Midnight come again by Dana Stabenow Read Free Book Online

high-school graduation, thinner in the face and much more serious. She stared the lens straight in the eye, looking as if she were trying to project fearlessness and succeeding only in showing a bravado that failed to hide the apprehension beneath. Again, nothing so different from any other teenager who had wondered what the hell he or she was supposed to do now. He remembered his own panic at the realization that the days of the parental safety net were numbered, that in ascending the stage to receive his diploma he was also taking steps to assume sole responsibility for his actions, of cooking his own meals, washing his own clothes, making his own bed, paying his own rent.
    He was lucky, he'd always wanted to be a cop, which put him one up on many classmates who were still dithering between majoring in philosophy and electrical engineering. Knowing what he wanted to do was no guarantee of a job in that field, however, and he knew it.

    By the time he had his college degree, he was much more confident of his ability to fend for himself. So was Kate. Her college graduation picture had attitude in spades; chin up, shoulders back, eyes confident, even arrogant. The picture of a woman who had found a calling, who was on her way up the ladder, and who knew it.

    The last picture he found was of Kate and Jack Morgan. It was at Bobby and Dinah's wedding the previous August, where Kate had acted as best man and maid of honor and, he recalled with a shudder, at the last minute, midwife. When it was all over and she was making motions toward stepping in as the cleanup crew, too, Jack had picked her up, tossed her over his shoulder, grabbed up a sleeping bag and disappeared into the woods, from which they had not emerged until morning. The picture was taken from the side, with their faces turned toward the camera. Kate's long black braid was falling over her face, from behind which she was pretending to be angry. Jack was laughing and about to give her an admonitory slap on the behind.
    Jim stared at the picture for a long time before coming back to himself with a start. His watch said it was eight thirty. Time to head for the Roadhouse. Maybe Bernie would know something. He dropped the picture in the box and walked to the open door.
    It was a beautiful evening, warm and serene and still but for the sound of water rushing down the creek in back of the cabin. It soothed nerves rubbed raw by the rush and bustle of modern civilization, gave senses chafed by the noise of life in the city at least the illusion of calm.
    The Alaskan Bush, the Last Frontier, the last retreat for the weary of spirit and the troubled in mind.
    It was, however, only an illusion, and no one would know that better than Kate Shugak, especially after the previous September, when all the rules changed, and peace and tranquility were overrun by malice, mayhem and brutal murder, and nothing would ever be the same again.

    He walked back to the box and picked up the picture of Kate and Jack.
    Tucking it into a breast pocket, he stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

    The same birds called all the way from Kate's cabin to Bobby's truck.

    The Roadhouse was a big barn of a room with a bar down one side, tables scattered around a dance floor, a jukebox in one corner and a twenty-five inch television suspended from the exposed beams of another.
    Tonight the television was black. "No games," Bernie said, pouring Jim a Coke.
    "Nobody to watch them, either," Jim said, nodding at the nearly empty bar.

    Bernie nodded. "Everybody's out fishing."
    "Old Sam tendering this summer?" Bernie nodded again. Jim sipped his Coke. "Kate go with him?"

    He must not have sounded as casual as he might have wished, because Bernie gave him a sharp look. A refugee from the sixties, Bernie, tall, skinny and pony-tailed, had not smoked enough dope then to make him stupid now. "No. Dandy Mike went out with him this summer." He produced a rag and began polishing the bar with great