Whisper To The Blood Part 24

Be worth something to see Jim Chopin's expression when he heard it.

She loaded the small mountain of purchases in the trailer of her snow machine and headed out for Tikani. She made good time up the river beneath gray clouds heavy with moisture, presaging a big dump of snow. When she got close to the village she slowed down and approached with caution, but it was as deserted as it had been three days before. She nosed the machine up over the bank and stopped in front of Vidar's house. A wisp of smoke trailed from the chimney. The woodpile didn't look any taller than it had the last time she was there. She unloaded the trailer, piling everything against the door as quickly and as quietly as she could.

She turned the snow machine around, banged on Vidar's door with a heavy fist, hopped on, and hit the throttle, Mutt loping easily beside her. As slow as Vidar moved, they'd be out of sight by the time he got to the door. He'd have a pretty good idea who'd left him the supplies but she didn't want to put him in the position of having to thank her. It'd just make them both cranky.

She spent the rest of the daylight hours stopping at individual cabins scattered along the river between Tikani and Niniltna. Perhaps a dozen in all, some that had been there since the Ark, these occupied by crusty old farts and less frequently crusty old fartettes with a taste for wilderness and solitude, not necessarily in that order and not always both. Most were homes that had begun life as log cabins, and some of them were beginning to sag beneath the weight of acc.u.mulated decades, but for the most part they were snug, tight little dwellings, and certainly none of them were as threadbare as Vidar's. Other cabins had been built more recently of materials brought upriver by barge or down the road by semi and patiently ferried across the river by skiff one two-by-four at a time, their interiors lightened by Sheetrock and paint and their asphalt-shingled roofs a substantial contrast to tar-papered slabs weighted with sod.

They were similar in size, usually one room with a loft, a floor plan that reminded Kate with a pang of her cabin. The smaller the cabin, the less fuel it took to keep warm and the cheaper the winter fuel bill, and since heat rose, the sleeping loft would stay warm longer than anywhere else in the house. A tried-and-true Bush floor plan.

Everyone who lived on the river practiced subsistence in some form. They hunted for their own meat, they caught their own salmon, and most of them grew their own potatoes, turnips and carrots and cabbage, and tomatoes if they had a greenhouse, and broccoli and cauliflower if they were willing to fight off the moose.

There were so few of them because the properties they had been built on were some of the very few pieces of private property in the Park, grandfathered in when the Park had been created around them. The Park Service wasn't happy that they were there, and lost no opportunity to hara.s.s the owners on any pretext, improper land use, overstepping or ignoring hunting regulations, driving a snow machine through a designated snow-machine-free area. Every Park rat had been guilty of all of these transgressions at one time or another in their lives. The river rats were the ones who got the most attention, though, probably because they were the easiest to get to.

These citizens of the river were a varied lot, and some of them had extraordinary hobbies. Take Olaf Christiansen, a retired seiner from Cordova who had stumbled on an entire salmon-canning line in an abandoned cannery near Alaganik. He had disa.s.sembled it, brought it upriver by barge, and rea.s.sembled it in a lean-to next to his cabin, where he set it to run at one-tenth its normal speed. He was happy to show it to anyone who offered him five bucks, and they'd have a can of air to take home with them as a souvenir.

Thor Moonin, originally from Port Graham, was an ivory carver of world renown. He made his living on jewelry, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, but he was also a world-cla.s.s sculptor, with the ability to render anything life-size into an exquisite miniature replica-human heads, castles, and once a miniature Yupik village, complete with dogsleds and mushers. In a shed he had a pile of walrus and mammoth tusks that was taller than he was, and he didn't mind the kids playing in there, either, although he did draw the line at dogs, because they had a tendency to mistake the tusks for bones.

Betty Cavanaugh was a retired librarian from Anchorage and a bibliophile who collected Alaskana. She had three separate sets of Captain Cook's logs in three different editions, and if Kate had been very good and had drunk all her coffee and had eaten all her bread and jam she was allowed to page through one of the precious volumes during a visit after she washed her hands.

