Whisper to the Blood (22 page)

He peered below again. Three snowgos meant three people. All three,
displaying a prudence beyond what their current activity would suggest,
remained inside the tents.

He decided that he'd tested the limits of aeronautical safety enough for one
day. He put the Cessna's nose on three-one-five and let the ground fall away
from him as he flew down the broad plateau of the valley.

He had a little time to think over what he should do next. It was vital to
lay hands on Howie Katelnikof as soon as possible, but there was nowhere flat
or long enough for him to sit down that was near enough to the camp for him to
get to them before they took off, which they would do because they'd hear him
land and because they had ground transportation and he didn't.

The trailer and its rudimentary airstrip sat in the middle of a very wide
valley that he estimated was a minimum of four to six miles across. If he put
her down there and waited, they'd just go around him. Aerial bombardment was
pretty much all that a Cessna in the air could do to stop a snow machine on the
ground, and Jim was fresh out of grenades.

The mouth of the valley widened to a slope that fell gradually down to the
east bank of the
Kanuyaq
River
, the
southwest-facing hill well treed but nowhere impassable by snow machine. If he
set down in one place, top or bottom, they'd simply go another way. They would
have recognized the white Cessna with the gold stripes and the gold seal on the
fuselage, so they would be doubly wary coming out.

There was no point, he decided, in trying to apprehend them from the air.
Now that they knew he was looking for them, they'd probably leave the kill to
the ravens and the wolves and the rest of the Park's carnivores. He couldn't
swear it was Howie he saw running for the tent, and while he had recognized
Howie's Ski-Doo, Howie could always ditch it and say it had been stolen. It
wouldn't be the first time.

No. He had to think up some way to make Howie come to him.

Movement a thousand feet below caught the corner of his eye and he banked
the Cessna a little to see George Perry's Cub take off from next to the GHRI
trailer. Had he dropped someone off? Someone like Talia Macleod, perhaps? He
changed channels. "Piper Super Cub at Suulutaq, that you, George?"

There was a burst of static. "Jim? Where you at?"

"On your six, a thousand feet."

A pause as George looked up and back. "Oh yeah, I gotcha. Where you
coming from?"

"Up the valley. Sightseeing. Did you just drop somebody off at the
Suulutaq trailer?"

"Yeah."

"Macleod?"

"I wish. No, one of her caretakers. Poor bastard. They're marooned out
here for a week at a time, with only a bunch of
Debbie Does Dallas
DVDs for company."

"But I hear she pays well."

Jim could hear the smile in George's voice when he replied. "That she
does."

"Think I'll go down and say hi." "Guy makes lousy
coffee."

"I have been warned. Cessna seven-nine Juliet, out."

"See you back at the ranch, Jim. Super Cub one-three Tango, out."

Jim dropped down to a hundred feet, buzzed the trailer to alert the occupant
of his imminent arrival, and landed.

Gallagher was waiting in the open door. He didn't look happy when he saw Jim
coming, but he was civil. "Sergeant Chopin, isn't it? Dick
Gallagher."

"That's right, we met at the Club Bar in Cordova, didn't we?"

"That we did, sir. What can I do for you?"

Jim shrugged. "Just stopped by for a cup of coffee."

Gallagher didn't believe him, but he stepped back and let Jim inside.

George was right, the coffee was awful, but then Jim, who ordered his
Tsunami Blend direct from Captain's Roast in Homer, was something of a coffee
snob. He hid his wince and said, leaning against the counter, "Nice job
you scored here."

"Pays well," Gallagher said, sitting behind the desk.

Jim nodded at the desk. "You heard what happened here, I guess. We
always try to keep that kind of thing quiet while the investigation is ongoing,
but. . ." He shrugged.

"Yeah," Gallagher said with feeling, "I heard, all right. I
had to clean up the mess. Jesus." He seemed to grudge the mess more than
the murder.

"You're new in the Park, aren't you?" Jim said.

Gallagher went wary again. "Yeah. Couple of months."

"New to
Alaska
,
too, I take it."

