Killing Grounds Part 9

Kate looked up at the girl, and caught a flicker in Dani's angry eyes. She was holding something back, but the set of her jaw didn't look promising. "How did you get back to the site, Frank?"

"He hitched a ride, okay?"

"Who with?"

Dani tossed her head. She looked older than her brother but not by much, and not for lack of trying to look that way. Kids never looked like kids anymore, they all looked like adults by the time they were ten. Or were working at it as hard as they could. "I don't know," she said with an elaborate shrug. "Some fisherman type, they all look alike, all covered with slime and scales."

Frank actually spoke, his head still down, his voice m.u.f.fled. "Wendell Kritchen. I saw him down at the harbor this morning. He told me Dad was dead, and gave me a ride out on the liana"

"I know you," Marian Meany said suddenly, staring at Old Sam. "You're Sam Dementieff. The one they call Old Sam."

"Yes, ma'am." The old man doffed his hat and bowed his head. Sam's company manners were faultless; he just didn't believe in wasting them on friends and family.

She pointed out the window. "You own the tender out there."

"Yes, ma'am."

Marian crossed the room and sat down, her hands on wide-spread knees, staring hard at Old Sam, looking more aware than she had when they arrived. "They say you're older than G.o.d, and that what you don't know about fish and fishing and fishermen isn't worth knowing."

"That would be about right, ma'am." There was nothing of false modesty about Old Sam, either. And, Kate reflected, what they said was right.

"Do you know anyone who would want to buy our permit and this cabin?"

Her brother-in-law stirred in his chair, his eyes fixed on Marian's face in a steady gaze, but like Kate he said nothing.

Old Sam looked Marian over with an a.s.sessing eye not entirely devoid of male appreciation. "You might want to try the Ursins," he said bluntly. "The people your husband forced out before you got here."

She didn't so much as blink. "Do you think they'd want to come back?"

"Depends on how much you want for the permit and cabin."

"Whatever my husband paid for it."

"Marian"

"Hush up, Neil," she said. "You couldn't stand up to him alive any more than I could. Well, he's dead, and we're not going to pretend any of us ever wanted this kind of life. He bullied us to Alaska, and then he bullied us down here after he bullied the Ursins out. We were never any of us anything more than free labor for his little empire."

"I didn't"

"We're selling out," Marian Meany said flatly. "The second after someone writes us a check."

Frank had raised his head and was looking at his mother with something approaching dumb adoration in his eyes.

She gave him a brief, wan smile. "It's going to be all right, kids. We're going home. We're selling the setnet site and the drifter and the house in Anchorage and we're going back to Cincinnati."

"Oh, goody," Dani, back in her bunk, said, and turned the page of her comic book.

"Knock it off, Dani," her mother said, the lack of hope she felt of being obeyed evident in the tired repet.i.tiveness of the words.

"Like you have anything to say about what I do or don't do."

In the same mechanical tone, Marian said, "Of course I do, you're my daughter."

Dani turned her head and looked Marian straight in the eye. Her voice was low, almost gentle. "It's a little late for you to start playing mother, isn't it?"

Marian turned away from the fury in her daughter's face. It might not be too late for Marian, but Kate wondered if the same could be said for Dani.

The widow looked at her brother-in-law, the other adult, the one person in the room she might rouse to some enthusiasm at their changed circ.u.mstances. "You can go back to school, Neil. After we sell the boat and the permit, there'll be enough left for that, too. You can get your doctorate, teach Keats."

"Yeats," he said.

"Whatever." Marian turned back to Sam. "So, Mr. Dementieff? Do you know how to get in touch with the Ursins?" He nodded. "Will you?"

"I'll call them when I get back to town."

She smiled at him, a meaningless stretch of her lips. "Thank you."

Old Sam grunted and crammed his hat back on his head. "Ain't done nothing yet."

"Thank you just the same." Her company manners were good, too.

"Listen, folks," Kate said, feeling it was more than time to get back to the point, "I need to know where you all were last night. It's just routine," she added, seeing the protests form on the faces in front of her. "Trooper Chopin asked me to get some of the preliminary questions out of the way, so he'll have a head start when he gets back."

Dani sat up, comic book forgotten. "Chopper Jim's coming here?"

"Yes, later tonight, or maybe tomorrow, and he"

The comic book went flying as Dani leapt from the bunk and ran over to a curtain made by hanging a length of unhemmed chintz from a wire stretched across one corner of the cabin. When she yanked the material to one side, the glow of colors behind it was momentarily blinding. Cherry red and lime green figured prominently.

