Killing Grounds Part 6

But not today. "Them boys ain't gonna let him do neither," Old Sam predicted.

He was only half right. There was the sudden roar of an engine and Meany's drifter, sluggish but determined, plowed straight for the midships of the Esther. Tim Sarakovikoff let out a yell of outrage, and Kate had a split second to wonder if he knew about Myra's extramarital activities. There was an answering roar of engines and a froth of water from the stern of the other boats, and the drifter slid through the sudden opening made between the Esther and the Deliah like waxed thread through the eye of a needle.

"Slicker'n snot," Old Sam said with reluctant admiration.

There was a furious roar from a dozen throats. Meany was called a lot of names, most of which would have offended his mother deeply, but he made it to deep water and out of the bay.

Old Sam spat over the side again. "Guess he's doing his own delivering today. Good."

Kate thought so, too. Fishermen had long memories, and Old Sam and the Freya could ill afford to be seen as helping to break a strike, not if they wanted fishermen delivering to them in the future. On the other hand, Kamaishi signed their paycheck. It was a thin enough line to tread, sometimes too thin. "We heading for the barn? Not much point in sticking around here, if n.o.body's fishing."

What with Jack and Johnny marooned with the aunties up Amartuq Creek, she didn't really want to go anywhere, and was glad when Old Sam grinned his demon grin. "Here's where the action seems to be, girl. We might as well stay and watch the show. h.e.l.l, we got front-row seats." She opened her mouth to request permission to spend the night on sh.o.r.e, caught his choleric eye and thought better of it. Besides, Jack and Johnny needed a day or so to acclimate, anyway. Not to mention, if she stayed on board she could read instead of fillet fish.

Pete Petersen brought the Monica alongside and the two old men retired to the galley and drank beer and reminisced about the good old days, when the Fish and Game and the fish buyers and wimmen knew their places and kept them. Kate had heard it all before, and retreated to the wheelhouse. Settling herself comfortably in the captain's chair, feet propped on the console, she opened The Heaven Tree Trilogy and lost herself in medieval Wales, which at that point seemed a lot more civilized than modern-day Prince William Sound on the Fourth of July.

With Meany gone, the scene shifted from confrontation to celebration. The parade in Cordova started at two that afternoon and since the fleet was on strike the fishermen could have upped anchor and sailed for Cordova in time to catch it, but they didn't trust each other enough to stay on strike, so they all stayed out on the fishing grounds until the period was over, just to keep each other honest.

It was immediately obvious that most of them had prepared well in advance to celebrate Independence Day, strike or no. At two o'clock, precisely in conjunction with the parade they were all missing, the fireworks came out in force, a fountain of pyrotechnics generated from every deck. With the injudicious placement of a large Roman candle, Jimmy Velasco went so far as to set the roof of the cabin of the Marie Josephine on fire. His nearest neighbors downed punk and raised buckets and helped him get it out before it did too much damage.

Les Nordensen broke his left arm when the hatch cover he was water-skiing on caught the stern of the Terra Jean. Pete Petersen set it with a roll of Playboy magazines and duct tape, and Les went back to the party.

Also under the influence, Kell Van Brocklin fell hopelessly in love with Ellen Steen, and pulled the hook to follow his pheromones across Alaganik Bay. They were pretty effective; after nearly running down Lamar Rousch's Zodiac, which raised a doubt in certain suspicious minds as to just how drunk he actually was, he sniffed the Dawn out from a group of drifters rafted together at the south end of the bay and nosed up alongside. From the Freya's wheelhouse it looked like the Joanna C. was trying to mate with the Dawn, but Ellen managed to repel boarders and steam off to a safe distance. Rejected, Kell lost interest, pa.s.sed out at the wheel and ran the Joanna C. up on a sandbar, which effectively put him out of commission until the next high tide.

Joe Anahonak challenged Craig Pirtle to a joust, and a group of drifters made a lane between two unsteady lines of boats. The Darlene and the Rose charged at each other at full throttle, boat hooks at the ready. Full throttle on a Grayling bowpicker was only about eight knots; still, it was enough to bring the aluminum bows together with one h.e.l.l of a clang, causing Kate to peer over the top of her book just in time to see Joe take a perfect, airborne tuck-and-roll over his own bow and Craig's as well, ending up in the water with a magnificent splash, big enough to cause a mini tidal wave that rocked nearby boats and caused two other fishermen to nose-dive for sea bottom. Craig was not so lucky, his boat hook somehow entangling itself in Joe's anchor chain. Either too dumb or too drunk to let go, or possibly distracted by a low-flying Super Cub, a grinning George Perry on the yoke, Craig pole-vaulted Joe's deck with a form worthy of an Olympic score of ten, to pancake on the roof of Joe's cabin, where, fortunately for him, Joe's spare set of gear was piled.

