Play With Fire (8 page)

"It's my money," he said, anxious for the first time. "I earned it myself, picking mushrooms." "Good for you. Kid," she said when he would have turned away.

"What?"

"You know who your father's dentist was?"

He looked surprised. "Sure. Dr. White."

"Where's he at?"

"Fairbanks. We drive up for checkups, once a year." He paused, and said,

"Was that part of the investigation?"

She never lied to a client. "Yes." She prayed he wouldn't ask why.

All he said was, "So you're hired."

"Looks like," Kate agreed, relieved, and watched as he leaned his bike against the cabin wall and went inside.

Back at camp Dinah said meditatively, "He's kind of like the Blues Brothers, isn't he."

Bobby and Kate both swiveled to look at her, identical expressions of incredulity on their faces. "He's on a mission from God," the blonde explained.

"I don't know about that," Kate said. "I do know he's scared to death about something."

"He's a sanctimonious little shit," Bobby said shortly.

"He's a client," Kate said.

"So? Doesn't make him any less sanctimonious." And with that Bobby crawled into his tent. Dinah looked at Kate, gave an uncomprehending shrug, and crawled after him.

"Like we thought. No shirt, no pants, no shoes, nothing," Chopper Jim said. "Guy didn't have a stitch on him."

"What was he doing out in a forest fire with no clothes on?" Kate said.

Dinah smacked a mosquito. "What was he doing out without any clothes on, period? These damn bugs would have eaten him alive."

Chopper Jim rewarded her with a wide smile. She wilted visibly, which was what Kate was pretty sure he'd flown up for this Sunday morning and buzzed the camp, setting the chopper down in a burned-out clearing a quarter of a mile away, instead of letting her phone in for the information on Monday. Bobby, predictably, bristled. Kate said, "Cause of death?" confidently expecting a reply of, "Smoke inhalation."

She didn't get it. Chopper Jim allowed the smile to linger on Dinah just long enough before turning it on Kate. A sensible woman, she distrusted it on sight, and her distrust was fully justified by his next two words.

"Anaphylactic shock."

"What?" "What?" Bobby said, startled.

"What's anaphylactic shock?" Dinah said, and turned immediately to search in vain for The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia. Thwarted, she reached for her camera.

Chopper Jim made a pretense of scanning his notebook but Kate knew that steel-trap mind had it all memorized, indexed and filed, on tap for instant recall. "Anaphylaxis is a physical reaction certain people have to certain substances, among them certain drugs, maybe penicillin, insulin, even aspirin, or certain foods, maybe shellfish, maybe strawberries, or certain insect bites. Bee stings, mostly."

"Bee stings?"

"Mostly. Upon exposure, the onset of anaphylaxis is sudden and severe, beginning with a constriction of the airways and the blood vessels.

Other symptoms parallel allergic reactions, itching eyes, plugged-up nose, hives, swollen lips and tongue, impaired breathing, increased pulse rate.

Untreated, it gets worse, including nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, loss of consciousness, cardio respiratory failure, and death.

All within minutes of exposure." He closed his notebook. "Treatment must be immediate. Recommended therapy is an injection of epinephrine or adrenaline."

"So this guy didn't get caught in the fire?" Kate said, readjusting her ideas.

"I didn't say that," Chopper Jim said.

Her look was pointed and said, Don't be coy, and there was that grin again. She hated that grin.

"Could be the fire caught up with him."

"After he died," she guessed, and he nodded. "So. Anaphylaxis."

There was another, briefer silence, broken only when Dinah put down her camera and made a beeline for the bottle of Skin-So-Soft she'd bought off the back of the Subaru. She started at her ankles and worked her way up. Chopper Jim watched her. Bobby watched Chopper Jim. "So this guy,"

Kate said, "this guy strips down to his birthday suit, goes jogging, gets bitten on the ass by a bee and falls down dead in front of a forest fire. That pretty much cover things so far?"

Chopper Jim gave a judicious nod.

"And nobody notices."

Chopper Jim shook his head.

Kate thought it over and came to a well-reasoned conclusion.

"Bullshit."

"Couldn't have put it better myself," Jim said.

"Metzger did notice something a little strange."

Kate looked at him.

"Okay, stranger. Body had some deep cuts on his upper right arm.

