A Taint in the Blood

18

Wanda Gajewski opened the door. She looked more resigned than surprised. “I knew you’d be back sooner or later.”

It took a little of the wind out of Kate’s sails, but not all of it. She walked in without invitation, followed by Jim Chopin. It didn’t help her temper that Wanda and Jim took one look at each other and formed a mutual admiration society. “I need you to tell me about William Muravieff.”

Wanda closed the door behind her. “Would you like some coffee?” Without waiting for an answer, she disappeared into the kitchen while Kate paced up and down.

“Relax, Kate,” Jim said.

“Relax, my ass,” she said.

Wanda’s home was as architecturally unremarkable inside as it was outside. The living room carpet was new, its color a horribly dull dusty rose. The furniture was a collection of modular units upholstered in some nubby fabric in a brown-and-gold weave that would hide dirt well. The walls were livened by large paintings of wildflowers, oil on canvas. They looked as if Wanda had bought them in bulk for a discount from the artist at a street fair, on the last day of the fair, just as the artist had been packing up to go home and long after all the best paintings had been sold. They were bright, Kate would give them that. One of them might even have looked like a lupine, if she squinted. She winced away from it and encountered the very blue eye of a Siamese cat, curled into a perfect circle in the dimpled seat of a chair. It hissed at Kate.

“Same backatcha,” Kate said, hurt. Usually animals liked her. Good thing they’d left Mutt in the car.

Wanda came into the room carrying a tray. Kate had seen more trays on this case than in the rest of her life combined. She didn’t own one herself, not even before the fire. She wondered if perhaps she should buy one with which to serve guests coffee when they came to visit her brand-new home.

“I need to know everything you can tell me about William,” she said.

“I thought I already had,” Wanda said, pouring the coffee.

“No, you told me everything about Eugene, William’s father, for whom you dumped William when you were in high school.”

The Siamese took exception to Kate’s tone.

“Come on, you,” Wanda said, rising to scoop up the cat. “You know you want to get hair all over my pillow anyway.” She carried the cat into another room. “Sorry about that,” she said when she reappeared. “Wilma’s a little overprotective.”

Wanda and her cat, Wilma. Kate put the mug down on the coffee table, a rectangular wicker basket with a sheet of glass cut to fit the top. She rubbed her face and leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands dangling. “I’m trying to figure out who killed your lover, not to mention his son and his daughter, too. Aren’t you the least bit interested in helping me do that?”

Wanda met her eyes steadily. “William’s mother was convicted of the crime. The police told me that Eugene was the victim of a home invasion. The paper said that Charlotte was killed by a hit-and-run driver. It’s awful that so much tragedy has happened to one family, but it’s not evidence of conspiracy to commit serial murders.”

Jim looked like he might applaud.

“They just let Victoria out,” Kate said.

“Yes.”

“They pardoned her for the crime of killing her son.”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“It’s been thirty years. She’s worked hard and made a difference during that time. She’s paid for her crime.”

“That’s big of you,” Kate said. “Talk to me about William.”

There was a brief silence. Wanda took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She sat back and looked at Kate. “He was one of the good guys,” she said, her eyes sad. “He never said he’d do something and then didn’t deliver, didn’t make promises he didn’t intend to keep. He was kind and honest and trustworthy. He wasn’t a saint, you understand. He was just a good boy who never got to be a good man.”

“Did you believe Victoria had done it?”

Wanda shook her head again. “I didn’t know her that long or that well, but from what I did see, it seemed insane to me that anyone could possibly accuse her of such a thing. But the police seemed so sure, and then the trial… When she was convicted, I thought she must have done it, after all. How could a jury find her guilty otherwise?”

“And now?”

“And now I don’t know,” Wanda said. She looked exhausted suddenly, and less beautiful. Again, Kate imagined a younger Wanda and the stir she must have created at Anchorage High School. Even Max had vivid memories of the young Wanda. What had he called her? A honey pot? “Wanda, before you met William, did-”

“That’s enough,” Victoria Bannister Muravieff said, appearing in the hallway.

