Whisper to the Blood (11 page)
Read Whisper to the Blood Online
Authors: Dana Stabenow
Tags: #General, #Mystery fiction, #Suspense, #Fiction, #American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, #Detective, #Mystery, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction - Mystery, #Crime & mystery, #Crime & Thriller, #Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, #Women Sleuths, #Alaska, #Murder - Investigation, #Shugak; Kate (Fictitious character), #Women private investigators - Alaska
Kate could smile about it, too. Now. "I'd have been all right if they
hadn't sandbagged me with being chairman. Probably. Anyway. Is this Macleod the
real deal, Mandy? Or is she just bought and paid for?"
"A little of both, probably," Mandy said thoughtfully. She looked
at Kate. "The thing you have to understand, Kate, is that no one in her
position makes any money to speak of. She's not Brett Favre or Kevin
Garnett."
Kate recognized neither name but she understood what Mandy was saying.
"That's hard to believe. She's got all kinds of endorsements, doesn't
she?"
"Sure, in
But Outside, or internationally?" Mandy shook her head. "As
attractive and as personable as she is, she is a biathloner. She skis and
shoots and skis. It doesn't make for riveting television, so it's not gonna be
what sells Nikes. My guess is she took this job for the paycheck."
"That's what she said. But she talks like a true believer."
Mandy raised an eyebrow. "That's what they're paying her for. She's got
a good heart, Kate."
"Then how come the first person she hired was Howie Katelnikof?"
Mandy stared. "You're kidding."
"I wish I was."
"Oh, crap." Mandy closed her eyes. "She didn't run names by you?"
Mandy glared at Kate.
"Of course she didn't," Kate said. "Sorry." She started
to say something else, and stopped. "What?"
Kate shrugged. "She didn't say hi to Annie. When
greeted every board member by name and had something to say to each of us to
show us how well she'd done her homework. But she ignored Annie. Like the
secretary-treasurer was beneath her notice. It pissed me off."
Mandy frowned. "Doesn't sound like her. Still, Annie doesn't have a
vote on the board, and Talia didn't have much time."
"Doesn't mean she can get away with rudeness. Not on my watch."
Mandy rolled her eyes. "Look at you, de chair o' de board. Wasn't even
a job you wanted and now you're the Emily Post of the Niniltna Native Association.
My mother, the queen of
so proud."
Kate had the grace to flush, and held up a hand. "Okay, ya got me.
But," she said stubbornly, "she should have said hi." She
hesitated, turning the mug around in her hands. "Mandy, what do you think
of this mine?"
Mandy shrugged. "I think at nine hundred dollars an ounce and climbing
every day, Global Harvest is gonna build it no matter what anyone in the Park
says. Might as well close our eyes and think of
Kate sighed and drained her mug. "The same. At least it's far enough
away that it won't impact you."
"Don't you believe it," Mandy said. "Don't you believe it,
Kate, it's going to seriously impact both of us." She pointed. "It'll
start with that road, traffic, heavy equipment, pretty soon it'll start falling
apart even worse than it already is and the state will come in and repair it
and probably pave it, and then we'll get every retired insurance salesman who
drives up the Alcan in an RV stopping by to have their picture taken with one
of the famous Park rats."
Kate stared at Mandy, the memory of an incident in Russell Gillespie's yard
in Chistona a couple of years before floating up out of the ether that occupied
the back of her brain. They'd caught a tourist who had been rooting around for
artifacts in back of the abandoned store in the ghost town. The only problem
was, Chistona wasn't a ghost town and Russell's store wasn't abandoned.
Apprised of this fact, the tourist had then insisted on taking a photograph of
Kate and Russell so she'd have a picture of real Alaskan Natives in her
vacation album. She said, a little weakly, "But we're not famous."
"We will be," Mandy said grimly. "Our privacy will be the
first thing to go, Kate, I promise you."
"So you hate the very thought of the mine," Kate said, a little
startled by Mandy's vehemence.
"Don't hate it. Don't love it, either. I'm just counting the
cost." Mandy shrugged. "And way before we have to pay. Best to wait
and see. Only thing we can do, really."
