Whisper to the Blood

TWENTY-FIVE

When he walked in the door there was a large plate with a wedge of some gooey blue cheese and a mound of toasted, salted walnuts, accompanied by a bowl of pears. There were napkins and paring knives at each place setting.

“No meat?” Jim said.

“Trust me,” Kate said, and raised her voice. “Dinner!”

Johnny ambled down the hall and flopped into his chair. “What’s this?”

“Cheese and fruit and nuts,” Kate said. “Trust me.”

Both of her men behaved as men will do and grumbled and whined and wrinkled their noses and shuffled their feet and implored the gods to explain why she was trying to starve them to death, but in the end plate and bowl were both empty.

“Okay, nice appetizer,” Jim said, “what’s for dinner?” He ducked out of the way of the thrown napkin as Johnny snickered.

“Oh well, if you insist,” Kate said, and went into the kitchen and pulled a moose burger meatloaf and roast potatoes out of the oven, loftily ignoring the cheering section.

“You know,” Jim said, sitting back from the table after the second course had likewise been cleared away, “this case is lousy with motive. What it lacks is evidence. Well, except for the body.”

Johnny watched and listened, his eyes following the conversation from one face to the other and back again.

Kate nodded. “Talia could have had other lovers.” He gave her his patented shark’s grin, and unreasonably reassured, she said, “And much as I hate to say it, I think our killer is a Park rat. There are no strangers in town unaccounted for in the witness statements.”

Johnny looked at Kate and opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

“My question is, do we still think the same person killed Mac as killed Talia?”

“Been thinking about that,” Jim said. “What did they have in common? Global Harvest. Mac hated Global Harvest for ripping him off. But Talia was Global Harvest’s point man in the Park. I don’t know, Kate, if Talia died before Mac, Mac would have had the hell of a motive for killing her.”

“I don’t see that,” Kate said, frowning slightly. “Anyone could have told you that Mac was always a guy with his eye to the main chance. He was hoping to get more money out of Global Harvest for the Nabesna. Why would he kill the goose he was hoping would lay him a golden egg?”

“By the way, I heard from the crime lab as I was leaving the post today. Howie’s rifle didn’t fire the bullet that killed Mac Devlin.”

“Really. What a shame.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Or something like it.” He paused. “What I’d like to do is charge him with the murder of Louis Deem.”

Kate looked at him. “Are you going to?”

“I said what I’d like to do. Louis was killed with a shotgun, and I didn’t get enough evidence at the scene even to guess at how tall the perp was. Let alone who he was.”

"There's the tire print at the scene. You matched it to Howie's truck."

"Yeah, but as Howie, the little weasel, points out, there isn't a Park rat who doesn't leave his keys in the truck when he gets out. Doesn't matter if it's at the store, the post office, the cafe, the Roadhouse, the school, home."

Kate remembered taking the key of her snow machine with her when she'd stopped to see Vidar. One time in how many years? Maybe her lifetime?

"Anyone could have driven off in his truck. And the tire track alone won't make a conviction, as Judge Singh was pleased to tell me."

"She wasn't pleased," Kate said.

Jim, a little ashamed of himself, said, "I know. I'm just-"

"I know," Kate said.

"Kate?" Johnny said.

"And I told you, Howie's reneging his confession all over the place anyway."

"And the aunties? What was the story they told you?"

"Pretty much the same one they told you," Jim said, unsmiling. "To a woman, they are shocked, shocked at the very idea of such a thing. Auntie Balasha says Howie must be mistaken, and she bawls when she says so." He shuddered. "Auntie Edna says he's full of shit. Auntie Joy says he was such a handsome little boy, she can hardly look at him without smiling at the memory."

"And Auntie Vi?"

"Auntie Vi told me to tend to my business and the aunties would tend to theirs."

"Ouch."

"Yeah."

"Was it just a story, then? Howie made it up?"

Jim thought of Bernie. "I don't know, Kate. I wish I did."

"Kate!"

They both looked at Johnny in mild surprise. "There's no need to shout, kid," Kate said. "Something on your mind?"

Now that he finally had the floor, Johnny seemed reluctant to talk.

"Spit it out," Kate said. "Van's not pregnant, is she?"