Kate’s mouth dropped open, and she suffered a momentary flashback to Max’s smug expression “I might” he’d said when she asked him if he knew where Victoria was. Might, my ass, she thought to herself. “Ms. Muravieff,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Victoria came forward to take a seat next to Wanda. She took Wanda’s hand in both of her own. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Wanda said, managing a watery smile.

Victoria looked back at Kate. “Why are you here? What else can you possibly need to know?”

Kate looked at Victoria, every regal inch the matriarch of a family whose roots went deep into Alaska’s history. Truth be told, it was all that mattered to either of them. “What if I told you,” Kate said slowly, “what if I said I’m starting to think that the person who died in that house fire thirty-one years ago was the target all along?”

Victoria snorted. “Today’s big surprise. I already told you, I killed them both, or I tried to. I was broke,” she said stonily, “and I needed the money. Now I want you to leave this house, please.”

She didn’t rise to see Kate out. The last Kate saw of them was Victoria putting an arm around Wanda’s shoulders, and tears running down Wanda’s face as she let her head fall on Victoria’s shoulder.

Jim looked back at Wanda’s house as they drove away. “How the hell did she wind up there?”

“Wanda works for Judge Berlin. She would have known about the release, and made sure she was waiting when Victoria got out.”

“That wasn’t what I meant. What the hell is Victoria Bannister Muravieff doing staying in the same house with her husband’s mistress? My God, thirty years ago this was an eighteen-year-old who’d had an affair with her husband. You’d think Victoria would want to scratch Wanda’s eyes out.”

“They both loved William,” Kate said. “And they both loved Eugene. I suppose it’s natural that they would become-” She hesitated.

“Friends?” Jim said.

Kate shrugged. “At least they’ll both have someone to talk to about their lost men.”

“Sweet Jesus. I will never understand women.”

She summoned up a smile, but it was lacking its customary provocation. “You’re not supposed to.”

“Good to know.”

The gold nugget numerals on the Alaska map clock read 5:00 P.M. when they walked in the door, and Jim reached for the remote and clicked on the television. He saw Kate’s glance and said, “Sorry. It’s like a nervous twitch when I’m in Anchorage,” then made as if to turn it off again.

“Wait,” she said, staring at the screen.

Ralph Patton was shown leaving the courthouse, his arm draped protectively around a woman holding a baby, shielding them from the television cameras. He looked angry, and immensely relieved.

“-in what the judge called a tragic and inexcusable miscarriage of justice, it appears that the arresting officer did not read Mr. Patton his rights when Mr. Patton was taken into custody. Further, in an exclusive interview with this reporter, Patton’s attorney, Joseph Dial, inferred that there were other and multiple irregularities to do with Patton’s arrest, culminating in the arraigning judge’s decision this afternoon to allow Patton to go free on bail.”

A clip of Joseph Dial, talking head. “It’s hard to imagine such incompetence in this day and age,” he said into the camera. “We have one of the finest police forces in the nation, well educated, well paid, and virtually free of corruption. But because of the victim’s prominence in the community and the pressure on the Anchorage Police Department to hold someone accountable for the crime as soon as possible, there was a rush to judgment. My client is innocent, and I fully expect all charges against him to be dropped in the next twenty-four hours.”

The scene shifted back to the anchor, who offered a brief recap of Charlotte’s death, with a mention of Victoria’s release, and moved on to the next story. Jim turned off the television.

Kate stared at the blank screen and saw Max’s face as he was recounting the story of Jasper Bannister and Richie Constantine and Calvin Esterhaus: “We even had ourselves something of a case-physical evidence linking him to the scene, not a half-bad description from an eyewitness, who even picked his photo out of a book of head shots. So we let him go.”

She went to the phone and dialed.

“Erland Bannister, please,” she said when someone answered.

“Kate?” Jim said ominously.

“May I ask who is calling?”

“Kate Shugak.”

“One moment, please.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Shugak?” Jim said.

“Kate,” Erland’s voice came smoothly on the line. “How nice to hear from you.”

“Hello, Erland. I just wanted to call and thank you for the invitation to your party. I had a lovely time.”

Kate felt the exhale of breath on the back of her neck.

“Why, thank you,” Erland said, “it was my pleasure entirely.”

