Though Not Dead (58 page)

“That’s almost the best part of the whole story,” Kate said. “Come to find out, Pete’s maternal grandfather was a stampeder, of the Pilz stampeders, no less, and Pete inherited the fever. He’s got gold pans and pickaxes all over the walls of his office, along with a poster of all the largest gold nuggets in the world. Most of which come from Australia, by the way. The biggest one in Alaska is the Centennial Nugget, two hundred and ninety-four point one ounces.” She looked at him expectantly.

He waved his hand in a come ahead motion.

“And he’s got a shelf full of books about gold discoveries, stampeder accounts about Dawson and Circle and Livengood and Nome. He’s a serious gold bug. I have no excuse for not noticing. I just took it all as Alaskana. Because the icon was the most valuable thing in Old Sam’s past, I figured that’s what everybody was looking for.”

“So?” Jim said with what he felt was commendable patience.

“So, when most of the residents of Niniltna and Kanuyaq were laid out in the great flu pandemic of 1918–1919, Mac McCullough was free to waltz in and out of every building in both places, taking everything that wasn’t bolted down. Hell, he had time enough to unbolt anything he wanted. Including the Cross of Gold Nugget.”

“The what?”

“The Cross of Gold Nugget, found in 1917 by a miner who wouldn’t say where. He sold it to the mine superintendent at Kanuyaq and left town, never to be seen again.”

“Was this a large nugget?” Jim said.

“Smaller than a cantaloupe,” Kate said, and grinned. “But bigger than a grapefruit. Two hundred ninety-seven point seventy-four troy ounces.”

“In English?”

“Twenty pounds six ounces,” she said.

“That’d be pretty big,” he said.

“The biggest one ever found in Alaska,” she said. “Bigger even than the Centennial.”

“You think Old Sam’s dad took it? Same time as he took the icon?”

“He did take it.”

He nodded, and then said, “Wait a minute. ‘Bigger than a grapefruit, smaller than a cantaloupe’? You’ve seen a picture?”

She shook her head once, side to side.

“You’ve seen the nugget?”

She nodded once, up and down.

“That’s what the map was to,” he said, “the nugget. Not the icon, and not the manuscript.”

“Yep.”

“Where is it? The nugget?” He looked around the room. “I’d like to see a lump of gold bigger than a grapefruit.”

“I left it there in the cave.”

“You what!”

“Well,” she said. “It was heavy, and I wanted to catch Bruce before he got away. And it’s painted to blend in with the rocks. And everyone who knows anything about it besides me is in jail.”

When he got his breath back, he said, “So we’ll be headed back up to Canyon Hot Springs sooner rather than later. Jesus Christ, Kate, gold’s over eleven hundred an ounce.”

She looked at him, disappointed. “I didn’t think you were a gold bug, too, Jim.”

“Gold bug, hell, I’m a practicing policeman. Word gets out and people’ll be killing each other to get their hands on it.”

“Oh.” She reflected. “I guess you’re right.”

“I know I’m right. We can give it to that museum in Anchorage you were talking about.”

Kate thought of Ms. Sherwood’s reaction, and smiled. “Okay.”

“How did Old Sam wind up with the nugget?”

“I don’t know that he did,” Kate said.

Jim digested this. “You think Mac left it up there?”

“It’s the only reason I can think of why Elizaveta insisted that Old Sam homestead up there. Mac wrote to her, remember. Old Sam might not have known about the nugget. I still can’t believe I found it. I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been looking so hard for the icon.”

He shook his head. “I’m getting dizzy. So Auntie Joy has the manuscript.”

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Nothing. It isn’t mine, Jim. Old Sam gave it to Auntie Joy.”

“Well.” He almost squirmed. “Do you think she’d let me read it?”

She laughed at him. After a moment, he joined in.

“So, where the hell is the icon?” he said.

Kate’s laughter died. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think Old Sam killed Emil Bannister to get it?”

Kate got up and went to the table. She brought back a sheet of paper.

“What’s this?” He looked at it.

“It’s the list of the items stolen from Emil Bannister’s house the night he died. Victoria Muravieff sent it to me.”

“So I see a Russian icon on it, along with some ivory carvings and, oh, look at that, another gold nugget, although this one’s a lot smaller than yours.”

