Part 3 (1/2)
35 Seconds later the trooper emerged in all his blue-and-gold glory. He conferred first with Dan, then with Stewman, then with Brandon and Selina, while Kate watched from her front doorstep, scowling and keeping her distance. Wasn't her land. Wasn't her body. Weren't her hunters. She didn't want anything to do with any of it, and she was prepared to tell Jim Chopin so, at length, but she never got the chance, because he loaded Selina into the chopper and took off.
Well. It was obvious that her help was neither wanted nor needed. Fine.
She stamped inside and made a fresh pot of hot water, just in time to pour out for Dan O'Brian, who had calmed down enough to stare into his mug and say incredulously, ”Since when do you drink tea?”
”Since I ran out of coffee and a jet engine fell on the only transportation I've got to get me to the store for supplies.”
He caught the ferocity behind the misleadingly mild words, and said hastily, ”Hey, I live for tea. Serve it up. Got any sugar?” It was immediately obvious that that was the wrong thing to say too, so he fell back on something he knew for certain she would agree with. ”I hate this time of year.”
”I heard that,” Kate said, with feeling.
He nodded at the wreckage in the yard. ”Looks like Chicken Little was right.”
”Looks like.”
”Jim says they found a body.”
”That's the rumor,” Kate said, studying the swirling liquid in her mug with absorption.
He grinned. ”Amazing how you don't have to go looking for work, Shugak, how it comes looking for you.”
”I wasn't looking,” she stated. ”I'm not looking. It's breakup, for crissake, I've got nineteen different things to do without taking on trying to figure out why some doofus wound up dead wandering around the back of beyond.”
His grin faded. ”I thought he got brained by a piece off that engine.”
36 ”I don't know,” Kate said stubbornly, stifling the memory of Stewman saying, This guy's been there longer than last night. ”I don't know anything about it. I don't want to know anything about it. All I know is the engine missed me.”
He got up to look out the window, measuring the distance between the engine and her front door. ”Barely.”
She was tired of the subject, or so she told herself, and nodded through the cabin's open door at the two men sitting at the base of the tree.
They had stopped shouting obscenities with the arrival of the trooper.
Now they were silent and glum. ”What's with Rocky and Rambo?”
”Couple of Arco engineers from Anchorage.” Dan turned to raise an eyebrow in her direction. ”On a hunting trip,” he added blandly.
”In a manner of speaking,” Kate agreed dryly. ”How'd you get onto them so fast?”
It was a legitimate question. The Park comprised twenty million acres and the year-round ranger staff was so small that most of the time irresponsible hunters did their damage and were long gone by the time Dan caught up with them.
”You'll like this.” He drank tea, repressing a shudder. ”They flew into Niniltna in a Cessna 180, loaded-you should pardon the expression-for bear. They got a ride to the Roadhouse last night and started asking around for the best place to go hunting.”
Kate laughed. She couldn't help it.
Dan grinned. ”Yeah, I know. Like anybody at the Roadhouse would steer them toward a bear they'd already marked out for themselves. So somebody told them Fish and Game hasn't issued permits for a bear hunt in ten years, the grizz population in the Park being down to what it is and all.”
Kate was of the newly formed opinion that the Park's grizzly population was in definite need of a brisk culling, but the Park's chief ranger was highly unlikely to enter into her feelings on the subject. ”I guess they didn't take the warning to heart, did they?”
37 ”Nope.” Dan shook his head. ”First they got drunk, and then they got a couple of four wheelers-”
”Where from?”
Dan looked at her out of the corner of his eye and said, ”Bought them off Dandy Mike. Cash on the barrelhead. Twice what they were worth.”
”Ouch.” Like all Park rats open to opportunity, Kate prudently refrained from asking him if the four-wheelers had belonged to Dandy in the first place, and, like a good friend, Dan avoided burdening her with that information. ”Anyway, Dandy counted the cash, twice, made a few suggestions as to where they might look for bear, and as soon as they were out of sight he called me. I flew down and borrowed Billy Mike's four-wheeler, and here I am.”
Kate sat up straight. ”Dandy sent them up here?” Dan grinned again, an answer in itself. ”That son of a b.i.t.c.h!”
”Now, Kate,” Dan said soothingly. ”To be fair, I'd rather they tangle with you than anyone else in the Park, and Dandy knows it. h.e.l.l, they all do.”
Kate looked around at the shambles of her homestead, and her burst of anger died away. ”I don't feel all that formidable today, Dan.”
The ranger raised his mug in salute. ”A temporary setback, Shugak.
You'll have all this up and running again in no time, I guarantee it.
These go teams move fast, from what I hear.”
They watched the NTSB work in silence for a moment. ”So if he didn't get brained by a piece off your engine-”
”It's not my engine.”
”-what was he doing out here anyway? Hunting bear, do you think? That's the only thing worth hunting this time of year.”
”Don't know how long he has been there,” Kate said, and shrugged. Okay, she'd play. ”If he really has been out there over the winter, he could have gotten lost hunting, got hurt. Happens all the time.”
”Maybe a bear ate him,” Dan suggested.
38 Kate thought of Mama Bear coming at her flat out across the creek the morning before. Maybe the sow's eagerness and speed hadn't entirely been due to her protective instincts, but to the sight of what she had already found to be an easy snack. Ursine finger food. Kate repressed a s.h.i.+ver. ”Maybe. Although it's not like a hungry bear to leave enough to show whether a body is male or female, and Stewman was definite that it was a man.” She shrugged again.
”Aren't you even curious?” Dan was joking when he added, ”What kind of sleuth are you anyway, Shugak?”
She wasn't when she snapped out her reply. ”A retired one.”
Dan looked as if he'd like to argue the point but Chopper Jim's return spared her. The helicopter settled into the clearing in the exact same spot as before, this time with a body bag strapped to one of the skids and a stretcher with a sandbag strapped to the other for ballast. Selina got out the instant the skids touched down and walked away very fast without looking back. Dan went to retrieve Whoopee and Powder River. Jim waved Kate over. She went, reluctantly.
He opened the door as she approached, his earphones around his neck.
”What you got?” Kate shouted over the noise of the engine, the rotors whapping at the air over her head.
He grinned at her. ”Looking for business, Kate?”
Her expression told him what she thought of that question and he laughed, kind of heartlessly, she thought, given she was standing like Dido in the middle of Carthage after the sack. He nodded at the jet engine. ”It seems Chicken Little was right.”
”So they tell me.” She jerked her chin at the body bag. ”What'd he get hit with?”
”What do you mean, what'd he get hit with?”
”Didn't he get clobbered by a piece off that engine?”