Play With Fire (17 page)

She was startled. "Easy?"

"Sure. Well, easier, anyway."

"Easier than what?"

"Easier than doing it yourself. Easier to know you can sin and be forgiven than to keep yourself from sinning in the first place."

Kate was silent for a moment. "I never thought of it that way."

"Plus," he added, "any form of organized belief in God is an excuse for one person to say to another, "Believe as I do or you'll go to hell, or I'll burn you at the stake, or I'll kill you and the horse you rode in on and everyone else who thinks like you."

Deep down, Kate felt it had been worth driving 269 miles just to hear those words. "So it's about power?"

"The most powerful and destructive of all the aphrodisiacs. There was a bishop during the Albigension Crusade in southern France, the one against the Cathars. Riding into battle, he gave the order to take no prisoners, to kill anything and everything that moved. One of his subordinates said, "Even the children, monseigneur?" His reply was,

"Kill! Kill! God will know his own!" " He paused, fiddling with a pencil. "Kate," he said without looking up, "if you decide to go up against these people ..

"Yes?"

He looked up then, at the direct eyes, the firm chin, the stubborn line of jaw, and sighed inwardly. "Just remember one thing."

"What?"

"There are no tricks in plain and simple faith."

He watched the intent look come into her eyes as she traced the quotation to its source, the triumphant smile that curled the corners of her mouth. "Julius Caesar."

He inclined his head in approval. "Shakespeare always gets the last word."

She picked the otter up and put him back in his bag and put the bag back in her pocket. Tom held the door for her. "Where are you staying?"

"Bartlett."

"Oh my poor dear."

"Are they ever going to replace those dorms? Or at least redo them?"

"The lower campus dorms are older and they're still in service. I believe," he added blandly, "there is a movement afoot to generate private funds to give the college president a new and bigger house."

"He's already got one."

"Ah, but he has to entertain."

And, joined by Jack, they spent their lunch talking of the venality and perfidy of university administrations everywhere, and other pleasant subjects. Jack and Winklebleck got on like a house on fire.

That, too, made Kate nervous.

Noxious kinds must be entirely condemned; for if there be near them a hob-nail, or a bit of rusty iron, or a piece of rotten cloth, forthwith the plant, as it grows, elaborates, the foreign juice and flavor into poison; who could discern the different kinds, except country-folk and those who gather them?

--Pliny

The drive to the borough school administration offices took Kate through the abomination of south Fairbanks, an echoing expanse of pavement divided into four lanes and two frontage roads. One strip mall was succeeded by another and one parking lot rolled into the next with occasional fast food restaurant interruptions, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Mcdonald's, Denny's. There was even a Super 8 Motel next to Denny's.

Progress. It looked like Dimond Boulevard in Anchorage, except Dimond had the single saving grace of the Chugach Mountains in the background.

Why do people allow this to happen in the places they live? she wondered, idling at a stop light. Why is there no testimony before the planning commissions that perpetrate these horrors? Are all the tree huggers and posy sniffers too busy saving the whales to join hands and lie down in front of even one cement truck?

Maybe it was that the locals didn't live here, they just visited when they had to shop and so they didn't care what it looked like.

Afterward, they hurried back to their homes in the suburbs, where trees grew and children played and traffic wasn't roaring by at forty-five miles an hour. Or it wasn't until they woke up one morning and found the encroaching wave of tarmac lapping at their doorstep and a belly-dumper burying the lot next door in a mound of gravel, preparatory to the erection of the next Costco.

Maybe, Kate thought, warming to her topic, maybe the Fairbanks city planners thought the only way to control ugliness like this was to pick up the town by the northern border, shake it fiercely and confine all the junk that fell into the southern half behind chain link, the better to guard against it ever spilling over into the real world. She hoped they guarded well, and was glad when her way took her through the old town. Nordstrom's was gone, so was the Chena Bar, and it was with real horror she discovered the North Star Bakery was closed. No more Lady Lou sandwiches, no more roast beef and cheddar cheese and tomatoes grilled between a slice of rye and a slice of white. She nearly wept.

