Whisper to the Blood

SEVENTEEN

He was gone when she woke up the next morning. On the whole, Kate was relieved. She rolled to the edge of the bed and to her dismay her legs wouldn't support her at first. When she felt confident enough to get to her feet, she staggered a little before she found her balance, and though she hated to admit it she was walking a little splay-legged on her way into the bathroom, where she ran a tub of water as hot as she could stand it. She let herself down into the tub with gingerly care and soaked until the water went tepid, by which time she was marginally mobile again and grateful for it.

The clothes she had been wearing the day before were beyond repair, even the jeans, the fly torn open and one of the buttons missing. She hunted for it but it was not to be found. With a sigh she bundled up T-shirt, jeans, bra, and panties and went downstairs. From her place in front of the long-dead fire, Mutt looked up and gave her a long yellow stare, eyebrows pointedly raised.

"You just shut up," Kate said, and went into the kitchen to find that Jim had left her a fresh pot of coffee. She thought about pouring it out and making her own, one untainted by Chopin hands.

Wasteful, though, and hypocritical. All her anger at him had been seared away over the long and tumultuous night. She winced into a seat at the table, and sipped coffee and watched the sky lighten in the east. Mostly cloudy, and the thermometer mounted outside the window showed the temperature at ten above. She'd miss the sun of the past week but she would welcome the warmer weather. They all would.

There was a tendency to dwell on the events of the previous evening. She forced those memories into a corner of her mind and shut the door on them, for now, turning her focus to the startling revelation Jim had made, that had knocked her so sideways she couldn't even- No, Kate, she thought fiercely. Focus.

All right. First, she had to consider the source. Howie was a congenital liar. Truth was such an alien concept to Howie that it might as well have a green card. Anything that came out of Howie's mouth had to be evaluated in the context of Howie's life, known associates, current misdemeanors, and planned felonies. There ought, in fact, to be a frequent felony plan for Howie. So many felonies and he got so many free days in jail. Oh wait, they already had one of those.

On the other hand, Howie was also capable of recognizing the truth as a commodity, with market value, which value might be exchanged for protective custody in the event Howie felt his life threatened.

Kate got up and poured herself some more coffee. She noted that half the coffee cake was gone, as well as a loaf of the white bread, most of the fried liver, leaving the rest congealed on the bottom of the frying pan, and all of the mashed potatoes. Jim had been hungry this morning.

She stood still, staring down at the empty and half-empty dishes.

If he could be believed, he hadn't slept with Talia Macleod.

One of the reasons she had a hard time believing it was that she couldn't understand why not. It was what Jim did, it was who he was. He was a dog. He admitted it. For a long time, he had positively gloried in it. The Father of the Park might be only an honorific, but it was certainly true in spirit. Kate would need double the fingers and toes to count the names of the women he'd been involved with over the years.

So, why wouldn't he sleep with Talia Macleod? The question was baffling, and unanswerable.

The cinnamon in the streusel topping teased at her nostrils, and her stomach growled in response. She started to cut a wedge and then put down the knife and got out a fork. She carried the cake tin to the table with the fresh cup of coffee and waded in.

Howie could have made it up. It wouldn't have been the first time he had indulged in creative fiction to divert attention from his own indiscretions.

She shoved the coffee cake away. Then why did she feel so sick? So apprehensive? So terrified?

She donned boots, parka, hat, and gloves and poured coffee into an insulated mug, dosing it with enough half-and-half to make café au lait. Mutt trotted over and Kate let them out the door, snagging a blue plastic boat cushion from the bench on the deck on the way.

Around the back of the house she postholed through the snow to the little bluff that overlooked the creek running in back of her house. Frozen solid, the resulting chasm looked like a lightning bolt imprisoned in the earth. Bare birch and aspen branches bent beneath the weight of frost, spruce trees slowly dying from the spruce bark beetle infestation were transformed into fairy-tale homes for elves and wizards. An arctic hare peeped out from a blueberry thicket, nose quivering, and freezing into immobility when it felt the weight of Mutt's interested eye. On the eastern horizon the Quilaks loomed large and menacing, mercenaries in arms to the gathering clouds overhead. Another battle for winter in the Park's near future was imminent, or the portents lied.

"Why do I think he's telling the truth?" Kate said out loud. "I'm not even fighting it."

For some reason, she remembered the trip down the river, talking to the Kaltaks, the Jeffersons, the Rileys. As sure as she was sitting here, they were to the last man, woman, and child convinced that the Johansens were responsible for the attacks. And to the last man, woman, and child they were equally convinced that the Johansens had been brought to account for their crimes.

Kate was afraid that they were right. Someone had decided on their own to take care of the problem.

"Like the aunties," she said out loud, feeling sick again. She swallowed hard. "Like the aunties might have taken care of Louis Deem."

