A Taint in the Blood

11

Kate’s temper was not improved when she got home and found Jim Chopin waiting on her doorstep. Repressing a wish that he’d been in the driveway, so she could run over him, she drove into the garage. She slammed out of the Subaru and stormed into the town house, steaming down on the front door like Patton’s Third Army. She yanked it open and bellowed, “How dare you! How dare you!”

Amazingly, he didn’t hear her, having apparently been struck deaf at the sight of her in party clothes. His expression one of dumb fascination, his eyes followed the V of the jacket’s neckline to the soft hint of cleavage. He swallowed audibly and opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“Did you do it?” she said fiercely. “Answer me!”

“Do what?” he croaked.

“Pull strings at the Department of Public Safety to get me the VPSO job!”

He blinked. “Huh?”

“The job that would have me working as your second number in the Park, you moron!” She poked him in the chest. “Did you try to get me that job?”

Mutt, observing all this from a safe distance, turned tail and vanished into the den, where she intended to remain until the decibel level fell.

Jim pulled off his hat, as if it had suddenly become too tight for his head. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Kate.” He dared to look at her again, knowing it was a mistake. He shouldn’t look. If he looked, he’d want to touch, and that wasn’t why he was here. Damn it.

He hadn’t told her, and she hadn’t asked, that he was still in town because he’d been called to testify at a trial involving the bust of a marijuana grow in the Valley he’d been TDY’d to the previous summer. And this under protest and only because the arresting officer scheduled to testify-a man he’d been assisting at the time-had been called Outside because of a death in the family. And now here he was, on the doorstep of this town house tonight, and pretty damn late it was, and where the hell had she been at this hour dressed like that?

Didn’t matter. He was here to make it clear to Kate Shugak once and for all that there was no relationship of any kind going on between the two of them, not even sex. Not even “sex with no complications-when its over, we go our separate ways, no harm, no foul.” Nope, not even that.

The jacket, made of some rich fabric that clung to every curve, the whispering black silk of the tuxedo pants tailored in so masculine a fashion that when worn by a woman they were nothing more or less than a blatant invitation to get her out of them. Which he suddenly knew he was going to do, given half the chance.

He ran a finger around the inside of his collar. Okay. He’d tell her it was over in the morning.

She stamped back into the house, pausing only to kick off her shoes. Jim followed her inside, watching her very fine ass move inside the black silk, and closed the door behind them.

“God, my feet,” she said, leaning a hand against the wall and raising one foot to rub at it.

He eyed the shoes. They had a barely discernible heel. “Sit,” he said, and steered her into the living room. She sank into the easy chair with a sigh, and he sat on the coffee table and lifted her feet into his lap. He began to knead them.

“Oh.” Her head fell back against the chair. “Yesssss.”

He’d heard that sound before, just not in this context. He had to shift a little where he was sitting. He cleared his throat. “Where did you go in that getup?”

She opened her eyes and looked down at herself. “Not bad, huh?”

“It’s fucking spectacular and you know it.”

She looked up, startled at the grim sound of his voice. He didn’t look happy, either. She sniffed the arm of the jacket and made a face. “Ick. Everybody was smoking like a chimney. I’ll have to wash my hair.”

“Where were you?” he said again. He’d been thumping on the door once every hour since 7:30 P.M. He arrested stalkers for less egregious behavior. The thought did not please him.

“At a party.”

“I deduced that from the camouflage. Whose party?”

“Erland Bannister’s.”

His hands stilled. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. Big-ass house down on the flats below the Turnagain Bluff.” She wriggled her feet suggestively and he started massaging them again. “Oh yeaaah.”

She moaned and he wanted to cry.

“I was scared to death there was going to be an earthquake the whole time I was there,” she said, “and that we were all going to fall into Cook Inlet.”

Disregarding this, he said, “Who was there?”

“Anyone who is anyone in Alaskan power politics.” She reflected. “Well, most of them. Seemed to be a contingent or two missing.”

