Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 02 - Capitol Offense (9 page)

He paused, but Hope just sat there.

“What you’ll do is very different,” Kane said. “You’ll do exactly what you’re told to do exactly when you’re told to do it. Eat, sleep, work, go to the bathroom. You’ll see the same people and the same rooms and the same walls. Over and over and over again.”

He paused again.

“There’s going to be a bail hearing,” Hope said. “I have a right to get out on bail. State law says so.”

Kane looked at the other man for a long moment.

“You get out on bail,” he said, “and you’ll think everything will be all right. You’ll lead an almost normal life, if you don’t think about it too hard. But then there will be a trial, and if you stick to this sorry story you just told me, the jury will convict you and you’ll spend the next twenty years or more doing exactly what you’re told to do exactly when you’re told to do it. And staring at the walls in between. Maybe you’re tough enough to take it. Maybe you’re not. Some people are. Lots aren’t. And maybe your people on the outside will wait and maybe they won’t. You married?”

Hope’s gaze was steady, but Kane could see the pulse throbbing in his temple.

“No, I’m not,” he said, “but I’ve got family, lots of family who would wait for me. But they won’t have to. I didn’t kill that woman.”

Kane waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t said, “That’s it? That’s the best you’ve got? I didn’t do it?”

Hope remained silent.

“So are you going to tell me the truth now?” Kane said.

The two men looked at each other for a long time.

“I’ve told you what happened,” Hope said at last.

Kane looked steadily at the other man, then shook his head.

“You know,” he said, “for a politician, you’re a crappy liar.”

He got to his feet and pushed the buzzer. The door behind Hope opened and the sandy-haired guard came in. Hope got to his feet and the two of them left. Without the distraction of talking to Hope, Kane could feel the room start to close in on him. The door to Kane’s room opened and the guard with the mullet came in.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

Kane nodded. He went through the door and down the hall, the guard behind him. The urge to start running was nearly irresistible, but he fought it down and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other at a steady pace. He forced himself not to fidget while they waited for the guard in the booth to open one locked door, then another. When he reached the lobby, Kane continued straight across the reception area and out into the cold. He stood there for a long while, breathing in and out. Then he took out his cell phone and called Cocoa.

“You can come and get me now,” he said. “I made my escape.”

He stood outside, ignoring the cold, until Cocoa’s cab pulled up. He got in.

“How was your visit?” the cabbie asked.

“Piece of cake,” Kane said. “I could get out anytime I wanted.”

A
laska’s Capitol is a U-shaped concrete building faced with bricks and slabs of limestone, a block long and half a block wide. The main entrance is on the front of the U, framed by four marble pillars, two stories tall, which support a small balcony of the sort that a queen might wave from.

When it was built, before Alaska became a state, the building housed the federal bureaucrats who ran the territory, making it the only state capitol building in the United States that wasn’t built as a Capitol. Because it was built on the slope of a hill, the building has six stories at the front but only five at the back. The first floor is called the ground floor, the second floor is called the first floor, and so on.

Perfect, Kane thought, folding the brochure titled “Facts About Alaska’s Capitol” and sliding it into a coat pocket. A building that follows its own rules full of people who make their own rules.

Senator Toby Grantham’s office was on the ground floor, down the hall from the print shop and the mailroom. The outer office was the size of a box of saltines. A gorgeous, dark-haired young woman sat at a desk flanked by a pair of closed doors. Her desk, a couple of chairs, and a coatrack barely left room for a visitor.

The young woman welcomed Kane with a big smile and asked if she could help him.

“I’m here to talk to Senator Grantham at the suggestion of Senator Matthew Hope,” Kane said, handing her a card.

The woman switched off her smile.

“Oh, it’s a terrible thing, terrible,” she said. “I’m sure Senator Hope had nothing to do with that woman’s death.” She got to her feet. “I’ll get Senator Grantham’s senior staff.” Still holding the card, she disappeared through one of the closed doors.

Kane took off his coat and hung it on a rack. He looked around the reception area. The walls were crowded with what he took to be class photos, but on closer examination they turned out to be photographs of the legislature through the years. He was looking at the oldest of them—the caption said “12th Alaska Legislature”—when the door behind him opened.

“That’s Senator Grantham there,” a woman said. She walked over and stood next to Kane, pointing at what appeared to be a college kid. “That photo was taken in 1982. Doesn’t he look young?”

“He certainly does,” Kane said.

The woman was a head shorter than Kane, with shoulder-length blond hair and blue eyes. She wore a dark suit and a white blouse open far enough to show the beginning of spectacular cleavage. She smelled of soap and tobacco smoke. Kane guessed her age at thirty.

