Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 02 - Capitol Offense (26 page)

“My plan was good, but it did not allow for Senator Potter ’s ambition. He wanted to hold the bill in his committee and win the support of the oil companies for his candidacy for governor. So the bill did not move. I needed to keep Senator Hope in jail longer. I thought perhaps to take his attorney captive, but feared that would stir up the authorities too much. Then the man who I cannot name told me that you were coming to investigate. Even in the Soviet Union, lawyers are dependent on investigators, so I knew that removing you would slow the proceedings. I sent those men to see you, but you bested them. Then Senator Hope was released, so I decided to abandon that strategy.

“I went to Senator Grantham and told him about the evidence I had of his infidelity, and he reacted as I thought he would. But before I could do anything more, I heard about the report of Melinda Foxx’s pregnancy. And the other aide was murdered, and I knew Senator Hope would be arrested once more.”

He raised a fist and pounded weakly on the hospital bed’s metal railing.

“Again, I was greedy,” he said, “greedy and stupid and proud. I should have continued as I did, in the end, with Grantham. But I wanted to keep that information for later. And you had insulted me in the restaurant by declining my hospitality. I knew that Alma wanted to leave, so I arranged your capture. I told myself that without your help Senator Hope would be less likely to be released, but really I was only trying to salvage my pride. But it was all for nothing. The bill moved more quickly to the floor than I anticipated, and I was unable tell Senator Grantham he could vote as he wished. Then you escaped, and now here we are.”

He waved vaguely at the room and was silent.

“You had me kidnapped because I insulted you?” Kane said. “Really?”

“It is so,” Bezhdetny said. “Since coming to Alaska, I have swallowed many insults many times. I saw an opportunity for revenge that seemed to coincide with my goals and I took it.”

Kane sat trying to digest that. A smart man would have ignored his emotions, wouldn’t he? That’s what he’d always thought: Don’t let your emotions interfere with your work. But was he doing so well that he could look down at the Ukrainian for trying to get a little of his own back?

“So your efforts were all about the oil tax bill?” Kane said. “And you had nothing to do with Melinda Foxx being killed?”

Bezhdetny nodded.

“That is correct,” he said.

“Might your employer have had it done?” Kane asked.

“Why would he?” Bezhdetny asked. “She was not a problem on oil taxes, and that is all he is interested in.”

Kane sighed. If Bezhdetny was telling the truth, and he seemed to be, then he was probably right. His efforts to defeat the oil tax bill and Melinda Foxx’s murder weren’t connected.

“Do you know anything about that murder that might help me?” Kane asked.

Bezhdetny smiled.

“That, really, is why I asked you here, to see your face when I told you this,” he said. “As I said, I watched everyone very carefully. I do know something about Melinda Foxx that might help you. But I will not tell you what it is. I will not tell anyone, unless I need the information to trade with the authorities.”

The Ukrainian laughed unpleasantly.

“You have ruined my life,” Bezhdetny said. “I will not help you with yours. We are like your country and my country, Nik Kane. You have won a battle but not the war. You may leave now.”

T
he bastard,” Doyle said when Kane called to tell him about his interview with the Ukrainian. His voice was so revved up with anger that it was practically ultrasonic. “He knows something that will help us and he won’t spill it because, why, he’s pissed at you?”

“Says he knows something,” Kane said. “We don’t know that he actually does.”

In the silence that ensued, Kane looked around his hotel room. He needed to finish with the lawyer, take a shower, and get some sleep. He wanted to be more alert when Dylan arrived.

“So did you believe him?” Doyle asked.

“I believe most of his story,” Kane said. “It had just the right mixture of intelligence and incompetence to be a true criminal story. But knowing something about the murder? He might just be trying to mess with me to get even. I don’t know what to believe.”

“Yeah, me either,” the lawyer said. “We could tell the cops and see if they can get anything out of him. But it might be handy just to file that piece of information away until we need it. This Bezhdetny seems like just the kind of villain juries love to pin things on. With him in the mix, Matthew Hope skates out of trouble.”

“I thought about that,” Kane said. “You might be able to keep Hope out of prison, but the only thing that saves his political career is establishing his innocence.”

“Saving his political career is not my problem,” Doyle squeaked.

“You may not think so,” Kane said, “but I’m sure your client, and the woman who is paying you, would both like that to happen. So I reckon I’ll just keep snooping around.”

“I’m not sure I like that,” Doyle said. “If you continue investigating, you might turn up information that hurts our case rather than helps it.”

“Risk you take,” Kane said and closed his phone.

