Whisper to the Blood

NINETEEN

Over the next three days Kate went in turn to all the aunties, Balasha, Edna, Joy, and even Auntie Vi again. To a woman, they stonewalled her. "They're stonewalling me," she said with incredulity that evening. "It's like they've rehearsed or something."

"They probably have," Jim said without looking up from George R. R. Martin's A Feast for Crows, which he was rereading because Martin was taking an excruciatingly long time to get the fifth book out, at which time Jim might finally learn what had happened to Jon and Arya. It was a good book and a great series and he felt that rereading it was a lot more productive and infinitely more enjoyable than entering into a conversation that he felt in his bones was only going to go in circles until it started biting its own tail.

"They're stonewalling me," she said again, this time emphasizing the last word. "Me!" "Uh-huh," Jim said.

"You should care more about this," she said, glaring down at his bent head.

There had been a lot of glaring going on lately, Johnny thought. He was keeping his own head down over his books at the dining table, praying that this night at least they'd get to eat dinner before the fight started. Place reminded him of an armed camp lately. "Place reminds me of an armed camp lately," he said out loud.

"Shut up," Kate and Jim said together.

"Okay," Johnny said, and went back to Robert Frost.

"Is Howie still at the post?"

"Yup."

Frost was a cranky old fart with a forked tongue, and you were never really confident that he was saying what you thought he was, Johnny thought. They were each supposed to memorize one Frost poem, recite it in class, and then lead a discussion on it for their lit final. His turn was fast approaching and it was crunch time for picking the poem.

"He's still afraid someone is going to kill him?"

"That's what he says."

He'd been considering one of the shorter poems, like "Fire and Ice" because of the whole kaboom thing, or "Once, by the Pacific" because he liked the monster image, or maybe "Design," because the fat white spider would freak out all the girls except Van, and that would be fun.

"Because somebody shot at Mac? And because he thinks they thought they were shooting at him?"

"Something's burning."

Kate charged back into the kitchen and yanked the moose roast out of the oven. She'd been cooking a lot lately, taking both his and Jim's turn in the rotation. The food had been really good, too, and there had been a lot of it.

He liked "Two Tramps in Mud Time" best but it was too long. Maybe "In a Glass of Cider." He read through it again. It was short enough. Maybe too short. Was there enough there to discuss? It had that whole "seize the day" thing going on. Seize the bubble thing, anyway.

"I can think offhand of a hundred people who'd like to take a punch at Howie. But shoot him? Have you investigated the possibility that whoever was shooting at Mac actually meant to? Shoot at Mac?"

"I'm looking. I'm not finding. He was a pretty solitary guy, no wife, no kids, no girlfriend. His social life seemed to center around the Roadhouse and nobody there says any different."

He hadn't seen Dick Gallagher around lately. He wondered if he was out at the Suulutaq trailer. Creepy, hanging out where a guy had got shot. He'd only seen Dick a couple of times since he'd gone out to the Roadhouse. He was secretly relieved that he hadn't been required to bring the guy home, and at the same time he was puzzled at Dick's refusals to his invitations. Polite but definite, he'd excused himself on the grounds of work. "Gotta make a good impression," he'd said, winking.

He winked a lot, Doyle did. Dick did.

"Howie can't think for one moment that the aunties would shoot at him, can he?" "Don't know."

"I mean, why would they? If they did-"

There was sudden silence in the kitchen. It lasted long enough for both men to look up.

Kate was standing with a cast-iron lid in one hand and a large spoon in the other and an arrested expression on her face.

"What?" Jim and Johnny said together. Jim even looked over his shoulder to make sure no one had driven into the clearing. "What's wrong, Kate?"

Kate put the spoon down and the lid back on the pot. "I know why he's scared."

"Howie? Why?"

"Of course," she said, unheeding. "Of course, that explains everything. Not who did it, no, but all the rest of it." She smacked her forehead. "How could I have been so stupid not to see it before? It's Howie all over!"

She went for the door, stamped on her boots, donned parka and hat, and grabbed her gloves. "Go ahead and eat, guys, it's all ready. I've got to go somewhere."

