Whisper To The Blood Part 7

"She's hired a caretaker for the mine site," Johnny said.

"Who?" Jim said.

Johnny looked at Kate with some caution. "Howie Katelnikof." Jim paused in the act of running his finger around the edge of his bowl. "You're kidding," he and Kate said at the same time. "That's what I said," Johnny said.

"Who the h.e.l.l told her that putting Howie on the payroll was a good idea?" Jim said. "Didn't she ask around first, get some names?"

Kate got up and headed for her coat and boots. "Where you going?" Jim said.

"To see Mandy," Kate said.

Mandy Baker's place was down the road toward Niniltna, at the end of a rutted track a little narrower than a pickup. It was a rambling, ramshackle collection of buildings that had once housed a wilderness lodge whose original owner had bankrupted himself in a failed attempt to attract big game hunters, most of whom were already clients of Demetri Totemoff's. The lodge was threatened on all sides by a dense forest of willow, black and white spruce, black cottonwood, and white paper birch, which had been allowed to grow unhindered save for half a dozen trails the width of a dogsled. The trees on the south side closest to the house had been trimmed to stumps and were used as posts to restrain Mandy's dogs from heading to Nome on their own. When Kate pulled up in the clearing, they set up a collective howl that could have been heard from the moon.

Kate winced and put her fingers in her ears. Mutt trotted out into the middle of the pack, sat down, raised her nose, and gave one loud, minatory bark, showing a little teeth while she was at it. There was an instantaneous silence, and Mutt stared around her with narrowed yellow eyes, just to make sure the point had been taken. It had.

"Man, I wish they'd do that for me," said a voice from the door, and Kate looked up to see Mandy standing in it.

"Why do you mush dogs if their howling drives you crazy?" Kate said, threading her way through the pack.

"Why do you think I took up mushing?" Mandy said. "They don't howl when they're hitched up and running."

"There's a problem with that reasoning but I'm just going to let it go," Kate said. She paused on the doorstep. "You doing some late culling? Doesn't seem to be quite the teeming ma.s.s of caninity that it usually is."

"Caninity?" Mandy said.

"Caninity," Kate said. "If Shakespeare can make up words so can I."

"Coffee?" Mandy said, standing back and holding the door wide.

"Sure." Kate shed parka and boots and went inside.

The door opened into a large room that served Mandy as kitchen, dining room, living room, and harness shed. There was an enormous old-fashioned woodstove in one corner with a fireplace in the corner opposite, and a higgledy-piggledy jumble of tables, chairs, couches, refrigerator-freezers, sinks, counters, and cupboards in between. On this dark, cold October night the room glowed with the muted light of half a dozen Coleman lanterns, hissing gently from hooks screwed into overhead beams. Mandy preferred them to electric light and had never installed a generator. Pots and pans, traps and ganglines hung from more hooks, making the entire area a hazard to navigation.

Mandy was a tall, rangy woman with a face full of good, strong bones, hair cut a la Prince Valiant, and a latent twinkle in her gray eyes. The scion of a wealthy Bostonian family, she had abandoned crinoline petticoats and charity b.a.l.l.s for down parkas and dog mushing as soon as she was of legal age. This had distressed her proper, conservative family no end, although her parents had come around after an eventful visit to the Park three years before. Since then, relations had been cordial, punctuated frequently by care packages featuring L.L.Bean, a telling switch from the usual Neiman Marcus.

"Chick around?" Kate said, accepting a steaming mug and adding a generous helping of canned milk.

She looked up in time to see the twinkle vanish. "Not lately."

Kate groaned. "Not again."

Mandy sat opposite and added three spoonfuls of sugar to her own mug. "To tell the truth, I don't know. I suppose it's possible he's not on a bender. All I know is he went to Anchorage last week to visit his mom, and I haven't heard from him since."

