A Cold Day For Murder Part 11

"Don't be silly, Kate."

"Don't tell me what or what not to do," she said, flaring up again.

"The day is long past when I listen to anything you have to say."

"Then be as silly as you want," he said in that same soothing voice, and she eyed him resentfully.

"p.r.i.c.k," she said with deep loathing.

He gave her a sudden grin that was as unexpected as it was dangerously contagious. "Feel better?"

"f.u.c.k off!" she said through her teeth.

"You feel better," he decided. "Let's go find Mac Devlin."

They found Mac Devlin the first place they looked, with his feet up on Billy Mike's desk. He was expounding at length on the future joys in store for Niniltna when Devlin Mining gained all its Mickey Mouse government permits and--Billy would forgive him for saying it-rid itself of all the Mickey Mouse aboriginal mining restrictions as well.

When Devlin Mining moved into full production--well.

Mac was picking a date on which to take the company public with a stock issue that would unquestionably be listed on the Big Board within hours after its release when Kate and Jack walked in. Billy Mike was listening with an expression of saintly resignation. Kate didn't fool herself for a moment that the pleasure with which the tribal chief greeted her and Jack had anything to do with how glad he was to see them. He bustled out from behind his desk, interrupting Mac in mid-oration, and grasped both their hands enthusiastically. He was a rotund little man with s.h.i.+ny black hair. He wore a s.h.i.+ny black suit to match, with a string tie drawn through a large, ornately carved and colored piece of ivory that looked as if it were holding up his chin.

Billy Mike was fifty-five years old. Born in Niniltna back when Alaska was still only a territory, he had never been farther away from home than Anchorage. He'd been elected tribal chief only when Ekaterina Shugak declined to continue representing the Niniltna Native a.s.sociation at the annual Alaska Federation of Natives meetings. He embraced Alaska and the Park with an abiding and inarticulate devotion, he loved his wife and their seven children, he was happy and contented in his job, and he rejoiced openly in his good fortune without the slightest trace of smugness. Spending more than thirty consecutive minutes in Billy Mike's company made Kate feel suicidal.

It didn't help that almost all of his seven children had been, were now going or would be going to the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, where they would major in business administration in order to learn how to run the Niniltna Native a.s.sociation when their father went on to his no doubt just reward. It was a given, like death or taxes, and six of his children understood that perfectly. The seventh, born male and afflicted with the name Dandy, was suspended for a year from school when he was caught with a retail-size marijuana crop in his second-floor room in UAF's Lathrop dormitory. He was serving his sentence at home, making his life a burden unto his father by hanging out with Martin Shugak. Kate remembered this interesting piece of information at almost the same instant she remembered seeing him at the Roadhouse the night before, exiting the back end of a pickup with his jeans down around his ankles.

She smiled at his father. "So what're you up to lately, Billy?"

"Oh, about two hundred and forty pounds, Kate," he said comfortably, and showed them to seats. "Can I pour you some coffee?"

Kate refused, Jack accepted and Billy bustled around filling mugs.

There was some conversation about the summer's catch, the fall hunt and the current cold snap. The mugs were refilled and Kate got down to business. "Actually, Billy," she said, "we've been looking for Mac.

We'd like to talk to him. Would it be all right if we used a room here in the building?"

Billy had a lively sense of self-preservation and recognized an escape when it hit him over the head. He stood up again at once. "Use my office, Kate. No, really, it's okay, it's my pleasure."

"Hey, Billy--" Mac began to say.

"No, I've got a meeting down the hall anyway." Billy disappeared with a wave of his hand.

Mac Devlin raised his eyebrows over merry brown eyes. "The granddaughter of Ekaterina Shugak speaks, and the earth moves. Or in this case, those on it."

"Where were you the night of October 26?" Kate said bluntly.

The brown eyes became less merry and the burly body stiffened in its chair. "Why?"

"Because that was the night Mark Miller disappeared."

Mac looked from Kate to Jack and back again. "Why would you think I might have anything to do with that?"

"It's too late to play coy, Mac. Because you knew Miller was going to call his daddy in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and try to cross you up getting permits for the Nabesna Mine. You knew about it, didn't you, Mac? Everybody knew about it; G.o.d knows Miller made no secret of it, but you had the most to lose if it happened. First he calls the EPA in on your operation on Carmack Creek, then he gets in between you and the Nabesna Mine." She rose to her feet and circled around his chair. Mac's head swiveled to follow her. "The kid was smart, he had ideas, and then he had that father of his, and you knew the only thing that could stop him was if he were stopped permanently. So you killed him."

"Well, now, Kate," Jack said soothingly, "maybe we should go easy on poor old Mac. I can understand how a man might be upset that his life's work was on the line like that. It was probably just an accident."

"Accident, my a.s.s! Miller's been missing for six weeks and no one's found his body. That doesn't sound like an accident to me."

"I'm sure Mac didn't really mean to hurt anybody," Jack insisted.

"And what about Ken Dahl?" Kate said. "He get a little too close to the truth maybe, huh, Mac? So he had to go, too?"