“Erland probably padded the list to up the insurance payout,” Kate said.

“You really think Old Sam stole the icon, Kate?” It just didn’t square with Jim’s memory of the old man.

It didn’t square with Kate’s, either. “I haven’t found it,” Kate said. “Until I do…” Her voice trailed off.

“If it he did,” Jim said, “it would explain why he couldn’t give it back to the tribe. It would have been known to have been stolen, and given who Emil Bannister was, it would have been familiar to a lot of people. Someone would have recognized it.” He thought it over. “Which is why he left it for you to do when you found it.”

“But I haven’t found it,” she said again.

“Ah hell, honey,” he said, tucking her under his arm again. “Don’t sound so mournful. You haven’t found it yet.”

She sighed. “I’ve been running back and forth between Niniltna and Ahtna and Canyon Hot Springs and Anchorage and Niniltna and Canyon Hot Springs for damn near three weeks. He left clues for me, Jim. He told Jane about the map. He told Tony about meeting Hammett in the Aleutians. He told Ruthe Mac’s name. I’ve pieced together most of the puzzle. I was sure the map was going to lead me to the icon.”

“Why did he do it?” Jim said, rubbing the small of her back absently. “Why send you on a treasure hunt? Why not just tell you the whole story and hand everything over?”

Kate remembered that bright day in the clearing last spring, right before the bear charged them.
You’re crankier than usual, girl. What’s going on?

It was one of the last real conversations they’d had, standing in a Park clearing taking a beat between collecting some human remains and creating some ursine ones. She had, in fact, been cranky, and Old Sam, as usual, had zeroed in on the cause. The Suulutaq Mine was changing the Park, changing it fast and not all for the better. She’d been feeling crowded, a fine thing in a place where there wasn’t but one person for every sixteen hundred acres, and that included the towns.

She thought of the crazy adventure he’d sent her on. He must have known, given what was at stake, that it could be dangerous, that it might even be deadly. And that it might be both those things but it sure as hell wouldn’t be boring. He was right, it hadn’t been. She’d been sandbagged, run off the road, ambushed, and shot at.

If the old fart sent you on a wild goose chase, he must have thought you needed one
, Bobby had said.

“Up until I went to see Erland Bannister at Spring Creek,” she said slowly, “it was like a scavenger hunt. Up until then…”

“Up until then,” he said, “you’d been having fun.”

“I guess,” she said. “If you ignore the sequential shiners.”

“Fortunes of war,” he said. “You’re still alive and kicking.”

She raised her head again. “Aren’t you supposed to come over all manly man and forbid the little lady from taking such risks with her fragile self?”

“I like my balls right where they are,” he said, and she laughed and put her head back down on his chest.

It had been fun, if alarming, to see the expression on Ranger Dan’s face when he realized who had title to Canyon Hot Springs, and to watch the gears ticking over as he thought how to rectify the situation.

It had been fun, and instructive, to talk to Jane Silver, probably one of the last Alaska good-time girls around, a grand old dame. There weren’t many of those left.

It had not been fun, admittedly, to witness Jane’s last breath and to realize that she might have had something to do with hastening it.

It had been fun, delicious fun, to talk to the lawyer. She’d felt like Thorby Rudbek when he was returned to Earth. It had been fun to toy with the idea of suing the Parks Service, although it wasn’t fun to contemplate Dan O’Brian’s reaction, or the possible destruction of their friendship.

It hadn’t been fun to be run off the road, but it had been fun to test her survival skills against the encroaching storm. She had survived, in spades and in style. Hell, she was near as dammit invulnerable at this point. Look at how she’d survived both attacks at Canyon Hot Springs, and hadn’t she made it all the way home safely? More or less? Jim was right, fortunes of war. You pays your money and you takes your chances. You don’t play, you can’t win.

But that morning in Spring Creek, she had looked again into the eyes of a killer, a man who had covered up one murder for his own benefit, ordered a second, and been fully prepared to commit his own.

She thought about waking up in that hunting shack in the back range of the Chugach Mountains, how alone she had felt, how angry.

How frightened.

