No Fixed Line (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 22)

by Dana Stabenow

  “You had one job,” the guy next door said, who was of course on his porch. “No more drivebys.”

  “Sorry,” Kate said.

  He went back inside and closed the door firmly behind him. Kate followed Mutt inside and this time made sure she threw the bolt. She looked up when Jim came down the hall.

  “Footprints out back, one set from where they came over the fence to the door and a second set that looked like the tracks of Usain Bolt heading out. I think they might have cleared the fence in a single stride.”

  “Think the shot was a diversion to get the guy out back inside?”

  “Could have been the plan. Until they were foiled by our girl in gray.” He bent over and grabbed Mutt’s head between his hands. “She’s such a good girl! Such a very good and very scary girl!”

  Mutt’s tailed wagged hard enough to fall off her butt and she gave Jim lavish tongue all up and down his face. Well, he’d set himself up for that.

  They went back into the living room and stared from the hole in the window to the hole in the wall. “Shooting pretty high. Maybe just a random?”

  “Maybe.” He sounded about as convinced as she felt. “Maybe just scared shitless.”

  “Should we call the cops?”

  “If we don’t someone else will.” Like the neighbor.

  So they called. At that they only rated a single cruiser, Anchorage night life as lively as it was on Friday evenings, but one of the responding officers knew Jim and so their story was taken more seriously than it otherwise might have been. One of the officers dug the bullet out of the wall and promised to call him if anything developed. They all knew it wouldn’t.

  The door closed behind the police and they both looked at Mutt, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. She gave a modest sneeze.

  “I agree,” Kate said. “Not much game.”

  Jim’s glare was pretty impartially divided between the two of them. He marched over to the living room window and pointed. “Not much game?” He twitched back the drape again and pointed at the starred hole in the glass.

  “Yeah, there’s some duct tape in the junk drawer in the kitchen,” Kate said, and went to get it. “I have to say,” she said as they were taping the hole, “I expected something like this. Just not this soon.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Just that every time I come to Anchorage someone tries to take me out. I’ve been knocked unconscious, kidnapped, once someone loosened the lug nuts on the car. Why should this time be any different?”

  They went upstairs. “I have to say, Shugak, that you’re getting awful goddamn sanguine about getting shot at.” For himself, his heart rate was just settling down to normal and he still had the coppery taste of fear in his mouth.

  She shrugged without answering and slid beneath the covers. He followed and pulled her firmly into his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin and hooking his leg around her hips to pull her in tight. He remained wakeful long after she fell asleep, listening to her breathing slow and stutter in that little hiccup someone a lot braver than he was might have called a snore.

  Not that anyone else was ever going to get the chance to.

  He spoke at length, almost entirely in obscenities, and never repeated himself once. There followed a charged silence.

  “I wonder, sir—”

  “What do you wonder, Jared?”

  “I wondered if perhaps it might be time to bring in Al and Kev, sir.”

  A silence. “Convince me.”

  “Well, they are both former government agents, so they can pass for DEA or ICE or FBI, always helpful in recovering strays. And you’ll recall we used them to make that delivery to Mr. Curley last month, so they’re familiar with the territory, as well as these particular strays.”

  “And?”

  “Well, sir—” said apologetically “—as empirical evidence recently, conclusively, and unfortunately proves, we have no assets worthy of the name on location. The for-hire community in this area does rather trend toward blunt force.”

  “And?”

  “And Al and Kev have proven themselves trustworthy. And didn’t I understand that Al is from Minnesota? He wouldn’t be afraid of cold weather. And Kev is a pilot, which could prove most useful. They have in the past shown themselves to be capable and efficient.”

  “They have, and that’s why I prefer to employ their services sparingly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Still…” Another, longer silence. “Very well. Call Pappas and tell him to prep the G-2.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell Kev and Al I want them en route as soon as they can get their asses to the FBO.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Make sure they understand the urgency of the situation.”

  “The jet will certainly underscore that message, sir.”

  “And for sweet christ’s sake, tell them to keep everything they do on the down low. This cluster does not need to be any more fucked than it already is.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Eleven

  SATURDAY, JANUARY 5

  Anchorage

  THEY WOKE UP TO THE TUB OF ICE CREAM licked clean and Mutt sitting all the way across the living room from it with an angelic expression on her face. “She deserved it,” Jim said, “and our fault anyway for forgetting to put it back in the freezer.”

  Over breakfast Kate told Jim about her meeting with Special Agent James G. “Gerry” Mason the day before. “Gary Curley, drug lord,” he said. “I’ve heard him called a lot of names but never that one.”

  “Mason says he lost a lot of money in oh-eight.” She described the search of Curley’s house in dispassionate terms but he was not fooled, and reached across the table to take her hand in his. She gave him a crooked smile. “What was that you said to me once?”

  “What? When?”

  “You said I never met a rule of evidence I liked.”

  “Oh. That. Yeah.” The topic under discussion that day had been the possibility of placing a Village Police and Safety Officer in Niniltna, and Kate’s unsuitability for the job.

  She shook her head and squeezed his hand once more before letting go. “Those two turret rooms—you know the worst thing about them?”