Mac looked from her to Jack and back one more time, and said, "Give it a rest, guys."

Kate straightened and said sweetly, "But you so obviously expected us to sweat you, Mac. We couldn't disappoint you."

"You'd never have forgiven us," Jack added.

Jack chuckled. Kate chuckled. After a moment, Mac chuckled, too. The room reeked of good fellows.h.i.+p and bonhomie.

"So where were you October 26, Mac?" Jack asked, sounding reluctant but bound to do his duty. "You've got a motive, you're a suspect, you've got to account for your whereabouts that night."

Mac tossed off the rest of his coffee and got to his feet. "October 26 I was in Juneau." He surveyed their resulting reactions with satisfaction, and added gently, "At dinner with the governor, his wife, the lieutenant governor and his wife, and my date, a Melissa Fen stenvald. She works for the Department of Natural Resources."

He stopped at the door and looked back at them. "You're right about one thing, Kate. That little p.r.i.c.k Miller was going to spend the rest of his life trying to talk Park residents into his way of thinking.

Development, yes, but limited development and run by the government for the specific purpose of increasing public access." He paused, and said, "What makes you think I've got a problem with that? If he offered me a big enough percentage I'd dig gold here for Moammar Kaddafi." His eyes met Kate's steadily. "Who wouldn't?"

Their gaze held for a long moment. Mac broke it off, and turned to leave. Kate stared after him with knitted brows. "Mac," she said suddenly.

He halted in the doorway. "What?"

"Did you talk to Ken Dahl two weeks ago? About Miller?"

"I did." Mac's merry brown gaze mocked her.

"What'd you tell him?"

Mac shrugged. "He'd heard I'd no cause to love the little p.r.i.c.k. He wanted to know who else felt that way."

"What did you tell him?"

Mac rubbed his hand over his brush cut. "He wanted to know if I thought Miller's testimony before that House subcommittee could have had anything to do with his disappearance. I said it could have, but that I thought your cousin Martin's fight with Miller that night had more."

"And that's all?" Jack said.

Mac grinned, a hard, jolly grin. "I thought it was enough." From Kate's expression, he could see she thought it was enough, too, and he left with a jaunty step.

Jack flopped down in Mac's vacated chair. "We didn't ask him where he was when Ken disappeared."

"Nope."

"No need, I guess."

"Nope."

"Think we'd better verify his alibi?"

"Yup."

"Think it'll stand up?"

"Yup."

"Me, too," Jack said, slumping. "Gamble's hanging around Anchorage with nothing to do. I'll put him on it, get him to call Juneau in the morning."

"So. Where does that leave us?"

"With Martin," Jack said. "I'm sorry, Kate, but he's all we have left."

She rubbed one hand over her face. "I know he's my cousin, Jack, and I'm supposed to be biased. But I still don't think he did it."

After seven years of working with her and five years of loving her, Jack Morgan had learned to respect Kate Shugak's hunches. Still, he was going to make her flesh it out, or try to. "Why not?"

She was silent, and then she said in a voice so low he could barely hear it, "Because my grandmother wants me to think he did."

"What?"

"She pointed me toward Xenia the moment I got here. She knows everything that goes on all over the Park, so she must have known Xenia was seeing Miller, and that Martin and Miller fought over it at the Roadhouse."

"Maybe she's trying to help us find Miller." Kate looked at Jack with wise and suddenly very old eyes, and for a fleeting moment he felt reduced to the size and age of a first-grader. "Jack, you've known Ekaterina for--what?--five, six years, now? Don't kid yourself that you know her. You've only seen what she wants you to see. The neat old lady holding friends and family together against the pressures of modern life. The upright tribal leader guiding her people out of the wilderness and into parity with the twentieth century. The profile in the Anchorage Daily News. You've never been face to face with the real Ekaterina Moonin Shugak."

"And who is the real Ekaterina Moonin Shugak?" he asked in an indulgent voice.

She shook her head, unsmiling. "The real Ekaterina Moonin Shugak could give Niccolo Machiavelli lessons. She's arrogant, manipulative and very, very powerful. Make no mistake, Jack, she runs this town, in spirit if not in name. She practically runs the Park. She could run the Alaska Federation of Natives if she wanted to, and as it is the president of AFN flies in once a month to consult with her."

Startled, Jack said, "I didn't know that." "The governor himself asked her to mediate that land swap between the state and Kachemak, Inc."

Kate smiled at Jack's expression. "Oh yes, Jack. Billy Mike might be tribal chief in name, but she is in fact and he knows it. He won't make a move without her backing him every step of the way." Kate s.h.i.+vered and rubbed her hands over her arms. She could not remember another winter this cold. "And I've got a feeling she doesn't want that ranger or whatever's left of him found."

"Why?"

"I don't know yet."

"Maybe because she doesn't want Xenia hurt," he suggested.

It was her turn to look indulgent. "She's doing her d.a.m.ndest to see that none of Xenia's generation ever leaves the Park, and she's driving Xenia crazy in the process." She was silent for a moment. She looked up at him with a twisted smile. "She approves of you, did you know?"

