A deeper sleep (9 page)

Bobby was the NOAA observer for the Park, reporting twice daily to NOAA and the National Weather Service and as needed on existing flying conditions to the FAA. This brought him in a very small amount of income, which led the curious to wonder how he financed his lifestyle. This included not only a wife and a daughter, but also a new truck every three years and a Piper Super Cub, as well as the stable of snow machines and four-wheelers required of any Park rat worthy of the name, all of them modified for use by a man who had left both his legs below the knee in Vietnam. The troopers out of Tok and Cordova had paid serious attention to Bobby when he had first appeared in the Park, but he had been scrupulous in giving them no reason whatsoever to continue this surveillance, and after a while they had gone away. After a while longer, the curiosity had gone away as well.

Attention resurfaced when Park Air went on the air, but Bobby was well able to afford the kind of devices that would deflect official notice from the FCC. Bobby had also from time to time been able to aid the troopers in their inquiries into various missing persons, as well as sundry personal property that had been, ah, misappropriated. Besides, the troopers enjoyed the broadcasts as much as the next Park rat, especially when Bobby, swallowing hard, put up a weekly two-hour show featuring the likes of Clint Black. Loretta Lynn he could stomach and he thought Patsy Cline divine, but he also thought the last decent country western singer had died with Hank Williams. Senior. "If they wanna be rock stars, let 'em sing goddamn rock and roll," he growled, but beneath his breath when the law showed up with the latest Tim McGraw CD.

Dinah had appeared in the Park almost four years before, a self-taught videographer with the declared intention of producing documentaries on life in Alaska. In spite of her being as white as he was black and twenty years his junior, they had married, and produced Katya minutes later. Kate had been in attendance front and center for both events, the memory of which she had been trying without success to erase from her cerebral cortex ever since.

As Kate watched, Katya wriggled free of her father's lenient grasp and scooted over to where Mutt was pawing through the wood box in search of the thighbone of a
T. rex
Bobby always kept there in case wolves got into the house. Bobby rolled his wheelchair around the console and picked Dinah up out of her chair and wrestled her into his lap. She protested but not too much, and he rolled them both over to the living room and shifted them to one of the couches that formed an open square.

Kate sipped coffee and waited for the giggling to die down, and then waited some more. "Perhaps the two of you would like to get a room."

Dinah, face flushed with laughter and perhaps something more, struggled free of her husband's grip and sat up straight. "Nonsense." She smoothed her hair back and reached for the mug of coffee Kate had placed on the coffee table. "We're an old married couple."

"Yeah," Bobby said, waggling his eyebrows, "and even if we weren't, we don't need no stinking room."

Kate rolled her eyes, but she and Bobby had had a thing back before Jack, before Jim, and way before Dinah, and she understood Bobby's talent for showing a woman the view from the mountaintop.

He bent a stern eye upon her, as if he knew what she was thinking. "You're looking awfully fucking smug there yourself, Shugak."

"I don't know why you would say that, Clark," she said with all the primness at her command, which wasn't much and which was pretty much ruined by the shit-eating grin that followed, but she forestalled further cross-examination. "What does Brendan want?"

Brendan was Brendan McCord of the Anchorage district attorney's office, a coconspirator of Kate's from her time served there, a longtime friend and an enthusiastic if erratic suitor.

Bobby waggled his eyebrows again, which given how thick and long they were were admirably suited to the purpose. "The reason they're called state secrets is because, you know, they're secret. ADA McCord doesn't think I need to know."

Kate waggled her own eyebrows back at him, which were less busy and altogether more elegant but did not fail of effect.

"The Smiths," Bobby said.

Dinah poked him in the side. "You're so easy."

He gave her a lascivious grin. "But not cheap."

Before they could get started again, Kate groaned. "I had a clue. What have they been up to lately?"

The Smiths had materialized in the Park the previous fall with the title to forty acres of land ten miles outside of the Niniltna city limits and five miles inside the Park boundary. Title to said land did not include a right of way between the road from Niniltna and the property. There was a dirt airstrip, but the Smiths, defying life as it was known in Alaska, did not number a pilot in their midst. Father Smith professed an aversion to civilization and all that came with it, which included aviation. Also electricity, running water, power tools, voting, jury duty, and public education. They also shunned birthdays and Christmas, but given their seventeen offspring this was generally seen to be more an act of fiscal survival than a faith-based initiative.

This aversion apparently did not include heavy-duty equipment, as their first act upon relocating to the Park was to rent a D6 Caterpillar tractor from Mac Devlin. Their second act was to bulldoze a track over fourteen miles of previously pristine Park land.

This had taken place the previous January. The Smiths woke up at least one bear by rolling over its den, felled a small forest of spruce that had managed to survive until that day the depredations of the spruce bark beetle epidemic, diverted the course of Salmon Creek, and wiped out Demetri Totemoff's duly permitted trapline along said creek. Demetri appealed to the Park's chief ranger, Dan O'Brien.