“In fact, I’d like to take you out to dinner as a way of showing my gratitude.”

He almost purred. “You mean we will see each other again after all? How nice. When and where?”

“Are you free this evening?”

“I’ll get free for you, Kate.”

Kate laughed, as low and as husky as she could make it. “Great. What’s your favorite restaurant?”

“It’s a beautiful afternoon. Let’s try the Crow’s Nest for the view. Do you know it?”

“I’ll find it,” Kate said.

“Seven o’clock? I’ll make a reservation.”

“Perfect,” Kate said, and hung up.

“Nice outfit,” Erland said, giving her the once-over. “I thought so the other night, too.”

“It’s the only dress-up outfit I’ve got,” Kate said, smiling.

“Stick with what works,” Erland said.

“I generally do.”

The waiter appeared and Erland ordered wine. Kate let him pour her a glass, touched the rim to her lips, and smiled at him over it.

They were at the top of the Hotel Captain Cook, with a view all the way down Cook Inlet to Redoubt, and Kate thought she might be able to see the peak of Iliamna, too. Their table was set with white linen, silver, and fine china.

Kate let Erland order for both of them, sitting back in her chair, and thought that there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between a man and a bull moose in rut. The moose had a bonus, the antlers with which he could fight off pretenders to his harem, but Erland’s competence with a menu and a waiter could not be denied.

He finished and reached for his wine. “A toast?”

She raised her glass. “To what?”

He touched his glass to hers. “How about to the beginning of a beautiful relationship?”

She laughed. “A Casablanca fan? Are you a closet romantic, Erland?”

“Oh, I’ve been out of the closet for years,” he said, and she laughed again.

“I was delighted when you called,” he said. “I didn’t know you were still in town.”

“Well, it’s like I told you, Erland,” she said, allowing her smile to fade into an appropriate mixture of sadness and determination. “Charlotte paid me in advance.”

“I understand that,” he said, leaning forward and letting his eyes drop to her neckline, “and I honor your work ethic. But surely…” His voice trailed away artistically.

She leaned forward, arms crossed on the table. Might as well give him the full view. “Surely?” she prompted.

“Well, certainly you have heard that my sister has been released from prison. The governor commuted her sentence to time served.”

“I had heard that,” Kate said. Their salads came. “Why, do you think?”

Erland’s eyes opened very wide. “Why, because of the extraordinary work she did, building an education department at her facility.” He dropped his voice. “Of course, I wouldn’t want this to get around, since our governor doesn’t like to appear as being soft on crime, but I think part of the reason was humanitarian.” He looked at Kate with dewy-eyed sincerity. “Victoria has just lost a daughter. I think that played a part in his decision as well.”

“Of course,” Kate said with equal sincerity. “The governor has always been on the cutting edge of humanitarian concerns.”

Her voice was innocently smooth, but her words earned her a sharp look, quickly concealed. “So you see,” Erland said, sitting back and taking up his wine to admire its color with the sun shining through it, “really, Kate, your job is finished.”

“It would seem so,” Kate said, pretending again to sip at her wine. “Still…”

“Still?” Erland said.

Kate gave him a smile of pretty apology. “Charlotte did seem certain that Victoria did not set the fire that killed her son. I feel a certain…” She hesitated.

One of the better tricks in the interrogator’s toolbox was to entice the subject into eliciting information himself.

“Yes?” Erland said. “A certain what?”

“Obligation,” Kate said, and looked at Erland for reassurance.

He gave her a benevolent smile. “Your sense of duty does you credit, Kate, but really, there is nothing left for you to do in this case.”

“But if your sister is innocent of the crime, wouldn’t you like to have that innocence established beyond all doubt? And you lost a nephew, Erland. Wouldn’t you like to see his real killer brought to justice?” Kate leaned forward again, all earnestness. “I saw you on the news when you offered the reward for information leading to the arrest and apprehension of the hit-and-run driver who killed your niece.” She peered at him from beneath her eyelashes. “I was impressed at your determination to see him brought to justice. Would you want any less for the murderer of your nephew?”

He sighed heavily. “It was all so long ago.” He paused, and asked almost casually, “Do you have any leads?”