“I’m Alma Atwood,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m Senator Grantham’s chief of staff. Jennifer said you’d like to speak with the senator?”

Kane took her hand, which was soft and warm and dry.

“I would,” he said. “I’m Nik Kane, part of Senator Matthew Hope’s defense team. Senator Hope suggested I talk to your boss.”

He was startled to realize that he was still holding the woman’s hand, so he dropped it, dug Doyle’s letter of authorization out of his coat pocket, and, since Grantham was on her list, Mrs. Foster’s letter as well. He handed them to the woman. The woman opened each in turn, read them, and nodded.

“I’m sure the senator will want to speak with you,” she said. “If you wouldn’t mind waiting?”

She took the letters, knocked at the other closed door, and opened it. Kane could hear a booming voice saying, “…organized labor gets off its ass and—” The closing door cut the voice off.

Kane sat in one of the chairs and waited. The woman emerged a while later.

“The senator can give you a few minutes now,” she said, “but he does have a lunch appointment.”

She opened the door and passed through it in front of Kane.

“Mr. Kane, Senator,” she said.

Grantham sat behind a big, tidy desk of dark wood. His office was much bigger than the outer office. RHIP, Kane thought.

The senator got up and walked around the desk, extending a hand. Kane shook it. The hand was as big and soft as a catcher’s mitt. Kane had no urge to hold on to it. Grantham was big and soft, too, and no longer looked like a college kid. He had salt-and-pepper hair that hung over his shirt collar and a big belly that hung over his belt. He wore a gray, pin-striped suit and a starched white shirt that gaped above the belt to show a not-so-white undershirt beneath. Red veins were visible in his beak of a nose and he smelled of aftershave and alcohol.

“Thank you, Alma,” he said in a voice as well seasoned as an oak barrel. The woman left, closing the door behind her. “Please have a seat, Mr. Kane.”

Kane sat in one of the wing chairs facing the desk. Grantham leaned over the desk, picked up the letters, and handed them to Kane. He sat in the other wing chair.

“So you are here on behalf of Senator Hope,” Grantham said, “and with the recommendation of Mrs. Richard Foster. That’s a potent combination. What can I do to help?”

“I’ve been hired by the defense to investigate the murder of Melinda Foxx,” Kane said. “I don’t know anything about politics or how the legislature works or the defendant or the victim. So pretty much anything you can tell me will help, Senator.”

Grantham laughed.

“You’ve got your work cut out for you, don’t you?” he said. “I’ve been at this thirty years and I’m not sure how either politics or the legislature works.”

Grantham propped his chin up with a hand and sat there.

“There’s a lot I could tell you,” he said at last, “so much that probably all it would do is confuse you. And unless you’re trying to get a bill passed, it wouldn’t help anyway. For your purposes, just think of the legislature as a nomad camp. There’s maybe five hundred of us if you count legislators and staff and lobbyists and reporters. Most of us don’t live in Juneau, we just camp out here when we’re in session. We work together and socialize together and don’t mix much with the locals. I’ve always thought we’d make a fascinating study for a sociologist. Or an anthropologist. Or even a psychiatrist.”

Kane showed the senator a smile at the witticism.

“So you all know each other pretty well?” he asked.

“Fairly well,” Grantham said. “There’s a significant burnout factor, so people leave and new people take their places. And there’s a tendency to socialize with your own kind—legislators with legislators, staff with staff, and so on. Except lobbyists. It’s more or less their job to be on good terms with everyone.”

From where he sat, Kane could look out three windows located at intervals in the wall and see people walking past, going up or down the hill. He saw heads in the first window, torsos in the second, and legs in the last. His kids had had a game like that when they were little, matching the proper heads, bodies, and legs.
Sesame Street
characters, as he recalled.

“Did you know Melinda Foxx well?” he asked Grantham.

“Only superficially,” Grantham said. “I tend to spend most of my time dealing with other senators and their staffs, and, since he’s the chairman of the Finance Committee, there’s no getting around Senator O. B. Potter and his staff. So I had dealings with Miss Foxx and knew her well enough to say hello to.”

“And to socialize with?” Lane asked.

Grantham shook his head.

“Maybe twenty years ago,” he said, “but I find I don’t have the energy to keep up with these young women anymore.”

“So you don’t know much about her personal life?” Kane asked.

Grantham shook his head again.

“I think you’d be better off talking to someone more her age,” he said, “probably other members of the staff.”

“And what can you tell me about Matthew Hope?” Kane asked. As he waited for an answer, the head of a pretty brunette became a robust torso, then a shapely pair of legs.