They brooded together in silence. "How are the dogs looking?" Kate
said, changing the subject.
"Healthy, ready to go." Mandy spoke with little enthusiasm.
"Problem?" Kate said.
"I don't know if global warming could be defined as a problem,"
Mandy said with a twisted smile. "Snow gets later every year, Kate, and
thinner on the ground when it does finally come down. Last couple of years
we've been running the dogs on frozen grass after
"I don't know how much longer I can keep it up."
Kate sustained another shock. "You thinking of quitting?"
"I barely finished in the money last year, Kate. The mushing has to pay
for itself, or I can't afford to keep doing it."
"What about your trust fund?"
"It never paid for everything," Mandy said. "It'll be enough
for me to retire on here."
Now that Kate was looking for it, she could see the fatigue in the lines of
Mandy's face and the hollows beneath her eyes. "What will you do with your
dogs?"
"Sell them. Won't be a problem."
Mandy's current team of dogs were the result of going on two decades of
careful breeding and training. "Mandy—"
Mandy stood up. "Let me refill your mug, Kate, and you can tell me how
you and Jim are getting on with the whole cohabitation thing."
Kate bowed to defeat and held out her mug.
SEVEN
T
he next day, five minutes after Jim
sat down at his desk, the phone rang. It was Cindy Bingley. "Jim,"
she said without preamble, "you've got to do something about
Willard."
Jim felt the hair prick up at the back of his neck. "What about
Willard?" he said.
"He keeps stealing stuff out of the store. Yesterday he walked out with
a gallon jug of white vinegar."
Jim couldn't help it. He laughed.
"It's not funny, Jim," Cindy said. She paused, hearing her voice
rise. "Well, okay, maybe it is a little. When I caught him on the steps I
asked him what in the world he was going to do with that much vinegar and he
said he brushed his teeth a lot."
Jim closed his eyes in momentary supplication of some heavenly entity to
intercede on behalf of all fools and children, of which Willard was both.
Willard Shugak, a cousin a couple of times removed from Kate, and Auntie
Balasha's grandson, was in his early forties. It was a blessing that he was even
still around, if a mixed one. Most people with fetal alcohol syndrome died
young.
"And then," Cindy said in despair, "he started to cry. You
know how he does."
"Yes," Jim said, sober now, "I know. Do you want to press
charges, Cindy?"
"No! Of course I don't! Aside from the fact that Auntie Balasha would
probably boycott the store, along with the other three aunties and shortly
thereafter most of the rest of the Park, Willard's just a baby. A kleptomaniac
baby. Sometimes I wish I could just turn him over my knee. Could you just, I
don't know, put the fear of god into him or something? Lock him up
overnight?"
Jim sighed. "I can probably do that." It wouldn't be the first
time.
"He's in here every day right after we open," Cindy said promptly.
It was a gray day not expected to get out of the teens, with the winds
sweeping down out of the Quilaks at fifteen miles an hour and bringing a fine,
white snow with them that immediately frosted anything stationary, including
Jim's windshield. The forecast called for three to six inches more. Combined
with the layer of black ice beneath it made for hazardous movement, either by
foot or by vehicle. Not that that would stop anyone from climbing into their
Ford Explorer or their Subaru Forester and barreling up and down the roads,
such as they were. Jim resigned himself to a day spent responding to
ditch-diving daredevils. He just hoped none of them involved fatalities. The
sooner the Park was snowed in and everyone switched to all snow machines all
the time, the better.
He also hoped nothing happened anywhere else in the Park that required him
to get in the air. The troopers gave first preference to any applicant with a
private pilot's license, and Jim was licensed for both fixed wing and
helicopters. The state of
rented space in George Perry's hangar.
The helicopter had been pulled when they opened the Niniltna post, the
reasoning behind that decision being he was closer to the action and didn't
need two methods of transportation, plus the Cessna could carry more weight.
Jim had disapproved of the decision, as the Bell Jet Ranger could get into a
lot more places than the Cessna could, but he understood the economics behind
the decision and held his peace. Most outposts in the Park had their own
airstrips, and those that didn't would simply go longer unserved by the law.
