Whisper to the Blood

EIGHTEEN

You knew," she said to Jim. "You knew and you didn't tell me."

"You knew I was Bernie's alibi," he said. "I sure as hell didn't know Bernie'd dragged the aunties into it," she said hotly. "Neither did I."

She glared at him.

He leaned forward and stared back, his chin out. "Neither did I, Kate," he said again, slowly and with great deliberation, "and I'd appreciate it if you'd take my word for that, too."

A sudden rush of color scorched her face. She tried to ignore it. "Have you asked Howie who this alleged assassin was?"

"Have you asked the aunties who they hired?"

They glared some more.

"Howie's just down the hall," Jim said. "Shall we?" "Let's," Kate said.

Oh man," Howie said when he saw Kate. "Come on, Jim, buddy, there's no need for this." He scrambled up on his bunk, pressing himself into a corner. "Don't you come near me, Kate," he said, his voice rising. "Don't you do it."

Jim opened the door to the cell and Kate sauntered in like a small but very deadly tiger, and, very much like a big cat, curled up at the end of Howie's bed. She crossed one leg over the other and linked her hands on her knee. She looked as if she felt quite at home, with no plans to leave anytime soon. She even smiled at him.

He might have whimpered. His eyes looked wild and he was definitely sweating. He gave Jim a pleading look. "Jim, come on, man."

Jim leaned against the door and crossed his arms. "You're not under arrest, Howie. You can walk out of here any time you want. You want?"

Howie licked his lips.

Howie Katelnikof was a guy who never looked as tall as he was. He had a hard time standing up straight and an even harder one looking anyone straight in the eye. No matter how often he showered his hair was always greasy, and no matter how often he changed his clothes they always smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke, and beer. He might have been a good-looking guy, he possessed the requisites, height and weight proportional, thick hair, regular features, but his character had forced his eyes a little too close together, had pushed his chin just a fraction too far back. His character oozed out of his pores and stained him for what he was, a wannabe crook who'd watched Oceans Eleven so many times he thought he was George Clooney when, as Bobby said, "Who he really is is Steve Buscemi in Fargo."

"Let's talk, Howie," Kate said.

"I doanwanna," Howie said.

"Relax, Howie," Kate said, and reached over to pat his knee. He cringed. "I don't want to talk about the time you took a shot at me and my kid and damn near killed my dog. I'm not ready for that conversation yet. Someday. I promise you." She patted his knee again. "But not today."

A bead of sweat drooped from his nose. He kept his face turned away. He might have been trembling. He looked like he felt the jaws of the snake closing around him after he'd been dropped into the glass cage.

Still in that light, good-humored, terrifying voice, Kate said, "What's this Jim tells me about the aunties hiring somebody to kill Louis?"

"I didn't do it," Howie said.

"What didn't you do?" Kate said. "'Cause, forgive me, Howie, but the list is getting kind of long. You didn't shoot at my truck? You didn't kill Mac Devlin? You didn't hire out to the aunties to kill your best bud Louis Deem?"

"I didn't kill Louis!" He came out of the corner, realized how close that put him to Kate, and shrank back in again. "I didn't do it," he said.

"But you're saying somebody did."

He nodded sullenly.

"So the aunties hired somebody to kill Louis Deem that wasn't you."

He nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again.

"Then how do you know about it? Excuse me, but it doesn't sound like the kind of thing they're going to drop casually into the conversation, Howie. Especially into a conversation with you."

"How come you're always so mean?" It was almost a wail.

"Because you don't deserve anything better, you little weasel," Kate said.

Jim cleared his throat. She turned to look at him. He shook his head. She almost flipped him off, but he was right. In this instance, insulting Howie probably wasn't the method of interrogation most productive of results.

"Howie," she said, turning back to him, "come on. You know you're gonna tell me, one way or another. Either in here, where you've got Jim and the Fifth Amendment on your side." She smiled again, and again he cowered from it. "Or out there somewhere, with just you, and me, and none of those messy Miranda warnings to confuse either one of us."

She waited. Jim waited. Howie sniveled. It was disgusting. Kate clicked her tongue impatiently and got up to grab Howie a bunch of toilet paper. She shoved it into his hands. "Here. Blow your nose."

He did, smearing snot on his cheeks.

"Jesus Christ, Howie," Kate said, disgusted, "can't you even blow your own nose right? Come on. What did you mean when you said that the aunties hired someone to kill Louis Deem?"

He looked at the crumpled ball of tissue. "I dint do it. I dint kill Louis."

"Okay," Kate said. "Say for the sake of argument I believe you. Who did?"

