Fatal Thaw (19 page)

"Kate." She turned to find Bernie with Eknaty Kvasnikof, the latter bundled in sweats. The coach hovered protectively over his player, reminding Kate of nothing so much as a mother duck shepherding her duckling across a pond.

There was a tendency on the part of the crowd to muscle in next to Eknaty. Kate signaled to Mutt. Mutt rose and stretched and stalked purposefully between Kate, Bernie and Eknaty and everyone else on the school grounds. Everyone else on the school grounds halted their forward motion. Mutt didn't bark, she didn't even growl, she just grinned at them, her tongue lolling out between two rows of extremely large and pointed teeth, as Kate and Bernie and Eknaty disappeared around a corner.

They found some privacy between the school's utility outbuilding and a World War II Quonset hut that served as the administrative annex.

"Bernie tell you why I wanted to talk to you?" she asked the boy.

He was tall and slender, with smooth skin and troubled brown eyes. His straight brown hair fell over his Forehead, and brushing it back was a nervous habit. He nodded without looking at her.

"Were you at Lisa and Lottie's that morning? The morning Lisa was shot?"

He nodded again.

"What time?" He said nothing, and she said, "Eknaty, what time were you there?"

He remained silent. Kate looked at Bernie. Bernie said, "'Natty."

That was all, but the word of a boy's basketball coach carries a weight with that boy that will not be denied. "Early," the boy said, mumbling the single word.

"How early?" He swallowed, his Adam's apple bouncing. "Lottie wanted me there at sunrise. I got there a little late, around seven."

"To do what?"

He shrugged, hands dug in his pockets, kicking at the snow. "Whatever needed doing. Chop wood, do the spring service on the tractor. She said something about scraping the hull on the boat, too. She was going to tell me what to do, but she wasn't there when I got there." He flushed painfully, and in the harsh, pitiless glare of the school's outdoor lights Kate saw that his eyes were filling up with tears.

Suddenly, she knew. "Lisa was there, though, wasn't she?" she asked him.

He hesitated, then nodded.

Kate's eyes met Bernie's. She gave her head a tiny, significant jerk.

His brows drew together and he opened his mouth as if to protest. Something in her set, stern face dissuaded him. He hesitated, looked from her to the boy, and moved out of earshot.

A quick look around satisfied her that no one had discovered them, and in a low voice Kate said, "Okay, Eknaty. What did she do?"

He dug the toe of his sneaker into the snow. "Nothing."

"Eknaty, somebody shot her"

"I didn't!"

"I know you didn't," Kate said soothingly, "but some. body did, and I've got to find out who, and that means I need to know everything about her.

Talk to me. What did Lisa do that day?"

He looked hard at the blue tin side of the gym. "One of the things Lottie told me she wanted me to do was haul their winter's trash to the dump. I'd been working at it for an hour, hour and a half, and I was bagging it up in the backyard when Lisa came out. She-" He stopped, his face scarlet.

But Kate knew. "Did she touch you?" He nodded. "Kiss you?" He nodded again. "Maybe more than that'? Maybe make love to you?"

"It wasn't making love," Eknaty said in an agonized voice. There was a brief, pain-filled pause, and then the words seemed to burst forth, tumbling one over the other, as if the story had been dammed up for too long behind a barrier of shame and embarrassment and the overwhelming uncertainty and awkwardness of adolescence. "When I touch Betty"-Kate identified Betty as Betty Moonin, one of her cousins on her mother's side, a plump, sweet-faced girl of sixteen-"it feels good. Lisa was like ... she was like an animal, like ... like a dog dragging its butt on the ground when it comes in heat. She smelled funny, like, I don't know, almost sour, but sweet, too, only too sweet. She kept touching me, all over. I ... I didn't want to, but she kept touching me, all over, and I ..."

"Ssshh," Kate said, stemming the flow of near hysteria with a soothing voice. She didn't make the mistake of forcing another unwanted embrace on the boy. " Ssshl-, now, Natty. It's all right now."

"No, it's not," he flared, wiping tears away with it clumsy hand. "I hated it, but I couldn't stop doing it, I know they say teenagers never think about anything else, but I really didn't want to. But I couldn't tell her no. She wanted me and she made me want her. I thought I was going to ... I had to go along. I couldn't stop it."

