Whisper to the Blood (31 page)

"I went and got someone from the village to stay with her, and then I
came back. I know you hang out a lot at that bar out the end of the road,
Sergeant Chopin, so I figured I had a good chance of finding you there. You
weren't but Sam was, and he brought me here."

He spread his hands. "The rest you know."

TWENTY

T
hey left at first light, Jim on one
snow machine, Kate on another, Matt Grosdidier on a third hauling an empty
sled. Dick Gallagher was still asleep at Auntie Vi's, and Jim said there was no
reason to get him up. They were in Double Eagle well before noon. Ken Kaltak
came out to greet them, looking as if he hadn't had a lot of sleep. "Thank
christ you're here so I can be done with this freak show."

"Did anybody touch anything?"

"Not after I got there," Ken said flatly. "I can't answer for
before. It doesn't look like it, but I'm not a cop. Kate, Matt."

"Hey, Ken. How was she . . ." Kate's voice failed her. "How
was it done?"

Ken shook his head. "This you gotta see for yourself."

He led the way to the creek, a narrow, winding affair between low banks,
those banks thick with willow, alder, and spruce, all of them drooping beneath
the weight of a heavy layer of snow. They turned the path of the creek into a
low, cold tunnel into which even the noontime sun could not reach. Jim's head
brushed a branch and snow fell silently down his neck. He stooped a little and
walked on.

"Stay," Kate told Mutt, and followed him.

Talia's head was where Gallagher had said it was, about twenty feet away
from her body. The face was turned away but the open portion of the neck
revealed frozen blood and tissue and the bony beginnings of a brain stem. It
was not a pretty sight. Kate heard Matt, just behind her, take a sharp breath.

Her body lay on its back, arms and legs splayed wide. Her snow machine was
nosefirst in the snowbank on the right-hand side of the creek. The trailer had
jackknifed, probably when the snow machine had run into the bank, but it hadn't
overturned.

Jim bent over the windshield and ran his flashlight over every inch of the
clear plastic. He stepped back and walked back up the creek. "Kate, you
take the right side. I'll take the left."

"Got it."

Ken and Matt watched, Ken with his attention firmly fixed on the overhanging
trees, Matt looking a little green around the gills, a color that matched one
of the colors in his Cinemascope black eye. About halfway between the snow machine
and the body, Kate said, "Here."

She tried not to mess up the snow next to it, but it was a futile effort. It
probably didn't matter, as with the warming weather there had been intermittent
snow showers over the past two days and there wasn't much to see.

She heard Jim's breath at her shoulder and pointed with a gloved finger,
slightly trembling. "See it?"

His breath exhaled on a long sigh. "Yeah. Line for mending gear,
right?"

"Yes."

They regarded it in silence. "You can get this stuff anywhere, he said.

She nodded. "Yes," she said again, a little mournfully.
"Everybody has a spool lying around. I've got some in the garage. I think
I even saw some spools at the Bingleys' store, in that corner in the back where
she's got all the nonedible stuff."

"So no possible chance of tracking down which spool this came
from."

"Probably not, but that's for the crime lab to say. You never know,
Jim, they can do some pretty amazing stuff." "Let me get the
camera."

He was back a moment later, and took a series of photos. It took longer than
it usually did because of the cold-he had to keep tucking the camera inside his
parka to warm it up so the shutter would work.

They found a corresponding length wrapped around the base of a tree opposite
the first one. Jim took more photos.

"About the right height," he said, measuring the top of the creek
bank against his height. "Three feet, maybe?"

"The windshield," she said.

"Yeah, but it's swept, it doesn't go straight up, it slants. It hits
the mono hard enough, the mono slides right up the windshield and snaps back.
She must have been kneeling on the seat for it to catch her right on the neck
like that."

"If she'd been sitting," Kate said, "the mono could have
caught her forehead. Same result, but then maybe it would have just broken her
neck."

"Would have left a mark."

Neither one of them moved to check if such a mark was on Macleod's forehead.
If that was what had happened, Macleod's head would still have been attached to
her body.

