Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead
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"Seventeen thousand dollars," he said again. His voice was deep with no
trace of an accent. Second-generation Swede, perhaps? He was
strong-featured rather than handsome. His face was impassive, but she
sensed that he was angry. She didn't know why, but it made her chin come up.
"Seventeen-five!" the squat man snapped. His eyes were little and cruel
and calculating.
"Eighteen," the tall man said imperturbably.
The squat man swore in a foreign tongue-Italian?- and said in a rising
voice, "Nineteen!"
"Twenty," the Greek said.
Everyone else seemed to have dropped out and were now swiveling their
heads among the three bidders. There would he a fight before the evening
was over, and they all knew it. Lust and blood lust, thwart one and the
other stepped in.
She wasn't going home with the squat man, but she had a good idea of
what six months of her exclusive attention was worth, and it was more
than twenty thousand dollars. "The last bid stands at twenty thousand,
boys," she called out into the silence, and when they turned to look at
her, she shook her head once. The single pin, artfully placed, loosened
itself, and her hair tumbled down in a thick, gleaming fall to her
waist. "I know you can do better than that."
One auburn strand fell forward to curl around her breast. The crowd
watched it, mesmerized. Someone gave a little moan. Someone else swore
not quite beneath his breath.
"Twenty-five," the man at the door said.
The room fell silent. He drained his mug and said into it, "Oh hell,
what's the use of wasting time." He looked up to run a possessive look
over the Dawson Darling and said, "Thirty thousand dollars." He smiled,
showing strong white teeth. He didn't seem angry anymore.
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She couldn't help herself. She had always had a weakness for good teeth.
She smiled back.
The Greek said nothing. The banker looked as if he were performing a
complicated mental calculation. The squat man saw her smile and
screamed, "You crooked, dirty whore!"
He struggled to reach her and was thwarted by the crowd, as protective
of her now as they had been avaricious before. With a sudden change of
direction, he rushed the man at the door, and this time the crowd parted
eagerly before him so that his opponent was grabbed up in a crushing
grip immediately. The tall blond man struggled and got one arm free to
fend off the hands reaching for his throat.
"I break him! I smash him!" the squat man shouted. His arms quivered,
muscles bulging. He lifted the tall man so that his feet dangled a foot
above the floor. The tall man went limp. Everyone watching expected to
hear the snap of the tall man's spine.
Instead, when the tall man went limp, the squat man's grip slipped, and
the tall man smashed him instead, one large-knuckled fist to the squat
man's jaw with a force that laid the squat man flat on his back on the
floor, out cold. The tall man almost went down with him, then caught his
balance and remained on his feet.
There was a roar of approval and a surge toward the tall man, who held
up one hand, and such was his presence that they halted. "My name's Sam
Halvorsen," he said, looking across the room to where she stood on the
catwalk, skin gleaming through white chiffon and auburn curls. "You
going to exercise your right to the next lowest bidder, ma'am?"
She could barely speak around the lump in her throat. "No, Sam," she
managed to say. "I am not."
The crowd, silent again, parted before him as he walked to the edge of
the stage. She didn't have to look down that far and realized he was
even taller than she had thought.
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He held up one hand, and she placed hers into it, only to give a
startled shriek when he yanked on it, jerking her off balance. She fell
forward, and he caught her neatly in his arms.
He grinned at her. "We've only got until June 24th," he said. "Time's
a-wasting."
And, carrying her easily, he shouldered his way out of the bar.
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I'M WATCHING YOU. That's all?" Jim Chopin said. Darlene Shelikof handed
over a manila file folder, and Jim leafed through half a dozen similar
missives, all on eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch sheets of plain white
paper folded in thirds.
He held one up to the light and read the watermark out loud. "Esleeck
Emco Bond, twenty-five percent cotton content." He lowered his arm.
"Available by the ream from Costco at six-seventy-nine a pop, the last
time I looked." "Can't you tell something from the writing?" He shuffled
through the sheets again. "Looks like he- or she-used a black Marksalot."
