A taint in the blood (37 page)

Jim had to make a phone call before she'd let him get his pants on, and they arrived at the facility damp but determined.

A stocky corrections officer with a round face and a dimpled smile was waiting for them. "Sam," Jim said. Jim.

"Thanks for setting this up."

"I was never here, I saw nothing, and I'm about to go off shift anyway."

"I appreciate that."

"Feel kind of sorry for the little bastard," Sam said as he buzzed them inside and escorted them down the hall.

"Why is that?"

"His wife was just here. They've got a kid with cystic fibrosis. She's a waitress, and he drives a cab. They don't have any kind of insurance. She was bawling her eyes out when she left."

Jim's eyes met Kate's for a significant moment. "Really," was all Kate said.

The interrogation room at CIPTF had been more recently painted than the one at Hiland Mountain. Otherwise, it looked exactly the same. A man in prison blues was already seated at the table, with a corrections officer standing against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. Sam nodded at him. "Thanks, Al."

"No problem." Al left, Sam crossed his arms over his chest and leaned up against the wall, Jim began a slow pace around the room, which took him in back of the man in the blues, and Kate pulled out a chair opposite him. "Ralph Patton?"

"Who wants to know?" It was a pitiful attempt at pugnacity from a skinny white guy with bad teeth, lank hair, and a skimpy attempt at the unshaven look so popular nowadays with male Hollywood starlets. He was twenty-three but looked seventeen.

"I'm Kate Shugak, and this is Sergeant Jim Chopin of the Alaska State Troopers. We're here to ask you a few questions about the hit-and-run."

"I was drunk," Patton said immediately, as if that was some kind of excuse.

Kate opened the file she had carried in. "So you said in your statement, but your blood-alcohol level was point-oh-four, well below the legal limit."

He hunched his shoulders. "I have a low tolerance for booze."

Kate looked back at the file. "Along with a low tolerance for booze, you've got a wife, as well as a year-old child diagnosed with cystic fibrosis."

Patton started to get out of his chair, but Jim slammed him back into it.

"Who paid you to kill Charlotte Muravieff, Ralph?"

"I want you to leave now," Ralph said, his face contorting.

"And who helped you do it?"

"I want to talk to my lawyer. You can't talk to me without my lawyer present."

"Because the thing is, we went up to O'Malley to look at the crash site, Ralph, and we found the driveway where you waited until your lookout told you Charlotte was coming up the road. You pulled out on the road and accelerated at just the right time, with just enough speed to cause maximum damage. That took some planning."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You got a bank account, Ralph? Because I'm guessing that when we take a look at it, we're going to find a large and recent deposit."

"That money is mine," Patton said, his voice rising.

"Nobody's saying it isn't," Kate said soothingly. "If it's in your bank account, of course it's your money. So long as you can explain where it came from, it shouldn't be a problem."

"It's mine," Patton said, "it's my money, and it's going to pay the doctors for my little girl. You can't touch it!"

"Of course I can't. It's your money, just like you said. So long as the Internal Revenue Service gets their share, they don't really care. Have you reported this money as income yet, Ralph?"

"It's my money!" Patton shouted, spraying Kate with spittle. "You can't touch it. I earned that for our baby!"

Jim slammed him back into his seat again and Kate pounced. "Who paid you, Ralph? Who paid you to crash your pickup into Charlotte's car as she was coming home Tuesday night?"

"What the hell is going on here?" a voice said from the doorway.

Kate and Jim looked up, to see a man in a three-piece suit that screamed attorney standing in the doorway.

"Mr. Dial," Patton said, shoving his chair over in his hurry to get to his feet, "I didn't say anything, sir, I promise!"

"You don't have to talk to these people, Ralph," Dial said. He looked first at Kate and then at Jim. "I'm Joseph Dial, Mr. Pat-ton's attorney. And you are leaving. Now." He looked at Sam. "I understand you're responsible for this meeting. I'll be lodging a complaint with the governor's office in the morning."

Five minutes later, they were outside the front door. "I'm sorry as hell, Sam," Jim said.

Sam didn't appear to be upset. "The worst they can do is force me into early retirement, and I've already got my thirty in. Don't sweat it, Jim. I owed you more than one."

"Thanks," Jim said, and they shook hands.

"Where now?" Jim said as he and Kate got into the Subaru.

"Max," Kate said, and started the engine.

"Tell me about William," Kate said to Max.

Max looked at Jim, standing at Kate's shoulder. "You the boyfriend?"

"No," Jim said.

Max surveyed him with palpable contempt. "If you'd said yes, I'd've called you a lucky bastard. Now I'm just gonna call you a stupid one." He looked back at Kate. "You want to know about William Muravieff."

"Yes," Kate said.

"He was only seventeen, Kate."

"I know. Tell me anyway. Everything you can remember."

"Why?"

"I'll tell you when you're done."