Kate couldn't believe she was putting those words together in a sentence.
She had another thought. "That may have been more in line with what the
murderer was planning, Jim. When the filament broke the two ends snapped back
around the base of both trees. If she hadn't been decapitated, if we'd just
found her with her neck broke, would we even have thought murder?"

He considered. "Maybe not."

"He might not have been expecting this. Who would?"

"And an accidental death doesn't come under the same magnifying glass a
murder does," Jim said, nodding. "He wouldn't think he had to be that
careful. Gotcha."

"Maybe not hard evidence," Kate said, "but there'll be
something."

They both hoped she was right.

Nothing else was found at the scene, however. They brought the snow machine
back up the creek and Jim took more photos with it positioned between the two
trees. He strung crime scene tape between them, pulling it taut, and pushed the
snow machine forward. The tape caught the windshield about midway. Kate climbed
on, straddling the seat, and at Jim's request Ken and Matt pushed it slowly
forward while Jim took photos. As the windshield pressed against the tape it
rode up, until it snapped off the windshield and whipped over the top of Kate's
head, ruffling her hair.

"She was practically twelve inches taller than me," Kate said, a
little pale.

"Let's do it again," Jim said, tight-lipped. "This time kneel
on the seat."

Ken and Matt pushed the snow machine back, Kate braced her left foot on the
running board and her right knee on the seat, leaning forward on the
handlebars, and they did it all over again. This time the yellow tape slid up
the windshield and caught Kate across the forehead. It stung. She didn't
complain.

Jim took photos of that, too, and more of the body and the head. He handed
Kate a pad and pencil. "Take some notes for me?"

He got out a tape measure and measured the distance between everything, snow
machine, body, head, trees, monofilament ends. Kate jotted down numbers with
increasingly numb fingers.

He opened his Leatherman and reached up to cut the almost invisible length
of pale green monofilament that had been wrapped multiple times around the base
of the tree, taking care to preserve the knots, although the filament was so
fine it would take a microscope to tell if they were granny knots or double
sheet bends. He bagged it carefully, and did the same with the remnants of line
on the opposite tree. "Okay," he said. "Let's bag the body and
get out of here before we all freeze solid."

Kate shook out a body bag, Jim picked up the head, and Matt turned, walked
two steps away, and threw up. Mutt whined once, softly.

They loaded Macleod's body on the trailer Matt was towing. Jim hooked her
snow machine to his and Kate took her trailer. They hauled everything to Ken
Kaltak's house and took his statement, which varied very little from
Gallagher's. At Jim's request, Ken fetched half a dozen of the other villagers,
and for the most part everyone's statements agreed. Everyone in the village had
turned out for GHRI's dog and pony show. With that many people present, it was
inevitable that there were moments when Macleod and Gallagher's time was
unaccounted for, but not so often or for so very long that Jim thought he had
to run down more witnesses.

"Anybody in Double Eagle seriously pissed about the mine?" Jim
said.

"Not this pissed," Ken said definitely.

Jim persisted. "Macleod have any arguments forced on her? Anybody try
to pick a fight?"

"Not that I saw." Ken reflected, and added, a little reluctantly,
She flirted with anything in pants. Even me, with Janice standing right next to
me. But Jesus, Jim, you don't decapitate somebody for flirting. I mean, if
Genghis Khan isn't around."

"She flirt with Gallagher?"

Ken thought. "He was always there, a step behind, but she kept it
pretty businesslike, at least in public."

"She order him around?"

"More like he was anticipating her every need. She didn't even have to
ask, and he had it ready for her."

"The perfect assistant, in fact."

"Pretty much." Ken looked at Jim. "Why, you think he did it?
Stringing that line would have taken some time. I don't recollect he went
missing from the gym that long. And she was his meal ticket. He looked pretty
happy in his work to me."

Jim gave a noncommittal grunt, and they left soon after. The trip back to
Niniltna was necessarily slower than the trip out had been, and it was almost
four o'clock before they pulled up in front of the post. "I'll get George
to take her into Anchorage in the morning. Help me put her in the
walk-in?"

The post had a free-standing walk-in cold locker out back, lined with
plywood shelves, and there they placed Macleod's body.

