The Singing of the Dead (32 page)

“What I liked best,” she said, swallowing the last of her dinner with reluctance,“was when the judge asked all the witnesses if they knew Angel Beecham, how they all said,‘Oh no, sir, I'm a married man.’ ” She snorted. “Like the messenger guy who was walking along shopping for a girl, just like they all were, and he says he was on his way home to dinner. And the judge doesn't even question dinner at thirty minutes after midnight.”

Ethan, next to Johnny,“I liked the doc best, especially his way of saying,‘The instrument of death’ and ‘That inference may be drawn, yes, sir.’ ”

“Yeah, but he's the only one really trying to do his job,” Jim said. “I mean, Jesus, Brittain doesn't even ask for a time of death. All that stuff Davidson tries to get in about rigor mortis, the coldness of the house, the congealed blood, and Brittain doesn't ask for a lousy time of death, something any moron in magistrate's robes knows to do before he signs his first warrant.”

“Probably because he knows Turner doesn't have an alibi for that time,” Ethan said.

“He's covering for one of his own,” Bobby said, not without relish. “Feels like the Five O'Clock Follies in Saigon all over again.”

Kate noticed that they were speaking of the inquest in the present tense, as if Brittain had taken testimony that day. Jim in particular seemed to be most exercised by the incompetence displayed on the part of the investigating officers. “Brittain cross-examines the milkman and the messenger about who they saw in the street; he makes them, insofar as you were able to in that time and place, admit to being customers of Angel Beecham. The police chief, the federal marshal, nothing like that.”

Kate had not known that Jim could get this upset, in particular about a cover-up that had been contrived almost a hundred years before. He was someone she regarded as rather relaxed in his judgments of those who went wrong, at least for a practicing member of law enforcement. He was a good cop, though, and there is nothing a good cop hates more than a bad cop, even if he has been dead for seventy years.

She remembered, some years back, when Roger McAniff had shot all those people, only it turned out he hadn't shot one of them after all. Jim Chopin had had an affair with the odd victim out, who had then dumped him. Following her death he had flown to Anchorage to lay that fact out in front of the investigating officers, one of whom was Jack Morgan. No, if Jim Chopin had been in Judge Brittain's place, or in Chief Fortson's place, or in Marshal Steward's place, or even in Doctor Davidson's place, he would have forced the truth into the open and slapped the cuffs on Matthew Turner himself.

“Why did he do it?” Dinah said, pushing her plate to one side. “Why did he kill her? Why not just divorce her before he married Cecily?”

“I don't think anyone who does something like that thinks it through rationally,” Jim said. “That coshing, as they called it then, the almost ritualistic slitting of the throat. It's totally out of step with making it look like an assault in the middle of a robbery. A robber clobbers, grabs, and runs. This was—this was a ceremony.”

“A leave-taking,” Dinah suggested.

“Possibly.”

“Brittain never asks if she was raped,” Kate said. “She was undressed down to her shoes and stockings, with the rest of her clothes neatly hung. The blinds were drawn so no one could see in. She's flat on her back on the floor. And Brittain never asks if there was sexual activity prior to the death.”

“Or after,” Ethan said with a shudder.

“Maybe he'd stopped by to rip off a piece for old time's sake, or that's what he told her,” Kate said.

“Maybe it wasn't the first time he'd done it, either, ” Bobby said, whisking around the table to pile empty plates in his lap and ferry them to the sink. Katya mumbled something fretful from her crib, and he was there in an instant. Mutt trotted over to stand next to him, head poked over the railing next to his, nose sniffing. Her ruff expanded, she backed up and gave a violent sneeze. “Yeah, I know,” Bobby told her, reaching for a clean diaper. “It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.”

Not me . Mutt didn't speak the words out loud but the back of her head going rapidly away in the other direction was very eloquent.

“Bobby's right,” Dinah said. “Turner probably visited Angel regularly. He paid for her fancy house.”

“ ‘Fancy house?’ ” Ethan cocked an eyebrow.

Dinah looked over at the couch, where Johnny, after inhaling his dinner, had ensconced himself with Kate's copy of The Lost Wagon . “Fancy woman, fancy house,” she said in disapproving accents. Ethan grinned, unabashed. Kate tried to ignore the jolt the grin gave her. Leftover feelings from adolescence could and would be ignored. And then she thought of Jack, and of the last time they had all foregathered in this place, of the day of Bobby and Dinah's wedding and Katya's birth, and she thought her heart would break beneath the pain.