Johnny blushed beet red. "No! No, it's nothing like that. Jeez, Kate."

"Sorry," Kate said, sounding less than repentant. "What's up?"

"There's something I've been wanting to tell you for a long time," Johnny said, and again seemed incapable of saying more.

"You're flunking physics," Kate said.

"No, Kate, stop it! It's that guy."

"What guy?" "That guy, Gallagher."

This was so far removed from the topic at hand that Kate was at first wholly at sea. "Huh? Who?"

"The new guy?" Jim said.

"Yeah, or he was last fall, anyway," Johnny said. "He showed up in September. Van and I ran into him in Ahtna."

Kate sat up. "When did you and Van run into him in Ahtna?"

He looked at her, caught off guard. "I… I… it was after we brought the truck home." He could see the thunderheads darkening and he cringed.

"You skipped school," she said in a level voice.

His own voice was very small in reply. "Yes."

"And you went to Ahtna without permission."

"Yes."

"And you took Van with you." "Yes."

"Your name is Johnny Morgan, prepare to die," Jim said in a fake Spanish accent.

Johnny swallowed hard and risked another look at Kate. "I know you're mad, Kate, but we need to talk about that later. The thing is, I know this guy."

"We all know him now, Johnny," Kate said. "Well, it's not like he's a fixture, but we've all met him by now. He didn't run screaming at the first snow, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Let's see if he makes it through the whole winter."

"Kate!"

"Sorry, sorry." Kate bent her head but Jim could see the corners of her mouth indent. Johnny would pay for skipping school, but that would be later, and she did so love giving the kid a ride.

"I know him," Johnny said again. "I rode with him."

That brought Kate's head up again, all traces of the smile erased. "What do you mean?"

"On the way here. I rode with him."

"From Phoenix? When you hitched home?"

"Yeah."

Kate stared at him out of narrow eyes, long enough to make him want to squirm some more. He didn't, but it was a near thing. "Did he threaten you? Harm you in any way?"

"No! No, nothing like that, Kate, I promise."

Jim saw Kate's breast rise and fall on a long, silent sigh. "So you know him. He gave you a ride. He didn't hurt you. He also didn't turn you over to the nearest cop shop, which he should have. Although I can't say, when all's said and done, that I'm sorry he didn't."

"Me, neither," Johnny said, with emphasis.

"So what?" Kate said. "Other than the fact that I should look this guy up and thank him for taking you from-outside Phoenix?-to where?"

"All the way to Seattle."

At that Kate did look impressed. "Wow. Okay, that was a nice big chunk of the journey out of the way." And a long way out of his mother's reach. "We owe him, no question. What, you want us to give him some moose? I could make him fry bread. Does he need a job? Or no, wait, he's got one."

"That's not all there is to it," Johnny said miserably. "There's something else. Something I should have told you when he first came to the Park."

They left Kate's snow machine in front of the trooper post and walked the rest of the way to Auntie Vi's. It was full dark and cold with it, and their breath frosted on the air and their boots squeaked on the road no matter how stealthy they tried to be. By contrast Mutt skimmed soundlessly over the snow, drifting in and out of the shadows like a ghost.

Auntie Vi's house was on the uphill road between the village and the airstrip, just up from Bingley's store and just down from the trooper post. It was a sturdy, practical, two-story home that Auntie Vi, a sturdy, practical, and entrepreneurial woman, had built specifically for a bed and breakfast. It was, so far, the only place to rent a room in Niniltna proper, but to be fair, Auntie Vi didn't short her customers just because they had no choice in the matter. Her mattresses were new, her sheets clean, her pillows soft, and her meals as good or better than what you got at the Riverside Cafe. There was a common room with squashy couches and chairs, a television and a DVD player with an extensive library of films, a bookshelf full of books, a pile of board games, and a desk.

"How many people has she got staying there at present?" Kate said, her voice a whisper of sound.

"I don't know," Jim said. "I'm hardly ever here. Have you met Gallagher?"

"Yeah."

"What did you think?"

"I could feel my Spidey sense tingling. You?"

"I thought he was bent. No more or less bent than anyone else who comes into the Park, you understand. You know how it is, Kate. Lots of people come to Alaska on the run from something. Wives, cops, job. Traffic. You heard the story Gallagher-do we call him Greenbaugh now?-you heard the story he spun Johnny. Could be true."