Kate thought back to her visit to Vidar Johansen, that cranky, lonely old man, the village built by his family emptying out two and three at a time around him. The school was gone. The post office was gone, mail delivered now to Niniltna. She could see the Johansen boys of Tikani, descendants of some of the oldest blood in the Park, getting hungrier and hungrier, too proud and too contrary to ask for help, until the only option seemed to be to forage for food and fuel wherever they could find it. From whomever they had to take it, even their neighbors.

And even if they hadn't, which she didn't know for a fact, she could see how they would be the obvious suspects.

If it was the Johansens, it would make sense that all the attacks occurred south of Niniltna, none of them north. Efficient predators know enough not to hunt too close to home. It frightens the game.

An eagle soared overhead on outspread wings, a soft presence on the minimal winter thermals generated by the rising sun. He spotted the hare and dipped his right wing, banking down into a swooping, tightening spiral. The hare vanished, snow falling from the trembling branches of the blueberry bush. The eagle straightened out and beat his wings to regain his original altitude, moving on. There would be another hare, or a squirrel, or a fox. There always was. Eagles, card-carrying carnivores, scavengers, opportunists, weren't picky about their food.

If someone had in fact constituted themselves judge, jury, and executioner in the matter of the snow machine attacks on the Kanuyaq River, that someone would have to be identified and warned against such action in future. She remembered Jim's complaints about Park rats taking justice into their own hands. Demetri attacking Smith for blading his beaver line. Bonnie Jeppsen keying the truck of the kid who as a prank put a dead salmon into the drop box. Arliss Kalifonsky putting a (probably well deserved, Kate thought) bullet into Mickey the next time he raised his hand to her. Dan O'Brien kicking a poacher's ass for trying to sell him a bear bladder.

They were all classic examples of Newton 's third law, and a hundred years ago these equal and opposite reactions would have earned nothing more than an approving nod from passersby, even if those passersby were territorial policemen. In their time the TPs were even more thin on the ground than their descendants, the state troopers, and welcomed all the help they got so long as it didn't make them more work.

Today, there was a trooper post in the Park, with a trooper assigned to it full time, and the Bill of Rights was more than just a paper under glass in the National Archives in Washington, D.G. Jim was right. He should be the first call people made, and for a while he had been, or so it seemed to Kate. What had changed?

A fat, glossy raven spoke from a nearby treetop. He had a lot to say in croaks and clicks and chuckles, slipping effortlessly from one raven dialect to another. Mutt's ears twitched and she gave the raven a hard look. The raven chattered on regardless, not unaware but not afraid, either. Even Mutt couldn't climb a tree.

"Maybe Talia turned him down," Kate said. That was it, it had to be. Jim had made his move, and Talia had declined with thanks.

Kate remembered Macleod's manner with the men on the board that morning. She'd definitely had a thing with Demetri at some point, and she'd been flirting with Old Sam, probably fifty years her senior. She remembered with painful clarity the intimacy between Jim and Macleod she'd seen at Bobby's house.

No, Kate didn't think Talia Macleod would have turned down Jim Chopin. She would have tripped Jim and beat him to the ground first.

And then another thought struck her, almost blinding in its force. "Oh, god," she said. "Oh, god."

Mutt looked at her in concern. It wasn't a tone of voice she was accustomed to hearing. She nudged Kate with her head and gave a soft, anxious whine.

"I believe Howie? And I don't believe Jim?"

She had to close her eyes while the world righted itself around her, and when she opened them again she was determined to banish thoughts of Jim Chopin from her mind, at least for the present. She reacquired her train of thought and held on grimly, determined not to be thrown off track this time.

Park rats were a self-sufficient bunch, no question, but Kate would never have described them as lawless. In fact, out here on what was still pretty much a frontier, people had more of a tendency to abide by the rules than not. When your nearest neighbor lives five miles away, the golden rule in particular became not just a nice adage but a way of life. There was no phone to pick up and call 911, even if there were a firehouse or a hospital within driving distance, which there wasn't, and even if there was a road between the fire-house or the hospital and your house, which there also wasn't. When you got into trouble you were going to need help. You wouldn't get it if you had a reputation for breaking the rules, for helping yourself to a neighbor's vegetable patch when she was out fishing, say, or making off with a cord of wood when they were on a Costco run, or cleaning out the cache when they were in Anchorage getting their eyes checked. Or draining their fuel tanks when they were on vacation.

So where was this coming from?

Her butt was starting to go numb and Kate was rising to her feet to return to the house when another thought stopped her in her tracks.

Louis Deem. Shot on a deserted stretch of Park road by a still unknown assassin. Louis Deem, embezzler, confidence man, thief, triple wife murderer. Louis Deem, who had lost no opportunity to abuse and victimize any Park rat unfortunate enough to cross his path.

