Killing Grounds Part 14

"Tell us about it," the trooper said. "All of it."

It was a short story. Tim Sarakovikoff had left Alaganik Bay at one minute past six p.m. precisely on Wednesday afternoon, when it was evident that the Independence Day celebration had reached a point where no one was going to be doing any fishing. By eight, maybe a little past, he was tied up at the fuel dock and, as they already knew, had been met by Otis and Wendell, eager harbingers of humiliation.

Tim's face, so open, so honest, so completely without guile, darkened like a thundercloud. "They'd seen him, they said, and her, going at it right on the deck of his boat. Right in the harbor!" His voice went up an octave, and all at once Kate was reminded of how young he was.

Jim gave one of those all-purpose trooper grunts that indicated comprehension, sympathy and the determination to slog away at the facts until the whole truth and nothing but was arrived at, if they both had to sit there till the last trump.

Tim must have recognized it for what it was because it didn't require any further prompting for him to continue. "I caught up with them on First. Looked like they were headed for our house. Probably wanted to try out our bed." Tim's broad shoulders moved in a shrug. "I didn't let them get that far."

"You confronted him?"

Tim gave a short, unamused laugh. "Yeah, I guess you could call it that." He looked down and picked up a section of mesh that was lying on the deck between his feet. The green twine was tangled and torn, a piece he'd taken out of his gear and replaced. "Myra was scared. She ran. Meany didn't even try to deny it. He laughed at me, said Myra wouldn't have come prowling around him if I'd been taking good enough care of her at home. So I hit him." He raised his hands, backs up, displaying the wounds of honorable battle. "Guy had a jaw like the blade on a D-nine. I thought every bone in my hand was broken, but I didn't stop. I keep hitting him, and I guess I was so angry he couldn't get through, except the one time." He touched his shiner. He raised his head and looked at Jim.

"To tell you the truth, Jim, I don't know what would have happened if Auntie Joy hadn't stopped me. I just hit him, and hit him, and hit him. It felt good. It would have felt even better to have kept on hitting him."

"But Joyce Shugak broke it up."

Tim nodded, looking suddenly exhausted. "I think she came out of the Cordova House. There were a bunch of people in there. Anyway, she brought out a pitcher of ice water and threw it on me. It shocked me, and I stopped."

Jim made another note. "What kind of shape was Meany in?"

Tim shook his head. "On his hands and knees. He was okay enough to call me a bunch of names."

"And then?"

"And then Auntie Joy chewed on my a.s.s for ten minutes, and then she picked Meany up and took him away."

Kate jerked erect in a movement that made her head throb and the low-level nausea surge threateningly to the back of her throat.

Jim noticed the sudden movement and eyed her curiously. She said nothing, and he turned back to Tim. "And then?"

Tim shrugged again. "And then I went up to the house and kicked Myra out."

Good for you, Kate thought, momentarily diverted. As young as Tim was, she had feared the romantic in him would be willing to forgive all for love.

"If there was one guy, there would have been others," Tim added. "I can'tI won't live with that."

Jim gave the grunt again, examining his notes with a critical air. "About what time was this, do you remember?"

"Oh h.e.l.l." Tim let his head fall back on his shoulders and thought. "Had to have been eight-thirty, nine o'clock anyway. Maybe a little past. I don't know for sure. I pulled the plug on Alaganik at six."

"Where did you go after you left Myra?"

"Out to the Powder House. Got drunk as a skunk. I don't remember the rest of the night too well." Tim tied off a knot, cut the twine and set the needle aside. "I woke up the next morning on the Esther. I couldn't stand being around town, with everybody probably talking about it and all. So I came on back out. Been here since." He sighed. "Might never go back."

Jim made another note. Tim watched him. "Could have been worse, I guess," he said.

"How so?" Jim said.

Tim gave a wan smile. "She could have been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g you."

As he was a.s.sisting Kate up over the side of the Freya, Jim said casually, "What's bothering you about Joyce, Kate?"

d.a.m.n him, he'd always been quick as a snake. Not that Kate had ever seen a snake, but she could well imagine one with Chopper Jim's sly expression on it, and with Jim's habit of striking out at precisely the one thing in a conversation you hoped he would miss.

"What?" Old Sam said, hauling up Kate from the other end. "What are you talking about, what's wrong with Joyce?"

"Nothing," Kate said, shaking off her tugs. She was feeling better; she could inhale without wanting to barf the air right back out. Upon investigation her belly felt hollow. "What's for breakfast?"

"Try lunch," Old Sam said. "How about pork chops and applesauce?"

