Whisper to the Blood (26 page)

The year before, Bernie Koslowski's wife and son had been murdered in their
own home. General consensus was that the killings had been committed by Park
bad actor Louis Deem, whom it was supposed Enid and Fitz Koslowski had caught
in the act of burglarizing the cabinet full of gold nuggets in the living room.

Shortly thereafter, Louis Deem had been shot and killed on the road to the
Step. Bernie was the obvious suspect, so Jim had looked hard at Bernie, to the
general disapprobration and not a little vocal abuse of the entire Park. The
subsequent investigation had cleared Bernie of all suspicion of the crime.

Not least because his alibi was Sergeant Jim Chopin, with whom he'd been
visiting over a latte at the Riverside Cafe at the time of the murder, in full
view of cafe owner Laurel Meganack, Old Sam Dementieff, and half a dozen other
Park rats, all with excellent memories.

"What is it you want me to do, Bernie?"

"Your job."

Well, he'd done his job. He'd maintained the peace and the public order.

One of the principal core values of the Alaska State Troopers was loyalty,
first to the state of
Alaska
,
then to the highest ideals of law enforcement, and, in third place, to the
truth, although as stated "the truth, regardless of outcome."

Jim had been thinking a lot about that particular core value lately. The
truth was he liked working in law enforcement. The truth was he didn't like the
messes people got themselves into and he liked using what ability he had to
step in and straighten those messes out. The truth was he was good at his job,
and he knew it.

He'd opened the Alaska State Troopers' forty-fourth post in Niniltna going
on three years ago, and if he had been a Park fixture before, by now he was a
full-fledged Park rat. He was well aware of the dangers of being so dug in. A
cop was always going to be a little bit on the outside looking in, or he should
be if he was going to function effectively. If he was regarded as a member of
his community, then it followed that other members in that community might feel
comfortable enough with his presence to approach him with suggestions they
wouldn't have dared to propose to the cop perceived to be Other.

"What is it you want me to do, Bernie?"

"Your job."

He had not allowed himself any preconceptions as to the identity of the
killer of Louis Deem. He had conducted a by-the-book investigation into his
death, reconstructing Deem's movements as minutely as was possible in an area
as vast and as unpopulated as the Park, extensively interviewing the people
closest to Louis as well as all the people who had last seen him alive, and, as
near as he was able, keeping his prior knowledge of the character of the dead
man from coloring his work.

He'd been thorough and conscientious enough to have discovered a missing
piece of evidence and tracked it down to Park ranger Dan O'Brien. Dan had found
the body and removed the piece of evidence before fetching Jim to the scene.
Jim should have charged Dan with evidence tampering and obstruction of justice.
He hadn't.

Since any list of Louis Deem's enemies included pretty much the entire
population of the Park, all this had taken some time. Meanwhile, there had been
pressure from his boss in
Fairbanks
to either close the case or move on. In the end, he'd come up empty, and
obedient to authority, he'd moved on. Louis Deem's murder was a cold case now,
and there wasn't a soul in the Park who would want it reopened.

Howie had not confessed to Louis's murder. It was the one thing he had
stopped short of doing this morning, and though Jim had poked and prodded and
tried to provoke him into admitting to it, he remained obdurate. He would only
reiterate that the aunties had hired the job done on Louis, and he wasn't going
to say any more until Jim gave him immunity, a fine word everyone in the Park with
a television had picked up from goddamn
Law and Order
or goddamn
CSI.
Fictional crime fighters made life so much harder on the real ones.

Howie was obviously afraid that Jim was right, that whoever had shot and
killed Mac Devlin had thought he was aiming at Howie.

Which led to another thought: Maybe that was why Howie had taken on his
first gainful employment in years, and from what Jim had heard, possibly in
Howie's life. Maybe the job was isolated enough for him to feel safe. Though,
of course, being Howie, he had lost no time in turning the location to his
advantage. That had been a caribou hunt of wholesale proportions.

The question remained. Who was Howie so afraid of that he'd ask to be taken
into protective custody?

