A grave denied (26 page)

For a fat man, Brendan McCord sure moved quick, Johnny thought. Observing the tight, even expression on the big face across from him, of the leashed power and authority that the big body radiated, Johnny also thought it might be a good idea to get on and stay on Brandon’s good side. Like, for life.

“Can I talk to the officer?”

“I already did, made a phone call this morning. He says the girl was fortunate in her choice of relatives.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She was Harold Elwell Bannister’s granddaughter. You never heard me say that, of course, the record is naturally sealed as she was a juvenile.”

“Oh.” Harold Elwell Bannister was an old-time Alaskan, a stampeder who had stayed on after the gold rush to found a chain of grocery stores and subsequently to guide the footsteps of first territorial and then state governors. The Bannisters were a wealthy and historic Alaskan family, and Kate doubted there was a cop or a prosecutor, or more importantly a judge, in the state who wouldn’t have done their utmost to see that a crime against any relative of his did not go unavenged. “I see.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t like there was any doubt, though. There was semen residue, and they tested it for blood type. And there was an eyewitness who saw him make the snatch. She was out walking her dog. She was eighty-three and you know how dark it is winter mornings, but she ID’d him in a lineup. Girl was waiting for the school bus. Duffy had staked her out, and grabbed her up the one morning she was standing there alone.”

“Did he admit that?”

“Not to staking her out, but the cop is pretty sure that’s what happened. Still, the prosecutor had to fight for it, blood tests back then were pre-DNA, there was plenty of room for the defense to maneuver, and our eighty-three-year-old witness wore Coke-bottle glasses and failed to identify her own daughter in the courtroom.”

“But Duffy was found guilty anyway.”

Brendan shrugged and grinned. “The judge was a regular guest at Einar Bannister’s duck shack out on the Beluga flats every September.”

“Collusion,” Kate said. “Conspiracy. Also,” she added, “justice.”

Brendan sobered. “As close to it as the girl was going to get, I reckon.” He smiled, and Johnny felt a chill run up his spine. “Myself, I’m of the opinion that castration without benefit of anesthesia, followed by hanging, drawing, and quartering at high noon in the town square, televised live on all local stations with viewing made mandatory by all citizens either live or in living color, would be a more effective deterrent.”

Kate thought of Gary Drussell’s youngest daughter putting the moves on a boy she had met for the first time half an hour before, and said, “Sounds about right to me.”

Johnny’s eyes went wide. “Jeeze, you guys.”

“Sorry, kid,” Brendan said, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Thanks, Brendan,” Kate said. “I appreciate you coming in on your day off to help.”

“I have no days off. My pleasure.” He found a leer somewhere and produced it to effect. “Your tab’s piling up, Shugak.”

She batted her eyelashes. “I can hardly wait until the bill comes due, McCord.”

“Really,” said a dry voice from the doorway.

They turned and Jim Chopin was standing there.

They all wound up at the Lucky Wishbone for a late lunch. Jim was jealous of Kate’s easy camaraderie with Brendan, trying like hell not to show it, and not succeeding very well. Brendan was hugely enjoying the resulting spectacle and losing no opportunity to flirt with Kate by word, glance, and touch.

Kate was doing her best to ignore them both, which wasn’t easy, because the only other person there to talk to was Johnny, and Johnny wasn’t speaking to any of them because before Kate had left Brendan’s office, she had called his mother and set up a meeting for later that afternoon. He’d stared at her, speechless in betrayal, and had refused to listen to any explanation she had tried to give between Third and L and Fifth and Karluk. She’d given up, finally, saying the one thing she’d never expected to hear out of her own mouth: “I’m older than you are, I’m smarter than you are, and I’m tougher than you are. You’re going to have to trust me that this is the right thing to do.”

They were pulling into the parking lot as she spoke, and his eyes grew to the size of saucers. “Look! Look at that!”

“What?” She looked where he was pointing with an accusing finger.

“There’re cops all over the place!”

