Whisper To The Blood Part 27

Jim was standing in the doorway of the trooper post when she drove up at noon the next day with the Johansen brothers in tow. Literally in tow, as she had packed the three of them into their sleeping bags and tied them into their individual snow machine sleds and hitched the sleds on behind her own in a train. The combined weight was a strain on the engine of her machine, which had not been built to pull that many pounds at once. Although the slow uphill slogs were more than made up for in the exhilarating downhill runs, when she had to go as fast as possible so the sleds didn't overtake her and the whole shebang didn't jackknife and kill them all.

Ick, Dead, and Gus, funnily enough, didn't appreciate the need for speed, instead having somehow gained the impression that she was hoping to kill the three of them before they could be put safely under arrest. They screamed a lot at first, and when that didn't do any good they closed their eyes and waited for death.

A fifth sled hitched last carried evidence, items of interest found in the hot springs cabin that Kate felt might be identified by the Rileys and the Kaltaks and the Jeffersons and Gene Daly as having been stolen from them during the attacks. Since several boxes, now mostly empty, had been clearly marked in black Sharpie RILEY-RED RUN and KEN KALTAK-DOUBLE EAGLE-WAIT FOR PICKUP, she felt fairly confident they would be. she felt fairly confident they would be.

They acquired something of a parade as they came through Niniltna, and Ick didn't think anything was funny anymore. He was swearing a blue streak by the time Jim got him out of his sled, although that turned out partly to be because he'd had to pee for the last twenty miles and bouncing up and down on the sled over b.u.mps and berms was not kind to the kidneys. Gus and Ick, of course, were already past praying for in that direction, and Jim recoiled when he unpeeled them from their sleeping bags. "Jesus, Kate," he said.

"I know," she said, "sorry, Jim."

She didn't sound very sorry. She didn't look it, either. He finished extricating the Johansens and at arm's length marched them one at a time through a cheering crowd of Park rats. They had all heard the story of the attacks on the river and had correctly deduced the reason for this morning's perp walk.

"I could cuss you out myself," Jim said to Kate inside. "They're going to smell up my post something fierce."

Kate, feeling much calmer now that she'd taken some direct action against somebody deserving, yawned widely, jaw cracking, and said with a lazy stretch, "Quit whining. I got your guys for you."

"Holy s.h.i.+t," Howie Katelnikof said, wide-eyed as Jim hustled the boys into the facing cell. "It's a three-Johansen salute." When he got a better look at them his eyes went even wider. "Jesus. What'd they do to p.i.s.s you off, Kate?"

Kate didn't deign to answer. Howie got a whiff of the brothers then and took a step backward, nose wrinkling. "Jeeeeeesuz, I can feel my lungs melting down. Come on, Jim, you can't lock me up with that smell."

In fairness, Kate couldn't blame him. Weeks spent holing up at the hot springs without soap or running water had left the Johansen brothers smelling pretty ripe before Kate got there, and from what she'd seen in Tikani, she had some question as to their fidelity to personal hygiene anyway. Their subsequent reaction to apprehension hadn't helped.

"Where'd you find them?" Jim said, closing the door to his office.

"The hot springs."

"Really. Heard about them. Never been there. Kinda thought they were a myth."

"No," Kate said, pulling first one arm past the opposite shoulder, and then the other. Her joints popped in protest. "They're real all right." She jumped up to grab the trim over the office door, and hung there, letting her spine unkink, while she counted to thirty. "Hard to find, is all, and you can pretty much only get there in winter, unless you want to spend a month bushwhacking through the undergrowth with a machete. I'll take you up there sometime if you want to see it."

"Sure." He sat down. "They confess?"

She relaxed into the chair opposite him. "To what?"

"To anything," he said dryly. "They look pretty beat up, Kate."

"I know," Kate said. "I didn't do that."

"What did you do?"

She told him. When he stopped laughing he said, "Okay. You didn't whale on them. Who did?"

She gave him a look.

"Yeah," he said, "we don't have to talk about that right now. Or maybe ever. So did they confess to anything?"

She shook her head. "Ick shut up Gus and Dead. You should probably separate them."

"I've only got two cells."

"Not my problem," she said. "My work here is done."

"Need a statement." He opened a doc.u.ment on his computer and gave her an expectant look. She sighed and started talking. Half an hour and some questions later he printed it out and she signed it. By way of payback she made him type up an invoice from Kate Shugak to the Department of Public Safety for services rendered and made him sign it in front of her. "Okay," she said, rising to her feet, "absent any further objection, I'm headed for the barn and a hot shower and a hot meal, and then I'm going to bed."

"Kate."

She turned, hand on the doork.n.o.b. "What?"

"Nice job." He smiled.

She smiled back, smug. "I know."

Outside, enough of the crowd remained to offer up another round of applause, approving comments, and pats on the back. Mutt stalked next to her, tongue lolling out in a canine grin, receiving her share of adulation with less than appropriate humility. George Perry was there, laughing out loud, Demetri Totemoff with one of his rare smiles creasing his dark face, Laurel Meganack and her father, who looked less than thrilled, Old Sam, Keith Gette, and Oscar Jimenez. Kate realized that they must have hit town the same time as the mail plane. At the edge of the crowd she saw the four aunties, huddled together, chirping away at each other in whispers. Auntie Joy saw her looking at them and the usual radiant smile faltered at Kate's expression. She said something and the other three aunties turned to look at Kate.

