A Taint in the Blood

13

It was a small spiral-bound notebook with lined paper. Kurt’s sprawling handwriting was barely legible. He’d written down Eugene Muravieff’s name on the first page and Henry Cowell’s name about halfway through. Notes followed each name.

He’d exploited those sources Kate had given him first, and Kate had to give him points for thoroughness. An attorney in private practice who subscribed to the Motznik public records database and who was willing to allow Kate to access it for a small fee had been his first stop, as indicated by the directions to the office that Kurt had scribbled down. Neither Muravieff nor Cowell had a current driver’s license, although the old ones had furnished their birth dates and Social Security numbers. The last litigation- the only-Muravieff had been involved in was his divorce from Victoria, when Victoria had been given all the property they held in common and sole custody of the children, and Eugene an admonishment from the judge to complete rehab, or detox, as it was called in those days. The last litigation Cowell had been involved in was as attorney of record for Victoria in Victoria Bannister Muravieff vs. the State of Alaska, one count of murder in the first degree, one count of attempted murder in the first degree, judgment found for the state.

Neither had a telephone number, listed or unlisted. Neither had a mortgage or a car payment. Neither had a vehicle with tires, wings, skis, tracks, or a hull listed in this name in the state of Alaska. MuraviefF had had a commercial fishing license for a set-net site in Seldovia, which had evidently been sold at some point, because Kurt’s notes indicated it had been transferred to an Ernie Gajewski. In parentheses Kurt had written “Wanda’s brother.”

Kate paused to look up Ernie Gajewski in the phone book. No joy. No Wanda Gajewski, either.

Neither MuraviefF nor Cowell had applied for a hunting or sportfishing license recently, and neither had ever applied for a permanent fund dividend since the payment had begun being made to Alaskan citizens in 1981. Cowell’s membership in the Alaska Bar Association had lapsed. Both men had registered for the draft their senior year in high school. MuraviefF had served in Korea, risen to the rank of sergeant, and been awarded a Purple Heart and a Medal of Valor. Cowell had served his time as a legal aide with the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Office in Washington, D.C.

All of which was no information at all. Kate wondered what happened when the Internal Revenue Service stopped getting taxes from a citizen. Did they notice? Did they follow up? Did they require proof of death? She’d had to file a final income tax statement for her grandmother when she died, so that Kate could legally give away most of Ekaterina’s belongings and take possession of the rest. That had required a death certificate. It might be worth checking into in the matter of MuraviefF and Cowell, if only because of the spectacular lack of other evidence of what had happened to either man.

It was information of sorts, if only in a negative way, that both men had dropped out of sight entirely.

She wondered if anyone had shot at them.

She looked at the first photo she’d taken from the old cabin earlier that day. It was black-and-white in a blue wooden frame, a group of three preadolescents, a girl between two boys, arms around one another, smiling broadly at the camera. She recognized a much younger Charlotte. The two boys with her would be her brothers, the dead William, and Oliver, whose much younger face was easily recognizable.

She looked at the second photo, the formal portrait of the girl. No clue as to her identity. She removed the back of the frame. The photographer’s name was stamped on the back of the photo, Gebhart Studio. She looked in the phone book again. There were half a dozen Gebharts, but no Gebhart Studio.

Mutt had moved to the floor next to the chair the first time Kate had gotten up for the phone book, and she watched Kate’s every move with alert yellow eyes.

“If Victoria didn’t kill William, who did?” Kate asked her.

Mutt didn’t know.

“They’re still around.”

Mutt barked, a single, sharp, thoroughly pissed-off agreement. Mutt didn’t care for people shooting at her human.

Quick footsteps came up the walk, a fist beat a rapid tattoo against the door, and the doorbell chimed several times. “Kate? Kate, I saw the car through the garage windows. I know you’re in there. Open up, goddamn it!”

Kate sighed. She looked at Mutt, who was on her feet, tail wagging furiously. “Shall we let him in?”

The bark was still short and sharp, but this time it was joyous. Kate got up and opened the door.

“Are you all right?” Jim demanded. He walked in without invitation. “I ran into somebody at the courthouse who said you’d been involved in a shooting.”

Of course. The Bush telegraph might be a shade faster than a courthouse when it came to spreading the news, but not much.

He stood her against the wall and more or less frisked her. “You’re okay? You’re not hurt? Nobody shot you?”