Chick was Chick Noyukpuk, Mandy's lover and mushing mentor. He was also a chronic alcoholic. A short, rotund little man with a cheerful disposition when sober, when drunk he turned maudlin and suicidal. Mandy had bought her first dogs from him. Then he had had his own kennel. Then he had been a world champion distance musher in his own right, earning the nickname the Billiken Bullet, much beloved of sports reporters for his evenhanded way with a bar tab. Now, he worked for Mandy, overseeing the breeding and training of the teams and as a tactical advisor on the trail, with the result that Mandy had been finishing in the money since her third Iditarod.

"His mom okay?" Kate said.

"She's in a.s.sisted living. She's pretty much all there mentally, she just needs help with the physical stuff. He's a good son, he goes in a lot. He just doesn't usually stay this long without calling. Unless he's on a bender."

"Um." Kate, knowing sympathy would be unwelcome, didn't offer any. "I met a friend of yours today."

"Oh, yeah? Who?"

"Woman by the name of Talia Macleod."

Mandy's face lit with pleasure. "Talia? No kidding? What's she doing in the Park?"

Kate told her.

"Not a bad gig," Mandy said. "An outfit like Global Harvest would pay for a face like that to put on a project this size. Lay a lot of Alaskan hackles, too, her being a local hero and all. And she is very smart and very personable."

Kate, about to refute this, recognized the justice of it in time. "Yes, she is," she said ruefully.

"How'd you meet her?"

Kate described that morning's board meeting, and when Mandy stopped laughing, she said, wiping tears away, "I would have paid real money for a ticket to that show."

Kate could smile about it, too. Now. "I'd have been all right if they hadn't sandbagged me with being chairman. Probably. Anyway. Is this Macleod the real deal, Mandy? Or is she just bought and paid for?"

"A little of both, probably," Mandy said thoughtfully. She looked at Kate. "The thing you have to understand, Kate, is that no one in her position makes any money to speak of. She's not Brett Favre or Kevin Garnett."

Kate recognized neither name but she understood what Mandy was saying. "That's hard to believe. She's got all kinds of endors.e.m.e.nts, doesn't she?"

"Sure, in Alaska. But Outside, or internationally?" Mandy shook her head. "As attractive and as personable as she is, she is a biathloner. She skis and shoots and skis. It doesn't make for riveting television, so it's not gonna be what sells Nikes. My guess is she took this job for the paycheck."

"That's what she said. But she talks like a true believer."

Mandy raised an eyebrow. "That's what they're paying her for. She's got a good heart, Kate."

"Then how come the first person she hired was Howie Katelnikof?"

Mandy stared. "You're kidding."

"I wish I was."

"Oh, c.r.a.p." Mandy closed her eyes. "She didn't run names by you?" Mandy glared at Kate.

"Of course she didn't," Kate said. "Sorry." She started to say something else, and stopped. "What?"

Kate shrugged. "She didn't say hi to Annie. When Harvey brought her into the board room, she greeted every board member by name and had something to say to each of us to show us how well she'd done her homework. But she ignored Annie. Like the secretary-treasurer was beneath her notice. It p.i.s.sed me off."

Mandy frowned. "Doesn't sound like her. Still, Annie doesn't have a vote on the board, and Talia didn't have much time."

"Doesn't mean she can get away with rudeness. Not on my watch."

Mandy rolled her eyes. "Look at you, de chair o' de board. Wasn't even a job you wanted and now you're the Emily Post of the Niniltna Native a.s.sociation. My mother, the queen of Beacon Hill, would be so proud."

Kate had the grace to flush, and held up a hand. "Okay, ya got me. But," she said stubbornly, "she should have said hi." She hesitated, turning the mug around in her hands. "Mandy, what do you think of this mine?"

Mandy shrugged. "I think at nine hundred dollars an ounce and climbing every day, Global Harvest is gonna build it no matter what anyone in the Park says. Might as well close our eyes and think of England. What do you think?"

