Whisper to the Blood (19 page)

Fortunately, the Suulutaq wasn't far by air, and shortly Jim was banking
left and losing altitude to glide the length of a wide, majestic valley, one
end open to the southwest, curving up and right to the other, northeastern end
in a roughly half-moon shape, the top end much narrower and steeper, and hemmed
about by nervous mountains afraid to give up their jealously held treasures.

Too late, Kate thought.

Jim brought the Cessna down to fifty feet off the deck and Passed over the
isolated little trailer. The wind sock hung limply from its pole, and the snow
looked smooth and settled enough to land on without sinking out of sight. He
pulled up, came around, and let down the skis. They set down with a hiss of
metal on snow, rolling out to a stop about ten feet from the cleared area
between trailer, woodpile, and shed. "Show-off," Kate said.

The smug grin beneath his sunglasses was answer enough.

They got out and walked carefully to the trailer, and any lingering
amusement vanished when Jim popped the lock on the handle of the door and they
went inside.

The odor that the others had described was even stronger now, but rigor had
yet to wear off. Jim took photographs of the scene as Kate prowled around
outside.

"No shells," she said. "Guy was careful." She walked a
few steps away from the trailer and turned. "If it was Mac specifically he
was shooting at, then he must have followed him out here."

He nodded, waiting.

"If it was Everynut with a gun, shooting at anything that moved because
the hairy pink enchiladas were after him, then it could have been the same
thing. Or the nutcase was already here and Mac could have just been a target of
opportunity. Or." She took a deep breath and let it out and looked at Jim
soberly. "It could have been someone who doesn't like the idea of the Suulutaq
Mine, and figured anyone who was out here was fair game. Mac. Howie."

"Talia."

"Who?"

"Talia Macleod," Jim said. "Oh. Yeah."

Mutt, who had been conducting her own investigation by trotting to and fro
with her nose to the ground, raised her muzzle in the direction from which they
had come and barked sharply, once. Kate looked over her shoulder. "That's
George's Cub. I heard she put him on retainer, so that's probably her
now."

"Who?"

"Macleod. Your new girlfriend."

"She's not my new girlfriend."

She looked at him, startled by the bite in his voice. She couldn't see his
eyes behind his sunglasses, but after a moment he smiled. "Well, she
isn't."

"Good to know," she said. "Kinda hoping I had dibs
there."

His smile broadened. "Good to know."

"Want to get Mac bagged up?"

"Might as well." They trudged back to the trailer, neither of them
in a hurry to face the task ahead. It helped that rigor had not worn off. There
was nothing worse than trying to stuff the body of a human being into an
elongated plastic bag. It tended to flop around a lot. Stiff with rigor, you
were just dealing with mass, much easier to handle.

It wasn't the first time for either of them and they were bringing him out
of the trailer by the time George and Macleod had gotten to the door. They
stood back, George stoic, Macleod pale. They deposited Mac in a snowbank for
the moment.

"Is it okay to go inside?" Talia said. Her face was pinched and
she looked cold.

"Sure," Jim said.

They went inside and stood around the office. "Talia, I'd like you to
take a look around, see if anything's missing."

She made a helpless gesture. "There isn't anything out here to steal,
really. There's a television in the living quarters, with a bunch of DVDs and a
player."

"All still there," Kate said.

"Anything in the way of papers or information about the mine that
someone might want to take a look at?"

She gave Jim an incredulous look. "Certainly nothing that I can imagine
anyone killing for, Jim." She pointed. "There's the map, but it's the
same map that's been reproduced in every one of the handouts, brochures, and
flyers." She picked up a flyer and waved it, and then tossed it back on
its pile. "We knew there would be rubber-neckers, especially after the
first snow. The caretakers are instructed to let no one leave here without a
fistful of Global propaganda."

"Where's Gallagher?" he said. Kate looked at him, frowning a
little.

"Who?" Macleod said vaguely. "Oh. I sent him back to Niniltna
with someone else. George didn't want to bring in anything bigger than his Cub,
so only room for one passenger." She turned to face him. "There is
one thing I don't understand."

"What?"

"Where's Howie Katelnikof?"

