KS13.5 - Wreck Rights (3 page)

“What?”

“We got mob in Alaska?”

She considered. “We got the Aleut mob,” she offered. “You don’t want to cross them, they’ll sic Senator Stevens on you.”

When he stopped laughing, she said, “I been asking around since I saw you last.”

“Asking who? And asking what?”

“Paul’s family. Sonia, mostly, although she’s not saying much.”

“Sonia’s the sister.”

“Yes.”

Her expression was unreadable. He waited. When nothing else came, he said, “And you found out what from all this asking around? Anything that will help us find out who tied up Paul Kameroff and put a bullet in his brain?”

She glared at him. “I don’t need to be reminded of the object of the exercise.”

“Funny, I thought you did. I won’t let the Park’s tribal loyalty screw up my investigation, Kate.”

“Neither will I.”

“Good to know.”

She drank coffee, a delaying tactic to regain control over her temper. “For one thing, I found out that my information on Paul was out of date. He wasn’t working for RPetCo on the Slope anymore, he’d moved to town.”

“Who was he working for?”

“Masterson Hauling and Storage.”

He paused in the act of raising his mug. “Really.”

“Really.”

“That would be the same outfit that owns the tractor trailer that went over the side of Hell Hill a couple nights ago.”

“It would.”

“Well,” Jim said, putting down his mug. “Isn’t that interesting.”

“You might even call it a clue,” she said. “When do you leave?”

“Immediately.” He reached for the cap with the trooper seal on the crown.

Mutt got to her feet, tail wagging. She was always ready for action. “Got room for two more?” Kate said.

He paused. “I meant what I said, Kate.”

She replied without heat. “I did, too.”

“I won’t hide what I find, no matter who it involves.”

“I know.”

He put his cap on and tugged it down. “All right, then. Let’s move like we got a purpose.”

· · ·

The Cessna was fueled and ready at Niniltna’s 4800-foot dirt airstrip. Kate untied her while Jim did the preflight and they were in the air fifteen minutes later. He leveled them out at five thousand feet and set the GPS. It was only then that he realized he’d be spending an hour plus touching shoulders with the one woman in all the gin joints in all the world who like to drive him right out of his mind. He could hear her inhaling over the headphones, and clicked off the channel, but that didn’t help because he could still see the rise and fall of her breast out of the corner of his eye. He knew she didn’t wear perfume but he could smell her anyway, an alluring mixture of soap and woodsmoke that his renegade pheromones translated as all heat.

A cold nose against the back of his neck made him jump, and Kate laughed. It was a very seductive laugh, or so it seemed to him, and he found himself leaning forward into the seatbelt as if he could push the plane along faster by doing so. He had never been so grateful in his life to hear Anchorage ATC come on the headset and he burned up the Old Seward Highway like he was driving for NASCAR, only at five hundred feet. The landing at Merrill Field was a runway paint job and he was out of the plane the instant it rolled to a stop.

It didn’t make him feel any better to see the tiny smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

· · ·

Masterson Hauling and Storage was headquartered in a massive warehouse in midtown off Old Seward near International. It was surrounded by a lot of other warehouses, car dealerships, a candy factory, a strip club and the Arctic Roadrunner, home of the best cheeseburger in the state. “What time is it?” Kate said.

“Not lunchtime.”

She gave him an exaggeratedly hopeful look. “After?”

Jim was partial to a good cheeseburger himself. “Works for me.”

The reception area of Masterson Hauling and Storage was a small room behind a door with a window in it. There was a yellow-and-green striped love seat much the worse for wear next to a pressed board telephone stand laden with a phone and a phone book and a stack of American Trucker magazines. At a desk a young woman with bleached blonde hair spiked into a Dali sculpture was applying more liner to brown eyes that already looked strongly raccoonish. “May I help you all?” she said. She saw Mutt and the burgeoning smile went away. “I’m so sorry, we can’t have animals in here.”

Jim smiled down at her. “Sure you can,” he said in a suddenly slow and very deep drawl. He let an admiring gaze drift down to the tight white man’s shirt that was straining at its buttons, and from there to the name plate on the front of the desk. “Candi.”

Candi forgot all about Mutt, and when she spoke again her voice was a little breathless. Candi was not long out of the very deep American south and her R’s had a tendency to defer to her H’s. “You all are a trooper?”

“I am that.” Jim didn’t bother to introduce Kate, which was okay because Kate wasn’t registering even on Candi’s extreme peripheral vision. “Who’s your boss, Candi?”