Not by the flicker of an eyelash did he betray that he already knew of her interview with Ralph Patton, but Kate could feel his attention focused directly and unwaveringly upon her, as if she were a bug beneath a microscope. The act of observation changes the thing observed, she thought. Obviously, Erland had skipped that class in Physics 101. “A few,” she said dismissively. She smiled modestly. “As you say, it has been thirty years. It’s been difficult to track down the investigating officers and the witnesses who testified at your sister’s trial. Many of the people involved have died or moved Outside.”

He sat back and smiled at her, an intimate smile full of intelligence, a smile that knew women inside and out, a smile of power and assurance. “That’s a shame. I wish you luck.”

“You have no objection to my proceeding with the investigation, then?” Kate said, trying to infuse her question with a hint of anxiety, as if she required permission of the great and powerful Erland Bannister before going forward.

“None at all,” Erland said, waving a hand. “As you pointed out, if my sister is innocent of the crime for which she was convicted, certainly that is something that I want the whole world to know.”

It was a bit of a change from the “Here’s your hat. What’s your hurry?” attitude the last time they’d met.

“You did know that the person who killed my niece has, in a travesty of justice, been set free on bail.”

“Really?” Kate said. “How an earth did that happen?”

Erland allowed rage to darken his eyes, just enough to be convincing. “I don’t know, but I’m going to make it my business to find out.”

“If anyone can do that, Erland, you can,” Kate said.

The waiter served their entrees, and afterward they talked of other things-local politics, the cost of a week’s worth of groceries for a family of four now compared to ten years ago, the problems of shipping to Bush communities, Oliver’s most recent case (Erland wincing at the thought of the family’s only child of that generation in the business of turning criminals loose on the streets again, then saying, “But I have high hopes of enticing him into Dwyer, Watson, an estate-planning firm run by a friend of mine”), the record salmon run up the Kanuyaq River and the lack of one up the Yukon. Erland was by turns witty, wise, and charming, with a large dollop of obvious attraction to his dinner companion. He was well-nigh irresistible.

For her part, Kate kept her lips parted in a constant gasp of wonder and admiration. She didn’t know how much of it Erland bought, but like all great men, he had an ego that was there to be stroked, and, needs must when the devil drives, Kate could stroke a male ego with the best of them.

She permitted him to walk her to the car, where they took fond leave of one another.

On the way home, she wondered if it had worked, if he was as smart as she thought he was. Lacking his resources, all she could do was lure him out of hiding, encourage him to show his hand in some way.

“You’re provoking him to attack, Kate,” Jim had said earlier, and she had replied, “I know. At this point, it’s all I can do.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed, goddamm it!”

His anger was enough to have her cruise past the town house once, checking for suspicious vehicles or activity, before she pulled into the driveway.

She lowered the garage door and went into the house. “Mutt?” she said. There was a muted, unidentifiable noise from the postage stamp-size piece of lawn that served as a backyard. Her skin prickled, and she slid along the wall to the window and looked out.

Kevin and Jordan had erected a tent and were currently occupying it with Mutt.

She opened the door. “Hey, guys.”

“Hey, Kate.”

“Your mom know you’re over here?”

“Sure,” Jordan said.

“Sure,” Kevin said.

“Wuff,” Mutt said.

Right. “Okay, but in the morning, we really have to talk. You got enough to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Want more blankets?”

“We’re using the sleeping bags from the garage.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Kate?”

“What?”

“Thanks.”

Don’t thank me, she thought.

She went into the kitchen and poured herself a Diet Sprite by the light of the refrigerator. When she closed the door again, Jim was standing there. Kate nearly jumped out of her skin.

“So?” he said. “How’d it go?”

“I didn’t know you were here. I didn’t see your car outside.”

“The guy I borrowed it from needed it back. How’d it go?”

Kate rolled her head, and he surprised her by turning her around to put his hands on her shoulders, whereupon he began to knead them.

“Oh yeah,” she said on a quiet exhalation.

“How’d it go?” he said for the third time.

“He’s pretty slick, is old Erland Bannister. Honestly? I don’t know.”

“How long are you going to stick around waiting to find out?”

