Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 05 - Play With Fire

by Play

  "And last fall?"

  "Last fall there was a forest fire. Wasn't much in the way of any kind of life, wild or otherwise, around after that. What was did some chewing on his butt." She pointed. Dinah didn't look. "Give me the tape."

  Dinah ejected the tape and handed it over. Kate took it and headed for camp, leaving the half-filled bucket behind. She wasn't sure she would ever be able to pick another mushroom again as long as she lived.

  Bobby took one look at her face and said one word. "What?"

  Kate jerked her head. "We found a body."

  He stared. "You kidding me."

  She shook her head. His gaze slid past her to Dinah, regarded her pale face for a frowning moment, and came back to Kate, examining the tense hold she had on her wide mouth, the tight look around her eyes. She'd picked up her pack and was slipping the tape inside. "You going for Chopper Jim?"

  She nodded, zipping the pack closed.

  "You okay?" She nodded again, and he shook his head, a disgusted expression crossing his face. "Sorry. Stupid question." He caught her hand and gave it a brief squeeze. "But you will be." He was rewarded with a small smile. "And we were having such a good time," he said, adding bitterly, "It's positively disgraceful, Shugak, the way bodies follow you around."

  The smile was more genuine this time. She slung the pack. "The nearest phone's at the junction. I'll be back as soon as I can." She looked at Dinah.

  Young as she was, the blonde was quick. She swallowed hard. "You want me to go back and see that nothing disturbs the body."

  Kate gave a small shrug. "It's been out there going on a year already."

  "But still," Dinah said.

  "But still," Kate agreed.

  Dinah swallowed again. "Okay."

  "Can my chair make it out there?" Bobby said.

  Dinah's face lightened. "We can try."

  "Then let us do so." "I'll be back as soon as I can," Kate said again, and headed out.

  Tanada was sleepy in the hot noon sun. The mushroom wholesaler's flatbed stood alone in the parking lot. The only living thing in sight was a bald eagle roosting in the top of a scrub spruce.

  The tavern was equally deserted. It was a different bartender than the one of the previous afternoon, a sad-looking man of forty with two wisps of lank, dark hair descending from his upper lip that were trying hard to look like a mustache. He polished a glass and rode along with Dwight Yoakum, sitting in the back of a long, white Cadillac. He raised eyes to Kate that looked as sorrowful as his singing voice sounded. "Phone?" she said. Without missing a beat his head nodded toward a corner.

  She dialed the operator and asked for the trooper office in Tok. When they answered she asked for Jim Chopin and they put her on hold. Next to her Mutt flopped down with less than her usual grace, the heat starting to get to her again. While they were waiting a couple came in the door.

  They were middle-aged and wide-eyed and had the air of something in definably foreign about them. Maybe it was the way the woman wore her clothes, casual yet too elegant to be American. Maybe it was the way the man carried his chin, up and ever so slightly arrogant. Maybe it was the tiny, exquisitely manicured poodle, his topknot caught up in a red sateen bow, cradled in the woman's arms and staring about him with beady little eyes.

  "Bonjour," the man said to the bartender.

  The bartender looked blank.

  "Hello?" a voice said in Kate's ear.

  She straightened and turned her face toward the wall. "Jim?"

  The voice was deep, slow and calm. "Kate? Is that you?"

  "Yes."

  "Hey, lady. Where you at?"

  "Tanada."

  A thread of amusement crept into the deep voice. "You picking mushrooms?"

  "I was."

  There was a brief silence. Like Bobby, Jim knew Kate rather well.

  "What's up?"

  "I found a body."

  The voice sharpened. "Where?"

  "Cat's Creek."

  A pause. "Where's Cat's Creek?"

  "Fifth turnoff south of Chistona."

  "Oh." There was another pause, while Kate imagined him looking at a map.

  His next words confirmed it. "Okay, I got it."

  "How soon can you be here?"

  "If I fly straight to Tanada, an hour. You wait for me, give me a ride in?"

  "Yeah. Jim?"

  "What?"

  "Body's been there a while."

  "How long?"

  "It's covered with ash."

  He was silent for a moment. "So you think it was somebody caught out in the fire last year?"

  "Looks that way."

  "Okay, I'll see you in a bit."

  "Bring a mask. Bring two." She hung up. On the tape deck, Dwight Yoakum had moved from the Cadillac to the honky-tonk, and two glasses of white wine had materialized on the bar. The woman reached for hers and took a small sip. An involuntary sound escaped her and she looked distressed.

  "Monsieur," her husband said to the bartender, "you tell moi, uh, where me find un traineau a chi ens For picture?" The bartender looked blank, and the man looked thwarted.

  Eons before, back in the Stone Age, Kate had fulfilled the foreign language requirement for her B.A. with four semesters of French.

  Somewhat to her own surprise she discovered an ambition to try it out, thought up what might be a recognizable sentence and walked up to the man and tapped him on the shoulder. "Pardonnez-moi, monsieur? Peutetre je vous aider ai They turned to her in surprise, and she repeated herself. Mutt stood next to her, panting slightly. The poodle, regarding them both with disfavor, let out a sharp yip pitched so high it hurt Kate's eardrums.