Gallagher shrugged.

Now, it was a maxim of Alaskan etiquette never to ask where somebody was
from, but Jim had a badge that said he could ask anyone anything anytime.
"Where you from?"

"
Arizona
,"
Gallagher said promptly.

Jim smiled. "Jeez. It's a lot warmer there come this time of year. What
brought you north?"

"Heard there were jobs here."

Jim gestured at the trailer. "You heard right."

"Yeah," Gallagher said. "It pays well."

"It must, you said that twice," Jim said. "Maybe I should
quit troopering and hire on with Global Harvest."

Gallagher grinned, but it seemed forced. "Maybe you should. Although I
hear state employees do okay in
Alaska
."

Jim laughed. "We do all right," he said. "Wonder if you could
do me a favor."

Whatever Gallagher was expecting, it wasn't that. "Sure. I guess. If I
can."

"Might be some guys driving snow machines down the valley later on.
Two, maybe three of them. If they stop in, be helpful if I knew who they
were."

"I don't know many people round these parts," Gallagher said, "not
yet, anyway. But if they stop in, I can ask."

"Appreciate it," Jim said, and set the still full mug on the
counter. "Thanks for the coffee."

"Anytime." Gallagher showed him out without haste. He even waited
in the open doorway to wave as the Cessna rose into the air.

Jim circled the trailer as he gained altitude and waggled his wings in a
friendly good-bye, but as he straightened out and put the nose back on
three-one-five, he was sure of one thing, and maybe two.

Gallagher was nervous about something.

And he sure didn't like cops.

FOURTEEN

T
he weather held, granting an
ephemeral warmth outside if you were bundled up in dark clothes and standing
still, but Kate was almost constantly in motion, visiting the downriver
villages of the 'Burbs, in order-Double Eagle, Chulyin, Potlatch, and Red Run.

Ken Kaltak had taken to carrying his rifle with him wherever he went. He
listened with a stone face as Kate pleaded for time to find the robbers, but
she could see he wasn't listening to a word she said. His wife Janice, the lone
schoolteacher for the Double Eagle School, which had ten students in seven
grades, sent her husband outside on the pretext of getting some moose out of
the cache and said bluntly, "Times are tough, Kate. Ken says he's never
seen so many fish go up the river, and he's never caught less. Fish and Game
gives preference to sports and subsistence fishers and by the time the drifters
are allowed to put a net in the water the fish are all up the river. We've got
a fish wheel and we catch enough to eat most years, but we rely on what we
catch driftnetting in Alaganik to pay for groceries and fuel. We had almost a
thousand dollars' worth of food on that sled." Her eyes filled up.
"How are we supposed to eat this winter?"

Ken saw Kate to her snow machine, where he exchanged cautious greetings with
Mutt (they'd howdied but they hadn't shook), and said, "You know who did
this, Kate. Why waste time? Why don't you just head straight for Tikani?"

Kate settled onto the seat. "Can you identify any of your attackers,
Ken?"

His lips tightened. He didn't answer.

"Didn't think so," Kate said. "They were wearing helmets, is
what I understand."

"Yes."

"So you didn't see their faces. And you didn't recognize the
machines."

"No."

She pressed the starter. "When there is evidence that points toward
Tikani, I'll go there."

In Chulyin Ike Jefferson was incandescent with rage and treated Kate with
something that bordered on contempt. It would have hurt her feelings if she
hadn't been so shocked. "Where the hell have you been?" he said.
"These guys have pretty much turned the river into a free-fire zone, and
you've been where? Because it sure as hell hasn't been anywhere around
here!"

"I just found out about them yesterday," she started to say.

"And where's the trooper?" He directed a pointed look over her
shoulder. "Sorta conspicuous by his absence, now, ain't he?"