Her hands and eyelashes fluttered uncontrollably. “Why, that would be Mr. Masterson. Mr. Conway Masterson.”

He let his smile widen. “I like the way you say his name, Candi.”

More fluttering. “Why, I, why, thank you kindly, mister, officer—”

“It’s Jim Chopin, Candi, Sergeant Chopin of the Alaska state troopers. I’d like to speak to your boss for a few minutes, if it’s convenient for him.”

“Why certainly, Sergeant,” Candi said, and reached for the phone. She missed it on the first try, and blushing again, had to disconnect from Jim’s eyes.

Jim looked at Kate. To his surprise, she was grinning and not bothering to hide it. “The Father of the Park has his uses,” she said.

“I told you I never did deserve that title,” he said.

She fluttered her eyelashes. “Ah, but did you earn it, Sergeant Chopin, sir?”

He thought longingly, not for the first time, just how much he’d like to wring her neck. Well. After.

Candi hung up and twinkled up at Jim. “Mr. Masterson can see you now, Sergeant Chopin.”

“Thank you, Candi.”

“Just on up the stairs now, first door at the top. And don’t forget to stop off to say bye.”

“I don’t think any man worthy of the name could forget to do that,” Jim said gallantly. Mutt was waiting for him around the corner. “What are you grinning at?” he said to her, and escaped up the stairs behind a Kate whose shoulders were shaking slightly.

Conway Masterson’s office was large and utilitarian, the desk piled with bills of lading and maintenance schedules and correspondence, more of the same stacked on top of a wall of filing cabinets. There was one window overlooking the interior of the warehouse, and one of the fluorescent lights was flickering overhead. One wall was given over to a large dry board divided into grids indicating trucks out on runs to Homer, Seward, Valdez, Tok, Fairbanks, Coldfoot and Deadhorse, including departure time, estimated arrival, and cargo. A radio was playing country-western music, which didn’t add to the ambience, and Masterson himself was talking on the phone as they stood in the doorway. He waved them inside and kept talking. “Well, get to it, I’ve got four loads scheduled for the Fairbanks warehouse already this week and I’m down two trailers.” He hung up. “You’re the trooper,” he said to Jim. To Kate, he said, “Who’re you? And who the fuck said you could bring a dog up here?”

Mutt’s ears went back, and a low growl rumbled up out of her throat.

Masterson bared his teeth and growled back.

Kate put a hand on Mutt’s shoulder before things got out of hand. Mutt stopped growling, but she didn’t sit down and she didn’t take her eyes off Masterson.

“Kate Shugak,” Jim said. “She’s working the case with me.”

“What case?”

“The murder of one of your employees,” Jim said bluntly. “Paul Kameroff.”

Conway Masterson was about fifty, with a bulbous, veiny nose barely separating small dark eyes, red fleshy lips and a stubborn chin that looked days past its last shave. His comb-over extended from just above his left ear to being tucked behind his right ear. He wore a rumpled navy blue suit off the rack from JCPenney, an unknotted red tie featuring a Vargas girl, and a white shirt with the third button down sewn on with brown thread. His eyes met Jim’s without a trace of awareness, but he took a little too long to answer for Jim’s taste. “Paul Kameroff? Who the hell’s he?”

“He used to drive for you,” Jim said. “His body was found in the wreckage of that semi your driver put over the side of the Glen Highway three, four days back.”

Masterson’s eyes narrowed. “Bert’s rig?”

“Bertha O’Shaugnnessy, yes.”

“It’s that fucking hill, what do my guys call it? Hell Hill, that’s it. It’s the worst stretch of that fucking road, we’ve put I don’t know how many goddamn rigs over the side there. It’s so fucking steep we can’t recover any of our cargo, and half the time the tractors go over the side with the goddamn trailers. Bert was fucking lucky. It’s getting so I can’t afford insurance on that fucking run. What the hell am I suppose to do, run everything up the goddamn Parks through fucking Fairbanks?”

“What can you tell me about Paul Kameroff?” Jim said.

Again a slight hesitation, barely noticeable. “I run a lot of trucks and a lot of cargo out of this warehouse, I don’t know the name of every last fucking employee.” He reached for the phone. “Candi? We got an employee named Paul Kaminski?”

“Kameroff,” Jim said.

“Whatever,” Masterson said. “If he’s got an employee file, make ‘em a copy.” He hung up. “That all?”

