Dana Stabenow - A Grave Denied

Sometime during that same month he and Dandy Mike had helped Virgil Hagberg build a greenhouse, as confirmed by both Dandy and Virgil.

In August he had repaired George’s hangar, according to George.

Around Labor Day he had regraveled the paths around the Roadhouse’s cabins, according to Bernie.

She regarded that last entry. Bernie had been uncomfortable talking about Dreyer. Could be Dreyer had done a lousy job, although that contradicted what everyone else said about his work, and Bernie wouldn’t have been shy to say so anyway. There was something, though, and she put a question mark next to Bernie’s name.

In mid-September Dreyer had done some repairs and maintenance on the Freya’s engine, according to Old Sam.

In October he had worked on Bobby’s roof, according to Bobby finishing the job the day before the first snowfall, which would make it October 22nd.

She flipped the page and drew a freehand map of the Park. The twenty-five miles between her homestead and Niniltna. The turnoff in Niniltna, left up to the Step, right to the Roadhouse, village between the two forks of the Y and the river. Dreyer’s cabin on the Step road, the Gettes’ next door. The Freya had been in dry dock in Cordova when Dreyer worked on it, so Kate put a notation at the bottom of the page. She put stars where Dreyer had worked, with dates next to them.

She flipped a page and started another list.

She had to ask Bernie if and what Dreyer had done to piss him off. She’d known Bernie a long time and she didn’t think he had killed Dreyer, still less that he’d torched her cabin, but there was something there to find out, and the more she learned about Dreyer, the closer she would be to finding out who killed him.

She had to reinterview everyone she’d already talked to and find out how much they had paid Dreyer. He’d had seven hundred plus dollars in his pockets when he’d been found. What if there had been more in his cabin? What if his cabin had been burned down before Dreyer was killed, in an attempt to hide the crime? What if Dreyer had found out and gone after the robber? There was motive for murder right there, although she didn’t see why the money found on Dreyer’s body hadn’t been stolen as well. Still, murder often led to haste and haste led to mistakes, especially unpremeditated murder. If Dreyer’s death came down to what would have been basically a mugging if he’d lived, there would be someone with a powerful motive to discourage someone else from looking into the matter. However it worked out, there were some gaps in his work history that needed filling in.

Which led her mind to Bonnie Jeppsen, the postmistress. Kate decided to talk to her first thing in the morning. Any Park rat who’d been in the country for more than five minutes could have recommended Len Dreyer’s services to someone who needed a jack-of-all-trades, but Bonnie would see more people any given day than any other single person in the Park, with the exception of Bernie.

Johnny had asked some smart questions about the movements of Grant Glacier. Kate needed to talk to someone who knew about glaciers. She didn’t know if Chief Ranger Dan O’Brien knew squat about glaciers but if he didn’t, he’d know who did. She might luck out and find some nerdy scientist type who had measured the thrust and retreat of Grant Glacier to the last inch, which would give her a better idea of when the body had been dumped in it, which would give her a better idea of time of death.

Maybe she should go see Dan first the next morning, because she was going to have to discover the time of death on her own, without access to the case file even now being filled in in Anchorage. Jim hadn’t been joking. She had been thoroughly, comprehensively, and most definitely fired.

There were various options available to get hold of a copy of the autopsy report. Brendan McCord would help, but she didn’t want to go to any one well too often, and she had another task in mind for ex-marine Brendan anyway. Didn’t one of her cousins once or twice removed work as a clerk in the state crime lab in Anchorage? And didn’t the state crime lab share space with the state medical examiner? She made another note. She might have to fly into Anchorage which, as the killer was most likely still in the Park, might not be a bad idea. She’d take Johnny with her. She could hit Twice Told Tales and Metro Music while she was there, start replacing her music and books.

Her lips compressed into a thin line. She raised her head and stared out the window. The brute bulk of the Quilak Mountains squatted like chained beasts against a steadily lightening eastern horizon, ready to attack on command.

Kate liked lists. She liked tackling a list in the morning, and enjoyed the warm sense of accomplishment she got at the end of the day when most or even all of the items on it had been crossed off. Undone tasks at the end of the day got added to another list, and the previous list sat on the table for a few days longer, silent testimony to its compiler’s industry and efficiency.

This list was different. This list was a ruthless, relentless compilation of facts and series of tasks that could lead to only one outcome. Anger was a great motivator, and Kate wasn’t just angry, she was enraged. Her eyes dropped from the mountains to the awkward, adolescent lump on the opposite couch that was Johnny Morgan, his face barely visible, eyes screwed shut, mouth open, one arm twisted beneath him and one leg hanging over the side of the couch to the floor.

Someone had burned down her cabin, her home, all her belongings, her clothes, her music. Her books.

But all that was only by-product. Someone had snuck up to her house in the middle of the night with intent to commit murder, and it wasn’t their fault that they hadn’t been successful twice over.

Johnny snorted and shifted into another impossible position. People had made attempts on her life before. It came with the territory. Stick your nose into someone else’s business, especially in Alaska, where maintaining one’s privacy came somewhere between a vocation and a religion, you ran the danger of getting that nose lopped off. It was an acceptable risk, but it was a risk of which she was always aware and one she had been willing to take for the sake of the greater good.

But this time, Johnny had been put at risk. Her eyes narrowed. Putting a child’s life in danger was not allowed. Someone must be brought to a realization of the error of his ways. Someone must be swiftly and surely punished for it, punished so severely that they knew just how badly they had transgressed, punished so memorably that no one else ever got the idea they could behave the same way.

But first she had to find them. She bent her head back over her task, and not even the creak of bedsprings and the whisper of wheelchair tires distracted her.

The long black arm reaching around and snatching the notepad out of her hands did. Bobby, face like a thundercloud, rifled through the pages and tossed the notepad back in her lap. “Somebody already tried to kill you once,” he said in a furious whisper that had Johnny stirring. “You gonna keep at this until they get the job done?”

Kate picked up the notepad and shook the pages into place without replying.

“Jim fired you off this case, Kate. I heard him. Dinah heard him, Johnny heard him, I think the whole fucking Park might have heard him. He’s not going to be happy when he hears you didn’t stay fired.”

Kate looked him straight in the eye and said calmly, “I find who killed Dreyer, I find who burned down my cabin. You really think I’m going to bother telling Jim when I do?”

She turned back to the list, and Bobby, recognizing a hopeless cause, returned to bed. He lay awake a long time, listening to the scratching of pencil on paper, and didn’t sleep until the light in the living room clicked off.