A Cold Day For Murder Part 12

She jerked the snow machine around and hit the gas, so that Jack almost pulled her off when he grabbed her waist. Even so, she felt him shaking with laughter all the way to Bernie's.

There was a party of Dall sheep hunters from somewhere Outside shucking their gear in front of the Roadhouse, being shepherded through the process by Demetri Totemoff. Kate pulled up to one side, killed the motor and pocketed the keys. She stood up, stripping the hood of her snowsuit back, and walked toward the door of the Roadhouse, Jack following.

One of the hunters stepped into Kate's way. She looked up, surprised.

"How," the man said, holding his hand up, palm out.

"Oh, Jesus," she heard Demetri say. She felt Jack pause behind her.

"Me no talk white man talk," Kate said pleasantly. "Now get the f.u.c.k out of my way." She shoved him and his fading smile to one side and went up the steps.

Inside the Roadhouse Kate was underwhelmed to find not only Martin but Xenia as well, sitting at opposite ends of the bar and pointedly ignoring each other. Kate muttered something under her breath that Jack didn't catch, and went over to take Xenia by the elbow. She deposited the girl at a table, and went for the girl's brother.

"Well, hey, Katya," Martin said, a six-pack shy of pa.s.sing out. "What you doing here? I thought you sweared off the Park for good when you busted Sandy."

"I thought so too, Martin," she said grimly, steering him to the table where an imperturbable Jack and an apprehensive Xenia waited for them.

Before Kate had seated herself Xenia burst out, "You said you wouldn't tell him! You promised!"

"I lied," Kate said. "Watch out she doesn't bolt," she said to Jack.

"She does that a lot." She turned to Martin. "Martin," she said, trying to get him to focus on her. "Martin?"

Martin Shugak was tall for an Aleut, but in everything else he was a carbon copy of his sister, with perhaps a more stubborn chin. He sported a wispy mustache and goatee that made him look like Fu Manchu and long, lank hair reaching his shoulders that might have been washed sometime within the last decade but didn't look or smell like it. His clothes were in even worse shape, and Kate only just managed to stop herself from moving her chair farther away from his. Her nose would adjust in a moment, she knew from long experience.

Martin had left the eighth grade when his father drowned, to take over fishing his father's permit in Prince William Sound. While the salmon ran he was sober, hardworking and solvent. The other seven months of the year he drank up what he had earned during the previous five. There was no cannery in Cordova who would not finance a new boat for Martin Shugak the first week of May. There was no cannery in Cordova who would advance him a dime after October.

His eyes wavered around the room and eventually came to rest on her face. "Katya," he said, a foolish smile crossing his face, "what you doing here? I thought--" "Yeah, yeah," Kate said impatiently, "you thought I swore off the Park. Martin, do you remember Mark Miller?"

"Who?"

"Mark Miller, the park ranger."

Martin made a face. "Doan know him. How 'bout not her beer?"

"Bernie!" Bernie looked up and Kate circled her forefinger in the air.

Bernie nodded and a moment later brought over three Olys and a c.o.ke.

Martin grabbed for his and sucked half down thirstily.

Kate wrestled the bottle out of his hand and held it out of his reach.

"You know Miller, Martin. The park ranger who was going out with Xenia."

Martin's brow furrowed in deep thought. "Xenia."

"Your sister," Kate specified.

Martin transferred his wavering gaze to his sister's pinched face, and frowned. "I remember."

"Thank G.o.d," Jack said to Kate. "I thought for a second we were going to have to introduce them."

"Little b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Martin said, unheeding. "Told him to leave my sister alone." He brightened. "Beat the s.h.i.t out of him, too. Candy-a.s.s."

"Then what did you do?" Kate said. "After you beat the s.h.i.t out of him."

He looked at her, surprised. "Went home, I guess."

"Have you seen him since?"

"Nope." He snickered. "Probly hiding."

"He's been missing for six weeks, Martin, and you had a fight with him just hours before n.o.body ever saw him again."