She returned their gaze for a long moment, her eyes traveling from one face to another. Auntie Edna, the bully, strong, unyielding, always right, always willing to say so, always with that anger simmering away beneath the surface. Auntie Balasha, the sentimentalist, soft, tender, a heart made for unconditional love. Auntie Joy, the idealist, who saw good in everything, impervious to evil.

And Auntie Vi, the independent businesswoman, the entrepreneur, the capitalist, the hard-eyed realist who knew stability, accountability, and transparency were essential to increase business to, from, and within the Park and who knew they would come only with a steady hand on the Park's tiller, and so much the better if it was the hand of her choice.

All four pairs of eyes bored into her back as she mounted her snow machine, called to Mutt, and left.

She didn't go as advertised, though, instead cutting through the village and following the track about a quarter of a mile downriver. She pulled up in front of a two-story house with blue vinyl siding, black s.h.i.+ngles, and a deck the width of the house that faced the river. Safely above its frozen surface, a handsome drift netter called the Audra Sue Audra Sue sat in dry dock. sat in dry dock.

There were four snow machines in the shed at the side of the house, along with some other interesting items. Kate climbed the stairs to the deck and banged on the door. She had to repeat the action a second and a third time before Matt Grosdidier, his s.h.i.+ner somewhat less spectacular now, poked his head outside. "Kate?" he said, sounding dazed. "What the h.e.l.l time is it?"

"Late enough to come calling," she said, shouldering her way inside. "Get your brothers up." He stared at her, his hair flattened on one side and a pillow crease on his cheek. "Go on," she said, "go get them. This won't take long."

She gave him a hard look that propelled him upstairs, and a moment later she heard him thumping doors and calling his brothers' names. In the meantime, she looked around her at the chaos that was the Grosdidier en famille. Their front room looked like a larger version of Johnny's room. She shuddered.

In short order they were a.s.sembled before her, wary at this home invasion and a.s.suming an early morning grouchiness to cover it up.

Without preamble she said, "Whose idea was it to go after the Johansens?"

Luke, Peter, and Mark looked at Matt, who grinned. "Don't know what you're talking about, Kate."

"I'm not looking to jam you up here," she said. "I'm just looking to fit in another piece of the puzzle. You four are looking like ten rounds with Muhammad Ali. The Johansens are looking like fifteen with Mike Tyson. Seems reasonable to suppose the two groups might have encountered each other recently."

Luke, Peter, and Mark looked at Matt again. It wasn't that they couldn't all speak, it was just that Matt was oldest. It was habit, mostly. He'd been the only one of legal age when their father's boat had gone down off Gore Point with their mother on board, and he'd raised the other three, seeing them safely through p.u.b.erty and high school, working as a deckhand until he'd saved enough money to buy a boat so he could work his father's drift permit with his brothers as deckhands.

She looked them over dispa.s.sionately. They were an attractive bunch, medium height inherited from their French father, black hair inherited from their Aleut mom, ruddy outdoor skin and dark, merry eyes. They were loud and boisterous and good-humored, and they fought each other with enthusiasm, until one was attacked by some clueless other, and then the four of them united to annihilate him with even more enthusiasm. They were fair about it, they cheerfully patched up whoever they beat the snot out of, but Jim Chopin had been known to observe that these occasional contretemps appeared to be more a matter of drumming up EMT business than of wreaking vengeance.

They seemed to have adopted the Park as a fifth sibling since they'd all four graduated from the EMT cla.s.s, however. Kate, looking past Matt, saw a framed copy of the Hippocratic oath hanging crookedly on the wall, surrounded by a bunch of family pictures.

She sighed. "Did you bait them out? I saw the sled with the supplies packed into it in the garage. I also noticed that all the boxes were empty."

"You're a snoop, Kate Shugak," Matt said without heat.

"Yes, I am, Matt Grosdidier," Kate said. "Did one of you bait them out and the rest of you jump them when they bit?"

He looked at his brothers. "If we did, so what? Boys needed a whupping." He looked back at her. "And at the time it didn't look like anyone else was going to give them one."

Kate ignored the unspoken implication. "So you stepped up."

He shrugged. "Even if we did, and I'm not saying that, it didn't do a whole lot of good, now, did it? They jumped that guy from Anchorage."

"So it doesn't count if it didn't work?" He didn't answer.

"Will you tell me one thing?" she said. "Was it your idea?"

His eyes s.h.i.+fted. "I don't know what you mean, Kate."

The Johansen brothers emphatically, categorically, and comprehensively deny killing Talia Macleod," Jim said that evening.

"Of course they do," Kate said.

"They say they didn't kill Mac Devlin, either."