Otherwise the town remained much as it had been eleven years before, narrow of street, a trifle seedy, but a real town that lived and breathed and had sidewalks with people walking down them. None of Fairbanks's founding fathers had gone in for much in the way of landscaping here, either, and there wasn't any room for it now, but the sight of all those squatty little un prepackaged buildings was insensibly reassuring. When Fred Meyer's mega store had crumbled to bits at the corner of University and Airport Way, Kate had a feeling that Tommy's Elbow Room would still be presiding over the banks of the Chena River.

She parked in front of the borough school district building and went inside to ask her way to the right office.

Frances Sleighter's grip was as firm as her eyes were keen. She was a thin, spare woman in her mid fifties, dressed in a well-worn tweed suit with a string of pearls and well-polished penny loafers with dimes in the slots instead of pennies. Her short, white hair was perfectly cut.

Her manner was brisk. Kate felt that Ms. Sleighter had not a minute to waste, but she wasted one anyway. "Is that Sleighter, like the glacier?"

"Why, yes. My grandfather came up with Dall." Her eyes narrowed.

"Shugak. Are you any relation to Ekaterina Shugak?"

"She's my grandmother."

"Ah." Frances Sleighter adjusted a paper on her desk with precision.

"Well, naturally, anything I can do."

Naturally, Kate thought, and proceeded to exploit her relationship to Ekaterina Moonin Shugak without delay. "I wanted some information on Daniel Seabolt."

Not a muscle in Ms. Sleighter's face moved but something in the atmosphere of the room changed. Kate stiffened imperceptibly in her chair, hands resting lightly on the armrests, every cell alert though she couldn't have said precisely why.

All Ms. Sleighter said was, "Really?"

Something about that cool, clipped syllable annoyed Kate and she decided to go in with the shock troops. "Did you see the News-Miner this morning, Ms. Sleighter?"

"I'm afraid not." Ms. Sleighter looked politely inquiring.

"There was a story on the front page about a body being found in the vicinity of Chistona."

Ms. Sleighter looked slightly less smug. "Oh?"

"The body was identified as that of Daniel Sea bolt."

Ms. Sleighter permitted her spine to rest for just a moment against the back of her chair, the first chink Kate had seen in the bureaucratic armor.

"I found him," Kate added.

Ms. Sleighter's eyes were wide and fixed on Kate's face. "How--how awful. How simply awful for you." "It wasn't very pleasant," Kate admitted. "I was picking mushrooms at the time."

"Picking mushrooms?"

Kate had the pleasure of seeing Ms. Sleighter at a loss twice in the same day. "Yes, there is a bumper crop of morel mushrooms springing up in that area. The forest fire last year, you know. Morel mushrooms,"

Kate said, mindful of Dinah's extensive tutoring, "in particular, seem to flourish the spring following a forest fire."

"The fire? Oh, yes, I remember now, of course. The big one. It spread all the way up through Men tasta Pass, didn't it?" Kate detected a distinct note of relief in the carefully modulated voice.

"Well, there's your answer, then. It's obvious. He was caught out in last summer's fire."

"Yes," Kate said, looking at her thoughtfully, "it is obvious, isn't it." She paused. "Daniel Seabolt was an employee of yours, I believe."

Ms. Sleighter's eyebrows came together a fraction of an inch, the picture of perfectly groomed perplexity. "Daniel Seabolt. Oh. Ah.

Yes. Of course." Ms. Sleighter's brow smoothed out and she met Kate's eyes with an expression of complete frankness that Kate immediately distrusted. "Yes, I believe he did teach at Chistona Public School."

"When did he leave?"

"Why, I don't believe I know. I'd have to look it up in his employee file." Kate waited. A minute passed, slowly. Ms. Sleighter permitted herself a thin smile and produced a manila folder from the teak IN basket on her desk and leafed through it. "Seabolt, Daniel.

Yes, of course, I remember now. He had been teaching at Chistona for two years before he left."

"When did he leave?"

Ms. Sleighter looked thoughtful. "I assumed sometime over the summer.

He finished the spring semester and failed to appear in the fall. We had to bustle about to fill his place, believe me."

Kate couldn't believe she'd used "bustle about" in a sentence and made it work. "Did he give notice?"

"No, he didn't. I must say, I was surprised at that."