"So what?" Martin said, seeming a little surprised that Kate would waste both their time remarking on it. "Good riddance, I'd say."

Kate reached over and grabbed Martin's face with both hands, trying to penetrate the alcoholic fog with sheer force of will. "I'll tell you what we think happened, Martin. Xenia was dating him and you didn't like it. She said he was going to marry her and take her away from the Park, and you didn't believe him or her. You argued with him about it.

Half the crowd at Bernie's heard you say you were going to kill him if he didn't stay away from her."

"Aw s.h.i.t, Kate," Martin said, looking everywhere but at her face. "Aw s.h.i.t."

"So you did. You left Bernie's and you waited till he came out and you killed him, and then you rolled his body into Lost Chance Creek off the old railroad bridge."

Martin blinked. "What you say?"

"Martin, Xenia saw you do it. She recognized your truck, she saw the license plate and the expired sticker and the dented fender. She heard the splash when the body went in."

"Xenia?" Martin said, sitting up straight and suddenly more sober than he had been all week. "Body? Kate, what the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the park ranger you dumped over the Lost Chance bridge Thursday night, October 26, an hour after you fought with Miller right here in this bar."

Martin stared from Kate to Xenia to Jack and back to Kate. "I didn't kill no park ranger."

"Prove it," Kate said.

"I didn't kill n.o.body," Martin said doggedly. His eyes lit on Xenia and brightened. He pointed at his sister and said, "Xenia probably killed him because he wasn't going to marry up with her and take her out of the Park like he said."

Xenia reached across the table to grab a hank of Martin's hair in one fist and begin beating on him with the other. The table rocked, the drinks spilled in everyone's laps, and Martin and Xenia rolled onto the floor, hissing and spitting and biting and scratching. When Jack and Kate finally got them separated Martin was missing a hank of hair above his left ear and Xenia's right eye was swelling shut.

"Sit down, Xenia," Kate said tightly. "I said sit down!" She slung the girl into a seat as Jack righted a chair and jammed Martin into it.

"I'm having a good time," he told Kate. "Are you having a good time?"

Activity in the Roadhouse barely checked. Bernie brought over another round, and peace if not serenity reigned supreme once more.

"If you didn't kill the ranger, Martin," Kate said, "then whose body were you dumping into Lost Chance Creek that night?"

"Aw s.h.i.t, Kate," Martin said, "it wasn't n.o.body's body, it was a G.o.ddam moose."

There was a stunned silence. He looked from Kate's face to Jack's and back again. He hung his head and admitted, "It was a yearling female.

I shot it up on the Kanuyaq around Silver Creek and I was bringing it home when Dandy told me there was a fish hawk in town. I wasn't going back to jail for no G.o.ddam moose." Kate met his eyes, and he slammed down his beer indignantly. "Jesus, Kate, if you won't believe me, ask Dandy, he was with me, he'll tell you."

Kate was silent for a moment. "Where were you last night about nine o'clock?"

Martin thought hard about this, his brow furrowed. Realization was long in coming, but when it did, his face flushed. He looked from his cousin to his sister with an expression half-guilty, half-pleading.

"Oh," he said. "That."

"Yes," Kate said dryly, "that. You could have killed me."

"Aw s.h.i.t, Katya," Martin said, "you know I can put a bullet wherever I want."

"Yes, well," Kate said, "why shoot at me at all?"

"I wan't--wasn't shooting at you," he insisted. "I dint even know you was there." He waved his hands expressively in the air. "I was just..

. you know, aiming in the general direction of the North Com shack.

She"-he hooked his thumb toward Xenia--"keeps picking up these little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and I keep having to scare them off. I tell you, Katya,"

Martin said with a martyred air, "I tell you, it's a full-time job being Xenia's brother."

Kate gave Xenia a long look and said, "I can understand that, Martin.

It's a full-time job being her cousin."

