Whisper to the Blood (28 page)

Kate thought back to her visit to Vidar Johansen, that cranky, lonely old
man, the village built by his family emptying out two and three at a time
around him. The school was gone. The post office was gone, mail delivered now
to Niniltna. She could see the Johansen boys of Tikani, descendants of some of
the oldest blood in the Park, getting hungrier and hungrier, too proud and too
contrary to ask for help, until the only option seemed to be to forage for food
and fuel wherever they could find it. From whomever they had to take it, even
their neighbors.

And even if they hadn't, which she didn't know for a fact, she could see how
they would be the obvious suspects.

If it was the Johansens, it would make sense that all the attacks occurred
south of Niniltna, none of them north. Efficient predators know enough not to
hunt too close to home. It frightens the game.

An eagle soared overhead on outspread wings, a soft presence on the minimal
winter thermals generated by the rising sun. He spotted the hare and dipped his
right wing, banking down into a swooping, tightening spiral. The hare vanished,
snow falling from the trembling branches of the blueberry bush. The eagle
straightened out and beat his wings to regain his original altitude, moving on.
There would be another hare, or a squirrel, or a fox. There always was. Eagles,
card-carrying carnivores, scavengers, opportunists, weren't picky about their
food.

If someone had in fact constituted themselves judge, jury, and executioner
in the matter of the snow machine attacks on the
Kanuyaq
River
,
that someone would have to be identified and warned against such action in future.
She remembered Jim's complaints about Park rats taking justice into their own
hands. Demetri attacking Smith for blading his beaver line. Bonnie Jeppsen
keying the truck of the kid who as a prank put a dead salmon into the drop box.
Arliss Kalifonsky putting a (probably well deserved, Kate thought) bullet into
Mickey the next time he raised his hand to her. Dan O'Brien kicking a poacher's
ass for trying to sell him a bear bladder.

They were all classic examples of
Newton
's
third law, and a hundred years ago these equal and opposite reactions would
have earned nothing more than an approving nod from passersby, even if those
passersby were territorial policemen. In their time the TPs were even more thin
on the ground than their descendants, the state troopers, and welcomed all the
help they got so long as it didn't make them more work.

Today, there was a trooper post in the Park, with a trooper assigned to it
full time, and the Bill of Rights was more than just a paper under glass in the
National Archives in Washington, D.G. Jim was right. He should be the first
call people made, and for a while he had been, or so it seemed to Kate. What
had changed?

A fat, glossy raven spoke from a nearby treetop. He had a lot to say in
croaks and clicks and chuckles, slipping effortlessly from one raven dialect to
another. Mutt's ears twitched and she gave the raven a hard look. The raven
chattered on regardless, not unaware but not afraid, either. Even Mutt couldn't
climb a tree.

"Maybe Talia turned him down," Kate said. That was it, it had to
be. Jim had made his move, and Talia had declined with thanks.

Kate remembered Macleod's manner with the men on the board that morning.
She'd definitely had a thing with Demetri at some point, and she'd been
flirting with Old Sam, probably fifty years her senior. She remembered with
painful clarity the intimacy between Jim and Macleod she'd seen at Bobby's
house.

No, Kate didn't think Talia Macleod would have turned down Jim Chopin. She
would have tripped Jim and beat him to the ground first.

And then another thought struck her, almost blinding in its force. "Oh,
god," she said. "Oh, god."

Mutt looked at her in concern. It wasn't a tone of voice she was accustomed
to hearing. She nudged Kate with her head and gave a soft, anxious whine.

"I believe Howie? And I don't believe Jim?"

She had to close her eyes while the world righted itself around her, and
when she opened them again she was determined to banish thoughts of Jim Chopin
from her mind, at least for the present. She reacquired her train of thought
and held on grimly, determined not to be thrown off track this time.