"Of course they do," Kate said again. She was stretched out on the couch with a copy of Christopher Hitchens's latest polemic against all G.o.ds, all faiths, and all those who sailed in them. Since she agreed with every word he said, naturally she considered it a work of genius, and she wanted to get back to it. Besides, she had a feeling that this conversation was going to do nothing but go around and around, like a snake chasing its own tail and eventually eating itself. Serene in her ignorance of Jim thinking the same thing about a previous conversation, she said with as much disinterest as she could infuse into the words, "What else would you expect them to say?"

He hung coat and cap and toed off his Sorels. "Nothing," he said, staring at his feet with dissatisfaction. "They cop to the river attacks?" "Yes."

"The last guy, whats.h.i.+sname, too?"

"Gene Daly. Yeah, him, too. All of them, no problem there." Mutt extricated herself from the quilt in front of the fire and bounded over for rea.s.surance that she still occupied the first and largest place in his heart.

"I can imagine," Kate said, very dry. All Jim would have had to do was tell the Johansen brothers they were going down for murder one and they would have confessed to anything else going on anywhere else in order to get out from under. "Ick do most of the talking?"

"Ick did all of the talking. Doesn't he always?" Jim gave Mutt a final scratch between the ears and stood up. "Kid home?"

"Studying in his room."

"Am I cooking tonight?"

She went back to her book. The Old Testament was a scary place, although the New Testament might be even scarier. "Did you know that h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation aren't mentioned by any of the Old Testament prophets?"

"Really?"

"Nope. Oh, they'd sell their daughters to angry mobs in exchange for their own safety and they'd slaughter opposing tribes by the thousand, but after that they were pretty much done. It's only Jesus who preaches h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation in the afterlife if you don't believe in him."

By this time Jim had deduced that if he wanted to eat, he was, in fact, cooking dinner that evening. Unperturbed, he went to the kitchen and as he expected, found a package of caribou steaks thawing in the sink and bread rising in a bowl. He opened the refrigerator and with great contentment found a six-pack of Alaskan Amber. Kate wouldn't bring home beer for just anyone. He uncapped a bottle and took a long swallow. "I made a bunch of calls the last couple of days. It turns out, our Talia got around."

Kate peered at him over the top of her book. "Do tell."

He nodded, put down the beer, and started chopping onions. "We all know there were enough Park rats around who wanted to take her down because of the mine," he said, pouring olive oil into a cast-iron frying pan and turning the heat on beneath it. "And let's face it, you didn't help."

That brought her upright, book discarded. "I beg your pardon?"

He shrugged. "You straddled the fence on the mine at the last NNA board meeting. Because you didn't vote to throw the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds out, some people could get the impression that Talia was a serious threat to the Park and to their way of life." He looked up and met her eyes. "You could have helped make her a target, Kate."

She didn't go immediately on offense, which surprised and relieved him. He needed her as a sounding board and it wouldn't help the discussion along if she got too mad to listen.

She sat in frowning silence for a moment. He tilted the cutting board over the frying pan and used the knife to push the onions into the oil. They sizzled. He stirred them with a wooden spoon.

"Okay, say that's true," she said. "Let's leave that for the moment, and you tell me about these calls you made."

He flattened some cloves of garlic, peeled them, and minced them. "Talia was a busy girl."

"Busy how?" Kate said, alert to the change in his tone.

"Busy between the sheets."

"Takes one to know one."

He looked at her, a steady, unflinching gaze.

She could feel the color rising into her cheeks. She looked down, picking up her book and smoothing the cover unnecessarily, mumbling something that might have been "Sorry."

The onions were beginning to brown and he added the garlic, stirring it in and leaving it over the heat just long enough to perfume the oil. "Understand that all I've been doing is gathering information," he said, using a slotted spoon to move them to a saucer. "Can't dignify much of it as more than gossip." There might have been an added bite to that last sentence. Mutt, having resumed her position in front of the fire, flicked her ears.

Kate's lips pressed together but she didn't say anything.

"The word is she was sleeping with both the mayor of Cordova and the manager of the Costco store in Ahtna. Plus I think she gave Gallagher a tumble, too."

"The mayor of Cordova is married," Kate said, making an effort to keep her voice neutral.

"Yeah," Jim said, "I don't think that mattered much to Talia." He took a deep breath and said, "She hit on me, too. When I was in Cordova, putting Margaret Kvasnikof and Hally Smith on the plane for Hiland Mountain."

"Oh," Kate said inadequately.

The hard part out of the way, he took another deep breath and let it out. "I also got Brendan to find out who was her attorney. I called him, and after he swore me to secrecy he told me that she had a chunk of nonvoting stock in Global Harvest."

"Part of the paycheck," Kate said. She felt a little light-headed, and forced herself to focus.

"Yeah, but. There's a weirdness."

"Which is?"

"These particular shares are held by a limited group of Global Harvest stockholders. They own their shares for the period of their lifetimes in joint rights of survivors.h.i.+p, accruing all dividends generated by those shares to themselves. But they can't sell them or trade them or leave them to anyone else. Once they die, the shares revert to the other partners."

Kate digested this in silence for a moment. "So her relatives don't inherit, beyond what she'd already earned?" "Nope."

"Which puts any of them out of the running."