"You didn't check him out?"

Again with the shrug. "No reason to so long as he kept his nose clean in the Park. I'm not one for borrowing trouble. There's plenty of it already on offer."

"Grim but true," Kate said. "Why didn't you do a wants and warrants on him before we came?"

"I'd rather talk to him first, get a feel. If I think he'll bolt, I'll grab him up for twenty-four. Be easier to run a search with prints anyway."

"But I notice we're whispering," she said. "Also tiptoeing." "Girls tiptoe. Guys sneak."

They came to Auntie Vi's driveway, overgrown with spruce and alder and birch and fireweed and way too much devil's club. Unless it was edible, Auntie Vi didn't care enough about landscaping other than to keep the driveway clear enough to drive on.

There was a light on in the living room. The front door was unlocked, as usual, and Jim led the way in. "Stay," Kate said to Mutt, and followed.

The living room was empty. So was the kitchen. So was Auntie Vi's little suite in back of the kitchen.

They went upstairs. "Which one is his?" Kate said.

Jim nodded at a door and Kate tried the handle. "Locked."

They stood side by side looking at the door with, had they but known it, identical speculative looks on their faces. "I know where the keys to the rooms are," Kate said.

"So do I." He looked at her. "I'm a practicing professional police officer. I need a warrant."

She made a face and went downstairs, returning a few moments later with a key. She inserted it into the lock and the door opened smoothly, as any door installed beneath Auntie Vi's auspices would have if it knew what was good for it.

The room held a full-size bed with a nightstand and a lamp next to it, a dresser with four drawers, and an easy chair grouped with a floor lamp and an end table. A tiny bathroom with a toilet, a sink, and a shower was tucked behind a door between dresser and chair. Outside the window spruce branches brushed the glass with scratchy fingers.

"Not a neatnik," Jim said from the doorway.

"Looks like Johnny's room," Kate said. "Or the Grosdidiers' house."

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

The bed was a jumble of blankets and sheets, socks and underwear spilled out of an open drawer, dirty clothes were tossed in a corner. Crumpled beer cans had missed the wastebasket.

Kate made a quick circuit. "No letters, bills, mail of any kind. Stack of these, big surprise." She held up a fistful of copies of the latest Global Harvest flyer.

"When did Johnny say Gallagher showed up?"

"September."

"Four months. Long time to go without paying a bill."

"Auntie Vi would have kicked him out if he hadn't been paying his here." Jim looked over his shoulder. "What?"

"Thought I heard something."

"Mutt's outside."

"Right. Gallagher own a vehicle?"

"A pickup, Johnny said."

"Global Harvest would have given him a company snow machine for the river trip."

"Yeah, he had his own when I saw them leaving for the trip on the river. Wasn't any snow machine outside."

Kate looked under the bed, and pulled out a large duffel bag, black and red and worn at the seams. "Padlocked." She slung the bag over to the door. Jim got out his key ring, selected a slender tool, and bent over the lock. It took about two seconds. "Pitiful. No wonder it's TSA approved." He shoved the bag back at her.

She unzipped the bag and looked inside. She looked inside for so long that he said, "What?"

"Who's dealing coke in the Park these days?"

She dragged the bag back over to him and they both looked down at the Ziploc with the white powder inside it.

"Open it up," Jim said.

Kate did, and Jim licked his little finger, dipped, and tasted. "Yeah. Coke."

"Isn't full, either." "I noticed."

"That's a lot for personal consumption."

"I noticed that, too."

"Maybe my question is, who's using in the Park these days, and who's supplying?" She looked at Jim.

"I haven't heard anything. Even Howie seems to have stopped dealing lately." He thought. "Actually, I haven't heard of him dealing anything since before Louis died."

"Me, either." She nodded at the Ziploc. "But one of us would have heard if Gallagher was dealing."

Too late, they both remembered that Kate had been left out of the loop on the assaults on the river. "You'd think so," he said, voice carefully neutral.

"Shit." Kate rested her elbows on her knees. "Would you like me to investigate further, officer?"

"Can't use any of it as evidence."

