No Fixed Line (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 22)

by Dana Stabenow

  Kate wondered if Erland Bannister had been Eugene Hutchinson’s only client. “How is APD seeing this crime, Detective?”

  “On the face of it, and absent further evidence, my boss will write it off as a home invasion. We’ll give it our best effort, but—” Branson shrugged. “We’re canvassing the neighborhood but so far no one saw anything.”

  Everyone thought about that for a moment or two, and then Kate held out her hand. “Good to meet you, Detective Branson.”

  Branson’s grip was firm and dry. “And you, Ms. Shugak. Mr. Chopin.” She grinned at Mutt. “You, too, gorgeous.”

  Mutt knew a compliment when she heard one and practically pranced out of the cop shop.

  Their Uber pulled up as they walked out the front door, their driver looking them over for cuffs or signs of extreme interrogation. Kate climbed in back with Mutt. “Can we go home by way of Ahtna?”

  He looked over his shoulder. “I’ll check the forecast again but it should be okay. It’s only an hour from home and the storm is staying offshore and moving west.”

  Preflight and they were airborne half an hour later. “ETA Ahtna about an hour and a quarter. Also, we’re going to Ahtna, why?”

  “Pete Heiman’s there today.”

  They leveled off and Jim adjusted the mixture to allow for the skinnier air at cruising altitude. “We’re meeting with Pete Heiman voluntarily?”

  He heard her sigh over the headset. “Pete’s a member of the board of directors of the Bannister Foundation.”

  They’d found an empty house almost immediately, which was good since their feet were freezing in their sandals. The front door wasn’t even locked. It was cold inside but not as cold as outside. It had a kind of old lady smell, not unpleasant, like Señora Barahona around the corner, who would look out for them after school before Mami came home from work. It was filled to bursting with books and magazines and baskets of yarn and a table with tiny bags and boxes full of beads of every size and color. The walls were covered with photographs, some black and white and fading, others in color, all sizes, some framed, others tacked and taped to the wall. There was a flat television hanging from one corner of the living room with a couch in front of it that was the most worn piece of furniture in the house.

  There was a bedroom in the back. The bed had been stripped but he found a huge stack of quilts in a closet and piled a bunch of them on the bed and settled Anna beneath them. He went around the house and locked all the locks, windows, front door and back, and then crawled in with her. It took a while to warm up the bed but they were asleep too quickly to care.

  The next morning they woke up when it got light out but stayed in bed so they didn’t have to get out from under the covers. The refrigerator was empty but the electricity was still on and David figured out how to turn on the burners of the stove. No water came out of the faucet when he turned it on but there was bottled water in the pantry and one filled the kettle. There was canned milk and Nestlé’s cocoa—it was strange how many things were the same in el norte as they were at home—and he made them mugs of steaming cocoa for breakfast, along with some white salty crackers and butter from a round can that were also in the pantry, along with a can of meat that opened with a key and came out like a brick. It smelled okay so he sliced it up and fried it in a little frying pan he found in the drawer in the bottom of the stove. It was good, but then they were so hungry anything would have tasted good.

  He never did figure out how to turn on the television so they spent the day on the couch wrapped in blankets reading the books they had brought with them. Anna wanted to play with the beads so David found some with holes big enough she could poke thread through and make a bracelet and a necklace. She was too little to use a needle.

  On their second morning in the house he was just reaching for the Bad Man’s phone to try to call Mami again when he heard someone at the door. He jumped down from the chair in a panic and Anna started to cry. He grabbed her hand and hauled her back to the bedroom. They hid in the closet in the back, behind the rest of the quilts. Be quiet, he said to Anna. Be very quiet so they don’t find us. Anna whimpered, and he put his arm around her and held her close.

  He heard someone, a woman, talking in a language that wasn’t English. It was very loud and even though he couldn’t understand it he was sure she was swearing. He heard footsteps come down the hallway and pause, probably in the doorway to the kitchen, where their breakfast was cooling on the table. The words cut off abruptly. He heard another voice say something that sounded like a question. The swearing woman said more swear words. Mami would have made her put money in the peso jar.