He hung his head. Kate saw another tear slip down his cheek and suddenly felt very old. There were a number of things she could have said then.

She could have pointed out how a seventeen-year-old boy was more in the charge of his hormones than of his head. She could have explained how much distance there was between having sex and making love. She could have run down the notches on Lisa Getty's bedpost for him.

She waited until he'd regained some of his composure. "Eknaty," she said, "somebody shot her. Somebody looked down the barrel of a 30.06 and sighted in on her the way you or I would a moose. Somebody pulled the trigger, knowing they were aiming at a person, a human being." She raised her hand, pointing to her bandage. "When I started trying to find out who, they took a shot at me." He looked up, startled out of his misery. She nodded. "I was lucky. Max Chaney, the new ranger, wasn't.

They found his body this afternoon." He sucked in a breath. His face, already bleached out in the merciless glow of the electric lights, went white to the lips. "We have to find out who did it, Eknaty, all of it.

We have to make sure they never do it again." His head bent. She waited. When he raised it again, the shame had not altogether faded from his features but at least now he didn't look as if he would crumple at a harsh word. "She took me ... we were in the barn," he said, steadily enough. "Then we heard the shots. Lottie came around the cabin." He flinched. "She saw us coming out of the barn," he said painfully. "She could tell what we ... what we ... well, she didn't say anything, but you could tell what she was thinking." He swallowed. "Lisa laughed at her. I was watching Lottie, and for a second I thought ..."

"What? What did you think?"

He took a deep breath and said, "For a second I thought Lottie was going to hit her." He shook his head. "You know how big Lottie is? Well, when she's mad, she looks about twice that big. She looks ... she looks as big as a grizzly. Only more scary." Kate didn't laugh, and he shivered.

"Lisa didn't even back up. She just kept looking at Lottie, like, like "Like what?"

"Like Lottie wasn't her sister at all, like Lottie was this, like, joke she lived with, and had to put up with, but one she didn't have to pay any attention to, or ... or respect. You know? It was like in Lisa's world, Lottie didn't count."

He looked up at Kate, his young face sick. "She even nudged me and winked at me when Lottie was yelling at her, like I was supposed to laugh at Lottie, too." "Did you?"

"No." He shook his head back and forth violently. "No way Jose. Lottie must outweigh me by seventy-five pounds, and she was mad enough. Besides ..." "Besides what?"

He smiled, a brief, weak, sad little smile Kate's heart ached to see. "I always liked Lottie. When she went on a hunt with Uncle Chick and me one time, up back of the Tellglligs, she taught me how to shoot, with her own rifle. I was just a kid, and Uncle Chick had a bottle along for company. She was pretty disgusted with him, so she took me out alone the next day. She helped me get my first caribou. I guess she felt sorry for me or something because after that she let me go fishing with her, and even bear hunting one time. She always hires me on for odd jobs around their place every spring. She talk much, but she's always nice to me. I like her," he repeated Kate waited patiently until he finished. "But, on that He shivered. "I'd never seen Lottie mad before. When she finished yelling at Lisa, she told us about finding Steve Syms's body at his house."

"Why had she gone there?"

"She was going to hire him to help scrape the hull on the bowpicker so we could copper paint it. Anyway, when she stopped yelling at Lisa, she went back in the house and came out with their parkas and rifles and threw Lisa's at her. And then she went to the garage and-" "They each had their own rifle?"

He looked over at her, surprised at the question. "Sure, Kate. They always each took their own. Sometimes I thought Lottie'd had hers welded to her shoulder." "Eknaty, are you sure? You remember seeing Lisa and Lottie each with their own rifle?"

He looked bewildered. "Yes. I'm sure. Lottie had her new rifle, the one Max gave her for her birthday. They were still going together then."

"What!" The exclamation was forced out of Kate. He jumped and looked at her, and she forced her voice down. "Max and Lottie were going together?"

"Sure. Didn't you know? Max met Lottie first. He even went sheep hunting with us last November." Kate, feeling as if the world were shaking a little beneath her feet, was barely able to restrain her incredulity. "Were they ... did they ... was it ... romantic?" she said finally.

He blushed and ducked his head. "He slept with her in her tent."