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t that they were such travesties of a storybook childhood. It was that they looked so… so well used. They’ve been sitting there all this time, decorated just like that, for I don’t know how many children over the years. They’d written on the walls and you could see where he’d had it painted over between—” her mouth twisted “—between guests.”

  A heavy silence fell and wisely, he let it lie.

  She raised her head and met his eyes. “In general, I like the Bill of Rights. I read somewhere that the US’s most exported product isn’t soybeans or 737s, it is the US constitution and I get that. You know, other than the four-hundred-year-old Native American genocide it’s founded on. It’s an ideal, and we’ll always fall short of it, and I get that, too. But something like those two rooms makes me want to just kick down doors and the hell with whichever amendment says I can’t. People knew Curley was a pedophile, Jim. Hell, they knew when I quit the DA’s office and that was ten years ago. The only reason the feds got into his house yesterday is because of the drugs you found at the site of the crash. Mason barely mentioned the two kids who might have been transported across an international border in an act of sex trafficking.” Her voice trembled. “So yay us, the good guys won one, and hey, at least Curley’s dead. But how many kids were cycled through those rooms, Jim? Including the two in the Park right now?”

  “At least they’re alive.”

  She sat back and sighed. “Yeah. There’s that.”

  They were silent for a moment. “What’s next?” he said.

  “Kurt and our new nerd are doing their best to hack into the Bannister Foundation’s records,” she said. “I’m going to call Brendan, see if he kept a wish file on Curley.”

 
; “A wish file?”

  “All prosecutors keep wish files, the ones they wish they could prosecute but can’t because they don’t have the evidence or the witnesses or what the fuck ever. He’d never give it to Mason but he might give it to me.”

  “George told me there was no record of Curley’s plane leaving Anchorage for Niniltna. There has to be something. You don’t fly in and out of Anchorage without somebody noticing. Elmendorf alone would have raised nine kinds of hell.” He thought. “I know a guy. Let me call him.”

  He took his phone into the living room and Kate found her own phone and called Brendan. He extorted another lunch out of her the next time she was in town and promised to send her a copy of the file. “It isn’t much,” he said, all the humor going out of his voice. “If I coulda found more his ass would be in jail right now.” He cheered up. “Still, if his ass had been in jail it wouldn’t have been on that plane and he wouldn’t be dead. So there is cause for celebration, Kate.”

  If I could have found more we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, Kate thought. She hung up and noticed that she’d had three calls the night before, all around midnight from an unknown number or numbers. She went into the living room to see Mutt sitting with her chin on Jim’s knee, hanging on his every word as he spoke on the phone. She was clearly suffering from a lack of attention from her favorite man. Although they were all her favorite men.

  He hung up. “Buddy of mine’s an air traffic controller. He wasn’t on duty New Year’s Eve but he’ll find out who was and get back to me.”

  “Thanks,” she said, leaning her elbows over her head on the frame of the door. The posture pulled the fabric of her tee tight over her breasts.

  He recognized the look in her eye, and he smiled at her, a return to the old wide, white shark’s grin of yesteryear, or even last night. He got to his feet, stepped over Mutt, and picked Kate up and carried her upstairs and back to bed. What happened there was an utter rejection of Gary Curley and Father Smith and the pedophile priests the Jesuits had hidden away in Alaska and all the rest of their corrupt, sadistic, amoral ilk. There was need and lust and pleasure, freely taken and freely given between two consenting, healthy adults. Jim took the lead, demanding her response to his hands and lips and tongue and cock and Kate allowed herself to be seduced and manhandled and thoroughly debauched. When it was over she could hear his heart thundering inside his chest. He raised his head and smiled down at her. There were no words. They needed none.

  They showered together, and dressed together, paused for a touch, a kiss, a caress, and packed for home. “The Cessna’s at Merrill?” she said. He nodded. “Have you checked the weather?”

  “Looks worse than it is.”

  They cleaned away the breakfast dishes and stripped the bed and left the rest for the cleaning service. As Kate tapped the Uber app the phone rang again, and again from an unknown number. She hated answering calls from unknown numbers and she moved to tap decline but she missed and hit answer instead. She said into the phone, “If you’re soliciting campaign funds for anyone other than Elmer Fudd I’m hanging up.”

  There was a brief silence. “May I ask who is speaking?”

  “I think that’s my line. I’m hanging up in three, two—”

  “This is Detective Josie Branson of the Anchorage Police Department.”

  “Are you at the cop shop?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Hang up and I’ll call back.” She dialed the number from memory and asked for Detective Branson, who picked up immediately. “Detective Branson? I’m the person who answered the number you dialed. My name is Kate Shugak. I’m a private investigator, previously with the Anchorage district attorney’s office. Brendan McCord will give me a reference if you’d like to call him and then call me back.”

  Another silence. “I’ll speak with him after I’ve talked to you, Ms., er, Shugak. May I ask where you’re calling from?”

  Some instinctive sense of self-preservation kicked in. “I live in Niniltna, east of Anchorage.”

  “How far east?”

  “Almost in Canada.”