  The footsteps began again, two sets this time. He heard the door to the bathroom creak open and hoped the swearing woman wouldn’t open the lid of the toilet to see where they’d used the toilet and how they hadn’t been able to flush it afterward. After a moment the footsteps came nearer until they were there, right there in the bedroom. The woman said something. It sounded like a question, said too loud to be talking only to herself. He didn’t answer, holding Anna tightly to him with one arm and with the other held desperately to the doorknob, keeping the door closed because there was no lock on the inside. He would not let her be hurt again.

  The footsteps came closer to the closet, and the door was wrenched out of his hand, pulling him forward and Anna with him. They sprawled onto the floor and the woman, it was a woman, let loose with a bunch of words in the language he didn’t know and he was sure this time she was swearing because she sounded like Señor Zelaya when David accidentally knocked him over with Pepito’s bicycle. Behind her was the young woman who spoke Spanish.

  He got to his feet shakily, and helped Anna to hers. She clutched his hand and they faced the woman together. She wasn’t much taller than they were, with her hair cut short in front and on the top and a skinny braid down her back. If it had been dyed red she would have looked like she belonged to Hulespuma, one of the Latino punk bands Papi had loved to listen to. She was dressed in heavy pants and big white boots that looked like the boots astronauts wore, and the tip of her nose was bright red and ice was melting from the hood of her jacket.

  He measured the distance to the door. If they could get around her, they could run.

  He looked up and saw her watching him. She heaved a sigh and held up one finger and said something in English. Wait, he thought. She wanted them to wait here while she called the policía.

  He tugged Anna closer to him and shook he head. No, he said as loud as he could. He knew it meant the same thing in both languages.

  “Ven con nosotros.”

  He looked at the younger woman. She nodded. “Ven con nosotros.” She spoke slowly and carefully. “Esta bien. Venga con nosotros.”

  “No,” he said, without conviction.

  The swearing woman put her hands on her hips and glared at him. She heaved another sigh, tapped her foot impatiently, and said something to the younger woman. She turned and stomped to the door, pausing to glare at them over her shoulder.

  We should go with her, Anna said.

  Why?

  I like her, Anna said, and she let go of his hand and walked forward to hold hers out to the younger woman, who smiled and took it.

  Anna.

  She looked over her shoulder. They won’t hurt us, David. Come on.

  Twelve

  SATURDAY, JANUARY 5

  Ahtna

  THEY LANDED A LITTLE BEFORE NOON. Ahtna was the biggest town nearest to the Park which made it the de facto market town for Park rats. It sprawled between the Glenn Highway and the Kanuyaq River where the two came nearest together at the river’s northernmost point. Both river and highway took opportunistic advantage of an interruption of the 600-mile long arc of the Alaska Range, with the Quilaks continuing on to the Canadian border in the east and the rest of the range building to a big finish with Denali and Foraker to the west. The land was thickly forested and rich with fish and game, and Ahtna made a good living off tourists, campers, a
nd sports fishermen in summer, hunters in the fall, and Park rat shoppers year round. There was one big hotel north of town that catered to cruise ship passengers brought by bus from Valdez, an older and much more colorful one on the river patronized by the locals, a campground that was wall to wall RVs from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and every Ahtnan rented out their spare rooms on Airbnb to all the college kids who spent their summers working at the hotels and restaurants and gift shops.

  The architecture was a wide-spot-in-the-road blend of old log cabins and new prefab, with a district courthouse, a movie theater with three screens, and a Costco as its crown jewels. The bars outnumbered the churches and you could even get a lap dance if you knew where to go. South to Anchorage was almost three hundred miles, north to Fairbanks another two hundred and fifty miles, but why bother? In Ahtna if that nosy Kenny Hazen busted your meth cook it was only a little farther to the Canadian border. It was true that these days the Canadians were getting awfully pissy about letting you cross without a passport but there was a reason God had invented four-wheelers and snow machines and roads wasn’t it.