“I don’t know that, either.” She gave the ghost of a laugh.

“What?”

“It turns out there is such a thing as too much information, and I’ve got it all. I just don’t know what the hell to do with any of it, and I still don’t know who burned down that house and killed that kid.”

“Even the governor stopped short of saying Victoria was innocent of the crime,” Jim said softly, his thumbs zeroing in on the knot of tension below her shoulder blades.

“Oh God, yes,”“ she said, ”right there.“ She was silent for a moment. ”Then why kill Charlotte? There’s no point to her death if I wasn’t looking for who really killed William Muravieff. There’s no point to the murder of Eugene Muravieff and the attempted murder of Kurt Pletnikoff. Killing them was supposed to put me out of a job.“

“Those two goons were waiting to kill you, too.”

“Yeah, mat would be another way of discouraging me. Someone is tying up lose ends all over town. And Erland Bannister is-”

“Is what?”

“He’s just so damned smug.”

“I don’t think you can arrest someone for aggravated smugness, Kate.”

“His whole attitude is-it’s like he’s got all his exits covered, and he knows it, and he’s making sure I know it, so that there is nothing left for me to do but go home or…”

“Or?”

She thought of the party at Erland’s house. “Or stay here and join his herd.”

“”His herd‘?“

“You should have seen the people at his party. Talk about suck-ups, brownnosers, and hangers-on. You should have heard how he talked about them. Guests in his house, for whom he had no liking and no respect. It was sickening.”

His hands paused. “You turning this into some kind of class warfare, Kate?”

“What?” she said, her head whipping around. “No! What the hell are you talking about?”

“The Bannisters have, you don’t. Is that what this is about?”

It was so ridiculous, she laughed out loud. “No. That is not what this is about.”

Jim resisted an urge to cover his balls. “Well, then, how about race warfare?”

“What?”

“You heard me,” Jim said steadily, still kneading her shoulders. “Is there possibly a little bit of ‘us versus them’ going on here? The residue of three hundred years of white power?”

“You think this can be reduced to skin color?” Kate said hotly.

“No,” Jim said. “I don’t.”

There was another, longer silence. “Okay,” Kate said. “I heard you.”

Jim remained silent.

Kate glared at him. “Why are you still here, anyway?”

“I told you.” He mustered up a lazy grin. “I got your back on this one, Shugak.”

Never happy on the defensive, she was delighted to switch on the siren. “You sure that’s all it is?” she said, mimicking him. She leaned back against him, and smiled when she felt his erection settle into the crack of her ass.

He didn’t move away, but he said, “This has nothing to do with us.”

“Oh.” The gluteus maximus, properly employed, was a well-muscled instrument of torture.

He caught his breath. “Because there is no us.”

“No?”

“No. This is about you pissing off one of the most powerful men in Alaska, Kate, a man with his fingers tied to every Alaskan string there is. It won’t be long before he starts pulling those strings. If you’re determined to carry on with this, you’re going to need backup. I’d do the same for any friend in this situation.”

Kate smiled.

“I’ve got to pee,” Jim said.

“I cannot begin to tell you how much I am enjoying this,” Kate said to his vanishing back.

She followed him up the stairs, unbuttoning the glittering red jacket. He came out of the bathroom as she walked into the bedroom.

“You know,” Kate said, “from the beginning, this has been all about family. There’s Erland and Victoria, brother and sister. Erland married Alice, and from what I picked up at the party, they had no children. Which may be a contributing factor to why she carves up her face every six months.” Remembering Alice’s pale, taut skin, as firm and smooth as a Barbie doll’s, if not quite so forever young, Kate shivered. There was something frightening in such a single-minded pursuit of a semblance of youth. She walked over to the dresser and peered into the mirror.

Her skin was firm and smooth and a pale brown that had turned its usual gold after a summer spent outdoors, but it was thirty-five-year-old skin, no getting around it, with at least the hint of squint lines at the corners of her eyes and laugh lines at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were the sort of indeterminate hazel that could seem anything from gray to green, depending on where she was and what she was wearing. She examined her temples. Still black as an October night, but it wouldn’t be long. She raised her chin and looked at her throat. Nope, she would never be mistaken for sixteen again.