Pork chops and applesauce was Kate's favorite meal in the whole world. As a child she'd gotten it only as a special treat because none of the Park rats raised pigs and, after you added on the air freight, pork in the Park was more expensive than filet mignon in New York City. Old Sam knew this perfectly well, and Kate realized that the offering of pork chops and applesauce was his way of showing his affection, alleviating his anxiety and ministering to her needs. Not that he would for a moment outwardly demonstrate anything of the kind; if challenged, he would have said the G.o.ddam chops were freezer-burnt and they might as well start using up some of the applesauce before the whole G.o.ddam case rusted out in the damp air of the focsle. "Sounds great," she said. "Good," he said gruffly. "I'll serve it up." When Old Sam cooked, he cooked comprehensively. There were, besides the aforementioned pork chops and applesauce, chicken adobo, sweet and sour spareribs (Old Sam had taken a course in Filipino cooking from his previous deckhand, a man from Seldovia who left him to open a restaurant in Homer), mashed potatoes, creamed corn, green beans with bacon and onions, and fruit salad. Kate spooned some of the fruit salad on her plate and said, "Hey, great, no marshmallows. You remembered."

Old Sam frowned ferociously. "We're out." "Oh." Kate prudently said no more on the subject and fell to without delay. Chopper Jim had laid hat and jacket aside and tucked a napkin into his collar; the view from her end of the galley table indicated that he only just managed to refrain from wallowing in his plate like a hog in a trough. Kate didn't blame him. Everything was delicious, and when she finished she sat back and reflected on how nearly impossible it was to despair on a full stomach.

That comfortable, almost complacent thought was challenged in the next thirty seconds, when Trooper Chopin pushed back his plate, complimented Old Sam extravagantly on his table d'hote and announced his intention of visiting Joyce Shugak at the fish camp. Kate's head snapped up. Chopper Jim met her gaze with an unwavering stare. He was determined, and she knew he was not going to be sweet-talked, sidetracked, misled or otherwise diverted this time. "Okay if we take the skiff again?" she asked Old Sam.

Jim took this determination to accompany him without a blink, although he did say, when they had cast off, "You remind me of this German shepherd I used to know, the better half of a K-nine team. Ornery, overprotective of his handler and frankly a colossal pain in the a.s.s." He smiled gently at her stiffening expression, and pointed out, "I did say he was the better half."

She did not dignify his observation with a reply.

The bay was a mirror in which the Ragged Mountains regarded themselves with approval, until the wake of the skiff opened a widening V in the still surface and their reflection broke into a collection of fragments that rolled and rippled ash.o.r.e, cast up on a gleaming expanse of gravel that divulged no secrets.

From on and above the waterline, various sets of people watched their progress, but only Mary Balashoff, with either audacity or a clear conscience or both, waved.

The fish wheel was shut down. Judging from the wear and tear of gravel leading to it, it had definitely seen recent and vigorous action. So much for state-imposed fishing periods, Kate thought wryly, or federally imposed injunctions, for that matter.

The skiff nudged on the gravel. Mutt heard them first, and bounded down to greet Kate with enthusiasm and Jim with ecstasy. Jack's greeting to Kate was wary, which baffled her. He was also, when he saw Jim, alarmed and, if she read the flash of emotion that crossed his face, embarra.s.sed.

The four aunties brought up the rear, not descending to the water's edge but lining up on the creek bank, looking more than ever like four birds sitting on a branch, cedar waxwings maybe, all fluffed out against the winter chill. Cedar waxwings, Kate remembered, had black masks like racc.o.o.ns, which made them look like cartoon bandits, or punk rockers. The aunties looked like neither, but there was a palpable air of solidarity about them, especially in their united regard of the trooper, and her heart sank. "Where's Johnny?" she said, trying to keep her voice light.

Jack, with an obvious effort, managed to match her lightness. "Downstream slaughtering salmon."

"Decided to strike out on his own, did he? Funny, we didn't see him on the way."

"Maybe a grizzly ate him."

"Nah." Kate shook her head. "Too full of fish."

"And he's got the twelve-gauge," his father added, rea.s.suring himself.

Jim, once he managed to fend off Mutt's advances, doffed his hat and spoke directly to Auntie Joy. "Joyce, I'm sorry tc have to bother you, especially at fish camp"thereby showing respect for both age and culture, Kate thought in grudging approval"but I understand you were a witness to a fight between Calvin Meany and Tim Sarakovikoff in Cordova the night of the Fourth." He paused. Auntie Joy said nothing, and he added, "I'm sure you've heard by now that Meany was killed that night. I'm tracking his movements, trying to find out who saw him when."