They liked their privacy, the main reason they lived on the Kanuyaq River, but to a man and a woman they greeted Kate cordially, and without exception they tried to feed her. They did feed Mutt, whose sides tightened up like a drum. Nor were they backward in answering Kate's questions.

Yes, they knew the Johansen brothers. There wasn't anyone on the river who didn't, and not just by reputation, either. Bad actors, all three of them, couldn't think where Vidar had gone so wrong. Maybe if Juanita had stayed around, might have been a different story, but probably not, the bad was likely born into them and there was no getting it out. Surprised they hadn't wound up in jail permanently. Probably only a matter of time.

Yes, people had been moving out of Tikani, there had been a virtual exodus over the past year, year and a half, people streaming downriver like they were fleeing the bubonic plague. Sure, that could be put down to the Johansen brothers, who had no concept of private property. The older they got, the less neighborly they became, and besides, Kate surely knew they had lost their school as well as their post office. There was only a rudimentary airstrip, barely long enough to let a Super Cub take off, empty, and it had been allowed to go to h.e.l.l with devil's club and alders. No reason for anyone to stay.

Old Vidar was still up there? You don't say. Well, I'll be. Ought to drop in on the old goat once in a while. He wasn't the friendliest person in the world but shouldn't ought n.o.body to be left completely alone year in and year out, wasn't healthy to have only your own self for company, start talking to yourself, worse, start telling yourself jokes, worse still, start laughing at them. Sure, they'd check on him, they'd set up a schedule. Somebody'd be dropping in on him once a week, or maybe every other week'd be all they could manage, but Vidar'd probably go nuts if he had visitors more often than that anyway. In the dictionary where it said hermit, hermit, there was a picture of Vidar Johansen. there was a picture of Vidar Johansen.

Pity his boys were so useless they couldn't be trusted to look after him themselves.

Yes, they'd heard of the snow machine attacks. No, no one had tried anything like that with them. 'Course their river running days were over, and they had plenty to do to keep them safe to home. Failing that, they all had their 12-gauge, or their .30-30, or their .357.

Could they put a name to whoever was most likely to be the perpetrators of said attacks? Well now, there weren't no flies on Kate Shugak that they'd ever seen. What did she think?

Had they heard of Talia Macleod? Why, of course, the mine woman, used to be some kind of famous athlete, wasn't it? She'd written them a letter saying she'd be stopping by, and then her man had come upriver and dropped off an information packet, along with a raffle ticket, winner got an all-expenses-paid weekend in Anchorage. Geiger, wasn't it? No, Gallagher, that was it, Gallagher. Eager beaver kinda guy, boomer, seen that type too many times before. Reckoned Macleod wanted their support for the mine, and they were all looking forward to seeing what she was willing to offer in exchange.

They were genuinely shocked when Kate told them of Macleod's death, and not a few of them were more worried when she left them than when she had arrived, for which she was sorry. It was better to put them on the alert than to leave them in ignorance of the event, though, and she promised that when the killer was identified and arrested she would let them know.

She headed for Niniltna after dark with the uneasy feeling that Park rats who lived on the river were getting out the gun oil and the ammunition all the way back to the Lost Chance Creek Bridge.

She pulled up at the post at eight that evening, noting evidence of a great many tracks in the snow in front. Only Jim's snow machine remained. She turned off the engine and got off, a little weary. Mutt took this opportunity to stretch her legs and vanished in the direction of the airstrip. There was a colony of rabbits denned up in a clearing in back of George's hangar.

Kate went inside. Maggie had already left for the day. "Jim?"

"Yeah," he said, and she went into his office.

He was stretched out almost horizontally in his chair, his feet up on the desk and his head on the windowsill. He had his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest and he looked like he was about to be carried out of the office feetfirst to have prayers sung over him for the repose of his eternal soul. "Hey," Kate said.

He opened one eye, and closed it again. "Hey." She sat down. "How awful was it?"

His chest rose and fell. "Could have been worse. Larry King could have shown up." Kate winced. "Really?"

"Really." He opened the eye again. "Where you been?"

She told him. When she finished they sat there, silent, for a while. Eventually he uncrossed his feet and set them down on the floor, regaining the vertical with a mumble and a groan. His eyes looked red, as if he'd been rubbing them a lot. "You?" she said.