She opened the door and Old Sam Dementieff was standing there in his ragged Carhartt bibs, Sorels picked and pocked and nipped from so many years of use that they were perilously close to being ventilated, and a sheepskin flap cap with the chin strap hanging loose. He didn't look happy.

"Sam," Kate said, startled. "I didn't hear you drive up."

He looked past her at Jim. "Talia Macleod has been murdered."

Talia Macleod and Dick Gallagher had spent the last three days on the river, traveling from village to village by snow machine. They'd gone south first, Double Eagle, Chulyin, Potlatch, and Red Run, retracing Kate's recent journey, after which the plan was to overnight in Niniltna and head back north. The tour would end in Ahtna, where a town meeting had been scheduled and the chief operating officer of Global Harvest was scheduled to appear personally to answer questions and address the concerns of the Park rats about the mine.

It had been a good plan. Apart from the fact that in the middle of a cold, dark winter Bush Alaskans were glad to see anybody, Park rats also liked it when people who wanted something came to them. Bush Alaskans spent half their lives four-wheeling, snowmachining, boating, driving, and flying to Fairbanks and Anchorage and Juneau When the legislature was in session, to buy food and supplies, to go to school, to go to the hospital, to attend Native corporation shareholder meetings and the Alaska Federation of Natives' annual convention, and to bang a shoe on their legislative representative's desk. Park rats traveled from home so often not because they wanted to but because they had to.

Now someone wanted to dig a big-ass hole in their backyard, and that someone came to them, one village at a time. They could have rented the Egan Convention Center in Anchorage and left it up to the villagers to get there, and to pay to get there, stay there, and eat there. This willingness to show up in person in even the tiniest village predisposed even the most cautious, conservative and conservation-minded Park rat in their favor. Global Harvest, Kate thought, did indeed know what they were doing.

The villages south of Niniltna were bigger than the villages north, each of them on or near the mouth of a creek with a substantial salmon run, each built on what had been a traditional fish camp, summer home for the tribe before it packed up in the fall and headed into the mountains after the caribou. The villages were permanent fixtures now, each with a school, an airstrip, and a post office, even if that post office was in someone's living room. For the most part they practiced a subsistence lifestyle, but that lifestyle wouldn't have been possible without the quarterly Association dividend, the annual state permanent fund dividend, and heavy federal subsidies for health, education, and fuel. Some residents, like Ike Jefferson, had to make ends meet by moving to Anchorage for the winter. Some eked out a living trapping and tanning hides and selling them at the fur auction during Fur Rendezvous. Most of them fished salmon during the summer and halibut and crab in the fall, either on their own boats or pulling down a crew share on someone else's, and if they didn't get their moose that fall, they didn't eat meat that winter.

None of the villages were over 200 in population, Red Run the largest at 197, Tikani the smallest, the last official count showing 29, although Kate thought the next census might show one, if Vidar lived that long. Macleod and Gallagher had gone to the southernmost village first, Red Run, and spent the night. They'd spent the next day at Potlatch and Chulyin, overnighting in Chulyin. The third day they'd spent in Double Eagle, and since the weather, while overcast, was still relatively mild and since it was only a little over thirty miles, they had decided to come on into Niniltna and spend the night there.

The scheduled town meeting in Double Eagle had taken place in the school gymnasium, as all such events in the smaller villages did, the gym being the only place big enough to hold all the villagers at once. People had stayed so long and asked so many questions that some had started to bring in food, and the event had turned into a potluck dinner. Someone had brought in a boom box, and somebody else had gotten out the basketballs, and there was dancing at one end of the court and a nonstop game of horse at the other.

"It was about nine, maybe nine thirty when things broke up," Dick Gallagher told them. He looked strained, his face washed-out and clammy. "Talia told me she was going to go on ahead, and for me to stay behind and make sure any stragglers got the handout and the raffle ticket for the two nights in Anchorage, and then follow her into Niniltna."

"There's a raffle?" Old Sam said, perking up.

They were at the post. Dick Gallagher was the one who had brought the news to Bernie's. Old Sam had been there, had brought Dick Gallagher to the post and called Maggie in to babysit him, and had come for Jim. Kate and Mutt had accompanied the two of them back to town.