"Howie?" Kate said. "Why would Howie be out here?"

"It was his week," Macleod said. "I hired him to sit out here
every other week, in rotation with Dick Gallagher. This is Howie's week. He
should have been here. He should be here now."

"Ah hell, I knew that," Jim said, disgusted. "But I didn't
connect the dots." He looked at Kate.

While it was a truth generally acknowledged that Mac Devlin had not been the
most beloved of Park rats, neither of them had been able to come up with a good
reason for anyone to kill him. Beat on him a little, sure, maybe, but not shoot
him. He wasn't married, and if he had had a girlfriend Jim hadn't heard of it.
So far as anyone knew he had no children. On the face of it the list of
suspects in Mac's case wasn't just short, it was virtually nonexistent.

Howie Katelnikof, on the other hand, while he was also single and childless,
had over the course of a long and prolific criminal career lied to, cheated,
and stolen from anyone who had ever set foot in the Park who wasn't smart
enough to see Howie coming. He had also done a lot of Louis Deem's wet work, especially
when it came to intimidating juries. Kate herself had a very good reason to
wish Howie dead. In fact, she had three.

The list of suspects in an investigation into the murder of Howie Katelnikof
would have been so long Jim would have had to take numbers. Hell, if somebody
shot Howie, the Park rats would have taken up a collection to reward the
shooter.

That was a thought far too close to home for Jim.

K
ate and Jim flew the body to Cordova
to put it on the jet to
Anchorage
,
and returned to Niniltna, landing at twilight. They walked into the trooper
post and dispatcher Maggie Montgomery's face lit up. "Thank god! Here,
take 'em!"

He looked down at the fistful of messages with resignation. "What, a
crime wave?"

"They're all about the snow machine attack on the river. Jim?"

He paused in the door of his office. "What?"

She looked at him with wide eyes. "It's not the only one."

TWELVE

J
im didn't make it home until the next
evening. "How come you didn't know about this?" he said, walking in
the door. "I don't know," Kate said, honestly bewildered, and not a
little aggrieved. It wasn't often she was this out of the loop in Park affairs.
In fact, she couldn't remember a time when she'd been out of the loop at all.
It was the Association board meeting in October all over again, leaving her
swamped in an ignorance so complete she felt like she was going down for the
third time. "I haven't been into town longer than it takes to check the
mail and grab a cup of coffee since I got back. Maybe that's why I hadn't heard
anything."

"I thought Auntie Vi was the town crier when it came to bad news, and
what Auntie Vi knows, you know."

"I can't explain it," she said again. Mutt leaned her head on
Kate's knee and looked up at her with sympathetic yellow eyes. "I haven't
heard a word about it, Jim. Nothing. I would have told you."

"Bet your ass," he said, still smarting. He didn't like it when
shit was dumped in his own backyard and he didn't smell it. He went to the map
of the Park Kate had recently attached to a piece of cork and framed with
colonial molding left over from the house raising-

It was smaller than the one in the Global Harvest trailer, and in much worse
shape, but it was adequate to the purpose. He traced the course of the
Kanuyaq
River
with his forefinger.

"Attack the first," he said. "Ken and Janice Kaltak on
November sixth, headed home to Double Eagle from a trip to Ahtna, doctors'
appointments and shopping. Stopped in Niniltna for a mugup at the Riverside
Cafe. There was some light snow but no wind so visibility okay and not cold
enough not to keep going. About a mile from home, three snow machines barreled
out of a willow thicket, one of the drivers coming straight at them like he's
playing chicken with them, while another one, this one with a two-by-four,
comes up from behind and hits Ken across the side hard enough to knock him off
his sled. Janice is riding behind and she rolls off with him. It all happens
too fast for Ken to get to his rifle. The third snow machine roars around them
in circles, loud, distracting, scary, while the first two guys disconnect the
trailer, loaded with groceries from Safeway and Costco, and they're gone. Lucky
they left them the snowgo, they woulda been dead otherwise and it would have
been murder along with assault and robbery." He paused. "What amazes
me is they didn't take the rifle."

"Was it registered, maybe?" she said.

He looked at her.

