A Taint in the Blood

12

Arriving in Jewel Lake fifteen minutes later, Kate drove through a subdivision of prepackaged cracker-board houses that all looked exactly alike and were all painted the very same shade of ash gray with the exact same white trim. The pavement ended in a forest of scrub spruce and spindly birch. A gravel road with more bumps and grinds than a stripper dodged tree-trunks as it passed by what looked like the original homesteads, which were closeted in stands of lilac and honeysuckle that had been there long enough to grow into trees thick enough to reduce the evening sunshine to an occasional dapple. Wouldn’t be long before the taxes got too high and some developer showed up with a fistful of cash and the plans to another cookie-cutter subdivision, where all of the houses had exactly the same floor plan and where the neighbors could lean out of their windows to exchange a cup of sugar instead of having to walk all the way down the sidewalk and knock on the door.

She maneuvered the Subaru around an old Pontiac someone had left parked not very close to the side of the one-lane road, and found the address on a mailbox. She turned into the driveway next to it, found a winding and rudimentary path between a thicket of birch trees, and pulled up in front of a log cabin, right behind the white Ford Escort Kate had rented for Kurt yesterday morning. She got out. “Kurt?” she called.

Mutt took three paces forward and froze in place, one paw elevated. She raised her nose a fraction of an inch, testing the air.

Kate, about to head for the cabin, stopped. She shut the door of the Subaru and took a long stride away from the vehicle, arms held slightly out from her sides, doing a sweep of the clearing. There was nothing in it except a few dried-up flower beds and a gravel parking area where the dandelions were fighting a last-ditch battle for primacy with the horsetail. The house was a small cabin made of logs gone the dull dark gold of age. The windows had no drapes, probably because the house looked out on no neighbors.

Mutt’s head drooped down beneath her shoulders, and she began a low, menacing whine. She stalked forward, nostrils twitching.

“Hold up, girl,” Kate said, and Mutt’s growl changed from a whine to a snarl. “Hold on just one damn minute, Mutt,” Kate said. She’d seen Mutt like this before, and what happened next was never pretty. She looked around for something to use as a weapon. There was nothing, not a shovel or a broom; this had to be the neatest yard she’d ever seen around a log cabin. She went back to the Subaru and found a box in the back holding a bottle of Windex, a roll of paper towels, a first-aid kit, flares, and a pair of jumper cables. She took out one of the cables and doubled it into kind of a short whip, with the clamps hanging free. She held it hip-high in her right hand, ready to swing, and kept her center of gravity over her feet in a kind of knees-bent glide, which contrasted with the sidling, stiff-legged movement of the dog shadowing her every step.

The steps up to the porch creaked. She saw no movement through the windows, but it was pretty dark inside. “Hello,” she said, raising her voice. “Anybody home?”

There was no answer. When she rapped on the door, it opened. Mutt’s growl intensified, but Kate didn’t need Mutt’s nose to smell the rich coppery scent of blood. She crouched down and hit the door a sharp rap with her left palm.

She caught a confused glimpse of a lumpen mass on the floor inside. There was a muffled curse and the door came back at her hard. Her head slammed against the jamb, and in the split second granted her for reflection she saw little bluebirds flying around in a circle. She even heard them tweeting. In the next second, instinct and training kicked in and she tucked and rolled into a forward somersault. It was a move designed to have her back up on her feet, and it would have worked if she hadn’t somersaulted right into the body of Kurt Pletnikoff. She scrabbled to get up and slipped in his blood.

Mutt’s growl cut off and someone screamed. Someone else cursed. Kate, slipping around like Abbott and Costello as she tried to regain her footing, heard Mutt’s teeth snapping together like a cleaver chopping up a chicken. There was another scream, louder this time. A gun fired and a bullet slammed into the stovepipe of the stove against the back wall of the living room.

Kate ducked and rolled behind a seedy old couch-dubious protection, but better than none-at the same moment the stovepipe came crashing down, raising a cloud of soot. There was another menacing growl and three more shots snapped off quickly. One shot thudded into the couch she was crouching behind and the other two into the wall over her head.

Mutt erupted into a fury of savage barks and snarls and there was the distinct sound of teeth tearing into flesh, and then another scream.

“Get it off me! Get it off me!” a panicked voice yelled, and then he screamed.