Upon inspection of the afflicted area, Dan went into orbit, not a great surprise to anybody watching. Everyone liked Dan, one of the few rangers in Alaska never to have been shot at in the line of duty. This was a real danger in the Park, first from cranky old farts who had homesteaded in territorial days only to see themselves after statehood slowly surrounded by the creation of federal and state parks, wildlife refuges and forests, and second from cranky Alaska Natives who had been hunting caribou and moose and bear in the area for ten thousand years and saw no need for either hunting licenses or hunting seasons.

But it had to be said that there was more than a little fellow feeling for the Smiths, who were only exercising their by-God given rights to access their own by-God land.

"Except it turns out," Bobby said, enjoying himself hugely, "that the title to said land may be in some question."

"You mean the Smiths didn't buy it after all?"

"Oh, they bought it, all right, but they bought it off some old guy who just got a divorce and hadn't waited for the property to be divided up between him and his ex-wife before he sold it off."

Kate paused with her coffee mug in midair. "Would that be Vinnie Huckabee?"

"And his lovely former wife, Rebecca, yes it would. God, what a bitch."

Dinah poked him in the side. "You used to think she was hot."

Bobby poked her back. "She was hot. Until I got to know her. Now she's just a bitch."

Rebecca and Vinnie Huckabee had split the sheets in spectacular fashion a year before. It hadn't been a Spenard divorce, exactly, but rumor had it there had been gunfire involved and later, and worse, a lot of lawyers who had distinguished themselves primarily by the speed with which they had serially decamped the case. Rebecca, an attorney prior to marrying Vinnie, in the end violated the cardinal rule of jurisprudence and represented herself, which didn't give her anything in the still-ongoing settlement hearings except continuity.

"The story goes that Vinnie hightailed it to town and hunkered down with his brother in Chugiak. His brother—"

"Walter."

"—his brother Walter put the word out about Vinnie having land for sale and along come the Smiths, new to the state and—" Bobby hesitated, "—and new to our ways."

Kate looked at Dinah. Dinah looked demure. "Let me guess," Kate said to Bobby, "they wanted to get back to nature."

Bobby clucked his tongue. "Don't be so cynical. They came to Alaska to reinvent themselves, as do all good cheechakos who hear the call of the wild." His grin flashed out again, partly righteous, all rogue. "They heard tell someone had some land for sale up back of beyond, and got in touch. Vinnie wasn't asking much, from what I hear, he just wanted enough cash to adios it. Last anybody heard he was on his way to Nome. Is Nome a good place to hide out from pissed-off soon-to-be ex-wives?"

"Beats the hell out of me."

"And she was pissed off, was the lovely Rebecca," Bobby said, dwelling upon what was evidently a fond memory. "Word is she went ballistic when she heard about the sale. Especially when she heard how much Willie sold it for. She figured it should have sold for a lot more. And she was right, was the lovely Rebecca."

"So," Kate said patiently, "the Smiths came here and rented a bulldozer."

"They have also begun to fell trees for a house and outbuildings. Some of them are Park trees."

Kate thought of Dan O'Brien and shuddered. "They must be pretty well financed if they can buy up that much land for cash and pay Mac Devlin enough to convince him to allow them to drive his beloved Cat. What does an Anchorage DA want me to do? This is a federal matter."

"Better ask him," Bobby said. "He said he'd be available all this afternoon."

Time was when Kate needed to talk to Anchorage, Bobby got on his ham radio, exchanged pleasantries with a ham in New Zealand and another in Iraq before raising KL7CC in Anchorage, who called Brendan at his office and patched him through over the air. Now Bobby went to his computer, got online via satellite, and bellied Kate up to the keyboard to do a little IM-ing. At least every Park rat with a radio wasn't listening in, but she missed eavesdropping on Bobby's conversations with the likes of King Juan Carlos, Jeana Yeager, and Barry Goldwater. Even if Barry was dead. She had a feeling most Park rats felt the same way.

In the meantime, she bellied. "Oh ha ha," she said when she saw the user name Bobby had assigned to her.

Bobby grinned his wide, nasty grin. "Thought you might like it."

"Very funny." Kate turned back to the keyboard before he could see her answering grin.

shysterguy: Hey, gorgeous, how you?

parkdick:
     
Life is good, handsome. Whattup?

shysterguy: Right to business, that's what I love about you, Katie. The Smiths.

parkdick:
     
I had a feeling. What about them?

shysterguy: They're driving the feds crazy.

parkdick:
     
Great! Let's throw a party.

shysterguy: Spoken like a true Park rat. The feds are leaning on the state to exercise a little authority in this situation. Especially since they know Niniltna now has its own trooper in residence.

parkdick:
      
How much authority?

shysterguy: Run them off, if you can. I'm told that their title to the land is in question.

parkdick:
                    
You want me to evict them?

shysterguy:
                    
Yeah.

parkdick:
                    
Kinda sorta need a court order for that.

shysterguy:
                    
Got one.

parkdick:
                    
Which judge?

shysterguy:
                    
Reitman.

parkdick:
                    
Figures.

shysterguy:
                    
Don't blame me, take it up with the Park Service.

parkdick: Why doesn't Jim's boss just order him to do it? Why me?