Park rats were a self-sufficient bunch, no question, but Kate would never
have described them as lawless. In fact, out here on what was still pretty much
a frontier, people had more of a tendency to abide by the rules than not. When
your nearest neighbor lives five miles away, the golden rule in particular
became not just a nice adage but a way of life. There was no phone to pick up
and call 911, even if there were a firehouse or a hospital within driving
distance, which there wasn't, and even if there was a road between the
fire-house or the hospital and your house, which there also wasn't. When you
got into trouble you were going to need help. You wouldn't get it if you had a
reputation for breaking the rules, for helping yourself to a neighbor's
vegetable patch when she was out fishing, say, or making off with a cord of
wood when they were on a Costco run, or cleaning out the cache when they were
in Anchorage getting their eyes checked. Or draining their fuel tanks when they
were on vacation.

So where was this coming from?

Her butt was starting to go numb and Kate was rising to her feet to return
to the house when another thought stopped her in her tracks.

Louis Deem. Shot on a deserted stretch of Park road by a still unknown
assassin. Louis Deem, embezzler, confidence man, thief, triple wife murderer.
Louis Deem, who had lost no opportunity to abuse and victimize any Park rat
unfortunate enough to cross his path.

Was Louis Deem's murder where all this began? She turned with decision and
made for the garage.

K
ate let herself in Auntie Vi's front
door, only to be confronted by a stranger. "Oh," she said.
"Hello. I'm looking for Auntie Vi."

The stranger-stocky, medium height, dark hair and eyes-had a broad grin that
came too easily. "Don't shoot," he said genially, holding his hands
up. "I'm a paying guest."

Kate smiled politely. "No problem."

The smile, set in an oval face with almond-shaped hazel eyes set on high
flat cheekbones and a wide, expressive mouth, all of it framed with a short cap
of black silk, the husky rasp of her voice, the whole package made him
straighten up and step in for a closer look. "I'm Dick Gallagher. Hey,
cool dog." He stretched out a hand and snapped his fingers. "Here,
boy."

Mutt looked at him, a long, steady, considering gaze.

"Heh," Gallagher said, and dropped his hand. "He doesn't take
kindly to strangers, I guess."

"She's a girl, for starters," Kate said. "I recognize your
name, I think. You're working for Talia Macleod out at Suulutaq, aren't
you?"

"That's right," he said. "Good job, too. Pays well."

"Congratulations," Kate said, looking around for Auntie Vi.

He hooked a thumb at the kitchen. "I could even afford to buy you
breakfast. Interested?"

"I've eaten, thanks. Is Auntie Vi here?"

"I haven't seen her since breakfast. Come on, a cup of coffee can't
hurt."

It had been a bitter cold ride in and she could use a warm-up, so she
followed him down the passageway to the kitchen and sat down at the table
opposite him.

"So what's your name?" he said, getting a plate of French toast
and bacon from the oven.

"Kate," she said. "Kate Shugak."

His fork stopped halfway to his mouth. "Kate Shugak," he said.

"Yeah. Where you from?"

He shrugged, and the fork continued its upward motion. "Outside."
He grinned again, although this time it seemed to lack its previous warmth.
"I understand that's what I'm supposed to say."

She registered a slight tingling of her Spidey sense. She shrugged, watching
his face. "It's what you can say."

He cocked his head a little. "Meaning if I do, I must be hiding
something?"

She surprised both of them by laughing, a rough husk of amusement that by
the appreciative gleam in his eye he found as attractive as the rest of her.
"If you aren't, you'd be the only cheechako in the Park who isn't."
She added, "And maybe the only one in
Alaska
." She looked at him, her face a
genial mask. "How long you been here?"

"Couple months now."

"You like it?"

H
e mopped up the last of the syrup
with the last piece of French toast and pointed it at her. "I'll tell you,
Kate," he said, "I fucking love it. I've never seen a place with more
opportunities to make a buck. Like I'm headed out on a snow machine trip today,
up and down the river with my boss going to the villages to talk to the people
about the mine, and I get overtime for that. Man." He laughed. "I
like it all right. I got a warm place to sleep, plenty to eat,
and"—he winked at her—"I'm making new friends every day.
A man can get ahead here. Yeah," he said, regarding his forkful of food
with a satisfaction that verged on complacency, "I fucking love it here.
I'm going to stay forever."

Or at least long enough to make enough money so he could spend the rest of
his life deep-sea fishing in Manzanillo, Kate thought. "You're what we
call a boomer," she said.