She closed her eyes and held up a hand. "Sorry, I wasn't
thinking."

"Attack the second. On November ninth, three days later—" He
moved his finger downriver. "—just outside Chulyin, maybe a mile
from their house, Ike Jefferson and his kid, Laverne, are hauling home a
fifty-five-gallon drum of diesel fuel when what sounds like the same three
assholes on snow machines show up, whack Ike with the two-by-four, terrorize
the kid, and take off with the diesel."

"Did they hurt her?" Kate said.

He shook his head. "She's only eight and they laid her dad out in front
of her a mile from home. She got him back on the sled and home all right. She was
pissed by the time I got there yesterday." He gave a reluctant smile.
"Told me I had a shiny new gun but it didn't look like I used it
much."

Kate smiled, too. "Good for her."

"Yeah, she's a feisty little pup. I can see why Ike is so proud of her.
And I'll tell you, Kate, if I'd had one of the bastards at point-blank when her
dad was telling me the story, I might have pulled the trigger on my shiny new
gun then and there."

"You said there were three incidents."

"Yeah, attack the third." He looked back at the map and slid his
finger farther down. "November fifteenth. They waited a week this time, by
which time they had upgraded their arsenal." He held up a small,
innocuous-looking black cylinder. "Don't move," he said, and gave his
hand a casual flick. A telescoping rod cracked out with astonishing speed and
Kate jerked back instinctively.

"It's weighted on the end," he said.

A chill went up Kate's spine. "I know," she said quietly.
"It's a collapsing baton, isn't it? I've heard about them but I've never
seen one before."

"It's lethal force, Kate. You whack someone with this, you can hurt
them badly, you can even kill them. And you can order them off Amazon for
twenty bucks apiece." Another wrist flick and the baton collapsed in on
itself again. "They used it on Christine and Art Riley of Red Run when
they were on their way home from a trip to Niniltna to bring Art's mother home.
Grandma Riley has been feeling poorly lately, and wanted to go downriver once
more before she died."

Kate closed her eyes briefly. "Grandma Riley is something like ninety
years old, isn't she?"

"Ninety-three. Evidently these assholes are no respecters of elders.
They jumped the Rileys halfway between Potlatch and Red Run. Christine managed
to get their rifle out of the scabbard but this thing knocked it out of her
hands. The good news is, it knocked this out of the attacker's hands, too.
Christine picked it up and brought it home. I had to talk her into giving it to
me. I think she was planning on using it on them if the Rileys ever ran into
them again. Can't say I blame her." He ran a hand over his face. "I'm
figuring that's why they went back to the two-by-four for the attack on Johnny
and Ruthe and Van thirteen days later. Attack the fourth."

"Although they've probably already ordered another of those
batons."

"They've probably already ordered another dozen," he said.
"Fifty-five gallons of diesel fuel at, what's the most recent Bush price,
four sixty a gallon? That's almost two hundred and fifty-five bucks. They could
sell that off a couple of gallons at a time, buy a dozen of these fuckers, and
have enough left over for a case of Windsor Canadian." He tossed the baton
into the glove and hat box behind the door and scrubbed his face with his
hands. "Art Riley says it was the Johansens."

The spatula paused in the act of flipping a steak. "He identified
them?"

"They were wearing helmets. But he says it was them." He scrubbed
his face again. "God, I'm tired."

Kate decided it was time to relax, regroup, and reassess, and for her that
always began with food. "The question is, are you hungry?"

He gave her a tired smile. "Is the answer to that question ever
no?"

She smiled back at him. "I just started a fire. You want something to
drink?"

"I'd love some Scotch, but I better not. I've alerted all the village
councils about the attacks, up and down the river, and I've called Kenny Hazen
and got him excited about it, too. I better be sober if any of them call
back."

"Grab a shower, then. You've just about got time."

Demonstrating the innate ability of the adolescent to arrive just as dinner
was put on the table, Johnny walked in the door as Kate served up a large and
redolent offering of country fried caribou steak and gravy, mashed potatoes,
and canned green beans drained and stirred into caramelized onions and crispy
bacon bits. Served with bread baked fresh that morning, everyone dug in with a
will, and everyone felt better afterward.