Whisper to the Blood

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WHISPER
to the
BLOOD

ALSO BY DANA STABENOW
Prepared for Rage
Blindfold Game

The Kate Shugak
Series
A Deeper Sleep
A Taint in the Blood
A Grave Denied
A Fine and Bitter Snow
The Singing of the Dead
Midnight Come Again
Hunter s Moon
Killing Grounds
Breakup
Blood Will Tell Play with Fire
A Cold-Blooded Business
Dead in the Water
A Fatal Thaw
A Cold Day for Murder

The Liam Campbell
Series
Better to Rest
Nothing Gold Can Stay
So Sure of Death
Fire and Ice

The Star Svensdotter
Series
Red Planet Run
A Handful of Stars
Second Star

Anthologies
Powers of Detection
Wild Crimes
Alaska
Women Write
The Mysterious North
At the Scene of the Crime
Unusual Suspects

WHISPER
to the
BLOOD

DANA STABENOW

Minotaur Books

New York

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events
portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously.

whisper to the blood
. Copyright © 2009 by Dana
Stabenow. All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America
. For
information, address
St. Martin
's Press,

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stabenow, Dana.

Whisper to the blood : a Kate Shugak novel / Dana Stabenow.-1st ed.

p. cm ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36974-3 ISBN-10: 0-312-36974-3 1. Shugak, Kate
(Fictitious character)-Fiction. 2. Women private investigators- Alaska-Fiction.
3. Murder-Investigation-Fiction. 4. Alaska-Fiction. I. Title.

PS3569.T1249W48 2009

813'.54-dc22 2008033959

First Edition: February 2009

10 9876 5 4321

This one is for my
editor,
Kelley Ragland,
and long overdue.

And if she doesn't mind sharing, it's also for Andy Martin and the rest of
the Minotaur gang, too. My heartfelt thanks for the great editor, the great
covers, and all the great wine.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to Irene
Rowan, whose wonderful and sometimes heartbreaking stories inspired the plot of
this novel.

My thanks to Talia
Ross, for the loan of her way-cool name.

And last but by no
means least, my thanks to Pat and Cliff Lunneborg, who once said to me,
"Do what you love. The money will come." I've been waiting to say
that in a book ever since.

. . . enemies
that whisper to the blood. . .
THEODORE ROETHKE, "PROGNOSIS

WHISPER
to the
BLOOD

SIX MONTHS AGO

VANCOUVER
,
BC
(AP): A Canadian-based mining firm, Global Harvest Resources Inc. (GHRI),
yesterday announced the discovery of a gold, copper and molybdenum deposit on
state-leased land in
Alaska
's
Iqaluk Wildlife Refuge. At a press conference at the company's headquarters in
Vancouver
,
British
Columbia
, GHRI said preliminary estimates put the
recoverable gold at 42 million ounces.

"That's more than seven times the total amount of gold mined during the
Klondike Gold Rush," said GHRI chief executive officer Bruce O'Malley.

It's not only gold in them thar hills, according to O'Malley. "There
are also 24 billion pounds of copper and 1.5 million pounds of
molybdenum," a hard metal used to strengthen steel, in what GHRI has named
the Suulutaq Mine.
Suulutaq
is the Aleut word for "gold."

At current prices, the gold alone in the Suulutaq Mine is worth over $38
billion.

The governor's office in
Juneau
issued a
press release that said, in part, "The people of
Alaska
applaud Global Harvest Resources'
entrepreneurial efforts in making this discovery, and look forward to a long
and profitable relationship with them."

State senator Pete Heiman (R), representing District 41, appeared optimistic
when asked about the proposed mine. "Global Harvest has already committed
to hiring locally, two thousand employees during construction and a thousand
for operation afterward, for as long as the ore holds out," he said.
"Anything that puts my constituents to work is a good thing."

Calls to the Niniltna Native Association's headquarters in Niniltna, the
community located nearest the prospective mine, were not returned as of press
time. The
village
of
Niniltna
itself is
unincorporated and has no elected officials.

ONE

SEPTEMBER

G
rin bought out Mac Devlin." Kate
looked up from the dining room table, where she was wrestling with a time sheet
for her last job. It had required extensive surveillance, some of which she had
subbed out to Kurt Pletnikoff in
Anchorage
.
Kurt was turning into quite the one-man Continental Op, and while Kate was glad
to see the erstwhile Park screwup make good, and while she begrudged none of
the hefty percentage of her fee he was earning, the bookkeeping strained her
negligible mathematical skills to the red shift limit. It took her a moment to
focus on Jim's news. "Grin?"

"Global Harvest Resources Inc. GHRIn. That's what we're calling them
around the Park, hadn't you heard?"

"No. Appropriate, though. They have to be grinning from ear to
ear."

"To be fair, everyone is-fed, state, local."

"Not everyone local is," Kate said.

"Yeah." Jim slung his jacket around a chair and pulled off the
ball cap with the Alaska State Trooper insignia, running a hand through his
thatch of dark blond hair. Jim was ever vigilant against hat hair. "And
not Mac Devlin anymore, either. He's been operating on a shoestring for years,
waiting on the big strike that never came. Last fall he had to sell off all his
heavy equipment to pay his outstanding bills. Well, just to gild the lily,
whoever his bank is got hit hard in the subprime mortgage mess, so they called
in a lot of debt, including what they had on the land his mine sits on."

"And the Nabesna Mine also just happens to sit right on the route to
the valley where Global Harvest has its leases," Kate said.

Jim nodded. "Owning the Nabesna Mine will give them easy access."

"Hell," Kate said, "Mac's road into the Nabesna Mine gets
them partway there. And give the devil his due, it's a pretty good road."

"Better than the state road into the Park."

"No kidding. Although that's not saying much." She pointed with
her chin. "The coffee's fresh. And there's gingerbread."

"Outstanding." He busied himself in the kitchen. "Mac's
pretty pissed about the whole deal. You know how he was such a rah-rah boy for
the Suulutaq from the get-go? Now he's saying Global Harvest and his bank must
have been in cahoots, that they conspired to force him to sell for pennies on
the dollar."

"Where's he saying this?"

"At the Roadhouse."

"What were you doing out at Bernie's?"

"Your cousin Martin was making a nuisance of himself again, so I went
out to lay down a little law."

Kate sighed. "What'd he do this time?"

"Got stumblebum drunk, tripped over a chair, and spilled a beer on the
current quilt."

"Holy shit," Kate said, looking up. "Is he still
living?"

Jim regarded the quarter section of gingerbread he had cut with
satisfaction, and not a little drool. "The aunties were pissed."

"Imagine my surprise. And Martin?"

Jim looked up and grinned. It was wide and white and predatory. "I
think Bernie called me out more to get Martin into protective custody than
because Martin was misbehaving in his bar."

"Martin being one of his better customers," Kate said. "Any
other news from the front?"

Howie Katelnikof, boon companion to the late and unlamented Louis Deem, had
been at the Roadhouse, too, hanging around the outskirts of the aunties'
quilting bee, but Howie's life was hanging by a thread where Kate was
concerned. Jim thought, on the whole, better not to mention Howie's presence.

It wasn't that Jim, a fair-minded man, didn't understand and to a certain
extent didn't even approve of Kate's homicidal intentions toward Howie. He was
as certain as he could be, lacking direct, concrete evidence, that Howie was
responsible for the attack that had put Kate's truck in the ditch with Kate and
Johnny in it, an attack which had also put Mutt in the hospital with a very
nearly fatal bullet wound. There would be justice done at some point, no doubt,
probably when Howie and the eagerly awaiting Park rats least expected it. Kate knew
well the value of patience.