“Like maybe from the nonwhite races?” Jim said.

“How did you guess.”

It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t bother answering it. “Why did you go?”

“Because Erland invited me.”

“How did you come to meet Erland Bannister? Did his sister introduce you?”

“No,” Kate said, “I have it on the best authority that Erland and Victoria haven’t spoken since she went inside.”

“Thirty years?” Jim said. “What, she’s been cast off by her family?” He reflected. “Yeah, well, she killed their nephew, their grandson, their cousin. I can see it. I wouldn’t feel all that kindly toward her myself in that situation.”

It occurred to Kate that she had not thus far discussed in depth her current job with Jim. “No, I think it was her choice. She’s cut herself off completely from her family. I hear she still talks to friends, however, hitting them up for money to fund the school she’s running out at Hiland Mountain.”

“She runs a prison school?”

Kate nodded, and told him about it, and about the case.

“No wonder,” Jim said when she finished.

“No wonder what?”

“You’ve got that thing about teachers.”

This brought back memories of the week she’d spent picking morel mushrooms in the north of the Park, and of the teacher who had been killed there. She still grieved for him. But she said, “Doesn’t mean I think she’s innocent.”

He raised an eyebrow but forbore to comment. “So if Victoria didn’t introduce you, how did you wangle an invitation to Erland’s party?”

“He invited me,” Kate repeated thoughtfully.

“How did he know to call you?”

“Brendan gave me a list of the names of witnesses at Victoria’s trial.” Jim scowled. Kate ignored it. “I started calling them, and one guy sounded really upset and wanted to know if Erland knew what Charlotte was doing, reopening her mother’s case. I think he called Erland, and Erland called me.”

“Why?”

“Good question.”

“Why were you yelling at me?”

Warmth was spreading up from her feet through her body, and her mind was starting to wander from the case. “Oh. Because I thought you might have pulled some strings to get me the VPSO’s job at the new trooper post in Niniltna.”

“Why the hell would I want to do that?”

She fluttered her eyelashes. It had seemed to work at the party.

His hands were warm and firm on her feet. The caress contrasted with the rise in the volume of his voice. “Why the hell would I want you around even more than you already are?”

She could have asked him what he was doing at the town house this evening, with her feet in his lap. Instead, she just smiled. “But I’m thinking now that there was something else going on there.”

He did his level best to resist the come-hither in her smile. “What?”

“Bruce Abbott was the one who made the offer.”

“Jesus. You really were flying high tonight, Kate, the governor’s right-hand man.”

Kate snorted. “Yeah. Real high. This guy doesn’t have a thought in his head that the governor didn’t put there.”

“It’s how he earns his salary.”

“Well, he didn’t earn it tonight.” She paused. “There was an implication-nothing overt, just a hint-that if I didn’t return home immediately, the job would go to someone else.”

“What? Bullshit. The department hasn’t even posted the job specs yet.”

“That’s another thing. He said that my attendance at the trooper academy in Sitka would be waived because of my prior education and experience.”

“What! Over my dead body! We want more than glorified security guards to back us up in the villages, Kate. VPSOs have to be trained in procedure, case preparation, and firearms, at the very minimum.”

“Don’t shoot the messenger, Chopin. I’m just reporting here.”

“Besides,” he said, “no offense, Shugak, but you’re not exactly known for following the rules.”

She grinned. “I admit, not my strong point.”

“Strong point, my ass. You never met a rule of evidence you liked.”

“And the courts are so picky about that ‘fruit of the poisoned tree’ stuff.”

“I don’t think you even know what Miranda means.”

“If someone wants to talk, why wouldn’t I listen?” she said wide-eyed.

“I could never be absolutely sure I could make a case with you working for me.”

“Probably not.”

But she caught perps, they both thought, and both had to bite back a smile.

There was a brief silence. “It was a bribe,” Jim said on a note of discovery.

“Indeed it was,” Kate said.

“What for?”

“I don’t know.” She let one foot slip down from his hands and let it rest in the notch between his legs.