“I’m fine,” she said, and fended him off when he showed signs of stripping her down right there to check for wounds. At least that was what she thought he was doing. “Really. I didn’t get hit.”

“Who did? They said somebody got shot.”

“Kurt.”

He stared at her. “Kurt Pletnikoff?”

“Yes. He’s working for me, helping track down some of the people connected to Victoria Muravieff’s case.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jim said. “Kurt Pletnikoff?”

“Yes.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“Yes. The guy he found isn’t.”

“What guy?”

“The guy lying dead in the bedroom with a bullet hole in his head.”

Jim stared at her for another minute and then shook his head. “Okay. I want you to start over, at the beginning.”

“I told you most of it last night.”

“Tell me again.”

It couldn’t hurt to talk it through again, especially since she was now hovering on the side of believing Victoria to be innocent. She knew how Jim, who was after all a practicing law-enforcement professional, would react to that notion, but maybe she needed a devil’s advocate right about now. Getting shot at always had a tendency to screw with her head. “Okay, but-what time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “A little after five.”

“God, is that all? It feels like a year since this morning.” Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t been able to finish her lunch. “Want some dinner?”

He followed her into the kitchen, where the pork ribs were stewing. She checked the rice, and pulled a package of frozen snow peas from the freezer and set it on the drain board to thaw.

Jim sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and listened to her story. When she finished, he stirred and said, “What took Kurt to that cabin?”

“I don’t know. He’s unconscious and his notes don’t say.”

“What did he say when he called you?”

“He said, ”I’ve got some news for you.“ And when I asked him what, he said, ”I want to show you.“”

“Did he call you from the cabin?”

She thought. “No. He said it would take him thirty minutes to get there because he was going to pick up some lunch on the way.”

“There’re damn few places in Anchorage that are thirty minutes away from anywhere, even when you’re stopping for lunch on the way,” Jim said.

“I know. Which leads me to believe he was in Muldoon, or South Anchorage, or…”

“What?”

“Or maybe up on Hillside,” she said.

“Who lives on Hillside?”

“Charlotte Muravieff.” Kate went into the living room and picked up the phone. It rang four times before the machine picked up. “Charlotte, this is Kate Shugak. I need to speak to you or Emily immediately. Call me at this number.”

She hung up and went back into the kitchen.

“You think your client sent Kurt to that cabin?” Jim said.

“If she did, I’ll rip her a new bodily orifice,” Kate said.

There followed a brief silence. No one who knew Kate Shugak would take such a threat lightly. Jim waited long enough for the sizzle to die out of the air before he said, “Do you suppose he found the body and wanted to show it to you before he called the cops?”

She took a deep breath and blew it out. “No. He sounded happy, like he knew he’d found something I needed. Kurt’s a lot of things, but morbid isn’t one of them. And I found him in the living room, so I’m not even sure he made it to the bedroom before they shot him.” She drained the ribs of all the broth but for half a cup and put the pot back on the stove. She opened a can of cream of mushroom soup and added it to the meat. Seeing Jim watching her, she said, “Secret Filipino ingredient.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A friend in college was Filipino. This was a dish her father taught her to make. He told her never to tell what the secret Filipino ingredient was.”

He laughed, but not for long. “Kate. Who do you think the dead man is?”

She sighed. “Eugene Muravieff.”

He digested this in silence for a moment. “Really.”

“I can’t be sure. I haven’t seen any pictures of him. But the dead man had a picture of the three Muravieff kids on a boat in what I think is Kachemak Bay. And he’s the right age.”

“Did he have any ID?”

She nodded, breaking open the pea pods and tossing them in with the ribs. “O’Leary said his name was Gene Salamantoff.”

“So, probably Aleut. And Eugene Muravieff was Aleut.” Jim frowned. “I don’t get it. Why’d he change his name?”

“Somebody shot him today, Jim. Who knows how long they’d been looking for him?”

The rice cooker clicked off and she found two trivets and set them on the table and the pots on the trivets. He found plates and silverware while she got the soy sauce out of the refrigerator. “I’ve got some phony lemonade,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, and they sat down and dished up their dinner. “Yum,” he said after the first bite.

“Yeah,” she said, and dug in.

He cleaned his plate twice before putting down his fork. “Had rigor subsided?”

“No. He was cold and stiff. Lividity was pronounced. They shot him while he was sleeping.”