Ike Jefferson was another fisherman, who supplemented his summer earnings by
working construction in
Anchorage
during the winter. A finish carpenter, he was an artist and a craftsman and was
better off financially than any of the other victims, but his wife had died
giving birth to Laverne and he was raising her alone. "I moved us to
Anchorage
in the winter
because of the work," he told Kate tightly, "but whenever we can, we
spend the weekend on the river. It don't happen anywhere near as often as
either one of us would like. All I was doing was hauling in some fuel so the
place don't freeze up while we're gone. Who pulls this kind of shit, Kate?
Since when do Park rats prey on their own? This used to be a good place to
live, with good neighbors that'd look out for the place while we're gone, but I
might as well live in
Anchorage
full time and
let Laverne hang out at the
Dimond
Center
for all the peace
we're getting here."

The
Dimond
Center
mall in
Anchorage
was a notorious hangout for gangbangers, with APD responding to shoot-outs
there half a dozen times a year. No Park rat regarded Anchorage itself as
anything more than a place to get your eyes checked, your teeth fixed, to buy
food, clothing, and parts, eat fried chicken at the Lucky Wishbone and pizza at
the Moose's Tooth, and maybe see a movie if enough things were blown up in it.
That Ike had been reduced to winters there only added insult to this newest
injury in his eyes.

Laverne, a chunky little girl with a self-possession that belied her years,
calmly corroborated her father's description of the attack and the
perpetrators, and added the interesting detail that all the snow machines were
new.

"Did you recognize what kind?" Kate said.

The girl nodded. "They were all Ski-Doos, and they were all
black."

Ike's lips were pressed into a thin line. "Somebody's making money
doing this," he said. "Good money. Where you headed now?"

"Red Run," she said.

He snorted. "Why bother? We both know where you shoulda gone
first."

She said the same thing to him that she had to Ken Kaltak. "Did you
recognize your attackers, Ike?"

He let loose with a string of profanity and stamped off toward the outhouse.
" 'Bye, Kate," Laverne said, and went back in the cabin.

Dismissed, Kate pressed the starter, negotiated the steep trail over bank to
river, idled for a few moments to give Mutt time to catch up and hop on, and
headed south.

She got to Red Run that evening and spent the night in her sleeping bag on
the floor of the school gym, courtesy of the new teacher who lived alone in a
little cabin out back and who was so hungry for company three months into the
school year that she insisted Kate join her for dinner and
Notting Hill
on DVD afterward. They both agreed they liked Hugh Grant's friends more than
they liked Hugh Grant, and Kate went to sleep that night thinking
Red
Run
School
would be lucky if
Alice Crawford lasted out the year.

Kate was at the Rileys' home at first light, a small, snug house that Art
had built himself from the ground up over the past thirty years. It had begun
life as a one-room log cabin, added on to as the children came, and then when
Art's father died of lung cancer he built a mother-in-law apartment on the side
facing the river. It had its own kitchen where she could make agutaq and fry
bread for the granddaughter, the child of Art and Christine's eldest son, an
Alaska National Guardsman stationed in
Anchorage
who was presently serving in
Iraq
.
The mother had vanished shortly after the child's birth and the child had never
lived with anyone else.

They welcomed Kate and invited her to share their breakfast. Art was a
trapper who ran lines up a couple of creeks in the Quilak foothills, one of
them in the
Suulutaq
Valley
. "Best wolf
run I've ever had, and last year the best prices I've ever got," he said.
"Seems all the
Hollywood
types are
trimming their coats with wolf nowadays, and where they go everybody follows.
'Course the mine'll put paid to all that."

"Doesn't have to," Kate said. "Not if we watch them."

He shook his head. "Don't kid yourself, Kate. It'll change
everything."

"Only if we let it," she said, but she was put forcibly in mind of
Mandy's certainty on the same subject. "About that attack, Art, she said.
"I was wondering if you'd remembered anything else about them. For
starters, do you have any idea who it was?"

"No," he said, "no idea."

His tone was oddly tranquil. The five of them were at the kitchen table
surrounded by the remnants of bacon and eggs and fried potatoes and toast, the
granddaughter absorbed in constructing a house from her potatoes. "You
told Jim Chopin you thought the Johansen brothers were the people he ought to
talk to."