In Jim's office, he didn't bother to shed his parka before he called
Fairbanks to let them know. Kate waited while he typed up a preliminary
statement and sent it off. "I heart the Internet," he said.
"Let's go home."

"Should we—"

"Tomorrow's going to be a nightmare," he said. "She was a
celebrity in Alaska, and she had a pretty high profile Outside, too. Plus she
was a babe, and if that wasn't enough she was a blonde. I'm guessing local
media, big-time, and didn't she have a stint on one of the networks as a
commentator?"

Kate didn't know.

"It's going to be about as bad as it can be," Jim said gloomily.
"I hate a celebrity murder. Let's just go home, okay?"

They went home and went to bed, and Kate wasn't alone in spending the better
part of the night staring at the ceiling.

Jim was gone before eight the next morning, Johnny to school shortly
thereafter, declaiming something about New Hampshire in iambic pentameter, and
Kate soothed the savage breast by some intensive housecleaning. When she was
done the fireplace was spotless, so were all the dishes and towels, and both
beds were freshly made with clean sheets, although negotiating the flotsam and
jetsam of Johnny's room was as always a challenge. They could have eaten off
the floor under the stove and the refrigerator, too, always supposing anyone
would ever want to do that.

She made salmon salad for a late lunch-canned salmon, chopped onions, sweet
pickles, and mayo-and didn't have enough energy left over to slice bread so she
ate it out of the bowl with a fork, curled up on the couch and feeding herself
blindly as she looked out the window. It was a gray day, which matched her
mood. The previous day's gruesome sights lingered unpleasantly before her
mind's eye.

She had disliked Talia Macleod on sight but she wouldn't wish something like
this on her, or on anyone. Except maybe Louis Deem, and he was already dead,
and to be perfectly honest she would have been wishful of rather more
dismemberment about his person than Macleod had suffered.

She checked herself guiltily. This was no subject for humor, no matter how
backhanded. She put bowl and fork into the sink, donned gear, said "Let's
take a ride" to Mutt, and headed for town.

H
er first stop was Bingley Mercantile,
where she loaded up on three hundred dollars' worth of staples: flour, sugar,
coffee, tea, eggs, pilot bread, Velveeta, peanut butter, grape jelly, canned
milk, canned vegetables, a case of Spam, another of canned corned beef, a mixed
case of Campbell's soup, salt, pepper, garlic powder, toilet paper, Ivory soap,
dish soap, clothes soap, a packet of disposable razors, Tylenol, Neosporin,
some Band-Aids, a box of assorted candy bars, a bag of peppermints; and at the
last minute she tossed in half a dozen magazines, including a new
Playboy
and a new
Penthouse,
on the theory that foldout company was better
than no company at all.

"Point of order," Cindy said when she rang up Kate's purchases.
Kate ignored the reference-et tu, Cindy?-and offered a bland stare and no
explanation of her purchases as punishment.

She left the store secure in the knowledge that in approximately four
minutes and twenty-three seconds the rumor that Kate Shugak had turned lesbian
would be circulating the Park on the Bush telegraph. It might even have gone
out on Park Air, but for the fact that Bobby Clark had the best of all possible
reasons to know that it wasn't true. Not that that would stop him laughing like
a hyena about it, also on the air.

Be worth something to see Jim Chopin's expression when he heard it.

She loaded the small mountain of purchases in the trailer of her snow
machine and headed out for Tikani. She made good time up the river beneath gray
clouds heavy with moisture, presaging a big dump of snow. When she got close to
the village she slowed down and approached with caution, but it was as deserted
as it had been three days before. She nosed the machine up over the bank and
stopped in front of Vidar's house. A wisp of smoke trailed from the chimney.
The woodpile didn't look any taller than it had the last time she was there.
She unloaded the trailer, piling everything against the door as quickly and as
quietly as she could.

She turned the snow machine around, banged on Vidar's door with a heavy
fist, hopped on, and hit the throttle, Mutt loping easily beside her. As slow
as Vidar moved, they'd be out of sight by the time he got to the door. He'd
have a pretty good idea who'd left him the supplies but she didn't want to put
him in the position of having to thank her. It'd just make them both cranky.