“Sometime last night or this morning, then.” Jim thought about that. “If they shot-we’ll call him Muravieff for the duration, okay?-if they shot Muravieff hours before, what were they doing hanging around till this afternoon?”

“Waiting for Kurt,” Kate said.

“Which means they felt that Kurt was as dangerous to them as the dead man was.”

“And me,” Kate said, and got up to clear the table. She put the leftovers in a Tupperware container to take to Kurt the following day.

His mouth tightened. “And you,” he said evenly, and went into the living room to turn on the television news.

She was putting her clothes in the dryer when she heard him call her name. She went to the living room and poked her head in the door. “What?”

He turned up the sound on the television with the remote.

“Charlotte Bannister Muravieff, well-known local caterer, was killed by a hit-and-run driver late last night as her car was struck by a large pickup truck on O’Malley Road. A witness told Channel Two News that-”

Jim looked at Kate, whose eyes were fixed on the screen. “That’s your client, right?”

She nodded dumbly.

The witness, a woman walking her Scottish terrier on the bike trail leading to the zoo before they both turned in for the night, had little to say beyond describing the hit-and-run vehicle as a pickup, dark in color. She thought it was a man at the wheel but she couldn’t be sure-“It’s hard to tell the difference nowadays, you know?” The terrier, held in her arms, yipped accompaniment until the woman took firm hold of its muzzle.

Mutt, sitting next to Jim on the couch, got down and padded over to Kate to shove her head under Kate’s hand.

Charlotte had been pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. There was a brief shot of the Cadillac Escalade, crushed like an accordion from the driver’s side door over, another of Emily, described as Charlotte’s good friend, weeping on her way into their house, and then Erland Bannister’s face flashed on the screen, looking tight and angry. The newscaster’s voice did a voice-over that said Erland Bannister was offering a $100,000 cash reward for the arrest and conviction of the driver of the vehicle that had killed his niece.

This time, the guard at the Hiland Mountain front desk welcomed Kate with a smile. “Brendan McCord says hey.” The guard was a willowy blonde, and from the inquisitive blue eyes busily inspecting Kate for flaws, she was evidently somewhere on Brendan’s list.

Kate smiled. “Tell him hey back next time you talk to him,” she said, insinuating that the guard would be talking to Brendan long before she would.

It was the right tack. The blonde relaxed, beamed, and waved her through.

Victoria was waiting in an interview room. She wasn’t happy. “Evidently I didn’t make myself clear the last time you were here,” she told Kate as Kate came through the door. “I have nothing to say to you.”

It wasn’t visiting hours, and only Brendan’s prior relationship with the willowy blonde had gotten Kate in the door and Victoria into the interview room.

Victoria was just as militant as she had been the first time Kate had seen her, and Kate realized with a sinking heart that no one had told Victoria that her daughter was dead. She wanted to turn and run from the room and keep running until she got all the way home. She wanted to hunt up Erland Bannister and kick him in the balls.

“May I?” she said instead, indicating the chair opposite Victoria.

Victoria snorted. “You don’t need my permission to sit in this place.” Nevertheless, the request softened her attitude a little.

Kate pulled out a chair and sat down, slumping against the chair back, hooking a foot over the edge of the table, trying to present as relaxed an attitude as possible.

Her problem was, she liked Victoria. She liked a woman in jail for life who refused to be coerced or intimidated. “Did they threaten you to get you in the same room with me?”

Victoria snorted again. “Like you didn’t know.”

“Humor me,” Kate said.

Victoria put both hands on the table and leaned in. “They told me they’d cancel my class for a week.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said, and she meant it.

“Sure you are. You’re so sorry, you’ll walk out of this interview under protest because I was brought into it under duress.”

Kate thought about it, shook her head ruefully. “Not that sorry,” she said.

It surprised a laugh out of Victoria. She suppressed it immediately, looking annoyed. “What do you want?” she snapped.

“Your daughter hired me to look into your case because you have been diagnosed with uterine cancer and she doesn’t want you to die in jail,” Kate said.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Victoria tossed up her hands and rolled her eyes. Before she could throw Kate out again, Kate said quickly, “You said you knew my grandmother.”

Victoria gave Kate an assessing look. She knew she was being distracted, but then she took the bait anyway. “She died recently, didn’t she?”

“Going on three years ago.”