It didn't, of course. Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love. Kate kept breathing in and breathing out; she kept waking early every morning and moving like she had a purpose through every day; she'd even taken on a job in her own field again, and sometimes, if a good-looking man twanged the heart that had once been the personal property of Jack Morgan, why, Jack Morgan himself would be the first to say,“Forward motion, girl, that's all that counts.”

Warm hands settled on her shoulders and squeezed once. She looked up, and then had to look down, because the hands belonged to Bobby, seated in his chair, not the ghost whose blue eyes she had for a foolish moment expected to meet.

“Okay?” Bobby said.

She blinked away tears she hadn't known were there. “Okay,” she said, and she pretty much was, except for crying in public, a thing she would rather die than do.

He bought her some time by asking Jim Chopin,“What happened to the guy at the gym?”

“Parka Man? He's in jail, where I'm probably going to be able to keep him forever, since he refuses to lawyer up. Says the justice system in this country is a sham and a joke run by niggers and kikes and spics and slopes who look out for their own by putting the screws to all those pure-as-the-driven-snow white folks out there, and he'll go to jail as a martyr before he allows it to make a mockery of his cause.”

“Speaking as one of the niggers, albeit one who stays as far away as possible from the justice system,” Bobby said, “what is his cause, exactly?”

“Exactly? I'm not sure,” Jim said, creasing his brow in an elaborate and failed attempt to act like he really cared. “White supremacy seems a little conservative for the brand of separatism he's preaching. I think you're supposed swim back to Africa, just for starters.”

“I've got news for him, I'm not even gonna roll back to Tennessee.” Bobby grinned at Dinah, who laughed.

“Anyway, he took it upon himself as an upstanding white folk to discourage Anne's candidacy. He's not entirely stupid; he could read the polls, like all of us he knew she had a good chance to get in.”

“So he started writing her letters,” Ethan said.

Jim nodded. “Yeah, we found the stationery and the envelopes and the pens up to his cabin.”

“What about the last letter?” Kate said.

“Like we figured,” Jim said. “The lab came back today with the results. Darlene wrote it.”

“She admit it?”

“No. Unlike Mr. Duane Mason, who is eschewing the American legal system in all its forms, Darlene Turner Shelikof has engaged herself an attorney, who has advised her to say nuffin to nobody.”

“Who's her attorney?” Kate said.

Jim cocked an eyebrow, and the grin came out, cutting a finned and sinuous wake. “Guess.”

She sat back, all thought of Jack and tears forgotten for the moment. “Oh man, tell you're me you're kidding!”

“What?” Ethan said, looking from one to the other, his expression indicating to anyone who was looking that he didn't particularly care for the fact that Jim and Kate understood each other so well. Dinah smiled down at the table.

Jim was nodding. “None other than good old Eddie P. himself.”

Kate shook her head, marveling. “Man, I don't hardly believe this.”

“I don't know,” Dinah said. “It's all a part of the same story, isn't it? Turner and Seese—and Heiman, the not-so-silent partner—start a bank a hundred years ago. They marry—and murder—and have children and flourish, and their families grow along with the territory and then the state. One of Seese's descendants becomes a lawyer, one of Turner's becomes a political operator, one of Heiman's becomes a legislator. One of them becomes a murderer herself. Full circle. It's Oedipus. It's Hamlet. It's the Duchess of doggone Malfi.” She stared off into space with dreamy eyes. “It's going to make for a great documentary, though. I figure two hours, or maybe even a miniseries.”

“I knew the call to momhood wouldn't last long,” Bobby said, heaving a sigh. Katya mumbled again, and he was at her side like a shot.

“The inquest on Angel Beecham was adjourned with a verdict of foul play by a perpetrator or perpetrators unknown,” Kate said. “Matthew Turner's name is never mentioned. This case is still open, Jim.”

“Not now, it's not.”

“We don't have any evidence. Everybody's dead, and you better believe Eddie P. won't let Darlene do any talking.”

He shrugged. Wasn't his case. He'd closed his case.

“I suppose the cover-up was inevitable,” Kate said, “given the good-old-boy mentality of the time and Matthew Turner's standing in the community. His bank was the one that stepped in after Barnette's failed and pretty much saved everyone's financial bacon. Cecily Turner hosted President Harding to tea. They named a town after him, for god's sake.” She added, “Of course his son blew it by marrying a Native, but what the hell, you can't have everything.”