Kate sighed and drained her mug. "The same. At least it's far enough away that it won't impact you."

"Don't you believe it," Mandy said. "Don't you believe it, Kate, it's going to seriously impact both of us." She pointed. "It'll start with that road, traffic, heavy equipment, pretty soon it'll start falling apart even worse than it already is and the state will come in and repair it and probably pave it, and then we'll get every retired insurance salesman who drives up the Alcan in an RV stopping by to have their picture taken with one of the famous Park rats."

Kate stared at Mandy, the memory of an incident in Russell Gillespie's yard in Chistona a couple of years before floating up out of the ether that occupied the back of her brain. They'd caught a tourist who had been rooting around for artifacts in back of the abandoned store in the ghost town. The only problem was, Chistona wasn't a ghost town and Russell's store wasn't abandoned. Apprised of this fact, the tourist had then insisted on taking a photograph of Kate and Russell so she'd have a picture of real Alaskan Natives in her vacation alb.u.m. She said, a little weakly, "But we're not famous."

"We will be," Mandy said grimly. "Our privacy will be the first thing to go, Kate, I promise you."

"So you hate the very thought of the mine," Kate said, a little startled by Mandy's vehemence.

"Don't hate it. Don't love it, either. I'm just counting the cost." Mandy shrugged. "And way before we have to pay. Best to wait and see. Only thing we can do, really."

They brooded together in silence. "How are the dogs looking?" Kate said, changing the subject.

"Healthy, ready to go." Mandy spoke with little enthusiasm.

"Problem?" Kate said.

"I don't know if global warming could be defined as a problem," Mandy said with a twisted smile. "Snow gets later every year, Kate, and thinner on the ground when it does finally come down. Last couple of years we've been running the dogs on frozen gra.s.s after RainyPa.s.s. Beats the h.e.l.l out of sled, musher, and dogs." She shook her head and sighed. "I don't know how much longer I can keep it up."

Kate sustained another shock. "You thinking of quitting?"

"I barely finished in the money last year, Kate. The mushing has to pay for itself, or I can't afford to keep doing it."

"What about your trust fund?"

"It never paid for everything," Mandy said. "It'll be enough for me to retire on here."

Now that Kate was looking for it, she could see the fatigue in the lines of Mandy's face and the hollows beneath her eyes. "What will you do with your dogs?"

"Sell them. Won't be a problem."

Mandy's current team of dogs were the result of going on two decades of careful breeding and training. "Mandy-"

Mandy stood up. "Let me refill your mug, Kate, and you can tell me how you and Jim are getting on with the whole cohabitation thing."

Kate bowed to defeat and held out her mug.

SEVEN.

The next day, five minutes after Jim sat down at his desk, the phone rang. It was Cindy Bingley. "Jim," she said without preamble, "you've got to do something about Willard."

Jim felt the hair p.r.i.c.k up at the back of his neck. "What about Willard?" he said.

"He keeps stealing stuff out of the store. Yesterday he walked out with a gallon jug of white vinegar."

Jim couldn't help it. He laughed.

"It's not funny, Jim," Cindy said. She paused, hearing her voice rise. "Well, okay, maybe it is a little. When I caught him on the steps I asked him what in the world he was going to do with that much vinegar and he said he brushed his teeth a lot."

Jim closed his eyes in momentary supplication of some heavenly ent.i.ty to intercede on behalf of all fools and children, of which Willard was both.

Willard Shugak, a cousin a couple of times removed from Kate, and Auntie Balasha's grandson, was in his early forties. It was a blessing that he was even still around, if a mixed one. Most people with fetal alcohol syndrome died young.

"And then," Cindy said in despair, "he started to cry. You know how he does."

"Yes," Jim said, sober now, "I know. Do you want to press charges, Cindy?"