She still didn’t think Erland Bannister would kill for a Russian icon, however historic, however storied, however culturally important, however connected to an unacknowledged side of his family, not even if the frame were studded with uncut diamonds the value of Cameroon’s national debt. He had all the money in the world, enough, apparently, even to buy his way out of a well-earned prison sentence with hardly any time served.

So he was after something else.

What?

It had to be the truth of his parentage. He could buy his way out of everything but that. And it might be the only thing left to him that he was willing to risk everything for.

Kate found it difficult to credit as a motive for murder, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

Someone knocked at the door. Kate, dressed only in Jim’s shirt, scurried upstairs while Jim, dressed only in sweatpants, went to the door. He yanked it open and said, “What?”

Bernie was standing there with a big square wooden box in his hands. “Uh, Kate left this on the bar last night. Thought she’d want it.”

“Thanks.” Jim shut the door in Bernie’s face. He was a guy. He’d understand. “It was just Bernie,” he said, raising his voice. “He dropped off something for you.”

“What?”

“A box. He said you left it on the bar.” He heard a snowgo start and drive off. Good old Bernie.

It took her a moment. “It’s the compass off the
Freya.
Old Sam left it to me.”

“Oh yeah?” He sat down on the couch and unlatched the lid. “Wow. Nice.” He touched a finger to the brass. It felt like gold to the touch, and it shone like it, too. “He took pretty good care of it.”

She came pattering down the stairs, dressed to his sorrow in jeans and a sweatshirt, although, more promisingly, her feet were still bare. “He told me once he got it from some old antiques dealer he knew in Seattle.”

“It looks pretty old, all right.”

“He said it dated back to the American Civil War.” She collected their mugs and plates and took them into the kitchen, returning with more coffee to see him fiddling with the bottom of the box. “What are you doing?”

“Doesn’t the workmanship remind you of my dad’s writing box?” He slipped his fingers down between the compass and the box. “I showed you, remember? There’s a secret drawer,” he said, “it looks just like—”

A drawer popped out of the bottom of the compass box.

Kate’s mouth dropped open.

“There’s something inside,” Jim said, and drew forth a package wrapped in a length of dusty black velvet tied with ordinary string.

Kate accepted it with hands that trembled. The string slipped free easily. She folded back the velvet.

Three wooden framed portraits of pressed metal, the same woman in all three portraits, the three frames hinged together.

The frames were studded with cabochon stones in inexpertly made bezels. Some of them were missing. Tarnish hid most of the gilt.

Kate slid from the couch and leaned forward to place the triptych gently on the floor, the sides bent in slightly so it would stand upright.

“The Lady of Kodiak,” Jim said, awed in spite of himself.

“The Sainted Mary,” Kate said. “Oh, Jim.”

“What?”

“Don’t you see?” Her voice broke and he looked up to see tears sliding down her cheeks. “He must have stolen it. Old Sam must have stolen her from Erland’s house. He must have been the one who broke in the night Emil died.”

Jaded law enforcement professional that he was, Jim still wanted to reject it. “Kate, no, I—”

She shook her head, her eyes closing. “He must have. He must have been the one who robbed the Bannister house.”

She took a long, shaky breath.

“And if he stole the Sainted Mary, he must have killed Emil, too.”

1959

Anchorage

Erland listened to the footsteps pound down the stairs and fade into the street without moving, watching his father’s face.

He heard his mother cry out upstairs. “Emil! Emil? What was that noise?”

He heard the door of his sister’s room open.

He invested as much power and authority in his voice as he could. “The two of you stay up there and lock your doors! There’s an intruder in the house!”

Emil’s breathing was labored and harsh in the stillness of the study. The blood flooded down the side of his head, soaking his white shirt collar, turning the shoulder of his suit jacket a darker blue.

Erland picked up a straight chair and threw it across the room. It hit one of the display cases, shattering glass and wood. “Stop that! Get out of our house!”

His father’s eyes fluttered open and fixed on Erland’s face. His lips parted.

Erland hooked an arm around a tabletop full of ivory carvings and sent them crashing to the floor. “Mom! Call the police!”

His father was trying to say something, his chest heaving.

Erland smiled down at him, and walked around his father’s heavy wooden desk. “Mom!” he shouted. “Call the cops!”

He put his hands beneath the edge of the desk, planted his feet, and with a mighty heave turned over the heavy mahogany desk.