"I don't know." He looked up. "By the time I found him, he was dead."

Back in Jim's office, he said, "How much of that do you believe?"

Kate dropped into a chair and rubbed her face with both hands, and then scrubbed at her scalp for good measure, ruffling the short cap of thick black hair until she looked like an angry panther. She shook her head and it obediently ordered itself again. Was there anything, he thought, that didn't do exactly and precisely what Kate Shugak told it to?

"I don't know," she said. "I talked to Auntie Vi this morning."

"And?"

"Oh, god," she said miserably.

"Did she say they did?" he asked, disbelieving.

She looked up. "She didn't say they didn't. And she gave me to understand that if they did have him killed, it was my fault for not doing it first."

"Christ." He went behind his desk and sat down with a thump. "It's the fucking Sopranos in the fucking Park."

"Okay," Kate said, clinging to sanity, "say they did hire him. Do you believe him when he says he didn't do it?"

"There was that tire track at the scene that matched Howie's Suburban. But you know as well as I do that a tire track all by itself isn't conclusive. Hell, Louis could have taken Howie's ride to go up to the Step to see Dan when I sprung him that day."

"Why wouldn't he take his own vehicle?"

"It was at home, fifty miles from here. Howie picked him up. Or he was supposed to."

Kate thought about it. "Howie sure had opportunity, Jim," she said. "And if the aunties paid him to do it, he had motive. And there must be a dozen guns out at Louis's house. He had means."

He looked at her. "Do you think he did it?"

Mutt, as was not her custom, had not gone straight to Jim and slobbered all over him when they'd arrived at the post. Instead, she had remained at Kate's side. Now she looked up at Kate with a steady yellow gaze. Solidarity, sister. "I don't know," she said. "He's just- He's such a little weasel, Jim. This is Howie Katelnikof we're talking about here, the Park rat most famous for achieving mobility while lacking a vertebral column. It's kind of hard for me to imagine him setting out to kill in cold blood."

"He took a shot at you," Jim said.

"From one moving truck, at another," she said. "He got lucky. Or maybe even unlucky."

"How so?"

"You know how hard it is to shoot a stationary target. Shooting and hitting a moving target is almost impossible, even for an expert, and he's no expert. Much as I loathe acquitting Howie of malice, he could have meant it like a shot across the bows. Throw a scare into us and then go home and tell Louis he did it. Doesn't mean he won't pay for it one day," she added.

"Never for one moment imagined otherwise," he said.

"And though Louis sure as hell wasn't anyone's nominee for humanitarian of the year, he was the closest thing Howie had to a brother. He fed him, he housed him. What little social structure Howie had, Louis gave him."

"He's still got the house," Jim said. "Him and Willard, still living on what Louis inherited from his second wife following her untimely death."

"You think Louis could have threatened to kick them out for some reason? And Howie killed him before he did?" Kate considered this. "Possible, I guess." She shook her head. "I don't know. If the aunties admit they did hire him, you can charge him."

"And if I charged him, I'd have to charge them with conspiracy to commit."

She straightened and looked at him, a sick expression on her face. "Oh. Of course. I… I didn't think of that."

"It's all I have been thinking about," he said grimly, "ever since Howie made me believe it might be true." He paused. "Well. Mostly all I've been thinking about."

Again she blushed, another scorcher. "There is no way," she said steadily, ignoring his last words. "There is no way you're going to march my aunties into a jail cell on the say-so of a loser like Howie Katelnikof."

"I've already winked at the law once in the murder of Louis Deem," he said. "I won't do it again, Kate."

"You'll do it for Bernie but you won't do it for Auntie Vi?" she said angrily.

He got up, came around the desk, and yanked her to her feet. She shoved her hands against his chest but he wasn't trying to kiss her. He shook her once, hard enough to rock her head back on her shoulders. "This is not about that, Kate. What happens there"-a stab of a finger in the general direction of the homestead-"stays there. What happens here is something else. Know the difference."

This time she took the bait. "How could you do that, Jim?"

"I didn't do it alone, Kate."

"I said no!" Kate said. She made an effort and said more calmly, "I said no. Lots of times."

"You turned off the stove," he said. "I- What?"

"When I started coming for you," he said. "You turned off the stove."

She opened her mouth and nothing came out.

"Plus you came three times." He walked to the door and opened it. "We were both angry, Kate, but don't try to turn it into something it wasn't."

She found herself on the other side of his office door without knowing quite how she got there. The door shut in her face. Maggie gave her a quizzical look. "I hate men," Kate said.

Maggie shook her head. "I hear you, honey," she said mournfully. "Oh, how I hear you."