Kate sighed, a long, deep sigh. "I guess that's romantic enough." At that moment a hovering Bernie swooped down and rescued Eknaty from Kate's fell clutch, offering a blanket curse on her offspring if Eknaty's performance the following day was less than perfect. "Always supposing some misguided fool feels inclined to beget upon you," he added acidly, herding Eknaty before him. "Right, thanks, Bernie," she replied in an abstracted voice. He paused for a moment and watched her walk away, his forehead puckered, before shaking himself and trotting off after Eknaty. There was a postgame analysis to be held, weaknesses in offense and defense to be identified, a dozen teenagers flushed with success to be tucked safely into bed, and two more days of games to plan for. Bernie had no time to waste on mere murder.

THE next morning George Perry roared up to Bobby's house on a Skidoo and off-loaded a grim-faced Jack. He entered without knocking, stamping the snow off his feet, and demanded, "Why didn't you wait for me up on the Step?"

Kate looked over at him coolly. "I had to talk to someone."

Jack counted to ten. "Okay," he said. "They shipped the body out to Anchorage last night. Forensics promised to have the bullet out and run a ballistics test on it by this morning, and Chopper Jim'11 get the news to us as soon as they do."

"Thirty-ought-six?" Bobby asked.

"Looks like. Won't know for sure until ballistics gets the slug." "It won't be the same rifle," Kate said. Jack's head whipped around.

"What?"

"The bullet didn't come from the same rifle that killed Lisa Getty."

"How do you know that?" he demanded.

"There were too many people in the area. After shooting Lisa, the killer had to ditch the rifle in the woods, or be caught with it. Chaney was shot with a different rifle."

"If the killer dumped the rifle that shot Lisa Getty in those woods, where is it? I've had twenty officers and investigators beat feet over every inch of those goddam woods at least five times apiece. Where the hell is it?" "It's there."

Forestalling, she knew for the moment only, further questions on the subject, she treated him to an abridged version of her last two days' activities. "You have been a busy girl," he said at last, frowning. "So what'd you do with the bear bladders and the tusks?" He looked at her blank face. "Don't tell me you left them on the boat?"

"How dumb do you think I am?"

"Don't tempt me. So what did you do with them?" "I sold them."

Jack's jaw dropped. "What!"

Kate shrugged. "I found a buyer who wanted them. He had cash."

"Jesus, Kate!"

"How much did you get?" Bobby said. "Sixty-six hundred." "Jesus Christ, Kate!"

Bobby gave a long, low, respectful whistle. "For half a dozen bladders, that's eleven hundred apiece. Not bad, Kate. Not bad at all."

"I thought so, too," she said with a trace of pride. "Sweet Jesus!" Jack said, varying his reaction. "Bear's private parts come high these days,"

Bobby observed.

"I know," she said, her smile fading. "Dan's already worried about the poaching going on in the Park. If the price goes up any more, the Park Service is going to have to hire a bodyguard for every black bear in it."

"Sweet Jesus H. Christ on a crutch!"

"What's your problem?" Kate asked Jack, annoyed and a little hurt. "You think I shouldn't have sold them? Why? The bears were dead, Lisa's dead, and I needed the cash. You know how far sixty-six hundred dollars can take me? I'll be able to fish for myself this year, instead of guiding some jackass Outsider who can't figure out why his ten-pound test keeps breaking every time he snags a Kanuyaq king."

Bobby eyed the fists gripping the arms of Jack's chair and hoped the chair would hold up under the strain. "Kate," Jack said with great calm, "by selling those bladders you have violated the Endangered Species Act, on top of which you can be charged with smuggling, shooting out of season, shooting over your limit, and God knows what else."

She smiled at him. "Prove it. And I didn't shoot them. Lisa did."

"Jesus!" Jack said, his momentary calm deserting him. "If Dan O'Brian ever finds out!" His face changed color, and he said in a hollow voice, "Jesus! Those bladders were evidence in an ongoing murder investigation. If Chopper Jim ever finds out, he'll throw us all in jail!"

"You plan on telling them?" Kate inquired. "Either one of them?"

Jack's voice deserted him, and he stared at her, speechless. "I suppose you sold him the walrus tusks, too?" he asked finally, if his expression was any indication, without much hope.

Kate was shocked and more than a little indignant. "Certainly not! What the hell kind of person do you think I am ?"

"I'd answer that truthfully, but I like living," Jack told Bobby.

"What's the difference between taking the bear bladders and taking the tusks?"