Three blue-and-whites were parked in front of the row of windows that separated booths from the parking lot. “So cops like fried chicken. That a problem for you?”

He’d slammed out of the Subaru without replying and stamped over to where Brendan and Jim were waiting. He’d made his displeasure known in a few curt sentences and been further outraged by Brandon saying, “Better to get it over with, kid,” and Jim saying, “He’s right, Johnny.” So he sat in a corner of the booth, face like a thundercloud, studiously ignoring the gang of men in black and badges sitting in the next booth and shoveling in fried chicken and French fries in a mechanical manner that wrung the heart of Heidi, their ebullient, redheaded server. She kept topping up his Coke and adding to his fries with a hopeful smile, which he ignored until Jim pulled his cap off and smacked Johnny with it. Even then all Heidi got was a stiff nod of the head and a gruff “thanks.” Kate longed to send him out to wait in the Subaru, but she was restrained by the fear that he would take off, and by the knowledge that his anger was caused by fear.

Brendan burped and patted his belly, of a size that barely fit between booth and table. “That was great.” He smiled at Heidi as she came to the table, and repeated the remark. She beamed at him and topped off his coffee and put a little extra into the process of walking away, which Brendan greatly appreciated and which Kate was sure added substantially to her tip. “I gotta go, I gotta girl waiting on me,” he said. “Kate, always a pleasure. Jim, likewise. Kid? Get that lower lip of yours off the floor, you’re in good hands that I don’t see letting go of you any time soon.”

With a genial wave, he was off. “I flew in a perp,” Jim said. “Brendan told me he’d be in so I figured I’d drop off the file in person.”

“Did I ask?” Kate said.

It made him nervous that the question wasn’t pugnacious. In fact, she was smiling, which made him even more nervous. Things had been so relaxed between them the night before, there was no reason for him to be nervous now. But he was. Dinah’s voice kept coming back to him.
What do you want with her?
He’d never asked himself that question; it seemed obvious to him what he wanted. He’d never thought about what happened after he got what he wanted.

He was thinking about it now. He cleared his throat. “So you’re going to meet with Jane.”

“Yes.”

“Want me along?”

“I appreciate the offer,” Kate said, “but let’s not make her any more insane than she is already by showing up with a trooper in tow.”

“If you need me…”

“I’ll yell for help.”

That was so out of character that he stumbled getting out of the booth. It didn’t help that she caught his arm and helped him regain his balance. “Are you in town overnight?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Got a ride home?”

“George.”

“Oh. Ah. Well. I’m in overnight, too. I’m picking up the autopsy report on Duffy in the morning.” His eyes searched the heavens for inspiration. “You could cancel George, ride with me. Save yourself some money.”

“I was planning on billing the state for the trip,” she said.

“Oh. Right. Sure. Of course. You’re here on the Duffy case. So I’ll see you back at—”

“But, okay.”

“Sorry?”

She thoroughly enjoyed his moment of blank incomprehension. She wasn’t sure she, or anyone else for that matter, had seen Jim Chopin unsure of how to act around a woman. It gave her, she admitted, if only to herself, a feeling of power. Not to mention satisfaction. Jim Chopin, the father of the Park, the cause of many a feminine flutter of heart, at her beck and call. She decided to push it, just a little. As her grandmother would have said, if you had power and didn’t use it, then you’d be giving it away to someone else, and they surely would. Kate didn’t like the idea of giving away any power she had over Jim Chopin. He’d bedeviled her long enough, he with the too-knowing eyes and the predatory grin. And the unquestioning comfort of his embrace, and the quick understanding of her loss, and—well. It was time and more than time for some payback. “Okay, we’ll ride home with you. Save the state some money.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure. Fine. Um, say around ten?”

“Plane at the trooper hangar at Lake Hood?”

He nodded.

“See you there.”

“Okay. Ten. Tomorrow. Right, see you then.”

She smiled.

He turned and blundered out of the door. His palms hadn’t been that sweaty since he was seventeen and asked Beverly Dobbyn to the prom.