"Xenia?"

"Emaa. She thinks you are a good man. She even manages to call you by name." She saw his look and said, "Don't knock it. It's more than she was ever able to do for Ken."

He stared at her for a long moment, and swiveled around to look away from her. "Great," he said under his breath. "That's just great."

"What?" Kate said.

"Nothing," he said lightly, lying through his teeth. "I'm honored."

She laughed shortly. "You should be." She picked up her parka. "I'm going out to the Roadhouse." Jack's face lost some of its normally healthy ruddiness. Kate paused with her hand on the doork.n.o.b and said maliciously, "Well? Are you coming?"

"Why do we have to go to the Roadhouse?"

"Because, at this time of year it's the one place we're sure to find Martin. It's more than time we stopped talking about him and started talking to him."

He hesitated.

"We'd better get going, Jack. If I know Abel, we're not going to be able to dodge him for much longer." "Why do we have to dodge him at all?" "Because if he knew what we know, Abel's just the guy to prune the Park of one Martin Ivanovich Shugak." She held the door open, waiting. Giving her a d.a.m.ning glare, he grabbed his parka and stamped past her.

To get from Niniltna to the river road that led to the Roadhouse, for the first mile or so they had to follow the old roadbed of the Kanuyaq River & Northern Railroad to Lost Chance Creek. A few hundred yards beyond the Lost Chance, the road to Bernie's branched off to the right while the railroad bed turned left to climb into the Quilaks. But first, always, and forever, you had to cross the creek.

Lost Chance Creek was at the bottom of a gorge that ran for three miles upstream and two down. It could not be got around, or tunneled beneath; it had to be crossed over, and to do that the Kanuyaq River & Northern Railroad had built a trestle and run tracks across it. The tracks were long gone, but the trestle remained, impervious to all the abuse heaped upon it by sixty Alaskan winters. It now supported the comings and goings of the Park residents on trucks and snow machines with the same reliability it had supported rail cars carrying over half a million tons of copper and a billion ounces of silver. The trestle was seven hundred feet long and narrow enough that you didn't want to open the doors of your pickup when you were crossing it. It had no railings, on either side.

What concerned Jack Morgan most was that it was three hundred feet high.

They roared up to Lost Chance Creek on Kate's snow machine. Kate stopped well before the bridge, and waited, letting the engine idle. The snow machine s.h.i.+fted as Jack climbed off, and without looking around Kate gunned the throttle and sped across the bridge. On the other side, she stopped again. This time she shut off the machine and got off. She fussed with the gas cap and the throttle, biding her time, before she looked back.

Jack was on his hands and knees, his nose practically touching the hard-packed snow beneath him, his eyes never looking to the right or to the left but only straight down at the tracks left by the treads of countless snow machines. He was crawling directly down the center of the bridge.

It should have been a sight to delight Kate's soul. She strolled to the edge of the gorge and peered over the side. Three weeks until Christmas and Lost Chance Creek still ran free, the white water moving at breakneck speed over a jumble of fallen rocks, splintered trunks of deadfall, remnants of eroded banks. Ice crusted thickly on whatever the spray touched.

It took Jack eleven minutes to cross the bridge. Kate was counting. He didn't get up from all fours until he was at least twenty feet onto the access. He rose, dusted off his mittens and the knees of his down overalls and for the first time saw her standing on the edge of the precipice. Returning color was immediately washed out of his face.

"What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?" he shouted. His ba.s.s voice echoed faintly off the walls of the gorge.

She turned, facing him fully, standing with the heels of her shoepaks an inch from the edge, and said, her hands in her pockets, "Looking for bodies."

"There'll be one more if you don't watch your a.s.s, Shugak!"

She shrugged and turned back to look into the gorge.

There wasn't anything to see and she knew it, but she took her time looking anyway. A movement caught the corner of her eye and she glanced up to see a bald eagle back-winging down to settle in the very top of a spruce tree. They looked at each other in silence, an odd similarity in the ferocity of their expressions.

Jack stood where he was, his urge to s.n.a.t.c.h her from the brink of the abyss and his fear of the abyss itself warring clearly in his face.

Kate waited for another minute, counting one-Mississippi to herself, before sauntering back to the snow machine and climbing on. "Coming?" she said over her shoulder.

Jack climbed back on behind Kate without a word. His eyes met her own calmly enough, but he couldn't hide the sheen of sweat on his forehead or the gray slowly receding from his complexion. She wondered suddenly if she'd been born a bra.s.s-plated b.i.t.c.h or if she'd just grown that way, and when. "Okay?" she said in a voice more gentle than he'd heard in fourteen months.

"Okay," he said. She smiled at him, and his eyes widened. "It walks, it talks, it smiles," he said, his voice marveling. "It might even be human." Kate's smile vanished and he added, his voice caressing, "On my way over I was remembering the first time we crossed that bridge together." He grinned. "I was remembering how you cured my vertigo then."