A deeper sleep by Dana Stabenow

everything of the Smiths' that isn't nailed down, and then she won't get the crease right when she irons his jeans, and he'll kill her for it."
     
    "You really think Louis Deem irons his jeans?"
     
    "This isn't funny, Jim!" Kate took a hasty turn around his office. Mutt, wisely, was keeping to her neutral corner. Mutt tended to stick with what worked.
     
    "No." Jim shook his head. "It isn't funny, but I can't do anything, Kate, and you know it."
     
    "Yeah, you have to let him kill her before you can do anything."
     
    Jim opened his mouth to defend himself. Fortunately, Kate was on a tear, so it wasn't necessary.
     
    "Let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we?" Kate ticked off on her fingers. "When Louis Deem is twenty-one, he gets hauled into court for the statutory rape of sixteen-year-old Jessie McComas."
     
    "Who," Jim said, attempting to exercise a preemptive strike, "insists that it was not rape, that she and Louis are madly in love and are going to live happily ever after. She's half right. They do marry. They don't live happily ever after."
     
    "Louis does," Kate said. "Jessie, on the other hand, dies six months later in a fall through the ice when she's fetching water from the creek out back of Louis's cabin. The inquest rules it death by misadventure, although they never could come up with an explanation for the lump on the back of her head. Particularly when she was found facedown in the creek."
     
    "Who was the coroner on that case?"
     
    "Magistrate Matthew Nelson."
     
    "Oh yeah. I remember now. Meltdown Matt. He retired soon after."
     
    "I'm pretty sure the state insisted on it," Kate said. "And then we have little Ruthie Moonin, Louis's second wife. She lasted longer than Jessie, almost a year, until Louis's truck fell on her when she was changing his tire. He never did explain why she was changing the tire and he wasn't, but the trooper—"
     
    "Harry Milner."
     
    "Trooper Milner couldn't find just cause and had to let it go. That's where our Louis got his homestead. It belonged to Ruthie's parents, and she was an only child."
     
    "He kill them, too?"
     
    "No," she said, reluctant to admit to even a negative virtue to Louis Deem. "Not that he wouldn't have, but they were dead by then. Ruthie was an orphan, and sole heir. Why do you think he married her?"
     
    Again, the question was rhetorical.
     
    "For crissake, Jim, this guy used to sneak up on Mandy's dog lot and use her dogs for target practice!"
     
    "I didn't know that," Jim said. "What happened?"
     
    "It took Chick three tries before he finally tracked Louis down."
     
    "Chick turn him in?"
     
    Kate snorted. "Chick beat the crap out of him. There were broken bones and internal injuries. For a while we were hoping Louis was going to die, but no such luck."
     
    "What happened to Chick?"
     
    "Nothing." At Jim's look, Kate added, "Harry Milner had his retirement locked in, and by then he knew how bent Louis Deem was. He was hoping Louis was going to die, too. He told Chick he was a bad, bad boy and refused to arrest him the next three times he caught Chick drunk driving."
     
    "Did Louis bring charges?"
     
    Kate's face hardened. "No. By the time he was up and walking around again, Mandy'd got Chick back on the wagon. Louis romanced one of Bernie's waitresses into supplying Chick with free drinks the next time he came in alone. Chick wound up in detox and he nearly died. Mandy kicked him out again and he wound up in the drunk tank again and I had to bail him out. Again."
     
    "And the waitress—"
     
    "Mary Waterbury. Pretty little thing. Almost married that asshole Lester Akiakchak. I wish she had. Lester's worthless, but at least he's not homicidal." She looked at him. "Jim, we taught this guy how to kill. Not only that, we taught him that he can get away with it."
     
    "I know, Kate." They brooded together in silence for a moment, and then Jim said, "Louis only marries Natives."
     
    "Of course he does," Kate said, "and only Natives