Auntie Joy looked at him with a blank expression and no reply.

One of the most effective tools an Alaska state trooper had was the quality of expectant silence that followed a question. They were taught it in trooper school, along with the need to establish one's authority at the beginning of an interview. His height, clad in all that dazzling blue and gold, and what Kate had once referred to as his Dudley Doright demeanor generally proved effective for the latter; for the former, Jim was relying on tried and true interrogative tradition.

However, in the matter of expectant silence an Alaska state trooper is no match for a villager from the Alaskan Bush who has been trained from birth to listen to her elders, to the land, to the river, to the very wind itself, before she opens her mouth to p.r.o.nounce upon any subject, if she ever feels the need to do anything of the kind. The aunties sat tight in their little round row and waited for what the trooper would say next.

So Jim, not inexperienced in dealing with tribal elders, played dirty. He hooked a thumb at Kate. "Whoever it was probably bashed your niece over the head last night and left her for dead on the deck of Old Sam's tender. In the rain," he added, piling it on.

Jack's eyebrows snapped together. Kate, who had left her bandage back on the Freya precisely to prevent unwanted and unnecessary solicitude from either the aunties or the big man with the increasingly p.i.s.sed-off expression, resisted the natural impulse to put her Nike right up Jim's elegant navy-blue backside. "I'm okay," she said. "Really," she said, warding off lack with an upraised hand. "Auntie," she said, stepping forward and addressing Auntie Joy directly, "Tim says you broke up his fight with Meany. Is that true?"

Auntie Joy said nothing.

"Kate," Jack said, "we've got to talk."

She shook off his hand. "In a minute. Auntie, Tim says you helped Meany after the fight. Did you take him somewhere? To Uncle Nick's house, maybe?"

Auntie Joy said nothing.

Behind Kate Jim stirred. "I think you'd better come back into town with me, Joyce."

Kate whirled. "No!"

Jim said, not without sympathy, "Kate, I don't see that I've got any other choice. She's a material witness to the hours directly preceding Meany's murder. She's not cooperating. What the h.e.l.l else do you expect me to do?" He paused. "I could arrest her for withholding evidence, what do you say?"

From behind the aunties a new voice spoke. "You'll have to wait your turn, Jim."

Everyone looked up to see Lamar Rousch standing behind Auntie Joy, along with a very tall man with an abundance of gray hair and a smug expression on his face.

The gray hair was natural, the smug expression acquired. Bill Nickle had come into the country fifty years before, apprenticed as a deckhand on a seiner, worked his way up to skipper and made a pile of money during the golden days of commercial salmon fishing in the seventies. Like Meany, he put his family to work for him, to such good effect that within eleven years his sons had taken over boat and business for their own.

Bill never forgave them, and came up with the perfect revenge, starting a professional sport-fish guiding operation and agitating in the legislature at every session for reductions in the commercial catch. Over the past ten years, and with the influx of tourists into the state, he had graduated from being a petty annoyance to the commercial and subsistence fishermen to a very real threat. It didn't help that he was smart, informed, articulate, and charming when he wanted to be.

He wasn't bothering today.

"What are you talking about?" the trooper said.

"I've got prior business here," Lamar replied, and turned to Auntie Joy. "Joyce, Bill's brought it to our attention that you've been violating the federal prohibition on fishing Amartuq Creek. I'm here to serve you with a cease-and-desist order."

"Now wait just a minute" Jim said.

"You're a little late, aren't you, Lamar?" Kate said.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Kate," the fish hawk said, trying and failing to look like it.

"Then permit me to enlighten you. She's been fishing this creek for the last five years."

The tall, gray-haired man bristled. "The main reason the sport fishermen's quota gets cut every year!"

Jack snapped, "Right, Bill, like there aren't commercial fishermen scooping up entire schools of fish the other side of the marker every period the whole friggin' summer."

"That's a G.o.ddam lie," Lamar said, his pink skin flushing scarlet to the roots of his blond hair.

"Not to mention a couple hundred trawlers with mile-long nets sucking up every living thing off the bottom of the north Pacific Ocean. Somehow I doubt that one piddly little fish wheel on Amartuq Creek counts for much in the grand scheme of things."

"Especially when the Fish and Game cut the catch on the creek and don't bother cutting it in the bay," Kate said hotly. "Like hauling entire schools of fish out of Alaganik doesn't have anything to do with the decline of reds up Amartuq Creek."