"So where were you, Dani?" Kate said, patiently for her. She'd seen this reaction before in women expecting a close encounter of the trooper kind. Unbeknownst to Dani, Jim Chopin chose his victims carefully. They were all, without exception, over the age of consent, and they all, without exception, had vocabularies consisting of more than the Valley Girlisms "Like, you know?" and "Oh-KAY?" Kate was able to restrain any impulse she might have had to leap to the defense of the teenager's virtue.

"Where was I?" Dani said. She pulled out an almost transparent little black dress with a nonexistent skirt and no bodice to speak of and paired it with flowered leggings trimmed with lace, a new high in setnet site chic. She regarded the resultant ensemble with a critical frown, decided it didn't reveal enough skin and dove back into the closet for more. "What do you mean, where was I?"

Although from the look of things, Kate just might have to leap to the defense of Chopper Jim's virtue.

The summer hire rose to his feet, and went to stand in front of the window, looking out. The set of his shoulders was stiff. Kate gave his back a long, thoughtful look, and said to the girl, "Where were you last night, Dani?" Kate didn't have an official time of death, so she guessed. "Say, from yesterday afternoon until this morning at about six-thirty?" There was silence, and she said, "You can talk to me now, or you can talk to Chopper Jim later"precisely the wrong thing to say.

Dani emerged from her makeshift closet with lip curled and att.i.tude intact. "Then I'll talk to Chopper Jim later." The girl tossed her head; her hair, a hundred miles from an electrical outlet, bounced around her face in perfect strands, looking as if it had been blow-dried by Vidal Sa.s.soon himself five minutes before. There was so much in the gesture, all of it only too easy for Kate to sort and identify: rebellion, bravado, braggadocio and a current of s.e.xual awareness that was as angry as it was intense. She'd seen it before, the unmistakable signs of a child brought to womanhood too fast and too soon.

"We were both here," Marian Meany said. "Right here in the cabin. The period ended at six o'clock. We came in here and crashed."

"That go for you, too?" Kate said to Neil Meany.

He hesitated. "Yes. I mean no. I mean, I cleaned up here first, and then I went up the beach for a while."

"Where up the beach?"

Before he could reply Dani said mockingly, "Like, you know, Uncle Neil's got himself a girlfriend."

The curse of fair skin is the inability to hide a blush, although Neil Meany's voice was steady enough. "I'm friends with the next setnetter up the beach. Anne Flanagan. She's got two daughters." His shoulders shifted uncomfortably beneath Kate's steady gaze, with what could have been manly embarra.s.sment at having his manly affections discovered. "I found a gla.s.s ball in the gear. One of those j.a.panese floats. It was only a little one, but I thought the girls might like it."

"You got there when?"

He looked at his watch, a battered Seiko on a plastic band. "Well, I washed up first, and changed my clothes. Took maybe twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. I took the skiff to her site"her site, Kate noticed, not their site"maybe ten minutes all told. So I probably got to her place a little before seven. A quarter till?"

"And when did you leave?"

"She invited me to dinner, and we talked for hours. Oh yes, and played Monopoly with the girls afterwards. I didn't get back here until, oh, I don't know, one-thirty? Two o'clock?" He smiled briefly. "It's hard to keep track of time during an Alaskan summer. Too much light."

Kate looked at Marian, who shrugged. "I was asleep."

"Dani?"

"Hm? Oh, I was sacked out, too. I didn't hear him come home." There was something in the airy dismissal that made both her mother and Kate look at her sharply, but Dani was holding a cherry-red T-shirt beneath her chin and twisting into a pretzel to regard the effect in the very inadequate mirror hanging from a nail over the sink.

"And Marian and Dani were in bed when you came home?" Kate asked Neil.

"Yes." Again, he hesitated. "I guess so. When it isn't raining I sleep in a hammock out back."

Great, Kate thought. "And Frank we've already heard from." The boy looked up from contemplation of folded hands. He had green eyes like his sister, like his mother, with the same wary look in them. Inwardly Kate cursed that wariness. None of them were telling her all that they could, and some of them were lying in their teeth, but then she was getting the distinct impression that life with Meany had not rewarded telling the truth. Like anything else, telling the truth was a habit: The more you did it, the better at it you became. The reverse was equally true.

Besides, there was nothing like murder to start off someone on a career of prevarication that Baron Munchausen would envy. What she needed now was more information, the better with which to poke holes in their stories.