He stilled. “Kate?” It came out like a croak.

She leaned forward and smiled into his eyes. “I’ve got to get out of these smelly clothes.” She nuzzled him, her nose against his nose, her lips against his lips, a gesture of warmth and tenderness that should have scared the hell out of him. “They’ve got all these”-she fluttered a hand-“buttons.”

He swallowed hard. “I noticed,” he said hoarsely.

“Mmmm. I don’t know if I can manage all of them on my own. I might need a little”-she ran her tongue around the curl of his ear-“help.”

She might just as well have led him up the stairs by his dick. It was doing all his thinking for him anyway.

The next morning, there were three boys waiting on the doorstep. “Okay,” Kate told Kevin, “you’re beginning to overgraze your range.”

“Hello,” the third boy said, and stuck out his hand. “I’m Garrett Hyde.”

Kate shook it. “How do you do,” she said, going formal on instinct. “I’m Kate Shugak.

Garrett was Jordan’s age and had straight blond hair neatly cut and direct brown eyes.

“I was about to start breakfast.” She stood back from the door. “Would you like to join us?”

Garrett didn’t budge. “I’m not supposed to go into strange people’s houses.”

“I’m Kevin and Jordan’s friend,” Kate said. “But don’t come in if it feels wrong.” She walked away from the open door and went into the kitchen.

Breakfast this morning was oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar and sourdough toast dripping with butter. Kevin and Jordan ate like horses, with Garrett eating just as much, only not as quickly. Afterward, Kevin disappeared into the living room with Mutt, and shortly thereafter the television could be heard.

Jordan, who was helping Garrett load the dishwasher with the breakfast dishes, paused and looked at Kate. “He likes Barney,” he said, and rolled his eyes.

“What are you going to do,” Kate said.

Jordan half-smiled.

Garrett looked at Jordan and said, “Okay.”

“The Garrett Hyde seal of approval?” Kate said.

He flushed. “We go to the same school. They’re friends of mine. We look out for each other.”

“Good to have friends,” Kate said, “understood. Were you out together all night last night?”

He shook his head. “We had a sleepover at my house.”

Kate was relieved. “Good.”

He hesitated. “Do you think you can help them? Their mom…” His voice trailed off.

“I’ll try,” Kate said.

“Okay,” Garrett said again.

Kate raised her voice. “Kevin, in here for a minute.”

He came back into the kitchen and looked at her with wary eyes. “Relax,” she said, “I haven’t called DFYS. Yet.”

Their faces closed up.

“Guys,” she said, “come on. It’s good you found a bolt-hole, but it’s temporary. It won’t be long before I go home. What are you going to do then?”

“I’ll look out for them,” Garrett said immediately.

In a voice carefully devoid of ridicule, Kate said, “How?”

“I’ll take them home with me.”

“Your parents up for two more kids in the house?”

She saw the answer on his face. More important, she saw it on Kevin’s and Jordan’s faces, too. “It’s okay,” Jordan said. Kevin looked at him, and he dropped his eyes. “Most of the time.”

Kate felt a touch on her arm and looked down to see that Kevin had drawn close, his small, pleading face raised imploringly to hers. “Don’t make us leave our mom,” he whispered. “Please don’t.”

“What are you going to do?” Jim said when the door closed behind them.

“I don’t know yet,” Kate said, rubbing her face with both hands. “But something.”

Jim looked as if the struggle to remain silent was difficult.

Kate drove to the library, wondering what to do about them. Jim was right. She should call DFYS and let them sort it out.

Two things stopped her. One, she had taken control over where she would live when she was in kindergarten, meeting and beating her grandmother’s determination that Kate live with her in town. Two, she remembered Abel, the surrogate father Emaa had found for Kate when Kate refused to leave the homestead. He was the one who had found her there when Emaa was frantically scouring the Park for her missing granddaughter. Abel had respected Kate’s act of self-determination enough not to manhandle her over to his cabin.

