Whisper To The Blood Part 20

Ruthlessly he pressed his advantage. "Howie says the four aunties hired the job done, Kate."

Her head snapped back up and she stared at him, obviously shocked. "What?"

"Just when were you going to let me in on that little tidbit of information?"

At this inopportune moment, Johnny returned with the peas and onions. "Here you go, Kate," he said with false cheer. "Sorry it took me so long, the veggie box is kinda buried in moosemeat."

She was still staring at Jim with her mouth open and no sound coming out. Jim was still glaring at her. Johnny looked from one to the other and said, "You know what? Van's having some trouble with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, getting the movers and shakers straight, Willie Hensley, Tyonek, all those guys. We've got a test on it tomorrow in History of Alaska cla.s.s. I think I'm going to drive over and help her out."

He fetched a daypack from his bedroom and swept the books and papers on the dining table into it with more efficiency than finesse. "Don't worry about me," he said, still cheery, "I'm sure An-nie'll give me dinner and a bed for the night."

Still nothing from the tableau vivant at the kitchen counter.

Johnny looked at Mutt. "You want to come with?"

Mutt c.o.c.ked one ear and bent a reflective gaze on Kate and Jim, but in the end decided she didn't want to be compared to a rat deserting a sinking ship, and sneezed a polite refusal.

"Yeah, well, just try to stay out of the line of fire," Johnny said, and left the building. A moment later the Arctic Cat started up, followed immediately by the sound of it moving up the track to the road and out of earshot. Truth to tell, he was a little surprised at getting away with it, the twenty-five-mile drive alone through a cold winter night. He was heartened at this apparent evidence of faith in his maturity.

Meanwhile, back in the house, Kate had barely registered his departure. "I-," she said. "I-"

He was suddenly and thoroughly fed up. "Yeah, you," he said, rounding the counter. She slapped off the burners and turned to face him. "You don't trust me not to be sleeping with anyone else. You don't trust me enough to inform me of crucial evidence in an open murder investigation."

"But I didn't-"

"What do you trust me for, Kate?" He looked down at her and the anger whipped itself into a white-hot flame. "Oh h.e.l.l, we both know what you trust me for," and he picked her up off her feet and kissed her so hard she felt her lip split.

She squirmed, her feet dangling a good foot off the floor, pushing against his shoulders, bending herself backward so she could free herself enough to speak. "No, Jim, wait-"

This only inflamed him further. "Wait, my a.s.s," he said, and started for the stairs to the loft.

Mutt came to her feet at that, her yellow eyes wide. "You stay right there," he told her. "This is between us."

Mutt looked uncharacteristically indecisive. Attack or stay? Was Kate in trouble or not?

Meanwhile Kate began struggling in earnest. "No, Jim, stop, you don't understand-"

"I understand plenty," he said, starting up the stairs.

She was strong and slippery but he had more muscle ma.s.s than she did, as well as a longer reach, and he managed to hold on until he got them upstairs. He didn't so much drop her to the bed as throw her at it. She bounced once and tried to scramble to the floor.

"Oh no you don't," he said, and 220 pounds of outraged male dropped full on her, driving all the breath out of her body.

"Jim-," she said, her voice a squeak of sound.

"Shut up," he said, kneeing her legs apart. He was fully aroused, hard against her. "Just shut the h.e.l.l up."

She fought him, she really did, but he ripped the white T-shirt over her head and left it to tangle her hands before he went for the b.u.t.tons on the fly of her jeans.

"Jim, don't," she said frantically, "not like this."

"Just like this," he said, ripping open her jeans and shoving them down. He kissed her again, not so much a caress as a claiming, rough and demanding.

This time she kissed him back, biting at his lips, his jaw, setting her teeth into his throat almost hard enough to draw blood. He growled and bit back and he wasn't gentle. Her bra went somewhere and his teeth were at her breast and her panties went next, shredded and tossed. His hand was between her legs, forcing entry, demanding a response, and she couldn't stop it any more than she could stop the sun rising or the rain falling, she arched up into his caress with an involuntary groan.