I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.
"The big block printing is an obvious attempt to disguise the handwriting."
ABORTION IS MUDRER.
"I take it Anne's pro-choice?"
"She started the family-planning clinic in Ahtna."
"That does tend to make the nuts fall from the tree." He held the letter
closer. "Probably printed with the left hand, or whatever hand is not
their hand of choice in writing poison-pen letters. Also, he can't spell."
YOUR HUSBANDS CUTE.
Jim's eyebrows went up. "Is he?"
Darlene smiled. "Not as cute as you are, Jim."
His smile was swift and predatory in return. "Why,
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Darlene, I didn't know you cared." Even to himself the words sounded
formul, and tired as well, and he looked back down at the file. Well,
hell, he was tired. It had been a long week, what with a rape in Slana,
a death by arson in Copper Center, and a suicide by cop in Valdez that
he would have missed if he hadn't had to overfly Cordova due to weather
and overnight on the Valdez chief of police's couch. He focused on the
papers in his hand.
YOUR DAUGHTER WEARS HER SKIRTS TOO
The writer had written in letters so large he or she had ran out of room
before finishing his or her thought, and had had to add "SHORT" in
smaller letters in the lower right-hand corner of the paper.
STAY HOME AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR KIDS.
"Ah, a traditionalist," Jim said.
The seventh letter was more direct, run for senator
AND ILL KILL YOU.
He held it up so she could read it. "This the one that made you bring
them all in?"
She nodded. "They've been coming in one at a time ever since she
announced. Then last week, we got two."
"All date-stamped except the first one, and you kept the envelope for
that one, too. Smart," Jim said. "We appreciate smart in law enforcement."
She smiled again.
He examined the envelopes, all of them stapled to the backs of the
letters. "All postmarked Ahtna. Well, I'll give the post office there a
call. You never know, somebody might have noticed something."
"You don't sound very optimistic."
"I'm not. The Ahtna post office handles all the mail that goes into and
comes out of the Park. That's, what, three thousand people, a little
less? And these are pretty anonymous letters, Darlene."
"What about the handwriting? Isn't there an expe
rt you can send them to,
figure out who wrote them?"
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"Sure, and I will," he said, stuffing them into an evidence bag. "Today.
But unless and until the state crime lab already has a sample of the
perp's writing to compare them to, we're SOL as far as identifying the
writer."
"What about fingerprints?"
He looked at her. What he wanted to say was, "You've been watching too
much television," but what he said instead, patiently, was, "Who opened
these?"
"The candidate, the first one." She thought. "The rest were opened by
volunteers, I think. Oh."
"Right. And then they got passed up or down the food chain to you, and
then your assistant had to file them. There are probably ten sets of
fingerprints on every letter, and we can't even be sure that every
letter has the same set of ten." He sealed the bag. "Have you
fingerprinted your staff?"
An expression of revulsion crossed her face. It was a very nice face
otherwise, black eyes set in a broad, flat face with a tiny pug nose and
a merry mouth, hair in a permed black frizz standing out around it. She
was thick through the body and short, although her erect posture made
her seem taller. She carried weight, did Darlene Shelikof, and not
necessarily just body weight. Her jeans were faded but clean, the blazer
over it a conservative navy blue, the shirt beneath a paler blue and
open at the throat. Ivory dangled from her ears and adorned her lapel
and both wrists.
She had been leaning forward, just a little, and now she leaned back,
just a little, not enough to give the impression she was in any way
relaxed. "What about protection?"
"What about it?"
For the first time she allowed herself to look angry. He admired her
control. "How much can you give us?"
"Darlene, you worked for the AG. You know exactly how much protection we
can give you."
Her mouth thinned. "The threats are escalating, in delivery and in degree."
"Yes."
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"Chances are he-or she-will try to make contact."
"Chances are he-or she-already has."
"What do you mean?"