Kate felt that if she manhandled Kevin and Jordan’s future, she would somehow be demonstrating a lack of respect for her foster father, another crusty Alaskan old fart who believed absolutely in independence and self-reliance. She couldn’t do that. Not yet, at any rate.

Not to mention that young Garrett had left her with the distinct impression that he expected better of her than that.

She pulled into the library parking lot and found a space in the first row, facing the fountain, the same row she always parked in when she came to the library, so she could find the car again. On impulse, she got out her cell phone and after three tries managed to dial Auntie Vi’s cell phone number. She wondered what color Auntie Vi’s phone was today. The last time she’d seen it, it had been lime green. The time before that, it had been cherry red.

Auntie Vi answered. “If’s me, Auntie,” Kate said. “Is Johnny there?”

“Hey, Kate,” Johnny said, trying to be cool but clearly delighted that she had called home just to talk to him.

They chatted for a while, Kate telling him about her overworked bullshit detector at last night’s party and Johnny grilling her about her shopping list at Costco to make sure she didn’t forget the important things, like batteries and bags of chips.

She told him about the boys. She didn’t ask, but he said anyway, “You can’t do anything else and still have them trusting you.”

“I know.”

“Besides, you cook a mean breakfast, Kate. Don’t worry, they’ll be back.”

She was still smiling when she got out of the car. She left the windows rolled down in case Mutt wanted to grab a snack from the flocks of geese that were currently nibbling the grass around the fountain, and went directly to the third floor and the microfiche stacks. She pulled the rolls for the Anchorage Times for a year before Victoria’s imprisonment and a year after and sat down at a machine with a notebook and a pencil.

Two hours later, she was suffering mild nausea from watching so much film scroll past and hadn’t discovered much in the way of additional information either to help or hurt her investigation of Victoria’s case. The facts were reported pretty much as they appeared in the police report and the trial transcript. The fire and the death of the boy, William, the discovery of the arson, and his mother’s subsequent arrest and conviction were sensationalized beneath screaming banner headlines, but that was primarily due to the prominence of the family. Crimes even more heinous were reported every day; they were just bumped back to the inside of the paper because the victims were poor or unelected.

More out of guilt at the immense salary she was pulling down than from a conviction that she’d find anything, she turned to the roll of microfiche for the year following Victoria’s conviction.

A year and one month after Victoria’s imprisonment, Pilz Mining and Exploration declared bankruptcy.

Well now. Kate sat back in her chair and contemplated this new information. Here might be an answer as to why Victoria burned down her house for the insurance money. Maybe the Pilzes and the Bannisters really were out of money.

But if this was the case, why hadn’t this information been brought forward at trial? It sure as hell provided motivation, which from the beginning had seemed to be lacking, at least in Kate’s opinion.

She thought of last night’s party in the Turnagain mansion. If the Bannisters had been broke, they had certainly recovered well.

She leaned forward again and began to read slowly through the story, placing the facts of the bankruptcy in chronological order. The Anchorage Times had been so obliging as to devote an entire business section of one Sunday issue to a history of the company, which wasn’t surprising when you realized that over two hundred people would have lost their jobs if the company had just folded. Of course, they were only making ninety-three cents an hour, but the mine commissary made a point of selling goods to miners’ families at or near cost. Back in 1941, the commissary made a profit of just $247 on $36,000 in sales. No, Skyscraper Mines had a history of high pay, good food, and fair dealing, and never lacked for labor.

Kate, back before the injury that left the scar on her throat and the permanent damage to her vocal cords, used to play the guitar and sing. A crowd-pleasing favorite was always “Sixteen Tons.” She didn’t think Tennessee Ernie Ford himself could have put it over at the Skyscraper Mines.

Not that this had anything to do with the matter at hand. Kate scrolled forward.