He took a while getting out of his clothes, then examined the bandage on his leg. No blood showed. He’d had Cocoa stop at the grocery store on their way back to the hotel and buy a roll of plastic wrap. Now he covered the bandage in several layers of plastic, got into the bathtub, and turned the shower on as hot as he could stand it. He let the water wash his thoughts away, until his mind was blank to everything but the pounding of the spray. He didn’t know how long he had been standing there when he roused himself, shampooed his hair, washed his body, rinsed, and got out of the shower.

Toweling himself off was a logistical nightmare, and the calf of his wounded leg was still wet when he dragged himself out of the bathroom and flopped onto the bed. He had just enough energy left to leave a wake-up call before his eyes closed and he was gone.

The telephone woke him. A recorded voice told him to wake up. The pain that shot through his thigh when he swung his legs out of the bed nearly made him faint.

Maybe lying down and stiffening up wasn’t the best idea, he thought.

He gritted his teeth, levered himself to his feet, and more or less hopped into the bathroom, where he splashed cold water on his face. He dried himself, ate some prescription painkillers the doctor had given him, and made it back to the bedroom, where he tried vainly to dress without hurting himself some more.

This is stupid, he thought. I’d have as much luck throwing the clothes into the air and running under them. So he put up with the pain it took to get dressed, then hopped around making the bed and picking clothing wrappers and tags off the floor. When he was satisfied with the condition of the room, he sat in the chair to wait. He opened Montaigne and found himself at an essay called “Of Judging the Death of Others.” He read along until he hit a quotation from Pliny: “A quick death is the supreme good fortune of human life.”

Is that so? he thought. Maybe if you are old or in bad health. But for a young and vital person like Melinda Foxx, was that really good fortune? And what about the man he had shot? Certainly, his death was quick. But didn’t he regret, even in that moment, all the life he might have had if he’d behaved differently? Or are the young so sure of their immortality that they never consider death, even when they are looking it in the face?

And he himself, Nik Kane? He could feel the breath of age on him. Would a quick death be a blessing? Since he’d gotten to Juneau, he’d had nothing but aches and pains and injuries, his pleasant, happy moments, like the night he’d spent with Alma Atwood, only setting him up for more unpleasant, unhappy ones.

No, he decided, putting the book down. I’m not ready to die. I have too much to do, too much damage to repair, too many flaws to overcome, to welcome a quick death. I am, as Montaigne says, like everyone else, too full of myself to contemplate death: “Whence it follows that we consider our death a great thing, and one which does not pass so easily, nor without solemn consultation with the stars.”

That’s me, he thought. Too important to die.

He found he’d been sitting there for some time, thinking what Laurie would have called “morbid thoughts,” when a knock at the door brought him to. He got to his feet with difficulty and let Dylan in. He offered the young man the chair and perched on the bed.

“This is easier on my leg anyway,” he said.

Dylan picked up the book and looked at the cover.

“Montaigne,” he said. “I read some of this once.”

“What did you think?” Kane asked.

“It was for a class,” Dylan said. “Why are you reading it?”

Kane shrugged.

“I guess because it helps me figure things out,” he said.

“Is figuring things out important to you?” Dylan said. “Is that why you’re a detective?”

“I suppose it is, at least partly,” Kane said. “Why are you asking all these questions?”

Dylan looked around the room. His movements reminded Kane of Laurie, too. He’s really his mother’s son, Kane thought.

“I guess because I don’t know you very well,” Dylan said. “I was still pretty young when you left, and what I remember is that you weren’t around much even before that. It made me mad, that you didn’t pay more attention to me.”

“Are you still angry?” Kane asked.

Dylan shrugged, his thin shoulders coming to points under the white shirt he had worn for work.

“I guess I am,” he said. “I don’t want to be, but I am. And I don’t know what to do about it. There were times when I really needed a father, and you weren’t there.”

The truth of what Dylan said, and his honesty in saying it, made Kane flinch.

“I could be a father now,” he said.

Dylan nodded as if he’d expected Kane to say that.

“I know,” he replied, “but I’m not sure I need a father now. Besides, what good does it do to have someone in your life if you’re mad at them all the time?”

He got to his feet and walked around the room, looking at the furniture like he’d never seen anything like it before.

“You got anything to eat?” he asked.

“No,” Kane said, “but we could call room service. Let’s look at the menu.”

They did, and Kane called and ordered. As they waited for the food, Dylan chatted about school and his job. It was as if, in talking about his anger, he had walked up to the edge of a cliff and, now, he wanted to back away from it in a cloud of inconsequential noises.

The food arrived and they sat at the table. Dylan began eating the French fries from his fish and chips and Kane took a bite of his steak sandwich. Dylan broke off a story about a party he’d been at and said, “Why did you leave us?”

Kane swallowed his food and said, “I was put in prison.”

“I know that,” Dylan said, “but Mom always said that you went to prison because you’d made bad choices. Why did you make bad choices?”