He shrugged. "How long has Anne been on the campaign trail? She
announced in June, didn't she?"
"Yes."
"What day in June?"
"The sixteenth."
"The first of those envelopes is dated June twenty- seventh."
She thought about it. "So he's been following her since the beginning?"
"That'd be my guess. She's been doing the usual things politicians do,
going to church in Chitina, walking the bars in Cordova, shaking hands
and kissing babies and promising to throw the bums out, like they all
do." Darlene looked indignant. He waved away whatever comment she had
been about to make about her candidate being all new and improved and
completely different. He'd been an Alaska state trooper for going on
twenty years; he'd seen a lot of political campaigns whistle-stop
through; he had seen every single candidate of every political party
(and in Alaska there were about seventeen separate and distinct
political parties with more springing up every year), and he had seen
every successful candidate as a first order of Juneau business cuddle up
with the lobbyist with the most money to spend. Call him a cynic, but he
didn't see anything changing just because this candidate was a woman and
a Native and homegrown.
Juneau seemed to have that inevitable and invariable effect on elected
officials, he reflected. Or maybe it was just political office
everywhere, because the nation as a whole seemed to be in about the same
shape. Substitute Washington, D.C, for Juneau and what did you get? Bill
Clinton for president. Jesus. It wasn't that Clinton was a rounder that
bothered him so much, it was that he'd been so awful god
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damn inept at it. If you're going to philander, he thought now, for
crissake do it with some style.
"So we have to wait until he takes a shot at her before you'll do
anything?" Darlene said.
"It's a big step from writing a nasty letter to someone popping off with
a thirty-ought-six." He held up a hand to forestall further commentary.
"What I will do is put the word out to all the local law enforcement
agencies that your candidate's getting hate mail, that it's personal,
and, yes, that it is increasing in amount and degree."
She gave an impatient snort. "What's that get us?"
He was starting to get a little annoyed. "Nothing, if you don't call
ahead to let the local agencies know when you'll be there."
She glared, and he sighed to himself. No point in getting the person who
was very probably going to sit at the right hand of the next senator
from District 41 mad at him. "I'll e-mail all the troopers in the area,
and all the police chiefs. I'll give you a list of names and numbers,
and I'll tell them you'll call when you know your candidate will be
speaking in their jurisdiction. You need to call every time, Darlene,"
he said with quiet force. "They can't plan to look out for you if they
don't know you're coming. They've got jobs, full-time ones, already." He
thought about the suicide by cop in Valdez. "Full-time jobs," he
repeated. "You releasing this information to the press?" She hesitated,
and he groaned. "Don't tell me you think that this is going to get her
the sympathy vote?"
She had the grace to flush.
"All you'll do is get him off," he warned. "That's what he wants,
attention, film at eleven."
"Or she," she reminded him.
He looked at her in sudden suspicion. She read his thought before he
could speak it out loud. "Fuck you, Chopin," she said, her voice rising.
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"Okay," he said, patting the air. "Okay. Sorry. Just a thought, a dumb
one, I admit, but-"
"As if I would-as if Anne would-just fuck you, Chopin!" She shot to her
feet and marched to the door. Hand on the knob, she turned and said,
spitting the words like knives, "Thanks for nothing. If-when Anne gets
into office, if this asshole doesn't kill her first, we'll remember all
this when it comes time to look at the budget for the Department of
Public Safety. I'd say trooper salaries and step tales for Bush posts
are way overdue for review."
"Darlene!"
His voice, cracking like a whip, stopped her halfway out the door. She
looked back, very ready to escalate hostilities.
"If you're that worried, if you really think Anne's in danger..."
She didn't move. "What?"
"What about hiring security for the campaign?"
"You mean like guards?"
"I mean like one guard." The one he was thinking of wouldn't need any help.
She let go of the handle, and the door hissed closed on its hydraulic
hinge. "You suggesting someone in particular?"
He just looked at her and, being a well-trained law enforcement