  Mutt returned no reply, merely fixed a considering yellow gaze on the other dog, still panting, maybe showing a centimeter more canine than was absolutely necessary but otherwise remaining calm.

  The woman, intercepting that considering yellow stare, clutched the poodle closer to her breast. "Pauvre petit chi en C'est bien, petit, c'est bien." She gave Mutt a hostile glance, and seemed ready to include Kate in it until Kate repeated herself, this time speaking more slowly, taking more care with her pronunciation. Surprise gave way to comprehension. For a moment the notorious French disdain for their mother tongue spoken atrociously warred with the desire for rational communication. Communication won.

  Speaking slowly and carefully, enunciating every syllable with care in a manner that left Kate in little doubt that the intervening years had not been kind to whatever accent she might once have possessed, Monsieur gave a little bow and said, "Bonjour, mademoiselle. Vous parlez franca is

  "Un peu seulement," she said, the only phrase she remembered word-perfect twelve years after her last class, "et pas pour un long, long fois."

  He winced a little but covered it up immediately. Everyone shook hands, the poodle taking a surreptitious nip at Kate's when Kate let go of Madame's. He missed Kate but he didn't miss Monsieur. Monsieur snatched his hand back and dog and man exchanged a malevolent glance.

  Madame's stare was suspicious, and Monsieur quickly smoothed his own expression into an acceptable blandness.

  From the other red marks on the back of Monsieur's hand Kate deduced that this wasn't the first time Pauvre Petit Chien had taken his best shot. From Monsieur's evident willingness to put up with the attacks, she further deduced Madame and Monsieur's relationship to be in its earlier stages. Not for nothing had Kate once been the star of the Anchorage D. A."s investigator's office.

  It looked like a case of love her, love her dog. Or aimez elle, aimez sa chi en Pleased with herself, Kate said, "Quest-ce que vous voulez? What do you want?"

  They brightened a little. Monsieur held up a camera. "Pour prendre un picture dun traineau a chi ens To take a picture of something, but what?

  Chien meant dog, but traineau? A train? "Oh." Kate's brow cleared. "A dog sled? You want to take a picture of a dog sled? Like the Iditarod?"

  Their faces broke into smiles and they nodded vigorously and Kate was sorry she had
to disappoint them. "Je regrette, monsieur, il ny a pas de dog sleds running during, uh--" What was the word? Madame Buss Stowell would be disgusted with her, not that Kate, whose tongue was better suited for Aleut gutturals than French nasals, had ever been one of Madame's star pupils "--le summer. I mean, I'ete." She shook her head from side to side. "Pas de dog sleds de chi en pendant I'ete. No dog sleds during the summer."

  Their faces fell. "Pourquoi?"

  "No snow in the summer," she said.

  After a puzzled moment he got it. "Ah. Pas de neige." "Neige," Kate said, nodding. "No neige during the summer. Not at this altitude, anyway."

  "Ah." They thought for a moment, exchanged a phrase or two, and turned back to her. "Eh bien. Y-a-t'il un mais on d'Esquimau ici, peutetre?"

  A picture of a little Japanese man, waddling like Charlie Chaplin and shouting, "Bangoon! Ban goon!" in the Prudhoe Bay airport terminal three months before flashed through her mind, and she gave a sudden laugh.

  Well, mais on was house. House of Eskimo. "Igloo?" Kate hazarded, and when they nodded again, smiled back, she said, even more apologetically,

  "Je regrette, pas de igloos, either. Only Eskimos build igloos, and there aren't any around here. Eskimos, I mean.

  Although there aren't any igloos, either." She tugged at the front of her sooty T-shirt, the neckline of which seemed to have gotten a little tighter.

  Madame was starting to get a little indignant. "Pas de traineau a chi ens Kate shook her head. "Pas de igloo?" Kate shook her head, and the woman snorted and tossed off a paragraph that Kate had no trouble interpreting as, "Then what the hell are we doing here?"

  Monsieur, displaying a touching anxiety to please that confirmed Kate's belief that their relationship was in its infancy, turned back to Kate.

  By now she was almost as anxious as he was to find something intrinsically Alaskan for him to photograph. "Aha!" "Yes?" Kate said eagerly. "Quest-ce que c'est?"

  "Ici, here, c'est la terre dele soleil de minuit." He beamed at her, and with a sinking heart Kate realized what was coming. "Me photographic, ah, le couchant du soleil de minuit. Ou, um, where le meilleur view he is?"

  He looked at her expectantly.

  Alaska was the land of the midnight sun all right, but it was the middle of June. Why hadn't she minded her own business and gone outside to wait for Chopper Jim? "Monsieur, sorry, but the sun doesn't set right now, uh, il ne couche pas main tenant He was incredulous. "Le soleil ne couche pas ja maisr

  "No, no, not never, the sun will set, just not this month. Or not much, or not enough to take a picture of ... " Her voice trailed away when she looked at them. Monsieur was crushed, Madame piqued, the poodle still assessing the distance between his teeth and Kate's ankle.