He laughed once, low in his throat, his hand moving. "Yeah," he said. He could feel the heat rising up off her body in a scorching wave, and he reached for his fly, only to find her hands there before him. A second was too long to wait, and then he was there and sliding home, and she moaned, a long, drawn-out sound compounded of pleasure, relief, and fury, arching up in demand. He didn't bother with preliminaries, he started moving, long, slow, hard strokes, in and out, in and out. "Jesus," he said, breathless, "babe," he said, "Kate," he said, "oh Kate oh holy s.h.i.t Kate, Kate, Kate!"

His eyes went dim but he felt her body tense like a strung bow and he heard her shout something, what he never knew and she couldn't remember. A blinding flood of pleasure and release started at the base of his spine and flooded up over his body like lava, burning out every living nerve end he had, leaving a wasteland of scorched earth and gray ash behind.

SEVENTEEN.

He was gone when she woke up the next morning. On the whole, Kate was relieved. She rolled to the edge of the bed and to her dismay her legs wouldn't support her at first. When she felt confident enough to get to her feet, she staggered a little before she found her balance, and though she hated to admit it she was walking a little splay-legged on her way into the bathroom, where she ran a tub of water as hot as she could stand it. She let herself down into the tub with gingerly care and soaked until the water went tepid, by which time she was marginally mobile again and grateful for it.

The clothes she had been wearing the day before were beyond repair, even the jeans, the fly torn open and one of the b.u.t.tons missing. She hunted for it but it was not to be found. With a sigh she bundled up T-shirt, jeans, bra, and panties and went downstairs. From her place in front of the long-dead fire, Mutt looked up and gave her a long yellow stare, eyebrows pointedly raised.

"You just shut up," Kate said, and went into the kitchen to find that Jim had left her a fresh pot of coffee. She thought about pouring it out and making her own, one untainted by Chopin hands.

Wasteful, though, and hypocritical. All her anger at him had been seared away over the long and tumultuous night. She winced into a seat at the table, and sipped coffee and watched the sky lighten in the east. Mostly cloudy, and the thermometer mounted outside the window showed the temperature at ten above. She'd miss the sun of the past week but she would welcome the warmer weather. They all would.

There was a tendency to dwell on the events of the previous evening. She forced those memories into a corner of her mind and shut the door on them, for now, turning her focus to the startling revelation Jim had made, that had knocked her so sideways she couldn't even- No, Kate, she thought fiercely. Focus.

All right. First, she had to consider the source. Howie was a congenital liar. Truth was such an alien concept to Howie that it might as well have a green card. Anything that came out of Howie's mouth had to be evaluated in the context of Howie's life, known a.s.sociates, current misdemeanors, and planned felonies. There ought, in fact, to be a frequent felony plan for Howie. So many felonies and he got so many free days in jail. Oh wait, they already had one of those.

On the other hand, Howie was also capable of recognizing the truth as a commodity, with market value, which value might be exchanged for protective custody in the event Howie felt his life threatened.

Kate got up and poured herself some more coffee. She noted that half the coffee cake was gone, as well as a loaf of the white bread, most of the fried liver, leaving the rest congealed on the bottom of the frying pan, and all of the mashed potatoes. Jim had been hungry this morning.

She stood still, staring down at the empty and half-empty dishes.

If he could be believed, he hadn't slept with Talia Macleod.

One of the reasons she had a hard time believing it was that she couldn't understand why not. It was what Jim did, it was who he was. He was a dog. He admitted it. For a long time, he had positively gloried in it. The Father of the Park might be only an honorific, but it was certainly true in spirit. Kate would need double the fingers and toes to count the names of the women he'd been involved with over the years.

So, why wouldn't he sleep with Talia Macleod? The question was baffling, and unanswerable.

The cinnamon in the streusel topping teased at her nostrils, and her stomach growled in response. She started to cut a wedge and then put down the knife and got out a fork. She carried the cake tin to the table with the fresh cup of coffee and waded in.

Howie could have made it up. It wouldn't have been the first time he had indulged in creative fiction to divert attention from his own indiscretions.

She shoved the coffee cake away. Then why did she feel so sick? So apprehensive? So terrified?

She donned boots, parka, hat, and gloves and poured coffee into an insulated mug, dosing it with enough half-and-half to make cafe au lait. Mutt trotted over and Kate let them out the door, snagging a blue plastic boat cushion from the bench on the deck on the way.