"Why?"

Ms. Sleighter gave a slight shrug, not forgetting the correct set of her shoulders and the proper hang of the tweed jacket from them. "He was up to date with every report, his material requests were always on time, his student grades were always filed by the deadline, he never failed to answer any query the main office had by return of post. I would have expected him to follow the correct protocols, to submit a letter of resignation before he left."

"Oh." Kate thought for a moment. "What weren't you surprised at?"

The eyebrows went up again. "I beg your pardon?"

"You said you were surprised that Seabolt didn't give notice. What in the situation weren't you surprised at?"

Ms. Sleighter gave a little laugh and a dismissing motion of one graceful hand. Kate wondered if she rehearsed the gesture in front of the mirror. "You must have misheard me." "I see," Kate said. "Why do you think he left?"

"I couldn't say." Ms. Sleighter caused her expression to exude exasperated indulgence. "As you may well be aware, Kate, may I call you Kate?"

"Of course," Kate said agreeably. "Fran."

Ms. Sleighter's smooth brow creased almost imperceptibly. "Frances."

It might only have been wishful thinking on her part but Kate thought she heard an edge in that controlled voice, and rejoiced inwardly.

"Frances it is."

Frances smiled, showing all her teeth and some to spare. "As I was saying, Kate, as you may already be aware and so I apologize in advance if I sound patronizing, it is not the easiest task to find qualified teachers for remote schools. In some of the very remotest locations, we frequently--and I may say, unfortunately --experience a very rapid turnover."

"Because of the lack of access to the area," Kate suggested, "and the subsequent high cost of transportation."

Ms. Sleighter sent her an approving smile. "Yes. It's difficult to find qualified applicants willing to live nine months of the year completely cut off from most of the amenities of civilization."

"And perhaps," Kate suggested smoothly, "it is also difficult because of community criticism? Say, criticism of the method of teaching employed?"

She paused. "Or, perhaps, of the content of the course work?"

The smile vanished. "I'm happy to say, that kind of thing has only very rarely occurred during my administration."

"But it does occur." "Very rarely," Ms. Sleighter said firmly.

"Did it occur in Chistona?"

A blunt enough question, easily answerable with a "yes" or a "no," but there were no easy answers forthcoming from Ms. Sleighter, who gave a small, indulgent laugh and repeated the dismissing wave of the hand.

"You know these little Alaskan communities, Kate. Each one has its own eccentricities. As long as the teachers are qualified, we are satisfied.

Thus, we were very glad to find such an experienced teacher in Daniel Seabolt, one, I may add, with impeccable references from the Oklahoma public school system, who also had strong ties to the community in which he would be teaching."

"His father."

"Yes."

"Pastor of the local church."

"Yes."

"A fundamentalist church," Kate said, "with a strong bias against teaching the theory of evolution."

"And of course," Ms. Sleighter said, "since the Molly Hootch settlement, we have more schools than ever with positions to fill, all over the Alaskan bush." Ms. Sleighter looked at Kate again, assessingly

"You would be about the right age. Were you one of the complainants?"

"Yes." Kate extended a hand. "May I see Mr. Seabolt's file?"

Ms. Sleighter closed the folder and gave her thin smile. "I'm afraid not. All personnel files are confidential."

Of course they were. Just to see what she'd say, Kate said, "What do you think might have happened to him?" Ms. Sleighter raised her eyebrows.

"If he weren't caught in the fire, that is."

Ms. Sleighter spread her hands in a helpless gesture that was greatly at odds with her brisk, take no-prisoners demeanor. "I know no more than the troopers, and they seem to think it was death by misadventure." "I thought you said you didn't read the paper this morning," Kate said.

Ms. Sleighter had the grace to flush slightly. The next words came out with just the suggestion of gritted teeth behind them. "I'm sorry, of course, for the loss to the community of such a promising young man, and naturally my heart goes out to his family."

And that was that. Kate left Frances Sleighter's office with two more questions than she went in with.

Why was Ms. Sleighter so eager for Daniel Sea bolt to have died in the forest fire?

And how was it she could barely remember his name when she had his personnel file in her IN basket?

"So you think she's lying?" Jack said.