"No! Of course I don't! Aside from the fact that Auntie Balasha would probably boycott the store, along with the other three aunties and shortly thereafter most of the rest of the Park, Willard's just a baby. A kleptomaniac baby. Sometimes I wish I could just turn him over my knee. Could you just, I don't know, put the fear of G.o.d into him or something? Lock him up overnight?"

Jim sighed. "I can probably do that." It wouldn't be the first time.

"He's in here every day right after we open," Cindy said promptly.

It was a gray day not expected to get out of the teens, with the winds sweeping down out of the Quilaks at fifteen miles an hour and bringing a fine, white snow with them that immediately frosted anything stationary, including Jim's windshield. The forecast called for three to six inches more. Combined with the layer of black ice beneath it made for hazardous movement, either by foot or by vehicle. Not that that would stop anyone from climbing into their Ford Explorer or their Subaru Forester and barreling up and down the roads, such as they were. Jim resigned himself to a day spent responding to ditch-diving daredevils. He just hoped none of them involved fatalities. The sooner the Park was snowed in and everyone switched to all snow machines all the time, the better.

He also hoped nothing happened anywhere else in the Park that required him to get in the air. The troopers gave first preference to any applicant with a private pilot's license, and Jim was licensed for both fixed wing and helicopters. The state of Alaska had kindly provided him with a Cessna 206, parked on the Niniltna airstrip in a rented s.p.a.ce in George Perry's hangar.

The helicopter had been pulled when they opened the Niniltna post, the reasoning behind that decision being he was closer to the action and didn't need two methods of transportation, plus the Cessna could carry more weight. Jim had disapproved of the decision, as the Bell Jet Ranger could get into a lot more places than the Cessna could, but he understood the economics behind the decision and held his peace. Most outposts in the Park had their own airstrips, and those that didn't would simply go longer unserved by the law. That was life off the road in Alaska.

"The first response on the last frontier," so ran the state troopers' latest recruiting slogan, but the state was 586,412 square miles large, and those miles contained some of the most challenging terrain the planet had on offer, with some of the worst weather the atmosphere could manufacture. The Alaska State Troopers, a mere 240 officers strong, hadn't a hope in h.e.l.l of responding to every outrage perpetrated by or against Alaskan citizens, or even most of them, no matter how many airplanes they spotted their officers.

There was, nevertheless, the expectation that they would try to do so. Jim, like every other Alaska Bush pilot, was well acquainted with the aviation axiom: There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. If the weather was going to be bad, he wanted it awful, as in below minimums.

For the moment, all that was required was the Blazer. Bingley Mercantile was a solid, square building about twenty-five feet on a side, six hundred and twenty-five feet of retail s.p.a.ce crammed with shelves, a wall of refers, and a small row of bins for produce. Their stock-in-trade was Lay's Potato Chips, Cherry c.o.ke, and EPT tests, but they made a praiseworthy attempt to bring in small amounts of oddball-for the Park-items like jasmine rice and tamari almonds, these last, after the freight was factored in, worth about the same amount per ounce as the gold Global Harvest would be taking out of Suulutaq. It was clean, well lit, and when the apples got spotty they threw them out. Park rats really couldn't ask for more than that.

Cindy and Ben Bingley had started the little store eighteen months ago with money from the Niniltna Native a.s.sociation's nascent small business loan program. They'd spent most of it on the building and the rest on stock and Jim understood and appreciated Cindy's concern over some of that stock walking out the door under Willard's arm. A grocery store had at best a marginal profit line.

He could also appreciate Cindy's reluctance to lodge a formal complaint over Willard's pilferage.

He himself was reluctant to arrest Willard Shugak for murder.

Willard's rusty old International pickup was already in the store's parking lot, the engine running, the cab empty. Jim swore a round oath and got out, killing his own engine and taking the keys. He didn't care if the Blazer froze up while he was in the store in the subzero temperatures. Rather that than a drunk Martin Shugak driving off in it, siren blaring and Christmas tree flashing. It had happened before in the Bush, though not to him, and he was going to make sure it never did.