Whisper To The Blood Part 25

"I get the picture. Still, good that he's here where we can keep an eye on him."

She preceded him out the door and she didn't see the curious look he gave her.

TWENTY-ONE.

No belly dancers or church socials this evening, just the regular crowd, a group of old farts playing pinochle at the round table beneath the blare of the basketball game on the television hanging over their heads, and a mosh of couples on the handkerchief-sized dance floor barely moving to the competing blare of Linda Ronstadt's "Blue Bayou." About half the tables were filled, the amount of empties per tabletop indicating the seriousness of the drinkers seated there, although n.o.body seemed especially drunk. No one seemed especially happy, either, except of course for the four Grosdidier brothers, although when Kate took a closer look she could see that Matt seemed a little strained.

"d.a.m.n," Jim said, looking at the Grosdidiers, "I hadn't realized the extent of the damage. I wonder what the other guys look like."

Nick and Eve Waterbury sat at one table. Eve had one timidly restraining hand on Nick's arm and radiated anxiety. She was saying something in a low voice. Nick had his face turned away. At first glance he looked sullen, at second angry, at third despairing. Kate made a mental note of distance and elevation. Nick wasn't much of a drinker but he had a temper, and it looked like Eve was testing it.

Jim gave her a gentle nudge with his elbow. The four aunties were sitting in the corner at their regular table. There was no greeting called to Kate and Jim, just four heads studiously bent over the current quilt, a bright, geometric splash of primary colors.

Bernie was behind the bar, a tall, thin presence with a calm face and what hair he had left bound back into a ponytail that reached to his belt.

Strike that, Kate thought, looking at Bernie, not thin, gaunt. Bernie looked as if he hadn't had a good meal since his wife died. His cheeks were hollowed out, his eyes sunken, the tendons of his hands stood out like whipcord. The past year had aged him ten. "Hey, Kate," he said. "Mutt."

Instead of rearing up to place both front feet on the bar as was her invariable habit, Mutt trotted around it to b.u.t.t Bernie's hand with her head. She looked up at him with what could only be described as a kind, loving gaze, if anything coming out of predatory yellow eyes could be called kind. For a moment Bernie seemed to stop breathing. Then he cuffed Mutt gently, pulled down a package of beef jerky, and said, albeit a little shakily, "Get out from behind the bar before I make you buy a round for the house."

Her tail swept a graceful arc. She nudged him again and then trotted back around the bar to Kate.

"Jim," Bernie said, looking over Kate's shoulder.

"Bernie," Jim said, looking at the bottles lined up in back of the bar.

"What'll you have?"

"Coffee," Kate said, taking a stool, "and heavy on the cream."

"Same," Jim said, sitting next to her.

On Jim's other side was Dan O'Brien, his back to them as he continued his ongoing attempts to romance Bernie's newest barmaid, one Laura Delgado, a Latina import from California who had followed a Bristol Bay fisherman north a year before. He had not proved to be as attractive in his natural habitat as he had been on a free-spending spree through the clubs of her native Los Angeles, and she had left him to start hitchhiking home the previous fall. In Ahtna she'd stopped to replenish the treasury by waiting tables at the Lodge, where she'd met and fallen madly in love with Martin Shugak.

That she'd fallen in love with Martin Shugak was a nine-day wonder in the Park, but, Kate thought, perhaps not so difficult, because no matter what Auntie Edna said the only person who could fall in love with Martin would be someone who didn't live in the Park and therefore did not know him well. At any rate little Laura Delgado had followed Martin home to Niniltna, and at the end of the road Bernie gave her a job. She was short and plump with polished golden brown cheeks, a perpetually wide smile, a perfect set of large white teeth, and a flirtatious look in her bright brown eyes that was going to get her into trouble before breakup. It didn't hurt that she sounded like Jennifer Lopez, and had considerably more cleavage.

"Bernie," Kate said in a quiet voice, "how often has Nick Waterbury been in here lately?"

Bernie followed her gaze and said with a noticeable lack of interest, "He's in here four nights out of five anymore."

"Eve always with him?"

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no."

"He drinking a lot?"

Bernie shook his head. "Not a lot. Steady, though."

"Yet another charge to put on Louis Deem's tab," Kate said.

Little Mary Waterbury, daughter and only child of Nick and Eve, had been Louis's third wife and last victim. She half rose to her feet. "Maybe I should-"

"No." Bernie held up a cautionary hand. "Leave them alone." His mouth twisted. "It's all we can do for them now, but we can do that much."

She looked at Jim. "Bernie's right," he said. "You can't fix this. If it's gonna get fixed, Nick and Eve have to do it."

What he didn't say but what they both knew was that most marriages did not survive the death of a child.