  “Oh. Uh. Well, I was going to ask if I could see you, but—”

  Jim made a spinning motion with his forefinger. “Detective Branson, I was just on my way out. How may I help you?” Preferably in twenty words or less, Kate thought but didn’t say. Law enforcement solidarity was all, private or public.

  “Ms. Shugak, are you speaking from your personal phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “This number?” Branson read it out.

  Kate’s phone was set not to reveal her number to a caller unless they were already in her list of contacts. “That is correct.”

  “Are you acquainted with a Mr. Eugene Hutchinson?”

  Jim’s eyebrows went up at Kate’s expression. “Yes. He’s an attorney in Anchorage.”

  “He was,” Detective Branson said. “He was found dead in his home this morning, and his cell phone shows yours as the last number he called. Three times.”

  Silence.

  “Ms. Shugak?”

  Kate drew in a long breath and exhaled slowly. “My phone was off. When I turned it on this morning I noticed I’d had three missed calls from an unknown number. Around midnight?”

  “That is correct.”

  Kate sighed. “I’m in Anchorage. I’m on my way.”

  Eugene Hutchinson had died from a gunshot wound received in an apparent home invasion.

  Kate digested this in silence for a moment. “I was shot at last night,” she said.

  Detective Branson looked surprised, as well she might. “Did you call it in?”

  “We did.” She gave the names of the officers, and there was a delay while Branson located the report.

  “One shot,” she said.

  “Yes. My dog frightened them off.”

  Branson looked at Mutt, who sat erect next to Kate, ears straight up, yellow eyes fixed on the detective. “Woof.”

  She was restraining her inner dementor this morning and Kate saw Branson’s lips twitch. “I can see how that might happen. The report shows that we recovered a spent round from the scene.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well. We don’t yet know what caliber of ammunition Hutchinson was killed with, so we won’t know until the autopsy report if there is any connection between the two incidents.”

  Other than the fact that he tried to call me three times immediately prior to his murder, Kate thought. “Bullets?” she said politely. “In the plural?”

  Branson nodded. She was in her mid-twenties, a square, solid young woman with thin fair hair, intent brown eyes, and a serious, firm-lipped expression. She patronized the same tailor as Brendan McCord and wore black Kurus that looked well worn in. “Two shots to the chest. One to the head.”

  Classic mob hit, Kate thought, exchanging a glance with Jim, who was staying so far in the background of this meeting that he was practically invisible.

  “What was your relationship with Mr. Hutchinson?” Branson said.

  “Brief. I met him once in his official capacity as Erland Bannister’s attorney, when he informed me that Bannister had named me the trustee of his estate.”

  It was obvious from Branson’s expression that she’d heard the name. “When was that?”

  “Wednesday morning.”

  “This past Wednesday?” Branson looked at her phone. “January second?”

  “Yes. He wrote to me about the trusteeship. I received the letter on January first, and I came to Anchorage to meet with him the next day.”

  “Where did this meeting take place?”

  “In the office of Pletnikof Investigations.” She gave Branson Kurt’s name and contact information and a brief summary of Hutchinson’s presentation, omitting any references to her suspicions of Erland’s motives in naming her his trustee. Branson made dutiful notes. “Where were you last night between midnight and one a.m., Ms. Shugak?”

  “At home.”

  “Any wit
nesses?”

  “One,” Jim said, speaking for the first time.

  Branson collected Jim’s contact information and evinced no discernible surprise when it proved to be the same as Kate’s own. “Well, I think that’s all for the moment, Ms. Shugak. Thank you for coming in.”

  Kate stood up and paused. “Was there any evidence at the scene that would indicate why he was murdered?”

  Branson hesitated. The correct response was to say that she couldn’t comment on an ongoing investigation and dismiss them with a polite smile. Instead she leaned back in her chair and looked the three of them over, Kate assessingly, Jim appreciatively (definitely hetero, Kate thought), and Mutt with a perceptible softening. “That isn’t a wolf, is it?”

  “Only half,” Kate and Jim said in unison.

  “Oh well, that’s okay then.” She held out a hand. Mutt sniffed at it, thought it over, and stepped forward to allow Branson the privilege of scratching behind her ears. “I have a dog myself. A retired sled dog.”

  “You get him through the August Foundation?” Kate said.

  Branson nodded. “Eight, neutered, raced with one of the Seaveys. He was starting to slow down so they put him up for adoption, and I grabbed him up.” She smiled. “We don’t go for walkies, we go for runnies. He keeps me in shape.” She dropped her hand from Mutt’s head. “Hutchinson’s phone had been reset to factory setting. We had to pull his most recent calls, including the three to you, off the nearest cell tower. When someone thought to go further back into his records, all calls to and from his phone had vanished.”

  “Interesting,” Kate said.

  “I’ll say. Hutchinson had an office in his home, but there was no laptop, no desktop, no tower, no printer. They also took his wallet, his watch if he had one, and any jewelry if he had any of that.”

  “Television?”

  “It’s a forty-three incher. They stuck to the small, portable stuff.”

  “Did Hutchinson have an office outside his home?”

  “If he did, we haven’t found it yet.”