He gave his scalp a vigorous scrub with his fingertips and then tried to smooth down the resulting haystack. "I got the body off to the lab. I just talked to Brillo, and while he's going to do the usual, he says what we saw is pretty likely what we got."

"Was she the intended victim, though?" Kate said.

Jim raised one shoulder. "Maybe, maybe not. Everybody uses the creek after it freezes up to get back and forth to the school. If the killer really was aiming for Talia, he was taking a h.e.l.l of a risk that he'd get somebody else."

"Mine related, you think?"

Again the shoulder. "Lot of people not loving the idea of that mine, Kate."

"I know," she said. "But to the point of murder?"

"Mac Devlin," he said. "At the trailer out at Suulutaq, from a distance that argues they might maybe have been shooting at anyone working for Global Harvest who happened to be there. And now Talia Macleod, Global Harvest's mouthpiece in the Park, lately to have been seen pretty near everywhere in it, promoting said mine."

"Same guy, then."

He nodded. "That's my thought. Too much propinquity not to be."

"I'm taking your Word of the Day calendar away."

He gave a tired smile. "How the river rats taking it?"

"In the immortal words of Brendan McCord, I left everyone mobilizing for Iwo Jima."

"Great," he said. "We need more bodies, 'cause it's not looking enough like the last scene in Hamlet Hamlet already." already."

"They have a right to protect themselves, Jim," she said quietly.

"I know." After a brief pause, he said, "So. The Johansen brothers?"

She didn't say anything for a moment. "I don't know," she said finally.

He looked at her. "You figured them for the attacks."

"Since Louis Deem's dead, yeah," she said. "But. . ."

"What?" he said as she didn't continue. "I like that scenario. On any other day, so would you."

"Murder?" she said, and shook her head. "It's convenient, the mine as a motive, Park rats with a grudge, but I'm just not feeling it."

"I'm taking your DVDs of The Wire The Wire away," he said, and sat up. "That's not all, though, is it. What haven't you told me that I don't want to hear?" away," he said, and sat up. "That's not all, though, is it. What haven't you told me that I don't want to hear?"

Kate sighed. "I'm a little worried about the Johansens."

He raised an eyebrow. "That's a first. For pretty much anyone within a five-hundred-mile radius."

"You know I went down the river the day after you found out about the attacks. I talked to Ken and Janice, Ike, and the Rileys. On my way down, Ken and Ike were foaming at the mouth and threatening to shoot on sight."

"Who?"

"Anybody," Kate said. "I'm probably lucky they didn't take a shot at me."

"Were the Johansens mentioned?"

"Of course they were," Kate said. "They're nowhere near the caliber of natural disaster that Louis Deem was, but you don't live on the river for a year without learning who you don't want to be your new best friends. So I kept on keeping on, down to Red Run to talk to the Rileys. And here's the thing, Jim. They aren't foaming at the mouth. They aren't even mildly disturbed. They're not worried about catching the guys who attacked them, they have perfect confidence that Trooper Jim will get the job done, and they're willing to put their faith in him."

"I appreciate the confidence."

"Yeah, well, don't pin that medal on yourself just yet. I go back up the river and drop in again on Ike and Ken, and guess what? They're all calm now, b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in their mouths, and what do you know, they know the law will catch up to the bad people who did this to them and that justice will be served."

She looked at Jim expectantly, and he did not disappoint. "You think the Park rats have taken care of this problem themselves."

"I'm terrified they did," she said. "I even went up and down the river looking in all the likely places to stuff three bodies."

He laughed out loud.

"Yeah, yuck it up," she said with asperity, "but then I went up to Tikani to see if maybe they were dumb enough to go home. They weren't there, and they hadn't been in a while. Vidar hasn't even heard their engines coming and going. And Jim, I just spent all day on the river, north of Niniltna, true, but n.o.body jumped out at me and said boo. I didn't see much traffic at all, come to think of it."

"That's not a surprise, given that two people have been murdered in the Park in the past two weeks. Not to mention it's freeze-your-a.s.s cold outside. I'd stay home, too, if I could."