Metzger said the deltoid muscle was almost severed."

"What caused the cuts?" "Metzger says it looks like glass."

"Glass? As in drinking?"

"As in window."

"As in windshield? As in maybe he got hit by a car?"

He shook his head. "As in window. It wasn't safety glass."

Kate was silent for a moment. "You want a name to go with what's left of the face?" She was pleased when the trooper sat up and took notice.

"I think he was a guy by the name of Daniel Seabolt, lived in Chistona."

"Seabolt. Related to the minister at the chapel there?"

"His son."

"He missing?"

"According to his son, since last August."

"Since the fire, then."

"Yeah." The four of them thought about it for a while. "I don't get this," Chopper Jim said finally. "I haven't heard a word about anybody missing from this area, not a peep." "Yeah," Kate said, "like I said.

Bullshit." She added, "His kid says they went to the dentist in Fairbanks regular once a year. Dentist's name is Dr. White."

He nodded. "Okay."

"Good." Kate stood up. To Bobby she said, "I'll be late getting back."

"Why? Where you going?"

"It's Sunday. I think I'll go to church."

The singing sounded good from the steps outside and Kate was sorry she'd missed the whole hymn. The Chistona Little Chapel was a small church, six rows of two pews each. All twelve were packed solid this morning and she had to stand in the back. There was an empty space against the wall next to a plump brunette with three toddlers clustered around her and a fourth on her hip. Kate folded her arms and prepared to listen.

Contrary to what his appearance suggested, Pastor Seabolt did not roar or thump the pulpit. He did not even raise his voice; on the contrary, he was calm, reasoned, articulate, and convincing. He began with a story about the two angels who visited Lot in Sodom and drew the obvious (to his congregation, anyway, judging from the emphatic nods punctuating each of his statements) connection to the current condition of the United States of America. With a serious expression and a doleful shake of the head, Pastor Seabolt said it was not too late to bring America back to God, and he urged his parishioners to become champions for Christ. How, specifically? Kate wondered, and Pastor Seabolt told her.

Protest. By lifting the ban on the gays in the military, the current administration, Congress and the courts had endorsed what God had condemned. America was becoming a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, for which Hollywood and Washington, D. C." were equally at fault. He was pleased to quote the Reverend Jerry Falwell on the subject, in that Hollywood, Washington, D. C." and Hell were three localities with much in common.

At that Kate laughed out loud and was immediately the cynosure of many pairs of shocked eyes, including those of the blue-eyed choirboy standing between two other blue-eyed choir boys on the opposite side of the pulpit from the preacher. She turned the laugh into a cough.

Pastor Seabolt urged his champions for Christ to marry and beget more champions and to raise them up in the moral and traditional family values. He declared that it was right and natural to marry, and unnatural and against the law of God to remain single. He digressed a moment to attack the women's movement (he spat the word "feminist" like it was a curse), proclaiming any true Christian woman would not, could not participate in such a movement. He named names so that the female members of the congregation would be perfectly clear on this: the proscribed organizations included the National Organization for Women, Emily's List, the Alaska Women's Political Caucus and Planned Parenthood. Mention of Planned Parenthood naturally led to a comprehensive condemnation of abortion, the Freedom of Choice Act and RU-486.

He closed neatly with a return to Lot and the destruction of Sodom and in case they'd missed it the first time, pointed out the similarities between Sodom and Gomorrah and present-day America, and warned of the disastrous future facing them if they did not become champions of Christ and fight to rescue their country from the vast and morally perverted swamp into which it was currently sinking. "Let us pray," he said, and they bowed their heads forthwith. He'd given them plenty to pray about, Kate would grant him that much. She, a practicing heathen, was feeling a little unsettled herself.

The service ended with another hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers," and the highest and sweetest voice in the choir came from the ten-year-old standing in the middle.

Outside the church the mother of four said to Kate, "I haven't seen you in church before, have I?"

"No, I've been picking mushrooms."

She laughed. "Haven't we all. I'm Sally Gilles pie." The baby on her hip started to fuss and the other three to become restless.

"Kate Shugak."

"Where are you from?" Two of the boys started playing tag.

"I've got a homestead outside Niniltna."