“MUTT!” Kate yelled.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” someone else shouted, and there was a trample of feet through the door, down the porch steps, and across the gravel. Kate rolled to her feet and peered over the back of the couch. To her immense relief, Mutt stood in the doorway, taut, tense, lips drawn back in a fierce snarl, ears flat, up on her toes, mane stiff“, tail straight out. She started to move forward, quivering in every limb.

“Mutt!” Kate said. “Stay!”

Mutt looked at her and snarled. She had blood on her muzzle.

“Oh, good girl,” Kate said, “good, good girl, but stay, damn it.” She went forward to check on Kurt. He’d been shot once through the chest, but high and to the right. As she stooped, his eyes fluttered open. His pulse was fast and thready and his skin was cool to the touch. A quick glance around revealed no telephone. “Kurt,” she said urgently. “Hang on. I’m calling for help.”

She began to rise, but his fingers plucked at her sleeve. “If’s okay, I’m just going for the phone.” She heard doors slam and an engine start in the distance. She half-rose to her feet. “Goddamn it!”

He grasped at her with a feeble hand.

Kate swore again but let him pull her back down. “All right, what?”

His lips moved, but she heard no sound. She bent down to put her ear next to them. “What?”

She felt his lips move but could make no sense of the words. She straightened so she could look into his face. “Okay, I got it, Kurt,” she said. “I got it, I got what you said. I’m going to call for help now. Hang on, do you hear me? You hang on!”

She ran out to the Subaru and got the cell phone from her day pack. She hit every button until she got a dial tone and then punched in 911 and gave her name and location. “Someone’s been shot,” she told the dispatcher. “Send an ambulance, and tell the cops to be on the lookout for a dark-colored Pontiac Firebird two-door hatchback coming out the same road, moving fast with two men inside, they’re the shooters.” She tossed the cell phone back in the Subaru, the woman still squawking at her to stay on the line, and ran back into the cabin. Kurt had lapsed into unconsciousness and his skin was now clammy, but he was still breathing and the blood from his wound had clotted. She didn’t dare move him, but she yanked the worn, nobbly afghan from the back of the couch and covered him with it. “Hang on, Kurt,” she said. “The ambulance is on its way. Please, please just hang on. I’m right here; I won’t leave. Hang on. Mutt!”

Mutt, looking mightily pissed off but mercifully less feral, came to lie against Kurt’s side.

Kate soft-footed it through the rest of the small house.

The living room took up the whole front of it, the back divided into kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The kitchen was antique but clean, the bathroom had a pink toilet that dated back to the fifties, and the queen-size bed in the bedroom had a body in it.

Kate swore and searched for a pulse. There was none, and the body was cold and rigid. Twelve to twenty-four hours, then, which meant he’d been dead before Kurt had arrived. Kurt was laid out in the living room, though, which meant he might not have made it to the bedroom before being ambushed and so might not have known the body was there.

The body was of an old man. Kate lifted the covers and saw that he was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, probably what he’d worn to bed the night before. There was a single bullet hole in his right temple. She stooped to peer at it. There were powder burns in the skin around the hole and the distinct smell of spent powder. The shot had been fired at very close range, so he’d been shot where he lay, probably in his sleep, given the neatness of the bed and the room.

She straightened and widened her focus from the wound to his whole face. He was Native. She estimated his height at around five six, his weight at about 150. He was wiry, broad-shouldered, long-waisted, and his legs were short and looked slightly bowed. His hands were large and rough.

She replaced the covers and, ears on alert for the sound of approaching sirens, went swiftly and thoroughly through every cupboard and drawer in the place, as well as the pocket of every pair of pants and coat she came across. She found a checkbook showing a balance of $530.72, bills for light, gas, and phone, and a wallet with a driver’s license. She compared the face in photo on the license to that of the dead man in the bed. It was the same.

There was another photo in the top drawer of the bedroom dresser, a four-by-six snapshot in a cheap wooden frame, the kind that came in a two-pack from Wal-Mart. It showed a group of three people posing on a boat on a sunshiny day, all laughing, all sunburned, all in life vests. The background looked like it might be Kachemak Bay. The stern of the boat was pointed at the camera, but only the tops of the letters of the name showed.

There was only one other picture in the entire cabin, this one in another wooden frame, the twin of the first. It was a black-and-white head shot of a young woman posed for a formal portrait. It looked like every other photo of a high school senior Kate had seen in her life.

At long last, she heard the distant wail of sirens. She stuffed both pictures into her day pack, and shut the door to the Subaru, turning to face the driveway.

The cops beat the ambulance by three minutes, but they still missed the Pontiac.