“I don’t know Senator Hope all that well, really,” Grantham said. “I’m not sure anyone does. Native legislators are a minority, and since most of them are Democrats, and the Republicans run things, they are a minority within a minority. So they play things close to the vest and tend to not socialize much. Plus, Hope only came over to the Senate from the House two years ago.”

“You are in the same party,” Kane said.

“We are,” said Grantham, “but people tend to assign too much significance to that. We share the same values, but we don’t agree on everything and we don’t all get along.”

“Does Hope have any friends here?” Kane asked.

Grantham was silent for a moment.

“None that I know of,” he said. “The legislature, particularly the Senate, isn’t given to friendships. We each have our own priorities and careers to worry about. You’d be better off thinking of our relationships as alliances that are constantly shifting. The alliance among members of the same party is important but not definitive. There are personal and regional considerations, electoral considerations. It’s a complicated business.”

Kane shook his head.

“So this is going to be worse than I thought,” he said.

“Probably much worse,” Grantham said with a smile.

“Did Senator Hope know Melinda Foxx?” Kane asked.

“I’m sure he did, although I have no idea how well,” Grantham said. “Ms. Foxx took care of bills in the Finance Committee, so every senator knew her and dealt with her at one time or another. Many of the members of the House, too, as well as most of the staff.”

“She took care of bills,” Kane said. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Grantham smiled.

“Ah, Government 101,” he said. “Most committees deal with bills, with laws legislators want passed. If the passage of a bill would require the government to spend more money, it is sent to the Finance Committee. In addition, the Finance Committee writes the budgets. So the committee staff works either on the bills that are sent to the committee or on the budgets. Ms. Foxx worked on bills.”

Kane nodded, and the senator continued.

“Senator Hope is the prime sponsor of only one bill,” he said, “to allow civil unions, and it is in the Finance Committee right now. So he probably has had conversations with Ms. Foxx about moving it out of committee. Although I can’t think of a reason why he’d bother.”

“Why not?’ Kane asked.

Grantham smiled again.

“Gay rights isn’t the most popular issue in the legislature,” he said. “Senator Potter, who is very conservative and has a lot of conservative, especially conservative Christian, support, is worse than most on the subject. He grabbed the bill on the flimsiest pretext just to block it. So that bill would have trouble getting out of his committee, too, even if Senator Hope weren’t on his hit list.”

“Why’s that?” Kane asked.

Grantham shifted in his chair.

“I wouldn’t normally be retailing gossip,” he said, “but I want to do everything I can to help Senator Hope. Several months ago, he released information showing that the state Department of Transportation was leasing office space from Senator Potter at three times the going rate, without a competitively bid contract. There’s an investigation going on right now that’s likely to be embarrassing for both Potter and the governor. And just before the session started, Potter was accused of taking illegal campaign contributions from a couple of oil field service companies. Everyone thinks Hope was the source of that information, too. So it’s not very likely that Potter would do Hope any favors. And that’s putting it mildly.”

Kane took his notebook out of his pocket and wrote in it.

“That wasn’t too smart, was it?” he asked. “Getting on the wrong side of someone as powerful as Senator Potter?”

He watched as a pair of chubby legs became a round body, then a fleshy head.

“Not if Senator Hope wants to get anything done in the Senate,” Grantham said. “But everyone thinks he’s got bigger plans, and he’s sacrificing effectiveness inside the legislature for political points outside it.”

Kane wrote some more.

“So you don’t think Senator Hope is serious about his civil unions bill?” he asked.

“He may be,” Grantham said. “He did manage to pry it out of a couple of committees in the Senate. But Senator Potter seems to be dug in pretty solidly against it, and I’m not sure what inducements Senator Hope could offer to change his position.”

“Inducements?” Kane said.

“Between senators, an inducement is usually a vote,” Grantham said, “as in ‘I’ll vote for your bill if you’ll vote for mine.’ A less kind term for that is logrolling. But Potter doesn’t have many logs to roll, and those he does have aren’t the sort of logs Senator Hope is likely to help him roll.”

“I can feel the water closing over my head,” Kane said.

Grantham saw the confused look on Kane’s face and chuckled.

“Just think of it as a big swap meet,” Grantham said, “with votes as the currency.”

“If you say so,” Kane said. “I suppose this makes sense, in its own way. Do you support the civil unions bill?”

Grantham smiled.

“I do,” he said. “I think it’s a matter of human rights.”

“I just read that in the newspaper, coming from Hope,” Kane said.

Grantham chuckled again.

“We all tend to use the same talking points,” he said. “But why so many questions about the legislation? Do you think it’s involved somehow in what happened to Miss Foxx?”