Was Louis Deem's murder where all this began? She turned with decision and made for the garage.

Kate let herself in Auntie Vi's front door, only to be confronted by a stranger. "Oh," she said. "Hello. I'm looking for Auntie Vi."

The stranger-stocky, medium height, dark hair and eyes-had a broad grin that came too easily. "Don't shoot," he said genially, holding his hands up. "I'm a paying guest."

Kate smiled politely. "No problem."

The smile, set in an oval face with almond-shaped hazel eyes set on high flat cheekbones and a wide, expressive mouth, all of it framed with a short cap of black silk, the husky rasp of her voice, the whole package made him straighten up and step in for a closer look. "I'm Dick Gallagher. Hey, cool dog." He stretched out a hand and snapped his fingers. "Here, boy."

Mutt looked at him, a long, steady, considering gaze.

"Heh," Gallagher said, and dropped his hand. "He doesn't take kindly to strangers, I guess."

"She's a girl, for starters," Kate said. "I recognize your name, I think. You're working for Talia Macleod out at Suulutaq, aren't you?"

"That's right," he said. "Good job, too. Pays well."

"Congratulations," Kate said, looking around for Auntie Vi.

He hooked a thumb at the kitchen. "I could even afford to buy you breakfast. Interested?"

"I've eaten, thanks. Is Auntie Vi here?"

"I haven't seen her since breakfast. Come on, a cup of coffee can't hurt."

It had been a bitter cold ride in and she could use a warm-up, so she followed him down the passageway to the kitchen and sat down at the table opposite him.

"So what's your name?" he said, getting a plate of French toast and bacon from the oven.

"Kate," she said. "Kate Shugak."

His fork stopped halfway to his mouth. "Kate Shugak," he said.

"Yeah. Where you from?"

He shrugged, and the fork continued its upward motion. "Outside." He grinned again, although this time it seemed to lack its previous warmth. "I understand that's what I'm supposed to say."

She registered a slight tingling of her Spidey sense. She shrugged, watching his face. "It's what you can say."

He cocked his head a little. "Meaning if I do, I must be hiding something?"

She surprised both of them by laughing, a rough husk of amusement that by the appreciative gleam in his eye he found as attractive as the rest of her. "If you aren't, you'd be the only cheechako in the Park who isn't." She added, "And maybe the only one in Alaska." She looked at him, her face a genial mask. "How long you been here?"

"Couple months now."

"You like it?"

He mopped up the last of the syrup with the last piece of French toast and pointed it at her. "I'll tell you, Kate," he said, "I fucking love it. I've never seen a place with more opportunities to make a buck. Like I'm headed out on a snow machine trip today, up and down the river with my boss going to the villages to talk to the people about the mine, and I get overtime for that. Man." He laughed. "I like it all right. I got a warm place to sleep, plenty to eat, and"-he winked at her-"I'm making new friends every day. A man can get ahead here. Yeah," he said, regarding his forkful of food with a satisfaction that verged on complacency, "I fucking love it here. I'm going to stay forever."

Or at least long enough to make enough money so he could spend the rest of his life deep-sea fishing in Manzanillo, Kate thought. "You're what we call a boomer," she said.

He looked quizzical. "Baby boomer, you mean?"

"No. Just a boomer. Somebody who comes to Alaska to make good, and who does very well."

His smile hardened momentarily, only to return at double wattage. "Nothing wrong with a man making a good living."

"Nothing at all," she said cordially.

She agreed with him too easily and he didn't trust her response, which proved he wasn't entirely stupid. Still, he was incapable of stopping his eyes from drifting down over her. They lingered on her chest for a moment, and then jerked back up, to the thin, white scar that bisected her throat. He looked at her face, and back at the scar. He opened his mouth to say something else when Auntie Vi slammed in the kitchen door. She saw Kate and stopped in her tracks. "Katya."

"Auntie." Kate rose. "Something we need to talk about, Auntie. Auntie Vi snorted. "You talk. I work." She filled the thermos she carried full of hot coffee.

"Great breakfast, Vi," Gallagher said heartily. "I don't know when I've eaten a better one."

Auntie Vi looked at him and snorted again. "You pay for what you get here." She slammed out again. Kate didn't move fast enough and almost got her nose caught in the door. She heard Gallagher chuckle behind her.

Kate found Auntie Vi mending gear in the net loft, a room over her garage that was insulated and Sheetrocked but unpainted. Heat came from a small Toyo stove, and the radio was on and currently tuned in to Park Air. Bobby's voice was transmuted by digital wizardry from its usual sonic boom to a more intimate and somehow sexier rumble, a velvet rasp of sound that made you listen whether you wanted to or not. NPR had missed out when they hadn't recruited Bobby Clark to replace Bob Edwards on Morning Edition. Of course, Bobby could be just a trifle more incendiary than Bob. "Okay, all you tree-hugging, bunny-loving, granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing Naderites, this one's for you," he said, "the only song worth a greenie shit," followed by the seductive opening licks of Three Dog Night's "Out in the Country." Bobby, Kate thought, was the living embodiment of Emerson's dictum that a foolish consistency was the hobgoblin of little minds.