Jim laughed out loud.

“Where is she?” Dinah said. “Angel, I mean. Where is she buried?”

“From what Paula's research shows, she was buried here at first, but later her son had her body moved to Fairbanks. He lived there; I guess he wanted her nearby.” She shook her head, marveling. “What a waste. What a goddamned waste. I mean, who cares? Who cares what the founding mothers of our fair state did to get here, to stay here? What else was there to do for a woman back then? Wife, mother, maid, that was it. You were born, you got married, you had a bunch of kids first because there wasn't any way not to and second because the kids were your social security, and then you died, usually way too young, most of the time in childbirth. What did you do if you were a woman and you didn't want that?

“Jesus!” she said in sudden realization. “They couldn't even vote!”

She looked at Dinah, at Bobby, cradling Katya, at Jim and Ethan. “And what is there in one woman's stepping outside that mold and making a living the best way she knew how, what is there in that to be ashamed of today? It wasn't like Lily MacGregor's hands were lily white. She was Angel's landlord. If I had a good-time girl in my family history, I'd shout it from the rooftops.”

Jim's smile was slow, warm, understanding. It made her uncomfortable. “Yeah,” he said. “You would at that. And you're right. Today is all that matters.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Today is all that matters,” he repeated. “Yesterday's gone, it's history. Who knows what shows up tomorrow.”

He looked across the table at her, unsmiling, no attitude, almost a stranger. “Today, here, now. That's all that counts.”

Ethan frowned.

Later, when Katya had been fed and rocked back to sleep, when the table had been cleared, the leftovers put away, and the dishes washed, they gathered on couches and chairs in front of the big stone fireplace. It was snowing outside, big fat flakes drifting down to pile themselves into broad, deep drifts. It was a sight Kate saw at the beginning of every new season, but was always astonished by the complete and total change achieved in utter, perfect silence. Trucks would be put away and snow machines brought out. Rakes would be hung up in favor of shovels. Moose and caribou would replace salmon on tables. Drift nets would go into net lofts, and traps would come out to be mended. People would sleep late, and eat too much, and read more, and in many cases drink more, and quarrel more often with their roommates, lovers, and wives, and mark days off on their calendars, counting down to the winter solstice, when once again the sun would begin its six-month climb back into the sky.

“I saw Anne in Ahtna,” Jim said, over coffee and Kahlua. “She's still campaigning.”

“Think she's got any kind of a chance?” Dinah said.

Kate shrugged. “This is Alaska. We've got legislators who use state funds to screw their mistresses in Denver, and get reelected by a landslide.”

“What's a little murder here and there on the campaign trail?” Bobby agreed. “Pete Heiman shouldn't get cocky.”

Kate thought back to the last speech she had heard Anne give.

“The buzz phrase for the Nineties was ‘taking responsibility,’ ” Anne Gordaoff had said in a strong voice that was clear to everyone in the senior citizens' center in Ahtna, even those leaning up against the back wall to gossip in low tones.

“We were all supposed to take responsibility for our actions, stop passing the buck.” Her voice carried well.

“So then when Alaska Natives try to take responsibility, to assume sovereign rights over their tribal lands and villages and homes, what does the legislature do but appropriate five hundred thousand of our state monies to fight us in the courts? What does the governor of the state do?” She waited a beat for what was becoming the chorus of this campaign tour.

“Tell us!”

“Say it, Anne!”

“Yeah, tell us!”

Anne smiled. “He directs the attorney general of the state of Alaska to sue us all the way to the Supreme Court!”

“Boo!”

“Hiss!”

“Aw, screw'm!”

“I ask you, what are these people so afraid of?” She paused. “And what about subsistence?”

Into the gathering silence the candidate had lowered her voice, causing people to lean forward in their seats, straining to catch her words. Even the gossips in the back stopped to listen.

“The sportsmen's fishing groups, the commercial fishing companies, what do they want? State control of the fisheries. Why? Because they're for-profit operations. We—” she thumped her chest “—we fish to feed our families!” She pointed over their heads to the two doors, propped open to let in the breeze blowing off the Kanuyaq River, a tributary rich with salmon, twisting and turning hundreds of miles from its delta on Prince William Sound to its source deep in the heart of the Quilak Mountains.