Kate watched him run into the door frame, apologize to it, walk into a man on his way inside, apologize to him, and trip over the edge of the sidewalk.

Sometimes it was just too easy.

Kate had arranged to meet Jane at another restaurant, hoping that everyone would be less inclined toward making a scene in a public place. She’d picked Denny’s on Northern Lights. She’d never been there and it had a large and rapid customer turnover, which meant that the odds were good she wouldn’t see anyone she knew and that if she did see them, they wouldn’t be there for long. There were in addition two ways out of the parking lot if it so happened that she needed them. She circled the block twice but saw no evidence of massive SWAT team deployment. Maybe Jane hadn’t called the cops. She parked in the space closest to the driveway leading onto Denali Street. If they had to make a getaway and they made it as far as the car, she could duck across Denali into the Sears Mall parking lot, do a little bobbing and weaving, jump across Northern Lights onto a side street, hit Fireweed and grab the New Seward north. Of course, that wouldn’t help if they went back to Jack’s town house, where everyone in the law enforcement community knew he had lived, and it wasn’t like there were more than two roads out of town anyway. “Hot pursuit” didn’t have quite the same ring to it in Alaska as it did elsewhere.

At this point she pulled herself together and gave herself a mental scolding. There would be no question of hot pursuit because there would be no need to escape. She and Jane and Johnny were going to sit down and discuss the situation like two civilized adults and one marginally civilized adolescent. She closed her eyes to Mutt’s pleading expression, locked her into the Subaru, and followed Johnny into the restaurant.

“You
bitch”
Jane hissed as Kate sat down opposite her.

“I’m out of here,” Johnny said.

“Like hell you are,” Kate said, grabbing his arm and forcing him into the seat next to her.

“You stole my son!”

It was a light between-lunch-and-dinner crowd but heads were turning in their direction. “Please keep your voice down, Jane,” Kate said.

“Or what? You’ll call the cops? Here’s a thought. Let’s call the cops!”

Jane was a tall, slim woman with white blond hair, skin color that was almost albino, and dark blue eyes with the lids weighted down with thick eyeliner and thicker mascara. She was dressed in blazer, slacks, and a soft white roll-neck sweater. She looked like she’d just stepped out of Nordstrom. Kate, remembering the inside of Jane’s closet, thought it was a good chance that she had. “Okay, Jane, let’s call the cops,” she said.

“What!” Johnny said.

“Why not?” Kate said, holding Jane’s angry gaze. “They’ll come. You’ll accuse me of kidnapping. Johnny will accuse you of abuse. You’ll tell your story, he’ll tell his story, I’ll tell my story, and after a while we’ll all wind up in front of a judge. Until we do, Johnny’ll probably be stuck into some foster care home with people he doesn’t know and other fostered kids who have already graduated from B&E 101 and are ready to move on to bigger and better things. Johnny’ll find it educational.”

“At least they’ll put you in jail where you belong!”

The waitress, a woman in her seventies with bright eyes buried in a sea of wrinkles and a wisp of gray hair confined neatly beneath a cap, said brightly, “Take your order, please?”

“Coffee all around,” Kate said with a smile, “thanks.”

“You bet, sweetie.” Granny moved on to the next table.

Kate considered Jane’s last remark with a judicial impartiality that wasn’t wholly assumed. “No,” she said at last, giving her head a shake, “I don’t think they’ll put me in jail, Jane. For one thing, I was a part of the law enforcement community in Anchorage for five and a half years. If they don’t know me, they’ve heard of me. No, I don’t think I’ll be put in jail.”

“You’re a kidnapper.” Jane smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile, and her voice dropped to an even less pleasant purr. “And who knows what else you’ve been doing to him, stuck on that homestead out in the middle of nowhere.” She ignored Johnny’s gasp. “An older woman, a young boy. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.”

Johnny went white to the lips. “You wouldn’t,” he said with difficulty. “You—you
couldn’t.”

Jane had yet even to look at her son. She was watching Kate like a cat watched a mouse.