The doctor came out of the operating room. He wasn’t smiling. Kate got up on shaky legs. “How bad?”

“Bad enough,” the doc said. “But not fatal.”

“Not?” Kate said. The relief took the strength out of her legs and she sat down again.

The doc shook his head. He was a wiry man, not much taller than Kate, and had a lined face and lively eyes. He didn’t smell like he’d showered in the last twenty-four hours and he didn’t look like he’d slept in longer than that. “Missed his heart, lungs, spine, even passed between his ribs on the way out.”

“So he’ll be all right?”

The doc shrugged. “Maybe. Probably.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “There’s a lot of muscle and tissue damage. Goddamn bullets just love to turn cartwheels when they get on the inside of a human body. He’ll be awhile healing, that’s for sure.”

“When can I talk to him?”

The doc gave her a derisive look. “Forget about it. He’s out of it for the next twelve to twenty-four. Sleep’s the best thing for him. He’s going to hurt like hell when he wakes up. The longer he can hold off on that, the better.”

From behind Kate, a voice said, “I’ll need to know the minute he wakes up.”

The doctor flapped his hand. “Yeah, yeah, I know the drill.” He shambled off down the hall, white coat stained with blood.

“So I’ll talk to you instead, Shugak.”

Kate turned. “O’Leary.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Kurt asked me to meet him there.”

“What was he doing there?”

Kate did a rapid mental review. “He’s working for me.”

“So you said. Doing what?”

“Finding a witness to a case I’m working.”

“What was the name of the witness?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said. It was her first lie. It wouldn’t be her last. “I was coming to town, and Billy Mike asked me to look for Luba Hardt while I was here.”

“I remember.” She paused, and to her relief and somewhat to her shame, O’Leary jumped right in. “So Kurt was looking for witnesses to the assault?”

“Yes. He called me to ask me to meet him there because he’d found something or someone. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, he just asked me to meet him. Who does that cabin belong to, anyway?”

She saw his look and hoped she hadn’t overdone the innocence. There was a long pause. “Guy by the name of Gene Salamantoff You know him?”

“Never heard of him.” That was the strict truth, so far as it went.

“Mmm.” O’Leary, big, beefy, red-faced, examined her with careful eyes, and decided for reasons best known to himself to provide further information. “Turns out he’s dead, too.”

“Salamantoff?”

O’Leary nodded. “We found his body in his bedroom.”

“You’re kidding,” Kate said, and earned herself another long look. She couldn’t help it-lying just wasn’t her very best thing. “Was he shot, too?”

O’Leary nodded.

“Same gun?”

“By the entry and exit wounds, yeah. Take ballistics a few days to be sure.”

“There were two men,” Kate said.

“I read your statement,” O’Leary said.

“Did you raise any prints?”

O’Leary shrugged.

“Got this, though,” and handed her a mug shot of the dead man.

“Thanks,” she said, a little surprised.

O’Leary’s middle name was not “helpful.”

“Anybody spot the Pontiac anywhere?”

O’Leary shrugged again.

“When you find them, look for bite marks,” Kate said.

O’Leary looked down at Mutt, who was standing one pace behind Kate, and almost smiled.

Kate left the number of the town house and the one for her cell phone at the nurses’ station with strict instructions to call her if Kurt showed any sign whatsoever of regaining consciousness. To be sure, she slipped into his room when the nurse’s back was turned and left a note under the bedside phone to that effect, too. She stood for a moment looking down at him. Tubed and wired and bandaged. No respirator, though. Kurt was breathing on his own, always a good sign, and the heart monitor registered a reassuringly steady blip.

He seemed to be frowning, his brow puckered. Truth to tell, he looked more than a little pissed off, and for some reason this caused Kate’s heart to lift a little. Pissed off was nowhere near to dying. She touched his shoulder. “I left both my phone numbers, Kurt,” she said in a low voice. “Call me when you wake up.

In the meantime, I’ll get on the trail of those sons a bitches in the Pontiac.“

Kate pulled some pork ribs out of the refrigerator and put them on to boil with salt and garlic powder, started rice in the rice cooker, and took a diet Sprite over ice with a lime twist into the upstairs bathroom. She stripped out of the clothes stained with Kurt’s blood and got into the shower. She let the water, hot as she could stand it, beat down on her back and took a long, cold swallow of her drink.

She turned her face into the water, soaking her hair, breathing the steam in deep.

Kurt was going to be all right, that was the main thing. “He’s going to be all right,” she said out loud, and then she said, “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch” and slapped the tile with her open hand hard enough to make it sting.