T
he aunties were at their corner table
when he walked into the Roadhouse, and he went directly to them, pulling up a
chair and straddling it. He put his arms across the back and leaned his chin on
them and stared at the aunties in turn, calling out their names as he did so.
"Auntie Vi. Auntie Joy. Auntie Balasha. Auntie Edna."

"Jim," Auntie Vi said, a little mystified by this formal greeting
and a little suspicious because of it. "Where Kate?"

"She's doing a job for me downriver," he said.

Auntie Vi gave this statement her cautious approbation. "Always good to
make some money."

Normally he would have talked to them individually. Some instinct had urged
him to take this to the aunties head on. It might not have had as much to do
with good police work as it did with self-preservation. No matter. Either he'd
carry the barricades or they would repulse his attack, and he'd have to live
with that.

He'd chosen here, in public, in a venue in which they felt comfortable and
where they were in a position of authority, however unofficial it was. Out of
the corner of his eye he saw Bernie coming toward him. He shook his head.
Bernie altered course for the table around which the four Grosdidiers were
celebrating something monumental, as evidenced by the number of dead soldiers
on the table. Matt had a black eye, Luke a fat lip, and the knuckles of the
hand Mark used to reach for his beer were swollen double, so probably a fight
in which one or all were victorious. Or maybe just a fight. The Grosdidier boys
were rabble-rousers of the first water. One of the smartest things the Niniltna
Native Association had ever done was to harness all that energy in an EMT
program and put it to good use.

Quit stalling, he told himself, and faced the aunties again and took a deep
breath. "Aunties," he said, "I just talked to Howie. He told me
that you hired him to kill Louis Deem."

It felt as if time stopped, which was ridiculous. He could still hear the
clink of glasses, laughter, a heated argument over drift net regulations, the
squeak of sneakers on wood on television. Life continued, of course it did. But
here, at this moment, at this table, it was as if everyone was holding their
breath, as if the intake of oxygen had been suspended, and depending on the
answers he got here, as if the world might begin spinning backward when time
resumed.

He looked at their faces again, one at a time. Tears gathered and fell down
Auntie Balasha's face. Auntie Edna looked pissed off, but then she always did.
Auntie Joy's needle froze halfway into the fabric square she was working on. She
didn't meet his eyes.

Auntie Vi alone did not so much as blink, her needle flashing in and out
steadily, rhythmically, a straight line of even stitches progressing steadily
across the quilt. "Such nonsense, Jim," she said, in a chiding voice.
"You smarter than that."

"So you didn't hire him to kill Louis?" Jim said.

She paused in her sewing to give him an impatient look. "Of course not.
Silliness. Surprised I am that you would believe him enough to ask us.
Howie!" She snorted. "Nobody believe a word that out of his mouth
come. Why you now?"

"Auntie Balasha?"

Her smile was wavering. "Silliness," she said, echoing Auntie Vi.

"Auntie Edna?"

Auntie Edna snorted her reply and without moving gave the distinct
impression of turning her back on him.

"Auntie Joy?"

Auntie Joy's hands trembled. She still wouldn't look up. "What Vi says,
Jim. Silliness."

Auntie Vi jumped. "Aycheewah!" She put her finger in her mouth,
and stared down at the perfect circle of bright red blood staining the cloth.

W
hen he walked into the house that
evening, Kate was frying moose liver rolled in flour, salt, and pepper in olive
oil with a dab of butter and mashing potatoes with butter and cream in what
looked like proportions equal to the potatoes. She was mashing the potatoes by
hand, and she was mashing with vigor. She didn't look up when Jim came in.
"Johnny," she said, "would you go out to the cache for me and
find a package of peas and onions?"

"Sure," Johnny said, and got up from where he had been studying
Alaska
history at the
dining room table. As he passed Jim in the doorway, he touched his arm and said
in a low voice, "She's mad about something, Jim."

Jim looked at Kate. "As it happens, so am I."

Johnny stared at him in consternation and gathering indignation. "Oh,
good," he said. "At least it'll be a fair fight." He grabbed his
parka and the door closed behind him.