"Hey, Laura," Bernie said. "Thirsty people waiting."

She giggled, a dimple flas.h.i.+ng in her left cheek, and with a toss of long black hair she grabbed up her tray, winked at Dan, and sashayed off, giving him a roguish look over her shoulder as she went. The impact was kind of lessened when she collided with a chair but Dan sighed anyway, a lovelorn, wistful sound. Usually it was breakup before Park rats started falling in love with anything that didn't move out of the way first.

"Hey, Dan," Jim said.

Dan's back stiffened. He turned, very slowly, his eyes wary, a thickset redhead with fair skin that flushed easily. He wore bibs over a plaid s.h.i.+rt and high, thick-soled leather boots. "Hey, Jim. Kate. Didn't see you come in."

"Yeah, we noticed," Jim said. "Looking for you, actually."

"Really." Dan took a long deliberate pull at his beer and sat contemplating the bottle for a moment. "What can I do for you?"

"You heard about the snow machine attacks on the river?"

The tension in Dan's shoulders eased slightly but his eyes were still wary. "It's all anybody's been talking about, and my ears work fine."

"Yeah, figures. I was thinking I'd talk to the Johansen boys about them."

Dan raised his eyebrows. "Couldn't hurt. What's that got to do with me?"

"They appear to have changed location. Haven't been home in a couple of weeks, according to their dad." "And?"

"And I don't think they'd leave the Park. So if they're still in the Park, and they've changed addresses, I got to thinking about where they'd go. And while I was thinking I remembered all those abandoned mines along the foothills south of the Step. Lot of old timber they could use to build a shelter inside one of them, put in a wood-stove, pack in some grub, melt snow for water, you'd make it through as long as you wanted to. I was thinking, too, that you'd have the best knowledge of those mines, and maybe even a map."

Dan shook his head. "No."

"You don't?"

"No, I do, but we've been closing those old mines, caving in the entrances. They're an invitation to squatters, and they're dangerous to hikers and backpackers. Every time I hear about a new one I close it up."

Jim shrugged. "Could be one of them was dug out."

"It'd be a major excavation, requiring at minimum one of Mac Devlin's Cats," Dan said dryly. "You can bring a lot of rock down with a stick of dynamite."

"That you can," Jim said with respect. "Any other ideas you might have as to where the Johansens might be holing up?"

Dan scratched his head. "h.e.l.l, Jim, place is twenty million acres."

"I know," Jim said with equal gloom.

They shook their heads, and Kate could see that all would eventually be right in the world of their friends.h.i.+p.

She, on the other hand, was growing more and more worried about the whereabouts of the Johansen brothers. They weren't home. According to Dan there was no place for them to go to ground among the old mines. Kenny Hazen would have called Jim if they'd shown up in Ahtna. Where the h.e.l.l were they?

It was no joke to be out in the Park without shelter at this time of year. Where could they go, especially if they were hurt? There'd have to be trees for fuel, they had to stay warm, and- She sat up, staring straight ahead. "Hey," she said.

Before she could say any more, the door to the Roadhouse slammed open. Everyone looked around and two men stood in the doorway, one with blood frozen on his face, the other supporting him. "Somebody else got jumped on the river!"

"f.u.c.k," Matt Grosdidier was heard to say clearly.

There was a general movement toward the two men. Jim nodded at the Grosdidiers and made a hole through the crowd, Kate bringing up the rear. The bleeding man started to slip and Luke Grosdidier slid a chair under his b.u.t.t before he fell all the way to the floor. The Grosdidiers did triage surrounded by a supervisory buzz of commentary, Peter fetching a first-aid kit the size of a hospital crash cart.

Jim let them get on with it for fifteen minutes before he said, "How bad?"

"Not too," Mark said, his usually cheerful face serious as he concentrated on the task at hand. "He's got a goose egg on the back of his head and it bled a little, but he says he woke up on his own. We'll keep him awake, in case of concussion, and he should probably go into Ahtna for an x-ray, but I think he'll be okay."

"Ask him some questions?"

Mark shrugged. "If he's up to it."

Jim shouldered forward and hunkered down in front of the victim. "What's your name, sir?"

The man's eyes seemed to be wandering a little, and he made a visible effort to bring them back under control. "Oh," he said, zeroing in on Jim. "The Niniltna trooper, right?"

"That's me. What's your name, and where do you live?"

"Gene Daly. I live in Anchorage. I've got a cabin on the river the other side of Double Eagle. I was headed there on my snow machine."

"What happened?"

"Wish to h.e.l.l I knew," Daly said, wincing when Matt pressed a little too hard on his head wound. Matt muttered an apology, and Kate gave him a thoughtful look.