"Yeah," Martin said with deep fellow feeling. "So anyway, no hard feelings about last night, right, Kate?"

"No, no hard feelings, Martin," Kate said, and added casually and cruelly, "I can't speak for Abel, of course."

Martin's face lost its alcoholic flush and went a little gray. "Jesus Christ, Kate, was that who that was with you?"

Kate nodded.

Martin licked his lips, and braced himself. "He know it was me?"

Kate smiled.

Martin swallowed, tried to speak, went red, then white, shoved himself upright and staggered back to the bar. Xenia, ignoring everyone, flounced over to another table and proved how unconcerned she was with Kate's opinion by drinking a great deal of beer and talking loudly and laughing often.

Jack sat back and nursed his beer. "Well?"

"I love my family," Kate said, her voice grim.

"Besides that."

"He's telling the truth," she said flatly.

Jack sighed. "Yeah." There was a brief silence. He thought of something else and brightened. "This means we don't have to climb down into the Lost Chance gorge, doesn't it?"

Kate managed a mirthless smile. "As soon as we find Dandy Mike and he confirms Martin's story, that's what it means."

"That's what I thought it meant," Jack said in a satisfied voice. "Does Abel know it was Martin who shot at you two last night?"

"Not yet."

Jack finished off his beer and rose to his feet. "Oh, Katie, you can be such a hard-nosed b.i.t.c.h."

She batted her eyelashes at him. "You do say such sweet things, Jack honey."

EIGHT.

Bobby was in the process of negotiating a fee, to be paid in moose steaks, for the broadcasting of a sale notice of Samuel Dementieff's last summer's red salmon gear. "Five roasts, not less than five pounds each," Bobby said in his usual roar, glaring at the elderly fisherman. "And don't think I won't weigh 'em, either."

Sam, seventy going on fifteen, glared right back and said fiercely, "Three, and you repeat the ad every night for a week."

"Four, and you get the weekend back-to-back special," Bobby said, leaning forward and glaring harder.

"Three," Sam said, leaning forward in turn, "and I'll throw in the tongue, and I get the weekend special and the week in between."

Mention of the tongue weakened Bobby visibly, as Sam had known it would. "And you play The Doors around it," he added. "I like "Light My Fire." " With gnarled hands he smoothed his cap on over his grizzled hair.

The deal was struck. It took them another ten minutes of haggling to compose the ad, and Bobby another five to pare it from a hundred words to fifty, each one of which Sam examined suspiciously and approved reluctantly, letter by letter. At the door he turned to fire his parting shot.

"Starting tonight?"

"Will you get the h.e.l.l out of here, you old pirate!" Bobby yelled.

Sam Dementieff smiled, a thin, triumphant smile, and swaggered out.

"And what the h.e.l.l do you want?"

This last was addressed to half a dozen teenagers loitering purposefully on the porch. The kids, three of whom Kate recognized as part of Bernie's first-string junior varsity girls' team, looked down at the snow melting on their boots and said nothing. "And get in here before you give the place a bad name," he added irritably with a slight reduction in decibels, but only slight, because he didn't want anyone ever to be able to say he was softening up in his old age. "Well? You there. You're Mike Kvasnikof's son, aren't you? Eknaty, isn't it?"

Mutely appealed to by his friends, Eknaty Kvasnikof hesitated and then said with a rush, "Mr. Clark, you know that commercial you're broadcasting for the bake sale the junior high cla.s.s is having on Sat.u.r.day at the gym?"

"What of it?" Bobby said. "It's on the spindle, I'll get to it in order tonight at eight when I go on the air. Get out."

Eknaty cast a wild eye about him for support. His friends looked at their feet, at the ceiling, out the window, anywhere but at Bobby or at anything that might draw Bobby's attention. Eknaty swallowed and said in a timid voice, "Well, when you do, we were wondering .. . maybe you could play some modern music before and after? Not too modern," he hastened to add. "Actually, it's kind of a cla.s.sic."