A taint in the blood (6 page)

"Has Kurt Pletnikoff been in lately?"

Bernie shrugged. "As much as anyone during fishing season."

"Has he been keeping out-of-town company?"

"Come on, Kate," he said. "You know I don't like to gossip about my customers behind their backs."

"I promise you, Bernie," she said, "you're going to have a lot more customers of the federal kind if you don't help me now. And they won't be as polite and refined as I am."

He snorted. "More business for the bar."

"Not from the locals, if Kurt continues to decimate the bear population."

"Who says he is?"

"No one," Kate admitted. "But according to Jim Chopin, there are degallbladdered bear carcasses all over the Park. And we all know what that means."

Bernie would rather by far be on Kurt Pletnikoff's bad side than Kate's. She never forgot and she never forgave, and she was related to half of his customers and had in one way or another helped out most of the other half. Besides, Kurt s tab was at five hundred and counting, and Bernie wasn't in the business of loaning money. "Kurt was in here a week ago."

"Alone?"

"He had company, looked to be of the Asian persuasion. One man, late fifties, I'd say. He had plenty of hair, but it was all gray." Bernie smoothed back a nonexistent hairline that ended in a long gray ponytail tied back with a strip of leather.

"You know him?"

"Never seen him before."

"He speak English, or have an accent if he did?"

Bernie shook his head. "Kurt did all the talking."

"How long were they here?"

"One drink, couple of beers. They didn't finish them." Bernie looked mildly annoyed. "Alaskan Amber, too. I hate pouring good beer down the sink."

"You notice anything else? Anything change hands?"

Bernie shook his head again. "Not in the bar."

"Okay. Thanks, Bernie."

"No problem. You didn't bring the wolf in to say hi?"

Kate grinned. "She's chasing geese."

Bernie swore. "Not Edna's geese, not again, Kate."

Kate relented. "She's in the cab."

Bernie looked relieved. "Thank god I won't have to stop my wife from rioting in the streets." He plucked a package of beef jerky out of a jar on the bar. "For the wolf."

"Thanks."

From the Roadhouse, Kate drove back to Niniltna and the airstrip, and this time she managed to arrive at the same time George Perry touched down. He was in the act of removing his headphones when he saw her. "Oh crap," he said, "what now?" He headed immediately for the 1966 Ford Econoline van—held together by faith, dirt, and duct tape—which served as ground support for Chugach Air Taxi's air-freight business. He backed it around to the Cessna and began unloading boxes from the one and stacking them in the back of the other.

Normally, Kate would have given him a hand, but over the past twenty-four hours she had been made humiliatingly aware that she might have overdone it in the gratitude department. "Have you done any business with Kurt Pletnikoff lately?" she said to George's determinedly turned back.

"Nope," he said, tossing a box into the back of the Econoline with a fine disregard for the
fragile
sticker on its side.

"Has he met any flights lately—say flights with unknown passengers of Asian origin on board?"

George paused. "Maybe."

"Did he or didn't he?"

"He might have," George said.

Kate gritted her teeth. She wasn't a patient person, but she was on probation and she knew it. "When might he have?"

George gave a characteristic little wiggle, something between a shrug and the Shimmy. "An Asian gentleman could have flown in last Tuesday."

"And could he have said why he was here?"

George shook his head.

"Did he have you call a ride?" There wasn't what you could call a cab in Niniltna, but George did have the names of people from the village who had vehicles and were willing to rent themselves out by the mile.

He shook his head.

"When did he leave?"

"That evening."

"Did you notice if he was carrying something out that he didn't carry in?"

"Maybe a duffel bag."

"How big?"

"Basketball-size. Maybe a little bigger. Had handles. Dark blue. Had a logo on it."

"What logo?"

George screwed up his face. "Can't remember. Some sports team maybe. Not the Kings."

As in the Kanuyaq Kings, the local high school team, and very likely the only team logo George could recognize on sight. He was dutiful in his devotion to the hometown boys, but he wasn't the biggest sports fan. "And this was last Tuesday?"

George nodded.

"Okay," she said. She started to thank him, then caught his eye, and thought better of it. "I need a ride into town," she said instead.

"When?"

"Tomorrow morning."

He thought for a moment before giving a short nod. "I can do that, if you don't mind early."

"I don't mind early. Seven?"

He nodded again. "Don't be late. I've got to be back here in time to bring the Grosdidier brothers home from Alaganik."

"You can fit them all into one plane?"

He grinned, the most natural expression he'd shown her all summer. "I packs 'em tight," he said, adding, "Don't tell the FAA."

She drove up to the Niniltna Native Association headquarters, a prefabricated building beneath a metal roof that positively sang in the rain and to which even the heaviest snowfall did not stick, to the imminent danger of those walking into and out of the building through the set of double doors centered most precisely beneath its eaves. It looked as if someone had let Auntie Balasha off the chain because the side of the building facing the road was engulfed in flowers of every size and hue, from nasturtiums at the road's edge to delphiniums tethered to stakes brushing the first-floor windowsills. It was a riot of color right across the spectrum, and it made the building look as if it housed something other than the organization that oversaw and administered the moneys and lands Kate's tribe had received as a result of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.