She soaped down, rinsed off, and toweled herself dry, then stalked into the bathroom and yanked on clean clothes. Mutt, who had followed her into the bathroom, trailed her into the bedroom. Kate took her bloodstained clothes into the laundry room and started the washer. Mutt followed her there, too, and followed her into the kitchen, where Kate boiled water for tea, got out a cup, and added a huge dollop of honey. She took the cup of tea into the living room and curled up in the easy chair, the afghan from the back of the couch tucked in around her. Mutt whined at her, so she scooched over, and Mutt climbed into the nest with her. It was a tight fit, but Kate was more than grateful for the reassurance that emanated from Mutt’s warm, solid body.

Suddenly, Kate was freezing. She was shaking so hard the tea spilled over the side of the cup and her teeth chattered on the rim. She had an immediate desire to call George and tell him to come get her and Mutt out of this friggin‘ town at once. She had an equally immediate desire to find the two shooters in the Pontiac, cut out their livers, and feed them to Mutt as a special treat.

Kate had never had anyone working for her hurt before.

Come to that, Kate had never had anyone working for her before.

It was one thing to get hurt herself. The risk of injury, even death, was always there in her line of work. The last time she’d been in the hospital the doctor had offered her frequent flyer miles.

But Kurt was new to the job, a mercy job Kate had thrown him because she’d felt guilty about separating him from his previous profession of poaching. It wasn’t like he was a professional private investigator. He’d never had any training, and other than the rare brawl at the Roadhouse, he probably had no experience in defending himself. He’d just been stumbling around in the dark, making it up as he went along.

Kate didn’t have a lot of personal investment in Kurt Pletnikoff. They lived on opposite sides of the Park, they hadn’t been in the same grade at school, they hadn’t been friends or lovers. He was some kind of second cousin twice removed-Kate thought through Auntie Vi, or maybe Auntie Balasha-but then, that could be said of half the residents of the Park.

But she’d accepted responsibility for him when she had hired him. From that moment forward, he was one of hers. She’d thought to share a little of the Bannister wealth, maybe give Kurt a head start in the next stage of his life, since she’d been instrumental in ending the last one.

She didn’t feel guilty about that. Somebody had to stand up for the Park bears, poor little defenseless creatures that they were.

She could have sent Kurt out into the PI fray with a little less insouciance and a little more preparation, though.

For the first time, Kate understood what it must be like to send a soldier out into battle, and to have to explain to his loved ones why he hadn’t returned.

Mutt whined, an anxious sound, and touched her cold nose gently to Kate’s cheek. Kate closed her eyes and leaned her head against Mutt’s and tried to think. Charlotte had hired her to free Victoria. She had hired Kurt to help her do so. Someone had shot Kurt and had been waiting at the cabin to shoot her, too. It was just plain blind luck, and Mutt, that she hadn’t charged right in the door and picked up her very own personal bullet in the chest.

She managed to down most of the tea, and the heat of the brew and the sweetness of the honey finally managed to calm her trembling. She was able to feel her feet again. She could think.

She wondered whether Victoria Pilz Bannister Muravieff might perhaps be innocent of the charge of murder that had had her incarcerated for thirty years. Perhaps whoever had really done the crime might be alarmed that someone was checking into the case again.

But if that was true, if Victoria was innocent, why had she refused to talk to Kate? What, was she nuts? Who the hell turns down a Get Out of Jail Free card? Who wants to stay in prison?

Victoria could be one of those people who had become completely institutionalized, so used to the structured life of the prison that she could not envision any other. It happened, Kate had seen prisoners released on probation reoffend and be back inside within the week. For some of them, a bed and three meals a day were worth it. Kate didn’t think Victoria Pilz Bannister Muravieff, scion of Alaska’s landed and moneyed gentry, was one of them. Someone who had the ability, even after being tried, convicted, and imprisoned for the with malice aforethought murder of her son, to finish a BA and a master’s degree and who had single-handedly gone on to organize and run what amounted to a small high school and community college on the inside was not institutionalized. At this point, Victoria pretty much was the institution, only she didn’t go home at night along with the rest of the staff.

Reopening a thirty-year-old case had its risks. There were always secrets that people thought they had buried deep, but in Alaska, never deep enough. The community was too small, and the memories of the old farts too good.

When she thought her hands were steady enough, she got up and went to her day pack, where she got out the notebook she’d taken from Kurt’s pocket before the police and the ambulance got there.