Around the back of the house she postholed through the snow to the little bluff that overlooked the creek running in back of her house. Frozen solid, the resulting chasm looked like a lightning bolt imprisoned in the earth. Bare birch and aspen branches bent beneath the weight of frost, spruce trees slowly dying from the spruce bark beetle infestation were transformed into fairy-tale homes for elves and wizards. An arctic hare peeped out from a blueberry thicket, nose quivering, and freezing into immobility when it felt the weight of Mutt's interested eye. On the eastern horizon the Quilaks loomed large and menacing, mercenaries in arms to the gathering clouds overhead. Another battle for winter in the Park's near future was imminent, or the portents lied.

"Why do I think he's telling the truth?" Kate said out loud. "I'm not even fighting it."

For some reason, she remembered the trip down the river, talking to the Kaltaks, the Jeffersons, the Rileys. As sure as she was sitting here, they were to the last man, woman, and child convinced that the Johansens were responsible for the attacks. And to the last man, woman, and child they were equally convinced that the Johansens had been brought to account for their crimes.

Kate was afraid that they were right. Someone had decided on their own to take care of the problem.

"Like the aunties," she said out loud, feeling sick again. She swallowed hard. "Like the aunties might have taken care of Louis Deem."

Kate thought back to her visit to Vidar Johansen, that cranky, lonely old man, the village built by his family emptying out two and three at a time around him. The school was gone. The post office was gone, mail delivered now to Niniltna. She could see the Johansen boys of Tikani, descendants of some of the oldest blood in the Park, getting hungrier and hungrier, too proud and too contrary to ask for help, until the only option seemed to be to forage for food and fuel wherever they could find it. From whomever they had to take it, even their neighbors.

And even if they hadn't, which she didn't know for a fact, she could see how they would be the obvious suspects.

If it was the Johansens, it would make sense that all the attacks occurred south of Niniltna, none of them north. Efficient predators know enough not to hunt too close to home. It frightens the game.

An eagle soared overhead on outspread wings, a soft presence on the minimal winter thermals generated by the rising sun. He spotted the hare and dipped his right wing, banking down into a swooping, tightening spiral. The hare vanished, snow falling from the trembling branches of the blueberry bush. The eagle straightened out and beat his wings to regain his original alt.i.tude, moving on. There would be another hare, or a squirrel, or a fox. There always was. Eagles, card-carrying carnivores, scavengers, opportunists, weren't picky about their food.

If someone had in fact const.i.tuted themselves judge, jury, and executioner in the matter of the snow machine attacks on the KanuyaqRiver, that someone would have to be identified and warned against such action in future. She remembered Jim's complaints about Park rats taking justice into their own hands. Demetri attacking Smith for blading his beaver line. Bonnie Jeppsen keying the truck of the kid who as a prank put a dead salmon into the drop box. Arliss Kalifonsky putting a (probably well deserved, Kate thought) bullet into Mickey the next time he raised his hand to her. Dan O'Brien kicking a poacher's a.s.s for trying to sell him a bear bladder.

They were all cla.s.sic examples of Newton's third law, and a hundred years ago these equal and opposite reactions would have earned nothing more than an approving nod from pa.s.sersby, even if those pa.s.sersby were territorial policemen. In their time the TPs were even more thin on the ground than their descendants, the state troopers, and welcomed all the help they got so long as it didn't make them more work.

Today, there was a trooper post in the Park, with a trooper a.s.signed to it full time, and the Bill of Rights was more than just a paper under gla.s.s in the National Archives in Washington, D.G. Jim was right. He should be the first call people made, and for a while he had been, or so it seemed to Kate. What had changed?

A fat, glossy raven spoke from a nearby treetop. He had a lot to say in croaks and clicks and chuckles, slipping effortlessly from one raven dialect to another. Mutt's ears twitched and she gave the raven a hard look. The raven chattered on regardless, not unaware but not afraid, either. Even Mutt couldn't climb a tree.

"Maybe Talia turned him down," Kate said. That was it, it had to be. Jim had made his move, and Talia had declined with thanks.

Kate remembered Macleod's manner with the men on the board that morning. She'd definitely had a thing with Demetri at some point, and she'd been flirting with Old Sam, probably fifty years her senior. She remembered with painful clarity the intimacy between Jim and Macleod she'd seen at Bobby's house.