George waggled his wings in applause and headed off toward Cordova. Kate reached for the binoculars. The person in the rear seat sprang into focus. It wasn't the man she'd seen going up the creek; this time it was Auntie Joy. What was Auntie Joy doing going into town? Usually once she got out to fish camp she was there for the duration, like the rest of the aunties. The aunties didn't usually fly between fish camp and town, either; it was too expensive for all of them and supplies, too. If there were anything to worry about, Auntie Vi would have brought the whole bunch out to the Freya. Kate trained the gla.s.ses on the mouth of Amartuq Creek. It remained empty of anything but water and sand and occasional jumping salmon. She put down the gla.s.ses and tried not to worry.

Meanwhile, back on the jousting grounds, Yuri Andreev fished Joe out of the drink. Yuri was one of the teetotaling Old Believers from Anchor Point, fishing his first year on the Sound, and he was torn between disbelief and disgust at the behavior of his fellow fishermen. Joe, unheeding, thanked Yuri profusely for the rescue and collapsed into Craig's arms to swear lifelong devotion to liberty, equality and especially fraternity.

The party went on. It was still going on when Kate finished the first part of the Trilogy, mopped up her tears with a shirtsleeve and turned in.

Possibly because of the unusual activity carrying on all night around the Freya, her dreams were disturbing. In one, Auntie Joy was tending her fish wheel, with Aunties Vi and Edna and Balasha cleaning and filleting the catch on the bank behind her. Lamar and Becky appeared, attired in clean uniforms with knife-edged creases on their shirtsleeves and pantlegs, and hats squared away at precisely the correct angle. Somehow Auntie Vi had a gun, and it went off. It was a shotgun, Kate noticed, because Kate was in the dream, too, but only as an invisible observer, and the shotgun kicked hard, knocking Auntie Vi over backwards. Lamar and Becky were miraculously unharmed, no speck of blood marring their crisp uniforms, but Auntie Vi's chest had been crushed by the recoil and she lay dead, staring open-eyed at the blue, blue sky.

Kate couldn't remember dreaming in color before, and she admired the effect, before the scene shifted to the deck of Meany's no-namer. He was beating his kid again, thump, thump, thump, his fist connecting with the boy's body in the one-two punch of a professional boxer, the meaty sound like someone smacking his lips together over and over again.

Or no, it was the sound of a heartbeat, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, slow, steady, inexorable. The halibut heart was back, and Kate stirred and moaned in her sleep. The dusky, humping lump of grainy flesh pumped against her hands, once, twice, three times, and she came awake in a rush, perspiration beading her forehead, her blood beating rapidly against her eardrums.

It was early yet, by the slant of the sun's rays no more than six. A light breeze caused the water to lap at the hull of the Freya. All else was calm, no sounds of jousting or other celebrations of fraternal love. There wasn't any halibut heart sharing her bunk, or crawling down the slant of the chart table, or lumping its way over the sill of the door between chart room and wheelhouse. She shook her head once, sharply, clearing the lingering trace of the dream from her mind, and took a deep breath and blew it out explosively.

Kate was not given to introspection, a nasty, addictive habit she believed led to self-absorption and a lifelong preoccupation with one's navel. Dreams weird enough to leave a shudder along the flesh were the best dreams to walk away from, as fast and as far as possible. Once upon a time, her dreams had been of former victims from her years as a s.e.x crimes investigator in the Anchorage DA's office, children mostly, children and women too beaten down for too long to fight back. She shook off those memories, too, something it was getting easier to do with every pa.s.sing year, although the scar on her throat would never let her completely forget.

She never would forget them, the children especially, their staring eyes, broken bodies and wounded hearts, but they no longer held her hostage to their memory, and she no longer felt guilty at having abandoned their successors to their fate. Five years was all she'd had to give, and she had given them, with every sc.r.a.p of ability and dedication and pa.s.sion she had to offer. When it was over, she came home, to recover her health, her equilibrium and her sanity, and to live out her life in a place that was as nourishing of spirit as it was calming of soul.

Understanding this in so many words for the first time, she felt her heart lift a little, and it was then she heard it, a faint, thudding sound, coming from below. She had to listen hard, but it was there, and seemed to be coming from the starboard side of the hull. "Sam?" she called.