"Fruit of the poisoned tree," she said. "Still." She reached in the bag and moved the Ziploc to one side. "Well, well."

"What?"

She pulled out a wad of bills fastened together with a rubber band.

There were a dozen more. All the bills looked well-used. Like maybe Gallagher had been taking payments in cash for something he was selling.

Kate repacked the bag, relocked the lock, and restowed the duffel beneath the bed. She rose to her feet, dusting her hands and knees. "Now what?"

"Well," Jim said, "we know more than we did before. We know Gallagher's running under an assumed name, and we know he is or was dealing coke."

"Doesn't mean he killed Mac or Macleod."

"No. Does Auntie Vi ever make her guests fill out any kind of form?"

She looked at him. "Did she make you fill out one?"

"No." He smiled down at her. "But that's me."

She rolled her eyes. "As long as their check or Visa card clears the bank, she doesn't care who they are or where they come from."

They closed the door and locked it and put the key back on the hook in the kitchen. Kate, unable to help herself, made a beeline for the flying pig cookie jar on the counter. No-bake cookies today. Kate took one, put the lid back, and then took the lid off again and took one more.

Auntie Vi's counters, while scrupulously clean, were barely visible beneath the detritus of her life, of which the flying pig was only one manifestation. There was a stack of unread Alaska Fisherman's Journals, another of legislative circulars that had been heavily notated and highlighted in yellow. She had three sets of canisters, one brass, one bright blue enamel, the third Lucite. A knife block bristled with knife handles, there was a beer box full of bright squares of fabric, a copy of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook on a stand, open to a scone recipe.

Kate sorted idly through a large shallow wicker basket that held a jumble of those tools essential to everyday civilized life. Pens, pencils, a Frosty the Snowman notepad, a handful of Hershey's Nuggets, a tape measure, an oven mitt, pushpins, safety pins, paper clips. There was a Camelot CD (original cast, Auntie Vi was a known Robert Goulet enthusiast). There were twist ties, a roll of duct tape, a roll of electrician's tape, a roll of Scotch tape, a spool of string.

Under the roll of duct tape she found a small untidy ball of green monofilament. "Hey," she said.

"Wait a minute." Jim was looking at the calendar hanging on Auntie Vi's wall. It was a big one, featuring gorgeous photographs of the Hawaiian Islands. The month pages featured large squares for the dates. There was something written in almost all of them, bake sales, basketball games, due dates for Park rat soon-to-be moms.

"Look at this." He turned his head and she held up the monofilament. "He eats breakfast in this kitchen every morning."

"Uh-huh," he said. "Look at this." He pointed at that day's date.

She followed his forefinger to the entry. "GH mtg, RC, 7pm." She looked up at him. "Global Harvest, Riverside Cafe?"

"Let's go see."

They parked in the store's parking lot and walked but they needn't have bothered. There was almost no one parked out front of the cafe. Kate sighed.

"What?"

"If Global Harvest stays on this mission of all information, all the time, people are bound to get bored and wander off."

"Think that's their plan?"

"It'd be mine, if I wanted to put in a strip mine in Iqaluk and I knew it was going to piss off a lot of people in the Park."

Jim held the door for her. "Stay," she said to Mutt, and went in.

Inside, Laurel Meganack was drying glasses behind the counter. She gave Jim a flat, inimical stare. She wouldn't even look at Kate. Maybe a dozen people were gathered around the corner table. Gallagher was on his feet, talking animatedly as he pointed to a map of the Park he'd taped to the wall. He looked up and his voice faltered when he saw Kate and Jim. Heads turned.

"Hey, Dick," Jim said.

"Sergeant Chopin," Gallagher said.

"Or should I say Doyle," Jim said.

"Who?" Gallagher said, but he waited a beat too long.

"Got a few questions for you," Jim said. "If you could come on down to the post, I'd appreciate it."

Gallagher looked past Jim at Kate, and whatever he saw in her face made the rest of the color drain from his own. "Sure," he said, "no problem. Just let me get my coat."

He turned and reached for the coat lying over the back of a chair. As he did so Kate hit Jim with a low tackle behind the knees and the bullet from the Sig Sauer P220 Compact only knocked the ball cap from his head and shattered the window in the door. From the other side of the door Mutt uttered a series of outraged barks.