Max made a production out of looking at his watch. "About lunchtime, I'm thinking."

"Your nothing but a serial opportunist," Kate said, and that was how Jim Chopin found himself seated at a table at Simon & Seaport's, in the middle of a gaggle of tourists in purple polyester and straw hats, with a few shysters in three-piecers mixed in and reminding him uncomfortably of Dial. The chatter was deafening, but the food was great, and the view went south all the way to Redoubt.

Max gave the drinks menu prolonged, concentrated study and then ordered a Lemon Drop. "No martini?" Kate said, and with an airy wave, Max said, "I like to broaden my experience from time to time," and then he ruined the comment with his nasty old man's grin. Kate laughed, and Jim, so help him, resented the laugh—or rather, the fact that Max had elicited the laugh and not him. The man had to be ninety-three, for crissake.

Besides which, Jim knew he had no serious relationship with Kate Shugak. They were acquaintances merely. Acquaintances who were at present having most excellent sex, but that was simply a matter of propinquity, born out of the circumstances of her life being in danger because of the case she was working on. Didn't matter a damn to him who made her laugh.

He'd like to see Morris "Max" Maxwell, Sergeant, Alaska State Troopers (Retired), protect Kate from a crazed killer.

Mercifully, at that moment his steak sandwich arrived and he used it to keep his mouth full.

Max's second drink appeared as he was draining his first. "How do you do that?" Kate said.

"Do what?" Max said, smacking his lips.

"Never mind?" she said, shaking her head. "You're going to be this case's highest-paid informant, I'll say that for you."

His bristly cheeks creased. "Have to spend it on someone."

"Okay, old man, earn your keep. Tell me about William Muravieff."

Max shrugged. "Okay, but it ain't going to do you no good. He was a seventeen-year-old boy. Didn't have no record, not so much as a speeding ticket. He majored in basketball and only kept his grades high enough so he could stay on the team."

"Was he good?"

"At b-ball?" Max shrugged again. "Nothing flashy. Had a dependable free throw. Didn't foul except when the coach told him to."

"How do you remember all this after thirty years?" Jim said. At Max's glare, he added, "I can barely remember my own games."

"You played b-ball?" Kate said, diverted. "I didn't know that."

"I was six feet tall by the time I was twelve," he said. "I was recruited in grade school."

Max, still affronted by Jim's challenging his memory, said crushingly, "Tall ain't everything. Hell, Butch Lincoln ran rings around players twice his size when he played for UAA."

Kate jumped in to head off the pissing contest at the pass. Testosterone didn't wane with age, evidently. "What else did William do besides play b-ball well?"

Max's eyes narrowed. "What are you looking for?"

"She was wondering if he ever had a summer job working for his uncle," Jim said.

Max's expression told Jim that he was not allowed to speak. Jim, whose sense of humor was strong and broad, would normally have grinned. Jim, whose sense of humor was being seriously tested, found himself getting annoyed at how Kate Shugak hung on this old fart's every word.

The old fart left off glaring at Jim long enough to look at Kate.

"What are you thinking, Shugak? That the kid worked for Erland Bannister long enough to stumble across something bent with his uncle's company?"

"If s a theory."

"Have you talked to Victoria since she's been out?"

Kate looked glum. "I can't find her."

Max snorted. "You're not much of a detective, are you, girl?"

Kate sat up. "You know where she is?"

"I might."

Jim started to say something. Kate shut him up with a single searing look. Max saw it and said, "Guess we know who's top dog now, hey, boy?" He looked back at Kate. "Why don't you go talk to his girlfriend, you want to know about William."

18

Wanda Gajewski opened the door. She looked more resigned than surprised. "I knew you'd be back sooner or later."

It took a little of the wind out of Kate's sails, but not all of it. She walked in without invitation, followed by Jim Chopin. It didn't help her temper that Wanda and Jim took one look at each other and formed a mutual admiration society. "I need you to tell me about William Muravieff."

Wanda closed the door behind her. "Would you like some coffee?" Without waiting for an answer, she disappeared into the kitchen while Kate paced up and down.

"Relax, Kate," Jim said.

"Relax, my ass," she said.

Wanda's home was as architecturally unremarkable inside as it was outside. The living room carpet was new, its color a horribly dull dusty rose. The furniture was a collection of modular units upholstered in some nubby fabric in a brown-and-gold weave that would hide dirt well. The walls were livened by large paintings of wildflowers, oil on canvas. They looked as if Wanda had bought them in bulk for a discount from the artist at a street fair, on the last day of the fair, just as the artist had been packing up to go home and long after all the best paintings had been sold. They were bright, Kate would give them that. One of them might even have looked like a lupine, if she squinted. She winced away from it and encountered the very blue eye of a Siamese cat, curled into a perfect circle in the dimpled seat of a chair. It hissed at Kate.

"Same backatcha," Kate said, hurt. Usually animals liked her. Good thing they'd left Mutt in the car.