“No,” Jim said. “I’ll need to talk to anyone who worked with Paul Kameroff.”

“What the fuck for? My delivery schedule’s already down the shitter this month, I don’t need you fucking around in the warehouse slowing things down even more!”

“Nevertheless,” Jim said, imperturbable.

· · ·

“That didn’t take long,” Kate said as they sat down with loaded trays.

“No, it didn’t, did it,” Jim said, reaching for the mustard. “Amazing how in a crew of twenty Masterson couldn’t remember Paul Kameroff.”

“Amazing how any of a crew of twenty barely remembered that Paul existed,” Kate said, and dug in. There was silence for a few bliss-filled minutes. Murder was a serious subject, but a good cheeseburger deserved attention and respect.

Jim grabbed a handful of napkins to clean the juice that had run down his hands. “Going to be hard to prove that anyone in that warehouse had anything to do with Kameroff’s death.”

“Next to impossible, I’d say,” Kate said. She licked her fingers, one by one.

He managed to resist the urge to offer to do it for her. “There used to be rumors about the truckers in Alaska.”

“There used to be fact about the truckers in Alaska,” Kate said, sitting back in the booth. “They were a pretty rough crowd during the pipeline days. I was just a kid when they first had oil in the line, back in, oh, June, July of 1977, I guess, but I remember hearing about how they expected a body to come out the other end with the first of the oil.”

“Did it?”

“No. If there were any bodies, there’s almost six hundred thousand mostly uninhabited square miles out there to have dumped them in.”

“Which naturally begs the question, why was Paul Kameroff’s body dumped in the back of a trailer that was going to be unloaded in Tok the next day?”

Kate met his eyes. “Whoever killed him wanted his body to be found,” they said at the same time.

Jim shoved his tray to one side. “It was a very formal little murder. He was bound first, hands and feet, no possibility of a struggle when the time came, and then shot. They wanted that bullet to go right where it did.”

“An execution,” Kate said, “part of the message.”

“Hi, you all,” a voice said.

They looked up to see Candi standing next to their table, tray in hand and a bright smile on her freshly-made up face.

It took Jim a second to remember her name. But only a second. “Candi,” he said, and flashed out his broadest, most welcoming smile. He scooted over in the booth. “Have a seat.”

Candi didn’t even look at Kate, who stood up and said, “I’ll just check on Mutt.”

Jim didn’t need to see her meaningful look to know what he was supposed to do. He put his arm along the back of the booth and smiled down at little Candi. “How nice to see you again.”

Little Candi’s blush was so powerful it caused her pancake makeup to glow like pale pink neon.

· · ·

“Well?” Kate said. She was sitting in the crew cab she had borrowed from Jeannie, the clerk at Stoddard’s Aircraft Parts, and since it was coming up on Jeannie’s quitting time she was getting a little restive.

“She didn’t know anything, either,” he said, slamming into the passenger seat. Mutt poked her nose into the front seat and rested a consoling chin on his shoulder.

“Did she know Paul, at least?”

“Yes, she knew Paul, enough to give him his paycheck every two weeks. Oh, and to forward his calls to the shop.”

“What calls?”

He gave an irritable shrug. Mutt gave him a wounded look and withdrew her support. “Seems like his sister called a lot.”

“Sonia?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

Kate, in the act of starting the engine, paused with her hand on the key. “Define ‘a lot.’”

“Often enough for Candi to recognize her voice. Maybe once or twice a week.”

Kate stared out the windshield at the unprepossessing city winterscape. There was a lot of slush on the road, a lot of snow on the sides of the road, and the hum of studded tires on pavement as vehicles so dirty you couldn’t make out their color, never mind their make, splattered by. “Why at work, I wonder?”

“I don’t know. Maybe when he was at work was the only time she could get to a phone. She lives in the Park, right?”

“Yes, outside Niniltna. And no, I don’t think she has a phone, she’d have to go into town to make the call.”

“Maybe he couldn’t afford one.”

“If he was a Teamster, he could afford a phone. But then why call so often? A couple of times a week, what’s that about?” She started bouncing her knee, a sure sign of intense Shugak rumination. “Their parents are okay, last time I checked. There aren’t any other brothers or sisters. Why’s she calling him twice a week?” She looked at the clock on the dash and started the truck. “We’ve got to get this truck back before Jeannie thinks we’ve taken it and headed for California.”