Jim looked to Mutt for succor. Mutt, a reliable barometer when it came to
Kate and a loyal friend even in the face of Mutt's undeniable lust for Jim, was
parked in front of the fireplace, nose under her tail. She hadn't even looked
up at his entrance. It was not the kind of treatment he was accustomed to, and
even more than Johnny's warning, it put him on full alert. A proponent of the
best defense is a good offense, he divested himself of parka, boots, and
especially his sidearm and said without preamble, "What's wrong?"

At least he could rely on her not to respond with a falsely bright,
"Nothing!" but he wasn't expecting what did come out.

"Do you have something going on with Talia Macleod?"

It caught him so flat-footed that his response was a brilliantly articulate,
"Huh?"

"I've been up and down the river and in and out of Niniltna the past
two days, and everywhere I go I'm told about the Father of the Park's new
target."

"Wait a minute—"

"You've been seen everywhere together, it seems." She gave the
potatoes a savage mash, her already tight shoulder muscles bunching with the
effort. "In Niniltna at the
Riverside
Cafe. At the Roadhouse. In Cordova at the Club Bar. At Bobby's. You've been
seen everywhere together, getting on like a house on fire, and the general
consensus seems to be that I'm out and she's in. Fine by me, you do what you
want, but I'd appreciate knowing if that's the case."

She pushed the pot of potatoes to the back of the stove and started turning
the strips of liver. Each move she made was accomplished with a delicate
precision, centering the pot and the frying pan on the stove's burners,
piercing each slice of liver precisely at a spot on one end that would
counterbalance the weight so it wouldn't slide off the tine of the fork,
setting it back into the pan at the correct distance so no slice would adhere
to the slice next to it. Each strip was a perfect brown, no charring allowed,
and the potatoes looked like a pot full of cumulus clouds, fluffy and creamy
and mouthwateringly appealing. A dish full of browned onions sat next to it.

He said the first thing that came into his head. "Why the cache for the
peas and onions? Why not the freezer?"

She paused, one strip of meat in the air, and gave him a look that would
have turned a lesser man to stone. "Why spend the money on diesel to run
the generator to run the freezer when winter will do the job just fine?"

"Makes sense," he said. He took in the rest of the kitchen. There
were two loaves of white bread cooling on a rack, a loaf of date nut bread
cooling in the pan, and coffee cake cooling in a cake tin. "You've been
busy."

"It's cold, I'm hungry, answer the question."

"You're jealous," he said.

Such a wave of fury rolled over the counter in his direction that he almost
instinctively ducked out of the way of the frying pan that-oil, liver, and
all-he was certain would be coming in his direction next.

She struggled for control and won. He breathed easier. "I told You
once," she said, her voice very tight, "I don't stand in line. You
want to sleep with Talia Macleod, go sleep with Talia Macleod. Just don't come
back here after you have."

She banged open a cupboard and slung a plate in the oven to warm with such
vigor he was surprised it didn't shatter.

"I'm not sleeping with her," Jim said, and as the words came out
of his mouth wondered at them. Had he ever had this particular conversation
with a woman before?

"Uh-huh," she said.

He realized she was hurt, and knew a momentary flash of guilt, which
corresponded almost exactly to a simultaneous lick of resentment. Since when
did he feel guilty over how he treated women?

Since never. His women were supposed to know the score, they were carefully
selected and the relationship structured on a rational basis where everyone had
a good time and nobody got hurt when it was over. "I've never lied to you,
Kate," he said, the words coming out maybe a little hotter and harder than
he'd meant them to. "If it comes to that, I've never lied to any woman
I've ever known. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't automatically assume I was
lying to you now."

She paused, a strip of liver dangled momentarily over the frying pan, and
then set it carefully flour-side down in the sizzling oil. "All
right," she said. "That's fair. I apologize." She set the fork
to one side and looked him straight in the eye for the first time since he'd
come into the room. "The day you were seen with her in the Club Bar? You
didn't come home that night." At his expression, she heaved an impatient
sigh. "I'm a trained investigator, Jim, not to mention which people tell
me stuff." She added bleakly, "I don't know why, but they always do.
Sometimes I think I should have been a priest, because I have to be the
depository of more secrets than any other Park rat walking around on two
legs."