“YOU TOOK A HELL OF A CHANCE,” TOM JEFFORDS SAID when Kane stopped talking.

The two of them were sitting in a corner of the bar at the top of the Hilton. Jeffords was wearing civilian clothes and had had a word with the waiter, so no one was seated within earshot.

Kane had done several things after Moses Wright blew his brains out. He’d retrieved Abraham Jordan and his snow machine from the mine and deposited them, along with a couple of ten-gallon jerry cans full of gasoline, at the old man’s home. He’d given Slade a statement about finding Faith and confronting Moses Wright. And he’d had a painful discussion with Ruth Hunt.

Then he’d driven back to Anchorage. At the top of the pass, he’d taken the prepaid cell phone out of the envelope and punched Call. When he heard the connection being made, he’d said, “It’s over. The girl’s body has been found. Her killer is dead. It was Moses Wright.” Then he’d thrown the phone as far as he could into the trees.

Closer to Anchorage, he’d gotten on his own cell phone and dialed Jeffords to set up this meeting. He’d come straight to it, wearing two-day-old clothes.

“Yes,” Jeffords said, “a hell of a chance. Moses Wright might have shot you.”

“And put me out of my misery, you mean?” Kane said, smiling. “I suppose he might have, but I was wearing a Kevlar vest. And there really wasn’t any other way to play it.”

“Why not?” Jeffords said. “You had all the evidence you needed in the girl’s handwritten statement.”

Kane let some club soda slide down his throat, then resumed smiling.

“True enough,” he said, “if there’d been a statement. But all I found between the covers of that Bible was the work of many anonymous writers compiled over about a thousand years, from Genesis to Revelation.”

“Then what was on the sheets of paper?”

“Faith’s outline for a paper on the separation of church and state. I picked it up at the trooper office when I stopped to tell Slade about the bodies.”

“So you were just bluffing?”

“I was, and counting on Moses Wright’s pride and temper to do the rest.”

The waiter came over and set another drink in front of Jeffords. Kane looked out the window at the darkness, broken only by the lights of the port and homes on the hill behind it. I wonder if I’ll ever not want to drink, he thought.

“Then how did you know Moses did it?” Jeffords said. “Why were you sure enough to go up against him like that? If he’d denied it, you’d have been up the creek.”

Kane shook his head.

“There might have been forensic evidence,” he said. “You never know. But I didn’t really need it. There were clues. Dorothy Allison, the name Faith used on her bank account? I found out in the library in Fairbanks that she writes about being abused as a child.

“And there was the fact that Moses was one of the few people in Rejoice who could dump a body unseen, since his house is on the edge of the community. He must have driven as close as he could to the drift tunnel in her Jeep, skied in towing her body on some sort of sled, then skied back out, driven the Jeep to the high school, and skied home from there. A lot of work for an old man, but he was tough as an old boot and he had all night.”

“Okay, that’s how he could have done it,” Jeffords said. “Still, you don’t have much proof.”

“I didn’t really need much proof, at least for myself,” Kane said. “You see, Faith wasn’t alone in that mine shaft.”

“What do you mean?” Jeffords said. Kane thought he heard something in the police chief’s voice, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

“There was another body laid out in there, too,” Kane said. “Mostly skeleton, but with some patches of skin, hanks of hair, and bits of clothing still attached. That mine gallery had been cut into permafrost, and the cold preserved a lot. Enough to convince me that I was looking at the remains of Moses Wright’s wife, Margaret Anderson. And there’s only one man who could have put both those bodies there, isn’t there? Well, two, actually, but I was pretty sure the other one wasn’t involved.”

“Who is that other suspect?” Jeffords asked. Hesitation, Kane thought. That’s what I’m hearing, hesitation.

“Thomas Wright’s father,” Kane said. “Margaret Anderson’s lover. The man who sent me the old pictures and the fifteen thousand dollars cash.”

Both men were quiet again. Kane’s eyes followed the lights of the traffic along the elevated freeway over Ship Creek.

“But it turned out to be Moses, the most likely candidate,” he said, “and that’s that.”