That was life off the road in
"The first response on the last frontier," so ran the state
troopers' latest recruiting slogan, but the state was 586,412 square miles
large, and those miles contained some of the most challenging terrain the
planet had on offer, with some of the worst weather the atmosphere could
manufacture. The Alaska State Troopers, a mere 240 officers strong, hadn't a
hope in hell of responding to every outrage perpetrated by or against Alaskan
citizens, or even most of them, no matter how many airplanes they spotted their
officers.
There was, nevertheless, the expectation that they would try to do so. Jim,
like every other Alaska Bush pilot, was well acquainted with the aviation
axiom: There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old,
bold pilots. If the weather was going to be bad, he wanted it awful, as in
below minimums.
For the moment, all that was required was the Blazer. Bingley Mercantile was
a solid, square building about twenty-five feet on a side, six hundred and
twenty-five feet of retail space crammed with shelves, a wall of refers, and a
small row of bins for produce. Their stock-in-trade was Lay's Potato Chips,
Cherry Coke, and EPT tests, but they made a praiseworthy attempt to bring in
small amounts of oddball-for the Park-items like jasmine rice and tamari
almonds, these last, after the freight was factored in, worth about the same
amount per ounce as the gold Global Harvest would be taking out of Suulutaq. It
was clean, well lit, and when the apples got spotty they threw them out. Park
rats really couldn't ask for more than that.
Cindy and Ben Bingley had started the little store eighteen months ago with
money from the Niniltna Native Association's nascent small business loan
program. They'd spent most of it on the building and the rest on stock and Jim
understood and appreciated Cindy's concern over some of that stock walking out
the door under Willard's arm. A grocery store had at best a marginal profit
line.
He could also appreciate Cindy's reluctance to lodge a formal complaint over
Willard's pilferage.
He himself was reluctant to arrest Willard Shugak for murder.
Willard's rusty old International pickup was already in the store's parking
lot, the engine running, the cab empty. Jim swore a round oath and got out,
killing his own engine and taking the keys. He didn't care if the Blazer froze
up while he was in the store in the subzero temperatures. Rather that than a
drunk Martin Shugak driving off in it, siren blaring and Christmas tree
flashing. It had happened before in the Bush, though not to him, and he was
going to make sure it never did.
The top of the door hit the little silver bell and it tinkled softly as he
entered, a pleasant sound. What wasn't pleasant was the expression on Cindy
Bingley's face when he spotted her standing at the end of one of the aisles.
What was distinctly unpleasant was the gun Cindy was waving around. Crap.
Jim craned his head.
Willard was crouched down in front of the candy shelves, a half-empty box of
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups clutched to his chest and a lot of empty wrappings
scattered on the floor around him. He had chocolate smeared around his mouth,
although the flood of tears down his face was making inroads into it. His eyes
were squinched shut and snot bubbled out of his nose with every sob.
Cindy, meanwhile, had lost it. "You lousy little weasel, I ought to
shoot you right now! Look at this mess! How many of those candy bars have you
had? How many did you steal this time?" She hauled back a foot and kicked
him, not gently, in the leg.
Willard gave a high, thin, pitiful shriek. Even Cindy seemed momentarily
paralyzed by it.
Into that brief silence, Jim said quietly, "Cindy?"
She whipped around, a dumpy, doughty little woman of faded prettiness,
pouchy eyes, blond hair graying fast, a triple chin threatening the line of her
neck. Her blue eyes were large and slightly protuberant and veined with red.
She looked ever so slightly insane, especially when she fixed Jim with a hard
look and said, "Yes? Something you wanted? Something you couldn't get here
in time to take care of yourself? Goddamn fucking trooper?" There was
special emphasis on the last word.
"Cindy," he said, dropping his voice even further, letting it fall
to a soothing murmur she had to lean toward him and away from Willard to hear
clearly, "you know you're not going to shoot Willard over a candy bar."
"It wasn't just a candy bar!" she shouted.
Behind her Willard whimpered. Jim was grateful when Cindy didn't round on
him. "What was it?" he said, still in that calming, sympathetic
murmur.