  Kenny Hazen met them at the side of the strip, which was five miles up the river from town. “Jim. Kate.” Kenny was the size of Sasquatch and nearly as hirsute. His enormous hand engulfed hers in a dry, firm grip. “Looking good.”

  “How’s the judge?” Kate said.

  Kenny smiled. “Also looking good. Good and healthy.”

  Kate smiled back. “Good to know. Tell her I said hi.”

  “Tell her yourself. She’s where we’re going.”

  Where they were going was the Ahtna old folks’ home, a newish construction of a one-floor, three-wing sprawl. Independent living was in the left wing, assisted living in the right, with the common areas in the middle. It was lunch time and all the residents had turned out for deep-fried halibut and tater tots accompanied by remarks from their very own US Congressman, Pete Heiman. The son and grandson of stampeders, Pete had made a fortune in trucking during the oil boom and run his first campaign for the state legislature on the profits. He had since upgraded and was now Alaska’s only voice in the US House of Representatives. Given Alaska’s transient population he would only ever be one voice, but he was their voice and they loved him in spite of his being credibly accused of, in no particular order, selling his vote for a development on Forest Service land in Florida, inappropriate behavior with regard to the opposite sex (he’d sworn off marriage after his third and a good thing, too), and traveling to exotic lands on alleged fact-finding missions funded by corporations subject to Congressional oversight. In short, a standard of behavior one had been conditioned to expect from one’s representatives to the federal government, and as a whole Alaskans could be thankful it was no worse. In exchange, he’d funneled every last federal dollar he had even minimal influence over into the state whether the state wanted the funding or not. And of course they did. Kate, Jim, and Kenny made it to their seats just in time for Pete’s introduction and the following standing ovation. Pete beamed round the room, which only enhanced his resemblance to a toddler with a beard. He was short and plump and jolly and as one comedian had described the average eighteen-month-old, had a right-hand reach of eight feet. A reach with very sticky fingers, too.

  When the applause died down Kate leaned over and said, “Hey, Judge. Looking good.”

  “Less gaunt, for sure,” Judge Roberta Singh said, but the truth was she had more color in her face and flesh on her bones than she had the last time Kate had seen her. Kenny was sitting next to her and Kate was pretty sure they were holding hands under the table, and who could blame them? Mutt trotted around to pay her respects to the judiciary and was rewarded with a piece of halibut and an ear scratch, thereafter taking up station next between Kate and Jim, confident that all the eyes on the room not focused on Pete were on her and pleased about it.

  Pete ran through his greatest hits. “Best economic recovery in history!” “More jobs created!” “Increased overseas markets for Alaskan oil and Alaska seafood!” “Opening the Tongass back up to the timber industry!” “Opening ANWR to oil exploration!” The follow-up Q&A was generally an opportunity for the residents to tell Pete how great he was. One little old lady stood up shakily on two crutches and asked about Medicare, and one old gent with pugnacious whiskers asked about kids in cages, but on the whole this was his crowd and he very nearly danced off the stage in a glow of self-satisfaction and began working the tables, shaking hands with both of his. When he came to their table he paused in mid-step but recovered at once. “Chief Hazen, Judge Singh, Jim, Kate, how the hell are you!” He gladhanded all of them and Kate didn’t even feel like she had to wipe her palm down her jeans afterward. The true gift of the professional politician.

  “Preaching to the choir here, Pete,” Jim said, all smiles.

  “They are my people,” Pete said, all smiles back.

  The building they were sitting in was the result of a massive grant from the Federal Housing Authority, and Pete so happened to sit on the congressional committee that oversaw the FHA. It was all about the bacon and who brung it home, and Alaskans, who received more federal funding per capita than Mississippi, knew that better than most, even if they did preach a lifestyle wholly independent of government interference. Great people did not have to think consistently from one moment to the next, Kate thought. And wasn’t Emerson the guy who’d paid Thoreau’s bail? “A word, Pete?” she said.