She looked at the silent, fox-faced young man who was leaning against the counter, arms folded. "And where were you last night, Mr. McCafferty?"

"Mac, please."

"Where were you last night, Mr. McCafferty?"

"On board the Priscilla. Dewey Dineen invited me to go water-skiing."

"And you returned here when?"

His narrow shoulders moved in a shrug. "I'm not sure." He tried the smile again, with as much success as before, and it faded again. "What with all the celebrating, I wasn't any too steady on my feet, you know? Check with Dewey, he might remember. It was late, I'm pretty sure of that."

"Anybody hear him come in?" Kate asked the question with all the hope it deserved, none, and was not disappointed. Neil had been sacked out in back in the hammock, Frank was in town, Dani and Marian were asleep. Or so they said. "You have any problems with Meany as an employer?"

Again the narrow-shouldered shrug. "His checks cleared the bank."

Her own view of life in the fishing industry, and clearly McCafferty's last word on the subject. None of them had any more to add, at least for the moment, and Kate decided it was time to collect more information from outside sources before she put what the people here had said to the test. She rose to her feet. "I think that's all for now. Due to the nature of the crime, I'm sure Chopper Jim would want me to tell you that he would prefer you remain here at present, at least until the matter is resolved to everyone's satisfaction."

With which fine words she decamped, Old Sam at her heels. Halfway down the beach, he said, "n.o.body's got an alibi, do they? Except maybe the boy?"

"Nope," Kate said glumly.

He gave her a shrewd look. "You were pretty tough on him."

"I don't want it to be him," she said wearily.

He gave a satisfied nod, as if she'd confirmed something he already knew. "What about the girl? The way these things work out, you know she come in for her share." He added, his voice gruff, "And then some, probably, being how she's a girl and all."

"I know," Kate said. "I know." She paused, one hand on the bow line, and looked over at him. "You built that stove, didn't you?" She jerked her head. "The one in the cabin. I recognized the doork.n.o.b. You've got a boxful just like it in the Freyas focsle."

He tugged unnecessarily at the bill of his cap. "They were good people. I might have helped them out a bit."

Not for a moment did Kate imagine that Old Sam was referring to the Meanys.

As they were about to shove off, Marian Meany came flying out of the cabin, stumbling through the gravel, sending rocks skittering down the beach. She fetched up against the boat, hands gripping the bow, panting, her face flushed. "Did you see him?" she said urgently.

"See who?" Kate said.

"My husband. Did you see the body?"

"Well, yes," Kate said, brows puckering. "I found him."

The older woman caught Kate's wrist. "Are you sure? Are you sure he's dead?"

Kate kept her arm very still beneath the influence of that desperate, almost painful grip. "I'm sure."

Marian Meany's eyes stared hard into Kate's, and the struggle over what to believe was plain to see.

"I saw him, too, Marian," Old Sam said from the stern, one hand on the kicker. "He was dead." He caught her eyes and repeated firmly, "He was dead before we ever hauled him on board the Freya."

"You're sure? You're absolutely sure?"

"We're sure," Old Sam said, more gently this time.

The grasping hand loosened and fell from Kate's wrist. "Thank you," Marian Meany said in a faint voice. "I'm sorry. I was afraid . . ." Her voice trailed off, and she retreated a few steps up the beach, before turning to face them again. "Thank you," she said fervently. "Thank you very much."

Her face before she turned to head up the beach again shone with a light that was almost beatific, and she walked as if she had shed twenty pounds, her stride long and graceful.

Old Sam hauled at the starter with unnecessary violence. "Dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.d's better off dead, he ain't capable of appreciating the kind of luck that lets him climb into bed next to that every night."

Old Sam was right about somebody being lucky, but i: wasn't Calvin Meany. It looked as if everyone in his family had just received a gift from G.o.d, in the form of his own death Except that in this case G.o.d had had a lot of help.

11.

In spite of Old Sam's vow to leave Kate to the Flanagan children's tender mercies, he was ahead of her going up the beach to their cabin. It was one of the flotsam-and-jetsam cabins, built of anything that came to handdriftwood, Blazo boxes, plywood that had obviously been left behind by the tide. The roof had a shallow peak and was layered with canvas. The canvas was weighted down with a dozen lengths of very old, one-inch manila line, also obviously scavenged. The lines had then been tossed over the ridgepole and weighed down at each end by large rocks, dangling beneath the eaves like participles, indicating a thoughtand a roof left unfinished.

As they approached the cabin the sound of raised voices could be heard.