“So what?” she told her reflection.

Jim, at first wary and then baffled, thought the best option available to him in this situation was to remain silent. Nobody ever got into trouble by keeping their mouth shut.

“Okay,” Kate said, turning from the mirror and removing the jacket to hang it in the closet. He watched her every move with close attention, his gaze lingering on the lace cups of her bra, cut almost down to her nipples.

She walked over to the bed and turned on the lamp, back to the door to turn off the overhead. Half in shadow, she slipped out of the silk slacks, leaving her dressed in the bra and a pair of matching panties. He swallowed hard. Now he understood why they called them briefs.

“Erland and Alice had no kids,” Kate said, wandering back over to the dresser. She raised her arms to run both hands through her hair. The line of her back arched and he could see in the mirror that her breasts were threatening to spill out of the bra.

She met his eyes in the mirror. Did she know what she was doing to him? Her voice was so cool, so controlled, so matter-of-fact. “Victoria, Erland’s sister, married Eugene, had three kids- William and Charlotte dead, Oliver still living. Victoria divorced Eugene-according to Max, at least in part due to family disapproval over their lily white daughter marrying an Aleut. Victoria then went to work in the family business, helping keep the books. Prior to that, though, she’d had a very public falling-out with them over their plans to lay off union workers and replace them with contract hires. In the meantime, her husband, Eugene, gets himself elected to head the employees’ union. This must have been pretty annoying to a man like Jasper Bannister, not to mention his son and heir.”

She walked over and got the straight-backed chair out of the corner and carried it back to the dresser. She straddled it and rested her arms along the back and her chin on her arms. His eyes dropped to the graceful line of her leg, knees bent, toes pointed. She rolled her head one way and then another, and met Jim’s eyes again in the mirror, an obvious invitation in her own. He walked over to put his hands on her shoulders again, this time with no fabric, no beads between his skin and hers.

“Is that enough, in and of itself, to cause Erland, a highly respected and greatly feared member of the community, to gallop out to the valley and torch his sister’s house?” Kate closed her eyes and tipped her head back. “Maybe my neck a little. Yeah, right there.”

Her body seemed to hum with pleasure beneath his hands.

“I could understand that,” Kate said, “if the attempt hadn’t been so clumsy. One thing you can be sure of, Erland would hire good help. If Erland had meant to burn down Victoria’s house as a warning to her, he would have hired someone smart enough to check that the house was empty. Arson is one thing. Murder is quite another.”

He held her neck firmly but gently and began working at her spine with the other.

She let her head fall forward again and moaned a little. The sound went straight to his cock, which he had thought couldn’t get any harder. “Not to mention which,” she said, gasping a little, “Victoria and Eugene’s actions on behalf of the union were fruitless. PME did in fact lay off all its union employees and replace them with contract hires, and now it’s one of the top twenty business concerns in the state. It’s hard to quarrel with that kind of success, and certainly Victoria’s daughter, Charlotte, and her son Oliver both have had some kind of financial stake in the success of the family firm. And so does Victoria. Now that she’s out.”

He had to clear his throat to speak. “You’re thinking he didn’t do it, then?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He knows who did, though. Hey.”

He was having difficulty focusing on her words. It was a minute before he said, “What?”

“I wonder who Charlotte’s heir was?”

Her skin had been steadily warming beneath her hands. He’d been angry at her for meeting Erland, for deliberately putting herself in harm’s way. Now all his anger seemed to have vanished, to be replaced by a need so great it threatened to drown him.

“I said I wonder who Charlotte’s heir was? Emily, do you think?”

He dragged himself back from the precipice with difficulty. “Yeah. Probably. Why not? They were as good as married.”

“It would explain why she won’t talk to me. Erland could have threatened to contest Charlotte’s will in court.”

“Could have.” He couldn’t stop himself, his hands slipped down over her shoulders and cupped her breasts.

She leaned back against him and he looked up to see them in the mirror, her seated in front of him, straddling the chair, his hands slipping into the cups of her bra, that tiny little pair of panties barely containing the mound between her legs.

He picked her up and carried her to the bed.