There was no answer. Old Sam and Pete hadn't turned in until long after she had, and with no delivery to make to the cannery Old Sam was probably still sacked out. She scrambled into her clothes and hopped out to the catwalk running around the bridge, pulling her tennis shoes on as she went. A bit of breeze formed a small, regular chop, and it lapped against the hull with a regular beat. For a moment she thought that was all it was, and then, as she leaned out over the railing, she caught sight of what looked like a bundle of sodden clothes pressed up against the black hull of the Freya. In that instant, a wave caught the bundle and it rolled face upward, resolving into the body of a man, the skin of his face leached white in the morning sun.

Even at this distance, even with the water darkening the color of his hair, she could identify him. The broad forehead, the heavy jaw, the thick torso.

It was Cal Meany.

And his eyes, staring blindly up at the dawn of a new day, left her in no doubt, even if she hadn't seen the swollen tongue protruding from between his half-open lips.

He was most definitely dead.

8.

Nine hours later Kate watched as an Alaska Airlines 737 rolled to a halt in front of the Mudhole Smith International Airport, there to disgorge a full load of pa.s.sengers and two igloos of freight. Five of the pa.s.sengers on flight 66 were locals, had little or no luggage and were whisked away by family members driving rusted-out Subarus and four-wheel-drive pickups; the rest were tourists, kayakers, sport fishermen, hikers and campers. One couple was met by a Bluebird bus converted into a recreational vehicle bearing Montana plates. An Isuzu pickup with Idaho plates picked up a pair of kayakers, with kayaks, and a tall, eager woman with flying blond hair screeched up in a puke-green Ford Econoline van with rapidly failing brakes and no plates at all and leapt out to embrace a man half as tall and twice as thick as she was, who returned her embrace with enthusiasm, to the point that Kate delicately averted her eyes.

A baggage tractor lumbered up to the luggage window and began off-loading duffel bags, cardboard boxes fastened with hundred-mile-an-hour tape, frame packs, knapsacks, sleeping bags, fishing pole cases, tackle boxes and about fifty optimistically empty coolers. Pa.s.sengers crowded around and the pile melted.

Fifteen minutes later the first of the small planes began taking off, a Cessna 206 so heavy with freight and pa.s.sengers it used up most of the runway before becoming airborne. It they caught any fish at all, it was going to take them at least two trips to get everything back to Cordova.

The next small plane took off the second the Cessna was clear of the ground, this time a Super Cub on wheel floats with rifles tied to the struts and gear lashed to the floats. It, too, took an inordinate amount of pavement to get into the air. The third small plane was a TriPacer, sprightly on its tricycle gear and with its light load of one pilot, one pa.s.senger, one pole, one pack, one rifle and one cooler. A fisherman who believed in traveling light and in solitude. Kate approved.

At that point a Cessna 185 with the blue and gold seal of the Alaska state troopers embossed on the tail landed in a three-point runway paint job, and Master Sergeant James M. Chopin pulled up on the ap.r.o.n with a flourish. It was a new plane, and gleamed bravely even in the cloudy drizzle that was standard for Mudhole Smith. Jim emerged gleaming no less bravely, a tall, broad-shouldered, long-legged man clad in an immaculate uniform, shiny blue jacket zipped to just beneath the perfectly tied Windsor knot of his tie, hat freshly brushed and its brim pulled down just far enough to provide Jim's bright blue eyes with just the correct amount of shade. Jim was well aware of the cachet the Alaska state trooper's uniform lent the wearer, and he took care never to appear less than sartori-ally splendid, whether he was testifying in court in Anchorage, disarming a wife killer in Chitina or responding to the scene of a murder in Cordova.

"Kate," he said, giving her a formal nod, immediately spoiling the effect with a grin than reminded her of nothing so much as the expression on the snout of a great white shark on its second pa.s.s. "Where's Mutt?"

"At fish camp. Where's your helicopter?"

"In the shop. Fish camp?"

"On Amartuq Creek, with Auntie Joy and Auntie Vi."

"Right. On Walden Pond with Th.o.r.eau, Gandhi and Dr. King, learning to practice civil disobedience. Mutt ought to be good at that." It unsettled Kate when she and Jim shared the same opinion on any subject, and it was doubly unnerving when the opinion concerned her elders' perfectly legitimate actions in defense of their cultural history.

He sensed her uneasiness. His grin widened and he adjusted his hat a millimeter to the south. "Hear you found yourself another body."

"I don't exactly go around drumming up business," Kate said, irritated.