Gallagher nodded wearily. "Yeah. For two nights in Anchorage. Well. There was supposed to be. I don't know now."

"You were comfortable with traveling from Double Eagle to Niniltna on your own?" Jim said. "I thought this was your first time on the river. Not to mention on a snow machine."

"I was a little nervous about that," Gallagher said, "but Talia said that I'd be okay so long as I remembered to turn right and stuck to the river." He gave a ghost of a smile. "It's kinda hard to miss."

"The raffle's for two nights in Anchorage?" Old Sam said.

"Yeah, plus airfare, plus a rental car, plus a thousand dollars in cash. I don't know, we sold the tickets up and down the river. I guess it's still on. I'll have to get hold of Mr. O'Malley to find out. I imagine he'll want me to step in, at least for now."

Kate, standing in a corner with her arms crossed, trying to keep out of Jim's line of sight, thought that in spite of the horror of the situation Gallagher sounded just a little bit complacent about his step up in the world. She also thought he was seriously jumping the gun. Global Harvest had thus far displayed a savvy that Kate had never seen equaled by any Outside organization bent on development in the Bush, and she didn't think their management was going to endow a cheechako like Gallagher with higher powers. For one thing, he didn't have the face time or the street cred that Talia Macleod had had in Alaska. For another, he didn't have the time served in the Park.

"What time did you leave the gym?" Jim said. He was typing Gallagher's words into a statement form on his computer as they spoke.

"About ten thirty, I think. I don't have a watch. Everyone was gone, and I packed up the leftover handouts. Talia was always very anal about not leaving trash behind. I went outside and packed everything in the sled and took off."

"Which way did you go?"

"Well, the school's kind of back from the river." "We know," Old Sam said.

"Of course. Sorry. I didn't go through the village, I took the creek and went around."

"Why not go through the village?"

Gallagher hesitated. "Well, to tell you the truth, Sergeant Chopin, I'm not real good with driving the snow machine yet. I'd just as soon not turn myself loose where there's people everywhere. You know?"

Either because Gallagher was afraid he'd hurt someone, or because he was afraid he'd make himself look bad in front of the villagers, Kate thought.

"So you took the creek to the river," Jim said. "Then what?"

"Well, it's only a couple hundred feet to the river, and it was real dark, the trees and the bushes hanging over everything and all. I didn't see her on the way down."

"What did you see?"

"Her snow machine. Of course at first I didn't know it was hers, so far all of them look alike to me. It's like women and cars, you know? Show me a female who can tell the difference between a Chevy Silverado and a Ford Ranger and I'll marry her." He smiled. "I'm like that with snow machines."

No one smiled back, and his own vanished. "But you recognized Talia's," Jim said. "How'd that happen?"

"Well, it was just sitting there, stuck in a snowbank, idling, with nobody on it and nobody around. I pulled up next to it and I saw her stuff in the trailer. I shouted for her a couple of times and there was no answer. So then I got to thinking that maybe she hit a bump and fell off and the snow machine kept going. So I went back up the creek, slow like, you know, looking for her." He paused, and swallowed.

"And?"

"And I found her," Gallagher said. "Both parts."

There was a momentary silence. "Both parts?" Jim said.

"Yeah." His face was pale and damp with perspiration, and his clasped hands were grinding against each other. "Her body was lying over to my left, kind of close to the bank, in the shadows, you know? So it was no wonder I didn't see her on the way down." He swallowed again.

"Want some water or something?"

"No, no, I'm okay, it's just, it's so godawful, Sergeant Chopin."

"What was, Mr. Gallagher?"

Gallagher looked up and said, "Her head was missing."

"What?" Jim said.

Gallagher nodded. "I found it about twenty feet up the creek."

Kate felt Old Sam look at her and turned her head to meet his eyes. It was the first time she'd ever seen that expression on his face.

"I went and got someone from the village to stay with her, and then I came back. I know you hang out a lot at that bar out the end of the road, Sergeant Chopin, so I figured I had a good chance of finding you there. You weren't but Sam was, and he brought me here."

He spread his hands. "The rest you know."