  "Je regrette mine fois," Kate said, and escaped.

  Outside, she collapsed on a bench on the porch and mopped a heated brow.

  "That's the last time I try my hand at interpretation," she told Mutt.

  Mutt flopped down next to the bench, mouth open, panting. She looked pitiful.

  "I couldn't agree more," Kate told her.

  It was hot, too hot, so hot even the dust lay unresisting when a car trundled down the road. She squinted around for a thermometer. There was a big white round one with large numbers that told her it was a sizzling seventy-nine degrees Fahrenheit. Funny, it hadn't felt that hot until she saw proof positive, but now the sweat trickled down her back in an unending stream, pooling at the base of her spine. "Give me twenty below anytime," she muttered.

  She leaned back, looking in vain for even the wisp of a cloud. The eagle was still roosting in his treetop, and he looked pissed, but that was an eagle's natural expression and so Kate couldn't put it down wholly to the weather. There was a rustle of undergrowth and she turned to see a cow moose browsing in the alder thicket at the edge of the gravel lot.

  Two soft-nosed calves stood next to her on wobbly legs, nuzzling at mama's belly. Kate wondered how anybody could be hungry at this temperature.

  The tavern door opened and Monsieur, Madame and Pauvre Petit Chien came out and saw mother and children at the same moment. There was a loud exclamation and a torrent of excited language, not one word in ten of which did Kate catch or need to. Mama moose looked around in mild bemusement, a strip of leaves hanging out of one side of her mouth.

  Neither calf, having reached Nirvana, paused in their busy suckling.

  "Oooohhh!" Madame cooed, which meant the same thing in any language.

  She dropped the poodle and trotted off across the parking lot. The poodle yipped and tore after her.

  Mutt's ears went straight up. The dangers of heat exhaustion forgotten, Kate surged to her feet. "Hey! Wait! Don't do that!

  DON'T!"

  Monsieur gaped at the scene, Madame never turned around and the poodle, yipping hysterically, bounced in the rear on tiny legs, trying frantically to catch up. Kate and Mutt took off in hot pursuit but neither of them had gotten up enough speed to intercept by the time Madame reached the moose and stretched out a hand to pet one of the calves.

  Madame stood five feet five inches tall in her two inch heels and at best guess weighed in at 115 pounds wringing wet. Alces alces stands on average five and a half feet high at the shoulder, measures nine feet stem to stern and weighs in anywhere from 800 to 1,400 pounds on the hoof. Bull moose have big racks they use to bang on each other with in rut that can weigh as much as 85 pounds all by themselves; because she lacks this rack the cow is not to be considered less dangerous, especially if she has two newborn calves fastened to the faucets. In Kate's experience, no female of any species was to be trifled with fresh out of the delivery room. "For God's sake, madame, HOLD IT!"

  Mama moose watched that human hand reach out for baby, waited until the range was just right and let fly with her left rear hoof. It caught Madame squarely in the solar plexus. She flew backward, in what Kate was pleased to identify (from a different class lo those many years ago), as an arc, or any part of a curve that does not intersect itself.

  This arc intersected all right, with the ground, hard. Kate, reaching Madame, stooped and without ceremony grabbed one of her arms and hauled her to her feet. She hooked the arm around her waist and started moving as fast as she could toward the porch. Behind her she heard Mutt give one short, sharp warning bark. Monsieur, recovering from the shock that had kept him immobile with his mouth open, rushed forward and supported Madame on the other side. Together they got back to the porch and safely behind the railing. Kate dumped Madame, who had yet to inhale, on the bench and turned to look. Mama was back at the alder and baby was back at the faucet.

  Kate blew out a breath and turned, relief giving way to anger. "Don't you EVER do anything that stupid again! Have you no sense? You're lucky she didn't charge you! She could have knocked you on your ass and tap danced on your breastbone until there wasn't enough left to scrape up with a spoon!"

  She came to herself enough to realize that she was yelling, which never got anybody anywhere, and that she was yelling in English, which in this case would get her nowhere faster than that. She took a deep breath and gathered her composure. "Never," she said carefully, "never, never, never pet the moose. Comprenez-moi, madame? Jamais, jamais, jamais pet le moose."

  At that moment Madame got her breath back in one enormous

  "WHOOOSH!" gulping in air like a bellows, breast heaving.

  There was another "WHOOOSH" and for a moment Kate thought it also had come from Madame, but something was off in the direction the sound came from, which was behind her. She heard a high-pitched, terror-stricken yip and turned to see the eagle, launching itself from the top of the scrub spruce, glide down and snatch up the poodle in its talons. "Yip, yip, yip," went the poodle, flap, flap, flap went the eagle's wings, and the last anyone ever saw of Pauvre Petit Chien, except for maybe Mama Eagle's hungry offspring, was him dangling below the great flapping wings as he disappeared over the tops of the trees to the south.