"Dammit, Kate!" Lamar said, his baby cheeks going pinker. "We don't have any numerical proof of that!"

"Now look," Jim said, trying to reestablish his authority with a deep, carrying voice, "Joyce is my witness, and I"

"You subsistence fishermen think the world revolves around you. It's time the sport fishermen got a crack at the take, and by G.o.d, I'm going to see to it we do!"

"You only think you will, you fly-fishing son of a b.i.t.c.h," Kate snapped.

"I know I will, you" His gaze encountered Jack's and he derailed that train of thought just in time. "We've got interests in this area," he said tightly. "Vested interests, and financial backing. We can generate more money in licenses and guiding and food and lodging than a piddly little fish camp that ain't good for nothing but providing dog food for a bunch of old-timers that'd be better off in the Pioneer Home anyway!"

Auntie Vi said something in Aleut that sounded distinctly uncomplimentary.

The old fart reddened. "You've got your orders, Lamar, from the commissioner himself. Serve her."

"Over my dead body!"

"That can be arranged, Shugak!"

"Quiet!" Chopper Jim bellowed out the command with all the authority of twenty-five years of experience.

It didn't silence the Amartuq Creek Debating Society, but it woke up a peacefully slumbering grizzly male in a clump of diamond willow across the creek, who had been sleeping off the stupefying effect of a dozen early silvers gulped for brunch. Jim's bellow startled him to his feet, where he tripped over a branch, somersaulted down the bank and into the creek with a tremendous splash, followed by an even more tremendous bawl of outrage that flushed birds from every tree in sight, startled a yearling moose out of a thicket and caused a family of otters to vacate their fishing hole for less boisterous habitation downstream.

The party on the opposite sh.o.r.e stared, finally and mercifully dumbstruck, as the grizzly, grousing and whining and generally indicating his displeasure with rude awakenings in general and this one in particular, shook himself off and lumbered up the bank, crashing through the brush in high dudgeon.

The noise of entire trees being felled seemed to go on forever, until the watching group began to realize that something else was crashing through the brush on the opposite side of the stream, something coming toward them. Jim put his hand on the flap of his holster. It was the first time in their acquaintance that Kate had seem him reach for his weapon. Just as his hand closed over the pistol b.u.t.t, Johnny burst from the enveloping alders about twenty feet down from where the grizzly had disappeared. He and the grizzly must have pa.s.sed each other like semis on an interstate, Kate thought, watching as the boy seemed to race across the top of the water in their direction. He was yelling something inarticulate at the top of his voice. His face was red, his hair on end, and he looked frightened out of his wits.

Mutt barked once and launched herself into the water, which quickly became too deep for walking. She paddled, inches ahead of Jack, who had moved smartly into the water a second behind her. Father and son and dog met at midstream, dog grabbed at son's sleeve and held him steady until father arrived and plucked son out of the water, tucked him beneath his right arm and plowed to sh.o.r.e, dog bringing up the rear. They collapsed heavily on the sand, panting and soaked to the skin. Mutt waded ash.o.r.e and shook herself vigorously, which got everybody else wet, too, and went to Johnny to poke at him with her nose, an anxious whine rising up out of her throat.

The boy rested his forehead on her neck for a moment. "I'm all right, girl." He looked up. "I'm all right, Dad. Really."

When Jack got his breath back he yelled, "Then what the h.e.l.l was that Charge of the Light Brigade all about!"

Johnny winced at the volume. "I found a body," he said, and his face contorted. "It's her, Dad!"

"You what!"

"Shut up, Jack," Kate said rudely, and shoved him to one side, Jim breathing down her neck. "Johnny, take a couple of deep breaths. Auntie, bring a blanket, and something hot to drink. Come on," she said to the boy, "get up out of the sand, sit on this log." She knelt before him in the sand and started untying his boots. He uttered an inarticulate protest and she brushed aside his fumbling hands. "Let me. You need to warm up,"

Jim paced around in the background while blankets and hot tea were fetched and Johnny was stripped and swathed and dosed. "Okay," he said finally, "enough. Johnny, tell us about this body."

The boy huddled inside the blanket, shaking hands clutching the mug. "It's her, Dad," he repeated.

"Who her?" Kate said sharply.

Johnny didn't hear her, his eyes fixed painfully on his father. "The girl you saw the other night?" his father said. "Are you sure?"

The boy nodded, teeth chattering as much from shock as from exposure, and then he shook his head. "It's her hair, Dad," he said, and his eyes filled with tears. "I could see her hair."

"Did you see her face?" Kate said sharply.