His dimples deepened. Master Sergeant James M. Chopin was a die-hard flirt who made his home as state trooper in residence at Tok, a small community to the north of the Park that didn't quite qualify as Bush because there was a road through it. Rated on both fixed wing and helicopter, he kept the peace of the Park's twenty million acres from the air, the only way to get around Bush Alaska, and had been doing so for the last fifteen years. He'd been seducing Kate's female relatives for at least that long, earning himself the nickname Father of the Park, used with affection by some (usually female) and with opprobrium by others (usually male).

His legendary charm left Kate cold, or so she told herself; she had fended off his advances in the beginning because she disliked the idea of standing in line, and now kept it up more out of habit than anything else. Habit and Jack, she reminded herself. She blinked in the face of that steady blue gaze and with an effort did not step back from it.

Flirtation aside, Jim was the consummate professional law enforcement officer, and she respected his instincts, his ability and his sangfroid in the face of the call of the weird. She remembered only too well the scene in Bernie's Road-house nearly three years ago, when the drunk pipeliner had pulled a gun and placed the muzzle at Jim's forehead. Without batting an eye, Jim had said, "What seems to be the problem here?" The drunk pipeliner, made aware of who he was up against, surrendered.

The feeling of respect was mutual, and he said, as he climbed into the cab of the rump-sprung pickup she'd borrowed from Gull, "What have we got, Kate?" knowing that her observational skills were acute, her judgment was sound and she would lay out events in concise, chronological manner, without histrionics and without coloring the facts with personal prejudice.

Although there had been a moment there, last spring, when he thought she'd shown signs of becoming less an adjunct to law enforcement and more a champion of tribal sovereignty. It was a moment, in fact, when by some mysterious alchemy she had taken on the authority of her grandmother. He still wasn't entirely sure she hadn't lied to him about that domestic disturbance he'd responded to in Niniltna, to find her already in place and the situation resolved. Just by the quality of silence that surrounded the incident he knew he'd missed something, but long experience with the parochialism of Bush villages kept him from pressing the issue. A few discreet questions had revealed that the parents had enrolled in the Native Sobriety Movement and that the kids were turning in B's and C's in school. He was all for local solutions to local problems, and so long as the situation remained stable and the kids were doing all right, he was willing to walk away.

Besides, if he accused Kate Shugak of obstruction of justice he'd never get into her pants.

Kate started talking when they turned from the airport parking lot onto Highway 10. It was thirteen miles from Mud-hole Smith International Airport to town, and Eyak Lake had iust appeared on their right as she came to that morning's discovery of the body.

"Where is the body?" Jim said.

"Wrapped in a tarp in Knight Island Packers' cooler."

He slanted a grin her way. "Meany deliver to Knight Island?"

Kate nodded. "When the price was right."

"Professional courtesy," he suggested.

She didn't smile.

He was sitting erect in the pa.s.senger seat, the round crown of his hat just brushing the ceiling of the truck's cab. His long legs were cramped because Kate had the bench drawn up far enough for her feet to reach the pedals, but he was the only person Kate had ever seen who could look dignified with his knees up around his ears, so it didn't matter. They came to the end of Eyak Lake and Le Fevre's street sign flashed by on the right. "Well, Kate," he said, ruminatively, "you going to tell me how he died?"

She took a deep breath, held it and released it slowly. "This one you should see for yourself, Jim, without any preconceptions."

"But it was murder? You're sure about that?"

She laughed, a short, sharp, unamused bark.

"Urn." The sound was noncommittal. "What's your best guess?"

She snorted, slowing as they pa.s.sed Eyak Packing Company and putting the blinker on to turn left on Railroad. "Motive we got, suspects we got more. He beat up on his son, who's big enough to have taken him out, by surprise anyway. He was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g at least one wife, as personally witnessed by me, and Gull is only too happy to a.s.sure me that there were just dozens more, so there's all their husbands, plus Meany's own wife."

"She in town?"

"No, she's working the setnet site."

His eyes narrowed. First motive, and then opportunity, how nice. In law enforcement it was axiomatic that in murder cases the spouse was always the number one suspect, since ninety percent of the time the spouse did the killing. "You talk to her yet?"