No, Kate didn't think Talia Macleod would have turned down Jim Chopin. She would have tripped Jim and beat him to the ground first.

And then another thought struck her, almost blinding in its force. "Oh, G.o.d," she said. "Oh, G.o.d."

Mutt looked at her in concern. It wasn't a tone of voice she was accustomed to hearing. She nudged Kate with her head and gave a soft, anxious whine.

"I believe Howie? And I don't believe Jim?"

She had to close her eyes while the world righted itself around her, and when she opened them again she was determined to banish thoughts of Jim Chopin from her mind, at least for the present. She reacquired her train of thought and held on grimly, determined not to be thrown off track this time.

Park rats were a self-sufficient bunch, no question, but Kate would never have described them as lawless. In fact, out here on what was still pretty much a frontier, people had more of a tendency to abide by the rules than not. When your nearest neighbor lives five miles away, the golden rule in particular became not just a nice adage but a way of life. There was no phone to pick up and call 911, even if there were a firehouse or a hospital within driving distance, which there wasn't, and even if there was a road between the fire-house or the hospital and your house, which there also wasn't. When you got into trouble you were going to need help. You wouldn't get it if you had a reputation for breaking the rules, for helping yourself to a neighbor's vegetable patch when she was out fishing, say, or making off with a cord of wood when they were on a Costco run, or cleaning out the cache when they were in Anchorage getting their eyes checked. Or draining their fuel tanks when they were on vacation.

So where was this coming from?

Her b.u.t.t was starting to go numb and Kate was rising to her feet to return to the house when another thought stopped her in her tracks.

Louis Deem. Shot on a deserted stretch of Park road by a still unknown a.s.sa.s.sin. Louis Deem, embezzler, confidence man, thief, triple wife murderer. Louis Deem, who had lost no opportunity to abuse and victimize any Park rat unfortunate enough to cross his path.

Was Louis Deem's murder where all this began? She turned with decision and made for the garage.

Kate let herself in Auntie Vi's front door, only to be confronted by a stranger. "Oh," she said. "h.e.l.lo. I'm looking for Auntie Vi."

The stranger-stocky, medium height, dark hair and eyes-had a broad grin that came too easily. "Don't shoot," he said genially, holding his hands up. "I'm a paying guest."

Kate smiled politely. "No problem."

The smile, set in an oval face with almond-shaped hazel eyes set on high flat cheekbones and a wide, expressive mouth, all of it framed with a short cap of black silk, the husky rasp of her voice, the whole package made him straighten up and step in for a closer look. "I'm d.i.c.k Gallagher. Hey, cool dog." He stretched out a hand and snapped his fingers. "Here, boy."

Mutt looked at him, a long, steady, considering gaze.

"Heh," Gallagher said, and dropped his hand. "He doesn't take kindly to strangers, I guess."

"She's a girl, for starters," Kate said. "I recognize your name, I think. You're working for Talia Macleod out at Suulutaq, aren't you?"

"That's right," he said. "Good job, too. Pays well."

"Congratulations," Kate said, looking around for Auntie Vi.

He hooked a thumb at the kitchen. "I could even afford to buy you breakfast. Interested?"

"I've eaten, thanks. Is Auntie Vi here?"

"I haven't seen her since breakfast. Come on, a cup of coffee can't hurt."

It had been a bitter cold ride in and she could use a warm-up, so she followed him down the pa.s.sageway to the kitchen and sat down at the table opposite him.

"So what's your name?" he said, getting a plate of French toast and bacon from the oven.

"Kate," she said. "Kate Shugak."

His fork stopped halfway to his mouth. "Kate Shugak," he said.

"Yeah. Where you from?"

He shrugged, and the fork continued its upward motion. "Outside." He grinned again, although this time it seemed to lack its previous warmth. "I understand that's what I'm supposed to say."

She registered a slight tingling of her Spidey sense. She shrugged, watching his face. "It's what you can say."

He c.o.c.ked his head a little. "Meaning if I do, I must be hiding something?"

She surprised both of them by laughing, a rough husk of amus.e.m.e.nt that by the appreciative gleam in his eye he found as attractive as the rest of her. "If you aren't, you'd be the only cheechako in the Park who isn't." She added, "And maybe the only one in Alaska." She looked at him, her face a genial mask. "How long you been here?"

"Couple months now."