Jeffords signaled for the waiter to bring him the bill.

“Well, you did pretty well out of this, didn’t you, Nik?” he said. “There’s what the Angels will pay you, the mine’s reward, and the cash you got out of the envelope.”

“I am keeping the money,” Kane said, “and the reward. I earned them. But I’m not billing the Angels. They’ve got enough trouble. It’s touch-and-go whether Rejoice will survive.”

“Do you think it will?” Jeffords asked.

“I don’t know,” Kane said. “When I left, Thomas Wright was heavily sedated and Gregory Pinchon had taken over, at least temporarily. I’m not sure Wright will ever be up to running the place again, even if the residents would let him. What his father did was a hell of a shock to the community, and many of the residents seem to be rethinking their commitment to the place. So it’s possible Rejoice will scatter to the four winds.”

“Maybe it should,” Jeffords said.

“Rejoice is more than Moses Wright,” Kane said. “And the world still needs faith.”

The waiter brought the bill. Jeffords handed him money and waved away the change.

“And what about you, Nik?” Jeffords said. “What are you going to do? More detecting?”

Kane nodded.

“I guess so,” he said, “if I can find anyone to hire me. It’s all I know how to do, and I need something to keep me on the straight and narrow.” He paused for a moment, then said, “And I’m going to try to let the past be the past and figure out some way to live in the present. I think one thing I’ll do is try to get used to the wide open spaces, then find some land out of town and build myself a cabin. I find I don’t like the city much anymore. And I have plenty of practice being alone.”

“And this other woman? Ruth Hunt?” Jeffords asked. “Do you think you’ll see her again?”

“I doubt it,” Kane said with a sad smile. “I doubt it very much.”

The two men rose, donned their coats, and got into the elevator. They had it all to themselves. As it descended, Kane said softly, “I’m sorry about your granddaughter, Tom.”

Jeffords looked at him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Nik,” he said.

“I talked to your pal at the troopers,” Kane said. “You got your start with them in ’sixty-six or ’sixty-seven, at the Tok station, which would have been the closest one to Rejoice in those days. And Thomas Wright looks a lot like you. Has some of the same mannerisms. After I saw him the first time, I thought you two might be related. But that money and cell phone threw me off. After all, you knew I’d tell you what happened. So why would I need the cell phone?

“In fact, it wasn’t until I was about to use it again that I realized it was just a red herring. You were trying to throw me off, to keep me from concluding that you are Thomas Wright’s father.”

Jeffords smiled and patted Kane on the shoulder.

“You always were a bright fellow,” he said.

“Why don’t you get in touch with Thomas?” Kane said. “A son should know his father.”

“My wife would like that, wouldn’t she?” Jeffords said. “With my track record, to suddenly produce a grown son? If I had one, that is. Which, of course, I don’t. A man in my position couldn’t afford the scandal.”

The elevator stopped and the two men got off. As they walked through the lobby, Jeffords said, “Come and see me in a few days, Nik. Whenever you feel like it. I have some ideas about how you can find work. And I want to help you, because I know you’re effective. And discreet.”

Outside, the two men shook hands. Jeffords got into his limousine. Kane walked across the street to the parking lot, started his truck, and drove to his apartment. He collected his mail from the manager, dumped everything on his bed, and unpacked his duffel. Then he opened the box of videotapes the mailman had delivered. He would burn them all, of course. There was no way Slade was ever going to get his hands on his tape.

He looked at the backs of the tapes, selected one, and went into his living room. He put the tape in the VCR and sat on the moldy couch with the remote control in his hand. He thought about his last, painful conversation with Ruth Hunt, then sighed, turned on the TV, started the tape, and fast-forwarded to the spot he wanted to see one last time.

On the screen, the waitress from the Devil’s Toe Roadhouse was astride Slade, naked, rising and falling. Another woman stood with her back to the camera, watching. The waitress turned her head and said something to the other woman, then slid off Slade. The other woman threw a leg over him and took the waitress’s place. Rising and falling, the woman turned to the camera. The intense concentration and joy on Ruth Hunt’s face made it look like she was praying.