"In the Park?" Kate nodded, and Sally said, "At least you're not as far from home as some of the pickers are."

The older boy growled and pretended to be a monster, and the other two boys got into the act. Kate felt surrounded by whirling dervishes.

Sally said something else and Kate had to ask her to repeat herself.

"I said, would you like to come to Sunday dinner? My husband's the postmaster, we live in back of the post office, you could come about five--"

"I'm T. Rex and I'm going to chomp you up! Grrrr!" Standing up on his tiptoes, arching his arms into claws, the older boy chased the smaller boys behind Kate. The two smaller boys shrieked with delighted terror and ran for their lives.

Sally's face went white and for a moment Kate thought she might faint.

"Brandon!" She grabbed the biggest boy by the back of his shirt as he dashed past her.

Startled, he overbalanced and would have fallen if she hadn't been holding him up. "What, Mom? What's the matter?"

"Don't you ever let me hear you say that again! We don't talk about those kinds of things and you know it!" She swatted him ineffectively, hampered by the baby, and cast an apprehensive look behind her at the church. In the doorway stood Pastor Sea bolt, regarding her impassively, and if possible her face went even whiter. She gathered her children up and with the barest of farewells marched her family homeward.

Seabolt's gaze shifted to Kate. His eyes were the coldest blue she'd ever seen, cold and clear and assessing, and without thinking she laid a hand on Mutt's head, a real and reassuring presence at her side. She stood a little straighter, pulled her shoulders a little squarer, lifted her chin a little higher beneath that coldly speculative gaze.

She would not scuttle away in fear from the challenge issued by those eyes, although later she wondered why fear, and later still, why the challenge. A challenge that was almost a dare. As if he were invulnerable, and knew it.

Someone touched him on the shoulder and he broke off the staring match to talk to a parishioner. Kate felt what amounted to a physical release that actually had her rocking back on her heels, just a little, just enough to make itself felt. She turned and made for the truck, shaken and determined not to show it.

She had her hand on the door when she heard her name, and turned to see Matthew Seabolt. He looked over his shoulder to reassure himself that his grandfather was no longer standing in the doorway of the church. He wasn't, and Matthew turned back to Kate. "Have you found my father?"

She busied herself, opening the door, sitting on the foot board, retying one shoelace that had gone limp beneath the Right Reverend Seabolt's fiery rhetoric. "Tell me again when he went missing. Everything you can remember."

"I wasn't here, I was at Bible camp."

She looked up. "So he was here when you left?" He nodded. "And gone when you came back." He nodded again. "Do you remember the dates?"

He frowned, blond brows knitting in concentration. "Bible camp always starts the first Monday in August."

"How long does it last?"

"Two weeks."

Kate looked at him, blond hair gleaming in the sun like a helmet, blue eyes sharp as the point of a sword, a little champion for Christ in the making. "Matthew, is this the first time you've told anyone that your father is missing?"

"Yes."

"And you haven't seen your father since last August?" He nodded. "Why did you wait so long? Why hasn't someone else said something? This is a small community. I presume everyone knows everyone else."

For the first time she saw a trace of vulnerability in those steady blue eyes. "Grandfather says Dad abandoned me, and that I shouldn't talk about him."

"Does he know where your father went?"

He shook his head.

She tried again. "Does he have any ideas where he might be?" "I told you," he said, lips tightening. "We don't talk about him."

The light morning breeze had dissipated beneath the hot sun and a stray mosquito wandered by, to settle almost desultorily on Matthew Seabolt's arm. He felt the sting and pinched it off between thumb and forefinger.

A smear of blood stained his skin.

"Do you think your father abandoned you?"

The answer was firm and direct. "No. Dad wouldn't do that. He wouldn't leave me without a word."

Another mosquito took the first one's place. The boy smacked it and it fell to the ground. The place where the first one had bitten was already red and swelling. Kate nodded at it. "They like you."

He looked down at the bite and rubbed it with one finger. He looked up again, more animated than Kate had yet seen him. "That's nothing. You should see Dad. When he gets bit first thing in the spring his eyes and his hands swell shut. One time when we were picking salmon berries the mosquitoes bit him so bad his ankles swelled over his shoes and we thought we were going to have to cut them off him. We used to order Cutter's by the case."