She gave a glum nod. “That I would, Virgil.”
“You will be building a new cabin, I am thinking.”
She nodded.
“Something bigger, now that you have the boy with you.”
She nodded again. “I don’t know when, but yes, something bigger.”
“You are sleeping in the RV now? The one they got stuck on this side of the Lost Chance Creek bridge?”
She smiled a little. “That’s the one.”
“That is a very sharp turn, that turn coming off of the east end of that bridge. The gravel they put there keeps sliding down the bank. It is always muddy.”
“It is that,” Kate said.
“It is good that you have a place to sleep out of the wet, Kate Shugak, but I am thinking you will not be happy in that RV for very long. Nor the boy.”
“No,” she said, a little mournfully.
“So you will build again. You need the help, I am good with the woodworking,” he said.
She was touched. “That’s a wonderful offer, Virgil. Thank you.”
Telma finally finished with the counter, sat down next to Virgil, folded her hands on her lap, and smiled at Kate. Virgil put his hand on hers and squeezed. “My Telma,” he said fondly.
Kate helped herself to another cookie even though she didn’t want one. “I’ll need all the expert help I can get, especially with Len Dreyer dead.”
Virgil’s smile didn’t change. “A man cut down in his prime,” he said piously. “A sad thing, that.”
Not necessarily, Kate thought.
“You will catch the terrible person who shot him,” Virgil stated.
“That I will,” she said. “And more to the point, the person who burned down my cabin.” She looked at Telma. “These really are wonderful cookies, Telma. You’re an amazing baker. I hope you’re passing some of that skill along to Vanessa.”
Telma smiled. “She is a fine girl. My cousin’s child.”
“Vanessa is not interested in the cooking yet,” Virgil said.
“Oh,” Kate said. “What is she interested in?”
“The reading. She would read all day of every day if we let her. And she likes that boy of yours, that Johnny.”
“She has good taste then,” Kate said easily. “He’s a good kid. How long has Vanessa been with you now?”
Virgil frowned in thought. “She comes to us last May, so almost a year now.”
“Must be nice, having a girl,” Kate said, with feeling.
“She is a quiet little thing,” Virgil said, “no trouble at all in the house.”
Kate wondered about that. One of the first signs of abuse was a retreat into oneself. “Was she always this quiet?”
“Oh, yes,” Virgil said. “From when she first came to us, she is always quiet.”
“I like children,” Telma said unexpectedly.
Kate didn’t know what to say to that, although she was glad of the sentiment. She ought to just come right out with it, like she had with Gary Drussell, but this was an older couple with no experience of children and certainly none of child abuse, and from Virgil’s attitude, the news about Len Dreyer’s past history had not permeated to the Hagberg homestead.
“But helpful,” Virgil said, “very, very helpful, at least out of doors and away from her books. She is good with the wood chopping, after I show her how. She helps me with the weeding of the garden all summer. And she is interested in the tanning of the caribou hide I bring home in the fall.”
Kate smiled and nodded. “Have you been teaching her how to drive?”
He shrugged. “The four-wheeler she already uses to go back and forth to school after the snow melts. Before, I teach her the snow machine. It is not difficult, and the girl is quick.”
“My boy is the same,” she said. “I was thinking of teaching him how to run the tractor, too. He wants to drive the truck.”
Virgil smiled. “At fourteen, all boys want to drive the truck.”
“Nice to have help down on the farm,” Kate said.
“It is that,” Virgil said.
“Especially now that it looks like we won’t be able to hire any, so far as we know.”
“Neighbors will help,” Virgil said. “I will help.”
“I appreciate that, Virgil, but I was thinking more along the lines of fixing roofs and replacing glass and rototilling gardens. It was nice to have help you could hire. Dreyer crossed a lot of items off a lot of peoples’ lists.”
“He did,” Virgil said. “Have another cookie, Kate Shugak.”
“A good worker, everyone said so,” Kate said.
“A sad thing,” Virgil said, shaking his head. “He did a fine job in the garden last spring. You should come see.” He got to his feet.
“Huh? I mean, okay.” Kate rose. Telma smiled impartially upon them both as Virgil led Kate out of the house.
Virgil paused on the porch. “Your dog. Where is she?”
Kate nodded toward the woods. “Either chasing rabbits or asleep in the sun.”
“Ah. That is good. I have too many rabbits on my land. Come see my garden, Kate Shugak.”
She followed him around the house. Maybe he’d be easier to talk to away from Telma. He was more of this world than his wife. If Dreyer had hurt Vanessa, he might actually have noticed something.
They walked through a copse of evenly spaced trees, all neatly pruned. There were squares of raspberries, blueberries, and currants. The garden was impressive, orderly rows of rich soil thirty feet in length in a plot fifty feet wide.
Every five feet there was a line of flat rocks, providing access to the produce without harming any of it. “Wow,” she said, impressed and envious. She turned. “Where did you-”
The last thing she saw was the bottom of a spade coming straight for her head.
“Ah, shit,” Jim said.
Johnny had been right, it was Dandy Mike. Johnny had also been right about the birds. Something else, maybe a fox or even a wolverine, had been at Dandy, too. The magpies and the ravens had fluttered away at his approach, but not far, and they scolded him from their perches in the trees for interrupting their meal.
“You dumb bastard,” Jim said to the corpse, “you dumb bastard! I told you to stay away from this case. I told you you didn’t have the training for this. Goddamn you anyway!”
He whipped off his cap and slapped it against his leg. It stung, even through his jeans. “Shit,” he said again, and went for the crime-scene kit he had in the crew cab. He shot two rolls of film, and made a drawing of the crime scene with measurements before he brought out a body bag and muscled Dandy into it and the bag into the back, scolded all the while by the magpies and the ravens. He thought about fetching the shotgun clipped to the dash of the pickup and letting it loose on them, and then he got his temper under better control.
Dandy had caught a blast in the chest from a shotgun held on him at short range, just like Len Dreyer/Leon Duffy, which meant he either knew his murderer well enough to allow him to get that close even with a weapon in his hand, or his murderer had surprised him.
Jim surveyed the clearing. He didn’t know what the hell Dandy Mike was looking for here, but with the cabin burned there wasn’t a hell of a lot of cover. What with the rain and the tracks from Johnny’s four-wheeler and the footprints of Johnny and Vanessa, there wasn’t a lot to read from the ground. The bushes and shrubs looked as though Dandy had been pulled from the clearing through the brush. He followed it, bent in half, eyes straining for anything the killer might have dropped. There wasn’t so much as a shell casing.
He quartered the clearing, nose to the ground. Although the rain had washed most of it away, he thought he could see a darker patch of ground that might once have been blood. A very faint trail that might have been dragging boot heels led to the bushes. He went to the truck and opened the body bag. Yes, Dandy had mud built up on the heels of his boots. He zipped the bag back up, avoiding another clear look at what was left of Dandy’s face.