That’s the $64,000 question, Kane thought. He took another bite and chewed and swallowed automatically, then drank some water.

“I could give you a lot of reasons for that,” he said. “I could tell you about my difficult childhood and about the fact that I’m an alcoholic. But I’ve come to think those are just rationalizations. I think the real reason I made bad choices was that I wasn’t thoughtful.”

“You mean you were, like, impulsive?” Dylan asked. “People say I’m impulsive.”

“Not exactly, although I was impulsive at times, too,” Kane said. “I mean I didn’t think about my life, about what it was and what I wanted it to be. It was like I just accepted everything about myself without question, without judgment. So I never really saw the bad parts of myself. No, that’s not quite right. It’s more that I never really saw that I could or should do something about those bad parts. I just thought I was who I was and there was nothing to be done about it. And since I was, by my reckoning, a better man than my father, I didn’t really see the need to try to improve. Until it was far, far too late.”

Both men ate for a while in silence.

“What do you think now?” Dylan asked.

“I think Socrates was right,” Kane said. “‘The unreflective life is not worth living.’ Now, I’m trying to figure out why I am who I am, and what I can do to be a better person. That’s why I read Montaigne, I guess, and sit in church. It’s hard, though, two steps forward and one step back. Sometimes three steps back. I’m beginning to wonder if I have enough time left to get where I’m going.”

Dylan reached out and put his hand on his father’s.

“It might be too late for us to be father and son,” he said, “but we could still be friends. I could work on my anger and you could work on your bad habits and things might improve.”

“I’d like that,” Kane said. “I would certainly encourage you to be thoughtful about your life, and to judge who you are and what you do by whether it makes you happy, not by whether you are doing well in the eyes of the world. It’s a better way to live, even if it doesn’t solve all your problems.”

“What do you mean?” Dylan asked. “I thought that’s what you were talking about, solving your problems.”

Kane ate silently for a few minutes, trying to get his thoughts in order.

“I think what I mean is that changing yourself takes a lot of time and effort,” he said. “I’m not sure that I could have made myself a better father even if I’d known I needed to. I love you and your sisters, but I never really had the patience to spend much time with you. I was too demanding and critical and, frankly, the things you enjoyed when you were younger bored me. I’m not sure there was any way I could have overcome that.”

“What should you have done, then?” Dylan asked.

“If I’d known myself well enough, I would have not become a father,” Kane said, “at least until I’d managed to change myself.”

They finished their meal in silence, both of them considering what Kane had said.

“How do you change yourself?” Dylan asked when they’d finished. “There are some things I don’t like about myself, either.”

Kane shook his head.

“I’m not sure I know, really,” he said. “About all I’ve figured out is to change my behavior and hope my instincts fall into line with it. I’m trying that with a few things now, like drinking, and it seems to be working. Sometimes.”

Again they were silent, until Dylan said, “Pretty heavy conversation. I’ve got a lot to think about now.”

He got up and walked around the room again.

“I’ve got to get going soon,” he said, “but tell me how your case is going. The Capitol gossip is all crime all the time. Hardly any work is getting done.”

So Kane told him about the Ukrainian, the plot to defeat the oil tax, the kidnapping and the shooting.

“Wow,” Dylan said, “it’s like a Harrison Ford movie or something.”

“Not much like a movie,” Kane said, shifting to make his leg more comfortable. “And none of it seems to be much help in figuring out who killed Melinda Foxx.”

“The White Rose,” Dylan said. “Is that over the top, or what? Maybe I could help you with the case. I know a lot about what goes on in the Capitol.”

“I’d be grateful for information,” Kane said, “but I don’t think you should get involved in any other way. Two people are dead, so we know the situation is very dangerous.”

Dylan laughed and got to his feet.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “I’ve got to be off. I’m going to meet Samantha down at the Alaskan Hotel. They’ve got a band tonight.”

He went to the closet for his coat.

“Dylan, are you really sleeping with that woman?” Kane said.

“Why do you ask?” Dylan said.

“Because I was in the Triangle the other night and saw her making out with another woman,” Kane said. “She’s gay, isn’t she?”

Dylan stood quietly, like he was thinking.

“I’m not sleeping with her,” he said at last. “I just said that to sound, you know, older. I like hanging out with Samantha and everything, but she doesn’t like men that way. She’s a lesbian. One of the reasons she lets me hang around, she told me, is that it gives her cover.”

“Why does she need cover?” Kane asked.

“My American studies prof would say it’s because the legislature is very chauvinistic,” Dylan said. “Its culture is based on male values like dominance and aggression, and it is also deeply homophobic, as a matter of culture as well as politics. So a lesbian, well, she just screws everything up.”

He paused for a moment.