Pilz Mining and Exploration had been formed as a partnership between the scions of the houses of Pilz and Bannister, to share the expenses and profits of, primarily, the Skyscraper Valley Mines and, secondarily, additional mines outside of Fairbanks and Juneau. The first lode of the Skyscraper Valley Mine had been discovered by one Torrance Hurley in 1906 near the top of Skyscraper Mountain in the Talkeetna Mountains north of Anchorage. The gold was fine, but the ore was high grade enough to haul in a sluice box, and of course as soon as the news got out, every miner with a gold pan showed up, and pretty soon the 3,500-foot alpine valley was wall-to-wall claims. Over the years, the mines consolidated into two controlling corporations, and in 1935 along came Herman Pilz, who bought them both out, and the Pilz Mining and Exploration Company, adding to their holdings in Fairbanks and Juneau, became the largest producer of gold in the state. From 1936 to 1942, the Skyscraper Valley mines produced a total of 152,429 ounces of gold. At $35 an ounce, that was $5,334,015. At the time, that was real money.

In 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the nation was at war shortly thereafter, and the U.S. War Production Board declared gold mining to be a nonessential industry. There was a brief period of fierce activity on the part of PME to extract as much gold as was humanly possible in the time before the closure, followed by a war-long hiatus. The mine didn’t get back up to speed until 1947. In 1951, gold was selling at $34.72 an ounce. PME began to diversify, beginning in the 1950s with oil leases in Cook Inlet, more oil leases in Prudhoe Bay in the 1960s, coal leases near Healy in the 1970s, zinc and lead leases near Kotzebue in the 1980s, and still more oil leases in Cook Inlet and on the North Slope in the 1990s.

PME held no majority in any of these concerns except for outright tide to their various gold mines, enough to exert a healthy influence over the board of directors, but not enough to concern themselves with anything except the bottom line. The gold mines were the only part of their mineral-producing empire that required them to pay salaries and benefits to employees. There had been union problems, which led to problems with the color of the bottom line, which had led to layoffs, which had led to more union problems, and then the price of gold, which had reached a high of $615 dollars an ounce, began to fall. The company had racked up a lot of zeros in legal debt. By then, the mines were, without exception, in serious need of some heavy investing in new mining technology and infrastructure. Their debtors were unwilling to wait for payment, and PME’s legal staff advised declaring bankruptcy to give the corporation breathing space to get back on its financial feet.

At this point, Kate’s stomach growled loudly enough to draw a condemnatory glance from the reference librarian. Kate busied herself with loading up on quarters from the change machine and printing out the relevant stories.

It was one o’clock, and Kate headed for Thai Kitchen on Tudor, where the best pad thai in town was served. She was head-down in it when her backpack started to vibrate. She jumped, dropping her chopsticks and knocking over her Coke. The backpack fell off the chair and scattered its contents across the floor and under the next table, which was, fortunately, unoccupied. One of the things that fell out was her new cell phone, which vibrated even farther across the floor, where it was scooped up by a white-haired matron in flowered polyester. “Is this yours, dear?” she said.

“Thanks,” Kate said. She couldn’t remember which button to push to answer it. The matron said, “Need some help there, dear?” and took the phone back. “I’ve got the same phone,” she said with a smile. “Costco, right? It takes a while to figure the little devil out.”

Kate retired to her table, kicking cash, notebook, pens, an address book, pencils, Tampax, Blistex, a comb, and a roll of cherry Lifesavers toward her backpack, and said into the phone, “Hello?”

“Kate?” Kurt said. “Is that you?”

“Yes.” She tried to keep her voice low. She’d been around too many people who seemed to think their cell phones were bullhorns. She knelt down and restuffed her backpack. “What’s up?”

“I’ve got some news for you.” Kurt paused for dramatic effect.

Kate sighed. “What?”

“I want to show you.”

“Kurt-”

“Come on, Kate, you’ll love it, I promise.” He gave her directions somewhere out near Jewel Lake. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes. I’m starving, I’ve got to grab some lunch.”

“Kurt, wait a-” There was a click and after a moment a dial tone.

Kate pulled the phone from her ear and looked down at the keypad. She sighed again and went back to the white-haired matron, who showed her how to turn it off.