She shook her head. "Waiting on you. Meany's setnet site and his drifter were the only nets in the water yesterday, when all the other fishermen were protesting the price drop, and I am here to tell you, the fleet don't like it when that happens." With which masterly understatement she braked to turn left on Nicholoff, pa.s.sed Baja Tacos, the AC Value Center and Save-U-Lots stores and the harbormaster's office, to pull up in front of a rambling building with different levels of flat, corrugated-tin roofs, some one-story, some three-story, all walled with gray plastic siding. The parking lot was nearly empty, and Kate stopped in front of a door marked "Office" in big black letters, put the truck into second and turned off the ignition. She sat for a moment, staring straight ahead, hands gripping the steering wheel, as if making up her mind. He waited.

With a muttered curse she turned to face him, and when she did, the sight of his impa.s.sive expression caused a reluctant smile to cross her own face. "I don't want it to be the kid."

He nodded.

"It used to be a lot easier. You know?"

"I know."

When she'd worked for the Anchorage DA, her duty was clear. Identify the perp, build a case on means, motive and opportunity that would hold up in court, arrest him and a.s.sist the DA in prosecution, followed by, if everyone did their jobs properly, an extended sojourn at Hiland or Spring Creek or Palmer hosted by the ever accommodating state of Alaska.

She'd been a private citizen too long. She said abruptly, "Monday was the opener. July second. Flat calm, no wind, sunny, fish hitting everywhere you looked, fishermen filling up and delivering and filling up again and delivering again. Meany delivered that day. He had a load on, the drifter's trim line was d.a.m.n near under water."

Still noncommittal, Jim said, "Lucky for him it was a no-weather day."

She nodded. "He had the son on board, kid maybe fifteen, sixteen years old. The kid did something stupid, something no worse than any other teenager with his hormones in an uproar hasn't done a billion times before anywhere in the world. Meany beat on him. He beat on him something fierce. He knocked him into the water, not once but twice. And then he kicked him."

He waited.

Her eyes met his. "The kid looked like it wasn't anything didn't happen once every day and twice on Sundays. He was used to it." She added, "I really don't want it to be the kid."

He thought. "Okay. So here we've got a fishermen, dead not by his own hand"he c.o.c.ked an eye at Kate and she shook her head"who was beating on his kid, probably a repeat offender." He waited for Kate's confirming nod. "A fisherman who was viewed as a scab by a hundred striking fishermen. A fisherman who was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with another fisherman's wife, and rumor has it, with others as well. That about cover it?"

"It does from what we know so far."

His gaze sharpened. "You have reason to believe there might be somebody else wanted this guy wasted?"

One shoulder raised, lowered. "Look at the pattern so far. This guy lived to p.i.s.s off everyone around him." Kate remembered Tim's flushed, excited face late Monday afternoon, so proud of being high boat. I know this guy, Tim had said. And Tim had not mentioned his wife that day, only his mother. Unusual for a newlywed. Was the omission deliberate? Had he known Myra was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around? Had he known with whom?

She would have to ask him, she realized reluctantly, or Jim would, and it would be less threatening coming from her. She didn't look forward to it, though.

A memory of Auntie Joy's expression as she looked at Meany from the deck of the Freya flashed through her mind. She gave a mental shrug. That at least was something she didn't have to worry about. Auntie Joy had been at fish camp surrounded by five witnesses, one of whom was the chief investigator for the Anchorage district attorney.

"Okay. We're lousy with motive and suspects. How about means?"

Kate got out of the truck. "The last time I saw him alive he was making for Cordova with a full load. Yesterday afternoon about one o'clock. He had to run a gauntlet of fishing boats to do it, with a lot of half-drunk p.i.s.sed-off fishermen skippering them, but he made it."

"His son on board?"

She nodded. "On deck, picking fish out of the last of the gear and pitching them into the hold. But h.e.l.l, that don't necessarily mean anything. We don't even know where Meany was killed."

"What do you mean? You found him at Alaganik?"

"Yeah, but who's to say he didn't get himself killed right here in the harbor, after he delivered?"

"He did deliver, then?"

She nodded again. "Mark Hanley, head of the beach gang, he says he pulled up to the Knight Island dock two hours after I saw him leave Alaganik."

"He remembers exactly?"

She gave a half-smile. "He was ticked at being called out. n.o.body else was fishing, the beach gang was celebrating the Fourth with a barbecue and, as I understand it, Meany showed up just about the time the wet T-shirt contest started."

Jim grinned. "Not a happy camper."

"No."

"So you think the killer might have killed him here, driven his boat back out to the grounds and rolled him into the water?"

"Maybe."

"Why? To confuse anybody who comes looking for him?"

"Definitely to confuse someone. Wait till you see the body, Jim," she said, with emphasis. "This, you should pardon the expression, is overkill."