Drift nets were heaped in orderly piles all over the floor, the one currently undergoing repair draped over a couple of sawhorses. Auntie Vi sat on a straight-backed wooden chair, head bent over hands wielding a hand-carved bone needle with unerring dexterity, translucent green monofilament almost magically assembling itself into a curtain of mesh whose individual cells were the exact size to snare a red salmon right behind the gills. "I'm busy," she said without looking up. "What you want?"

Okay, no point in not being equally blunt. "Howie Katelnikof told Jim Chopin that you and the other aunties hired someone to kill Louis Deem."

Auntie Vi didn't answer. The silence stretched out. Kate looked hard at the top of Auntie Vi's unresponsive head. "Auntie, did you hear me?"

"Nothing wrong with my ears."

Kate began to feel a slow burn. "Anything you'd like to say about it?" Mutt, standing next to her, moved a pace forward, putting a firm shoulder in between the two women.

"What to say?"

"Oh, I don't know," Kate said. "How about, Howie's full of shit? How about, Howie's trying to buy his way out of getting caught with a commercial load of caribou taken out of season? How about, Howie's a little weasel who'd sell out his own mother to stay out of jail? I'm wide open for suggestions here."

"Howie got no mother."

Kate looked at Auntie Vi's bent head with a dawning horror. "Jesus Christ, Auntie. Is it true?"

"Howie say who we suppose to hired?"

There was a short, charged silence. "No," Kate said. "Not yet."

Auntie Vi finished mending one hole and put down the needle to shake the cramp out of her fingers. "Tell something to me, Katya." She looked up for the first time, and Kate almost fell back a step from the anger she saw there.

"What you do, Katya? Tell me what you do. Louis Deem monster. Monster," she said again, with emphasis, making it clear. "Liar. Thief. Murderer. Murder three wives. Three. Jessie. Ruthie. Mary. All dead, by his hand. Everybody know this, Katya. And nobody do nothing."

"Not nothing, Auntie," Kate said. "Not nothing. He was brought to trial twice."

Auntie Vi dismissed this with a contemptuous wave of her hand.

Her button black eyes burned and her face was flushed. "What that matter? They let him go. You always let him go, Katya." She looked straight at Kate. "You always let him go." "Auntie, I-"

"Then he hurt those two girls. Those two babies. That one she comes to me crying her eyes out. She beg me for help. What do we do, Katya? You tell me. What do we do?"

Kate tried to say something and failed.

"What you do, Katya?" Auntie Vi said, and the resentment in her voice was as unmistakable as it was flaying. "What do you do?"

She took up the needle again and reached for the next hole in the gear.

Kate stood there, shocked, speechless.

"Working here," Auntie Vi said. "You bother me. Go."

Kate went.

Outside, she was just in time to see Gallagher and Macleod loading up their snow machines.

Macleod looked up and gave her a warm smile. "Kate," she said.

Kate made a heroic effort and managed a civil reply. "I hear you're making a trip downriver."

Macleod nodded. "Down first, one day in each village, back and overnight here, and then up to Ahtna, same."

"Spreading the gospel according to Global Harvest Resources Inc.," Kate said.

Macleod shrugged, unfazed by Kate's less than enthusiastic tone. "I told Global Harvest that if they wanted a successful operation they'd better get to know the neighbors."

"The 'Burbs know you're coming?"

"Oh yeah," Macleod said. "We've got town meetings set up everywhere we're stopping, and someplace warm to lay our heads every night. People have been pretty welcoming."

"So far," Kate said.

"So far," Macleod said agreeably.

Kate nodded at the rifle in the scabbard on Macleod's snow machine. "Keep that handy. There have been a couple of attacks on the river lately."

"Yeah, Jim told me."

In spite of herself Kate stiffened. "Did he."

"Yeah, I checked in with him before coming down here to pick up Dick. He wasn't happy when I told him what we were up to. He told me about the attacks and to be careful." Her ravishing smile flashed out again. "Good guy, Jim. For a trooper. Not to mention hot as a pistol."

Dick Gallagher's head whipped around at that, and his expression wasn't pretty, but Macleod didn't see. She pressed the starter and the engine roared into life. "See you, Kate!"

Kate stepped back as Macleod accelerated down the road, followed, at first tentatively and then with more assurance, by Gallagher.

Kate watched them until they were out of sight. "Yeah," she said, her lips tight. "See you."