He looked quizzical. "Baby boomer, you mean?"

"No. Just a boomer. Somebody who comes to
Alaska
to make good, and who does very
well."

His smile hardened momentarily, only to return at double wattage.
"Nothing wrong with a man making a good living."

"Nothing at all," she said cordially.

She agreed with him too easily and he didn't trust her response, which
proved he wasn't entirely stupid. Still, he was incapable of stopping his eyes
from drifting down over her. They lingered on her chest for a moment, and then
jerked back up, to the thin, white scar that bisected her throat. He looked at
her face, and back at the scar. He opened his mouth to say something else when
Auntie Vi slammed in the kitchen door. She saw Kate and stopped in her tracks.
"Katya."

"Auntie." Kate rose. "Something we need to talk about,
Auntie. Auntie Vi snorted. "You talk. I work." She filled the thermos
she carried full of hot coffee.

"Great breakfast, Vi," Gallagher said heartily. "I don't know
when I've eaten a better one."

Auntie Vi looked at him and snorted again. "You pay for what you get
here." She slammed out again. Kate didn't move fast enough and almost got
her nose caught in the door. She heard Gallagher chuckle behind her.

K
ate found Auntie Vi mending gear in
the net loft, a room over her garage that was insulated and Sheetrocked but
unpainted. Heat came from a small Toyo stove, and the radio was on and
currently tuned in to Park Air. Bobby's voice was transmuted by digital
wizardry from its usual sonic boom to a more intimate and somehow sexier
rumble, a velvet rasp of sound that made you listen whether you wanted to or
not. NPR had missed out when they hadn't recruited Bobby Clark to replace Bob
Edwards
on Morning Edition.
Of course, Bobby could be just a trifle
more incendiary than Bob. "Okay, all you tree-hugging, bunny-loving,
granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing Naderites, this one's for you," he
said, "the only song worth a greenie shit," followed by the seductive
opening licks of Three Dog Night's "Out in the Country." Bobby, Kate
thought, was the living embodiment of Emerson's dictum that a foolish consistency
was the hobgoblin of little minds.

Drift nets were heaped in orderly piles all over the floor, the one
currently undergoing repair draped over a couple of sawhorses. Auntie Vi sat on
a straight-backed wooden chair, head bent over hands wielding a hand-carved
bone needle with unerring dexterity, translucent green monofilament almost
magically assembling itself into a curtain of mesh whose individual cells were
the exact size to snare a red salmon right behind the gills. "I'm
busy," she said without looking up. "What you want?"

Okay, no point in not being equally blunt. "Howie Katelnikof told Jim
Chopin that you and the other aunties hired someone to kill Louis Deem."

Auntie Vi didn't answer. The silence stretched out. Kate looked hard at the
top of Auntie Vi's unresponsive head. "Auntie, did you hear me?"

"Nothing wrong with my ears."

Kate began to feel a slow burn. "Anything you'd like to say about
it?" Mutt, standing next to her, moved a pace forward, putting a firm
shoulder in between the two women.

"What to say?"

"Oh, I don't know," Kate said. "How about, Howie's full of
shit? How about, Howie's trying to buy his way out of getting caught with a
commercial load of caribou taken out of season? How about, Howie's a little
weasel who'd sell out his own mother to stay out of jail? I'm wide open for
suggestions here."

"Howie got no mother."

Kate looked at Auntie Vi's bent head with a dawning horror. "Jesus
Christ, Auntie. Is it true?"

"Howie say who we suppose to hired?"

There was a short, charged silence. "No," Kate said. "Not
yet."

Auntie Vi finished mending one hole and put down the needle to shake the
cramp out of her fingers. "Tell something to me, Katya." She looked
up for the first time, and Kate almost fell back a step from the anger she saw
there.

"What you do, Katya? Tell me what you do. Louis Deem monster.
Monster," she said again, with emphasis, making it clear. "Liar.
Thief. Murderer. Murder three wives. Three. Jessie. Ruthie. Mary. All dead, by
his hand. Everybody know this, Katya. And nobody do nothing."

"Not nothing, Auntie," Kate said. "Not nothing. He was
brought to trial twice."