"I was coasting down the river, smooth as you please, making for the cabin with a bunch of supplies, going to spend a week there." He put a tentative hand to his head and winced again. "Everything inside my head just sort of exploded." He looked up. "I woke up and the trailer was gone and I was bleeding and I couldn't get my snow machine started. Woulda froze to death if this guy hadn't come along. Saved my life. Thanks, man."

His rescuer looked anything but pleased at the accolade. Indeed, he was trying to worm through the crowd, on a heading for the door. Jim took three steps and grabbed him by his collar. "Hold on, there, Martin. Been looking for you. Need a word."

Jim frog-marched Martin to the bar, sat him on a stool, and said to Kate, "Watch him for me?"

Kate said to Mutt, "Watch him for me?"

Mutt looked at Martin and gave a single, authoritative bark that established a perimeter of not more than a foot in every direction that was perfectly understood by everyone concerned.

Kate followed Jim back to the victim, who was struggling to remember something, anything else. "No," he said. "I'm sorry, I just don't remember. Wait, maybe, there might have been another snow machine?" He closed his eyes and shook his head, and then stopped, grimacing, as if trying to think hurt his head. "I don't know."

"If you remember something else, be sure to contact me," Jim said, and stood, nodding at the Grosdidiers, who escorted their patient out in an EMT guard of honor. There was nothing the four Grosdidiers loved more than having a patient to minister to. They'd fixed up what was essentially a two-bed ward in their house, and Daly would be well looked after until George took him to Ahtna the following day.

Jim turned to Kate. "Well, you can stop worrying. It would appear the Johansens are alive and well and still in business."

"Not for much longer," Kate said. "Mutt!"

Mutt gave Martin a threatening glare, just to keep in practice, and shot after Kate as she headed for the door. They were both showing a considerable amount of teeth.

"Kate," Jim said.

"Later," she said. The door to the Roadhouse opened and Harvey Meganack stepped inside. He saw what was coming his way and he stepped back hastily, overbalanced on the top step, and stumbled backward. Kate and Mutt didn't so much as break stride, brus.h.i.+ng by him as his arms windmilled and he tap-danced backward down the stairs.

"Kate!"

This time she didn't bother answering.

TWENTY-TWO.

She loaded a fifty-gallon drum onto the trailer of her snow machine, las.h.i.+ng it down. It held gas for the snow machine, not stove oil, but the Johansen brothers wouldn't know that and they probably wouldn't care anyway. Around the drum on the sled, she packed food, stove, and tent.

As angry as she was, she was glad to have a focus, a goal with a tangible end in sight. Someone was hijacking innocent Park rats and hapless Park visitors on the Kanuyaq River. She was going to find them and stop them, and-she patted the rifle-if she had to hurt someone in the process, fine by her. She might even be looking forward to it.

She kept her thoughts firmly focused on her preparations, but somewhere, tucked in a corner of her mind, she knew what was really pus.h.i.+ng her down the river.

Life had taken some strange turns of late, and all of those turns had left her on an unfamiliar path, each with a destination shrouded in darkness and uncertainty. Kate didn't care for uncertainty. If it came to that, she wasn't big with the darkness, either.

If that little weasel, Howie Katelnikof, were to be believed, the aunties had conspired to have Louis Deem murdered. The aunties, of all people, the fixed foot around which the rest of the Park revolved. The aunties were the first and last stop when you needed a job, a bed, a meal, or just some ordinary, everyday comfort, ladled out with cocoa and fry bread and an attentive and sympathetic ear.

She'd always known the aunties were judge and jury. She just hadn't known that they saw themselves as executioner, too.

The aunties. Conspiracy to commit murder. She couldn't believe it, and her mind refused to deal with the thought of them being tried and jailed for it.

Or of a Park without aunties in it.

The snow machine was fueled, oil checked, the rifle loaded and snug in its scabbard.

Then there was her seat on the a.s.sociation board, definitely not a consummation devoutly to be wished, if she wanted to keep quoting poetry to herself, which she could if she wanted to. Not only a seat, she was chair of the board. How the h.e.l.l had that happened? There followed of course her less than stellar debut at her first board meeting, as she fumbled and farted her way through an unfamiliar agenda she hadn't written, and responded-or not-to topics about which she knew little or-be honest, now-nothing.

Kate had always regarded herself as a responsible shareholder. Well, she would have if she'd thought about it. She voted in all the elections and where she felt it was necessary she spoke her mind at those-be honest again, admittedly few-shareholder meetings she'd managed to attend, work permitting. Her work took her all over the state, from Prudhoe Bay to Dutch Harbor, often at a moment's notice. The number of meetings she'd missed far outweighed the number of meetings she'd attended.