There was a peremptory bark outside and Kate got up to admit the lupine member of the constabulary. Mutt bounded over to Jim and offered an exuberant greeting. She returned to Kate's side and plunked down to begin a thorough grooming of her already magnificent self.

"I like to close a case as much as any cop," Kate said, "but murder? The Johansens?" She shook her head. "That's a h.e.l.l of a step up for them."

"I've got people looking into Talia's background, see if there is anything there," Jim said. "But the Johansens attacked Johnny, Ruthe, and Van with a two-by-four, let's not forget. Not to mention Ken and Janice, Ike and Laverne, and Chris and Art and Grandma Riley."

"We think they did," she said. "Let's find them first."

He raised an eyebrow. "You got any thoughts on that score?"

"Where to find them, you mean?" Her turn to frown. "According to Vidar, they haven't been back home in maybe as long as two weeks. Out that long, they'll need shelter, and food." She got up and walked to the map of the Park on the wall, and ran her finger down the line that represented the Kanuyaq River. "I'm guessing, if they're still alive, that they've squirreled themselves away in the hills somewhere."

"That narrows it down."

"Yeah, actually it does." Her finger left the river and traced the line of foothills between it and the Quilak Mountains. "There are a lot of old mines back there, a lot of old gold dredges, too."

"Yeah," he said, "probably fifty, a hundred? You able to narrow it down any more?"

"Dan could help us do that." She looked around in time to see the expression on his face. "He's got the most up-to-date records and maps about mines and equipment in the Park. He's always on the lookout for squatters. He'll know if there is anything out there in good enough shape to be used for more than an overnight shelter."

He didn't say anything, and she said persuasively, "Come on, Jim. I don't know what's going on with the two of you, but you have to talk to him sometime."

He scowled. She waited. Mutt groomed.

"When he found Deem's body?" Jim said.

"Yeah?" Kate said.

"He tampered with the crime scene." She waited.

He sighed. "Deem had the deed to the Smiths' forty acres in his pocket. He and Smith were co-owners. It retains subsurface rights."

"Oh," Kate said. "Like if they found gold on the creek."

"Dan's pretty sure it was all about the gold. He thinks Louis bankrolled Smith, and it was why he was going to marry Abigail and why Smith was going to let him. I think it's why Louis was headed up to the Step that day, to establish their mining rights."

"Why did Dan take the deed?"

"Ah, jesus, who knows. He was half in the bag for one thing. Moron. n.o.body knows better than him, unless maybe it's you, that you don't remove evidence from a crime scene."

"You didn't charge him."

"No," he said glumly, "I didn't charge him. I should have, but I didn't."

Considering what he himself had done or not done in the matter of the murder of Louis Deem and the Koslowski murders, he was as at fault as Dan was of withholding evidence. Maybe, he thought now, that might be why he'd stayed mad at Dan for so long. It was hard to forgive someone for behavior of which you yourself were guilty. You knew only too well how much in the wrong you were.

She was silent for a moment, and then she repeated herself. "You have to talk to him sometime, Jim. If nothing else, you have to work with him."

"Fine," he said without enthusiasm. "You go on home. I'll detour up to the Step."

"No need," she said. "I pa.s.sed him on the way here. Looked like he was headed for Bernie's."

He brightened a little.

They got up. Kate paused in the doorway. "Howie still in the back?"

"Yup."

"Good."

"Well, he won't leave until I catch whoever shot Mac, and when he heard about Talia I thought he was going to wet his pants. As long as I don't need the room and he buys his own food, I'm okay with it." He hesitated. "I did talk to Judge Singh, and she says that lacking anything more than a tire print we don't have a case against him for Louis."

"Did you tell her about the aunties?"

"Yes," he said, a little apprehensively. When she didn't go off on him he relaxed again. "She says she's disinclined to issue a warrant for a dog on the say-so of Howie Katelnikof."

"The aunties still not talking?"

"Haven't seen them today, I've been otherwise engaged. And Howie of course is now reneging his-quote-nonconfession confession-end quote-right, left, and center. He says he must have been drunk, and I hadn't Mirandized him, and I was threatening him anyway and he got scared and confused and he would have said anything to get me to leave him alone, and-"