  He made a show of consulting his watch, because he actually still wore one. “I don’t know, Kate, they’ve got me on a pretty tight schedule—”

  She stood up. “This won’t take but a minute, Pete.”

  Kate knew where a lot of Pete’s bodies were buried, of which he was well aware. Mutt woofed, and that did it. Pete followed Kate out of the dining room, Mutt ticky-tacking over the linoleum tiles behind them. Kate found an empty office and closed the door once they were inside, Mutt taking up station outside to discourage anyone so foolish as to try to interrupt them. Kate came straight to the point. “Erland Bannister named me his trustee.”

  Pete’s jaw dropped. “What—what the—what?”

  She regarded him with interest. “You didn’t know.”

  “Not only no, but hell no,” he said, looking, Kate had to admit, a little shell-shocked. “I would have said Erland was the last person to invite you of all people to get all up in his business.”

  “So would I,” she said. “You’re on the board of the Bannister Foundation.”

  “Well.” Pete was thinking, never a good thing.

  “Your photo’s on the website, Pete, along with a lovely little bio.”

  “Well, yeah, okay. It was an honor, and hell, Kate—” out flashed Pete’s electioneering grin “—so was everyone the hell else on the board. Even your own cousin, granddaughter to the great Ekaterina Shugak herself.”

  Kate tried not to grit her teeth. “And then there were those wonderful all-expenses paid quarterly vacations. Hard to turn down.”

  “Those are board meetings, Kate.” Pete was trying for dignity and not quite making it. A thought occurred that did not appear at all welcome to him. “Are you investigating the Bannister Foundation, Kate?”

  “Do you think I have cause to?”

  “Not to my knowledge, and I’m a plankholder,” Pete said. “I’ve been there since the beginning and I’ve never caught a whiff of improper behavior. We get donations, they go straight into the endowment, we’re required by federal law to spend four to five percent of our income every year, and we meet four times a year to hear our executive director brief us on the applications. We vote on who gets how much and we’re done, and in another three months we do it again.” He pointed a finger at her. “And a condition of the application is that the person or the organization has to be Alaskan. That right there is why it’s worth doing. And Jane—Jane Morgan, or Wardwell I think she is now, Erland’s assistant—she’s done excellent work in curating and vetting applications.” He caught himself.
“Morgan. Morgan? Any relation to Jack?”

  “His ex.”

  Pete stared at her for a moment and then burst out laughing. It was the kind of laugh that suited his appearance, full-throated, rollicking, roisterous, infectious. Kate maintained her stone face, but then she’d been subjected to Pete’s laugh before. Every time his laughter started to die down he’d glimpse her expression and go off into whoops again. After what felt like an inordinately long time he knuckled the tears from his eyes, blew his nose on a gigantic red handkerchief, and said, “Jesus. Erland really knew where and how to stick in the knife.”

  “You think that’s why he did it? Named me trustee? Because I’d have to work with her?” Kate’s voice was deceptively calm.

  Pete gave her a curious glance, the last of his amusement fading. “Isn’t it obvious? Erland might have hated your guts but he sure couldn’t have named anyone to be his trustee who was better known to be less on the take. But it’d be like him to force you to hang out with Jack’s ex while you do. He was a malicious old bastard.”

  Erland also might have thought I’d get to Jane Morgan, think the same thing, and stop there, Kate thought. Or run away screaming. “You’re probably right,” she said out loud. “Let’s get you back to your adoring public.”

  “Kenny,” Kate said as she sat down again, “do you know where the Ahtna Women’s Shelter is?”

  It was a rambling frame house set well back on a four-acre lot, around which a small forest of spruce and quaking aspen had been encouraged to grow. It was located off the highway and down a dirt road which led to another, smaller dirt road and then the route turned off on a third that was barely wide enough to allow Kenny’s vehicle to pass. Motion detector lights were mounted on all four corners of the roof and there was a video doorbell. Kenny pressed it. “Marlena? It’s Kenny. Got that person here I called you about.”

  A moment, and then the door opened on a heavy chain. “Hey, Kenny.”