There were screams and shouts and chairs scraping and bodies hitting the floor, and then another loud crash when a second window went. Kate and Jim were on their feet and looking at the broken window at the end of the counter Gallagher had evidently dived through. Jim started forward and Kate turned and hit the front door. "Mutt!"

Mutt was quivering with rage, teeth bared in a vulpine snarl. She snapped and growled, dancing around Kate. She didn't like people shooting at her. "Come on!"

Kate ran around the back of the cafe just in time to see Jim finish knocking the rest of the glass out of the frame and jump outside. "Which way?" Something sang by her ear, followed by the distinctive crack of the Sig. "Fuck!

Jim had his 9mm out. "Stay back!"

"Like hell!"

"Goddammit, Kate, you're not armed!"

"Like hell!"

There was the sound of rapidly receding footsteps and Kate went after them, Mutt shooting past her, a gray streak with her head lowered between her shoulders, long legs eating up the ground, and a feral and terrifying growl issuing from her throat.

They all heard the snow machine start, and rounded a corner in time to see Gallagher start off on somebody's dark blue Polaris.

"Kate!"

"Mutt! Take!"

The gray streak that was Mutt seemed to flatten out and gather speed. The snow machine had to slow for a second to take the corner of the Kvasnikof home and as it did Mutt launched herself in mid-lope and hit Gallagher in the back with all of her not inconsiderable weight. Gallagher rolled from the seat and went tumbling head over heels. Mutt did a kind of mid-air jackknife to make a four-point landing, falling over Gallagher like a net, teeth bared and snapping inches from his face. He froze in place, and then the hand that was still somehow holding the Sig raised it and squeezed.

"Goddammit!" Jim said, and dived, landing on his belly with an ungraceful flop and skidding three feet farther on the snow and ice. Ahead of him, Kate had dodged behind the Kvasnikof house. The bullet hit the house next to her with a deafening bang and startled cries issued forth from all around them.

Mutt went ballistic. She snarled and bit Gallagher on the face, tearing skin and drawing blood, and then she went for his gun hand. Thirty feet away Jim could hear the crunch of bones breaking.

Gallagher shrieked and dropped the Sig. Kate ran out from behind the Kvasnikofs' and scooped up the Sig on the fly, and by the time she slowed forward momentum Mutt had her teeth on Gallagher's throat, that slow, steady, emasculating growl issuing from her own. He made one feeble effort to shove her away. Her jaws closed tighter and she shook her head. He screamed, or tried to. The result was a garbled, gargling sound.

Jim got to his feet. "Kate. Call her off."

"Why?" Kate said, torn between fright and fury. She didn't like getting shot at, either.

"Kate."

"Oh, all right. Mutt, release. Mutt! Mutt, release! Come on, girl, it's okay. Get off him. Off, Mutt, now!"

Mutt looked up at Kate, her jaws bloody from Gallagher's face, wrist, and throat, still that steady rumble, like tank tracks, issuing forth.

Kate grabbed Mutt's ears and shoved her down to the ground, her face right in Mutt's, her own bared teeth inches from Mutt's throat. "No! No! Release, I said! Release!"

"Jesus, Kate," Jim said, shaken.

Inexplicably, Mutt went motionless. Jim wasn't even sure she was still breathing.

For a long moment the three of them remained frozen in place, to the accompaniment of Gallagher crying and whimpering in the background. Jim couldn't say he blamed him much.

A soft, conciliatory whine sounded. Mutt stuck out a long pink tongue and washed Kate's cheek.

"All right then." Kate released her. They both got to their feet. Mutt shook herself and gave another ingratiating whine, touching her nose to Kate's hand. Kate cuffed her and Mutt cringed and whined again. "Oh shut up, you big baby," Kate said, and gave her a rough caress. Mutt bounced in place, yipped, and wagged an ingratiating tail.

"Holy shit," Jim said.

"No big," Kate said. She shook her hair out of her eyes, feeling suddenly, debilitatingly weary. "Once in a while I have to remind her who's still the alpha dog in the pack. She is half wolf, you know."

Nevertheless, Jim made a big circle around the both of them when he went to peel Gallagher off the ground.