Victoria nodded. “She was a fine woman, and a great leader.” She frowned, and then she said abruptly, “She visited me here.”

“You were friends?”

Victoria thought about it. “Acquaintances,” she said at last. “We met through my mother-in-law, Mary Muravieff. Mary worked on the land claims act with Ekaterina. When I started the school here, Ekaterina heard of it and came to offer help. There are a disproportionately higher number of Alaska Natives in jail, as you know.”

“I know,” Kate said.

“That’s right, you put some of them in here.”

“I did,” Kate said without apology.

“She was proud of you,” Victoria said. “Proud of what you have accomplished. Which reminds me. What does the Anchorage DA have to do with reopening a thirty-year-old case?”

“Nothing,” Kate said, “I don’t work for them anymore.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a private investigator,” Kate said, “which is where I came in. Your daughter hired me to look into your case. She doesn’t think you’re guilty of the crime for which you have been imprisoned. She wants me to reopen the investigation and find out who did it.”

“I did do it,” Victoria said. She met Kate’s eyes squarely.

“Did you?” Kate said, hiding her surprise.

“I did,” Victoria said firmly. “I won’t say I’m innocent, because I’m not. I won’t thank you for trying to get me out of here, because the judge was right to sentence me to life. I deserved it. I siphoned the gas out of my car, I splashed it all over the living room, and I set it to go off after Charlotte and I were safely at the fund-raiser at my brother’s house in town.”

“Hmmm,” Kate said. “How did you set it to go off?”

“A delayed fuse attached to a timer,” Victoria said promptly.

Exactly as had been presented by the district attorney at Victoria’s trial. “How did you learn to do that?”

“From a book,” Victoria said.

Kate gave a thoughtful nod. “You can find anything in the library, can’t you?”

Victoria blinked. “Well, yes, I suppose you can. That’s what it’s for.”

“It is indeed,” Kate said. “Why did you do it?”

“Money,” Victoria said. “I was broke.”

Kate winced and shook her head. “You had me going there, Victoria, I admit. But money as a motive?” She leaned forward, hands flat on the table. “To burn your sons alive?”

For the first time, she saw Victoria flinch. She recovered immediately, though, and met Kate’s eyes with a stony gaze.

Kate sat back. “Do you ever hear from your attorney?”

Victoria’s browed furrowed at this change of subject. “Henry?”

“Yes. Do you ever hear from him?”

Victoria was wary, but she couldn’t come up with a reason not to answer. “No.”

“When was the last time you talked to him?”

“At my sentencing.”

“No further contact after that?”

Victoria shook her head.

“How about your ex-husband?”

Victoria became very still. “Gene?”

“Yes,” Kate said, watching Victoria from beneath her eyelashes.

“I haven’t heard from Gene since our divorce.”

“Didn’t he try to see the children?”

“He had no visitation rights under the divorce decree. I had sole custody.”

That wasn’t what I asked you, Kate thought. “He was their father,” she said. “Seems odd that he wouldn’t try to work something out with you so he could spend at least some time with his children.”

“He didn’t,” Victoria said. Her elegant shoulders were looking very tense.

“Charlotte and Oliver were both underage when you went inside,” Kate said. “Who did they go to?”

Victoria stared at a point on the wall in back of Kate’s head. “My brother Erland took them in. It wasn’t for long. Charlotte was sixteen, Oliver was seventeen. They were in college and out of his house in a very short time.”

Kate nodded. “I see.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her and took a deep breath. “Ms. Muravieff-” She paused. “You kept the name,” she said.

“What?”

“You kept your husband’s name. Even after the divorce.”

Victoria’s eyes narrowed, as if she were really looking at Kate for the first time. “Why are you here, Ms. Shugak?” Despite her best efforts, something of what she was feeling must have crossed Kate’s face, because Victoria sat up straight in her chair. “Tell me at once,” she said, snapping it out like an order.

“I’m afraid I have bad news, Ms. Muravieff,” Kate said. She took another breath and said steadily, “Your daughter, Charlotte, was killed going home yesterday evening by a hit-and-run driver.”

Victoria sat very still, frozen in place. Kate couldn’t even hear her breathing.

When she spoke, her voice was frail and thready. “Yesterday? Charlotte’s been dead all day today?” “Yes. I’m so very sorry, Ms. Muravieff.” Victoria spoke again through stiff lips. “Leave me.” Kate got up at once and left the room.