Billy, chief of said tribe, looked up from his desk when Kate walked in, and, it must be said, paled at the sight of her. Kate, weary of this reaction, held up a hand. "It's all right, Billy. You get to help me this time."

He failed to hide his relief. "What do you need, Kate?"

Billy Mike's face used to be as round as his body, and his smile at least as broad. He was thinner now, paler, too, and there was a bruised look in his eyes that had not been there before and that hurt Kate to see. It was only three months since he'd lost his youngest son, Dandy, and Billy and his wife, Annie, were both still grieving. They had taken in another child, a fourteen-year-old named Vanessa Cox, who was Johnny Morgan's boon companion and who, Kate greatly feared, was rapidly becoming rather more than that. This was in addition to the Korean baby they had adopted when Annie began to suffer from empty nest syndrome, not to mention the six children who had grown up, gone to school, and, instead of moving back home, had stayed in Anchorage, where there were jobs and bars and cable television, and who were proving remarkably dilatory in providing the Mikes with the grandchildren both of them were vociferous about wanting.

That Billy and Annie didn't blame Kate for Dandy's death was a mystery for which she would be eternally grateful. That they had opened their home and hearts to Vanessa, the killer's child, was even more extraordinary, but it was a fact that Vanessa, orphaned when both her parents had been killed in a car crash Outside and then shipped to Alaska to live with her nearest relatives, was looking more like a kid and less like a prematurely aged old woman than she had since she arrived in the Park the year before.

"I'm looking for Kurt Pletnikoff," Kate said. "He's not in the same old cabin out on Fool's Gold Creek, is he?"

Billy shook his head. "He moved. He came into some money when his father died. The father evidently couldn't figure out anybody better to leave it to. Kurt bought Luba Hardt's property off Black Water Road and built himself a house. Sort of."

"I didn't know that," Kate said. "Did Luba move out of the Park?"

"No, she just got thirsty, and Kurt happened to be standing next to her at the Roadhouse with a fistful of his daddy's cash when she did."

"Where's she living now?"

"Last I heard, she was on the street in Anchorage. I got George to put the word out at Bean's Cafe and the Brother Francis Shelter that when she wants to come home, we'll foot the bill."

"I'm going to Anchorage myself tomorrow or the next day," Kate said. "I'll look around."

Billy nodded. "Appreciate it. Why do you want to know where Kurt is?"

Kate looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

He waved her off. "Yeah, I know, ask a dumb question. Don't kill him, okay?"

"No promises," Kate said, and left.

Kurt Pletnikoff’s home, if you could call it that, had been built on an elevated foundation of cement blocks around a frame of two-by-fours in a space in the middle of a thick stand of tall, heavy spruce that blocked out the sun. It was a gloomy little clearing, but neat, the wood stacked and the trash picked up.

The steps to the front and only door were made of more two-by-fours, in which there were a lot of nail pops to catch at the soles of Kate's shoes. The building shook slightly when she knocked on the door. "Kurt?"

There was no answer.

She knocked again. "Kurt Pletnikoff ? It’s Kate Shugak."

Still no answer. She tried the handle. It was unlocked. She peered inside.

It was one room, about the size of her former cabin, with neither the loft nor the charm. The inside was even less prepossessing than the outside. A narrow iron cot with a thin mattress stood beneath the only window, a couple of green army blankets smoothed across it. A broken-down couch stood on one side of an oil stove made from a fifty-five-gallon drum. On the other side of the stove stood a table made of an old door, with two-by-fours for legs. There was a pile of magazines, nothing too sophisticated—
Guns & Ammo, Sports Illustrated, Penthouse.
A cupboard minus the doors had been screwed to one wall and was filled with canned and dry goods. A bag of apples, the top knotted off, sat on top of a bag of dog food.

The floor was clean, and a big galvanized garbage can sat next to the cupboard. A bowl, a spoon, and a mug were upended on a dish towel spread next to the apples.

Kate touched the bowl. A drop of water coalesced on her fingertip. She felt rather than heard motion behind her, and she stepped quickly to the left, dropping to the floor in a shoulder roll and regaining her feet in the same movement. She picked up the chair and brought the seat down on the head of the man who had been sneaking up behind her, not hard enough to knock him out, just hard enough to get his attention.

"Ouch!" the man yelled. He grabbed his head.

"Hi, Kurt," Kate said, and put the chair down. It had been a while, and it pleased her to know that she still had the moves. Especially after she'd gotten blindsided by that shovel in May, an event she still couldn't think of without a certain amount of shame. Mutt, galloping up to the door, her tongue lolling out to one side, surveyed the situation with an expert eye, gave a short congratulatory bark, and went back to sniffing out the moose cow and calf who had left such an intriguing scent trail crisscrossing the yard around the cabin. She wasn't all that hungry, but like Kate she liked to know that she still got game.