Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead

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by The Singing Of The Dead(lit)


  They looked tanned and fit and happy. Percy joined them without a

  backward glance at his mother and was accepted without question, a

  tow-head among many darker ones.

  Lily MacGregor not only sold the Darling the best of the two lots, she

  found her a contractor to put up a crib, two stories with a scalloped

  awning, a dainty porch, and the biggest sitting-room window on the

  street. It was a design much envied and quickly copied.

  It took no time to settle into a routine, and she picked up a steady

  clientele with no trouble. Several of her clients fell in love with her

  and proposed.

  Why not? she often thought. It wasn't as if it didn't happen

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  on a regular basis, girls of the Line marrying into the first gentlemen

  of Alaska, retiring into a quieter life of housewifery and gardening,

  even motherhood for some of them not too old to bear children.

  But in the end she refused them all, wary of ever again ceding power

  over her life to anyone else, no matter how charming he seemed on the

  surface. In the meantime, the Dawson Darling plied her trade, saved her

  money, and raised her son. In 1910 he celebrated his eleventh birthday,

  and no one looking at him that day, covered with dirt from playing

  hide-and-seek in Lily MacGregor's yard with Lily MacGregor's many and

  various children, would recognize him for the sickly child she had

  carried from Nome those long years ago.

  Tuesday of the week following Percy's eleventh birthday she looked up

  from the pink silk settee upon which she displayed her wares, and saw

  Matt staring back at her through the plate-glass window.

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  The truck tore down the road as the needle on the speedometer swung hard

  to the right and stayed there. How long had he dawdled at the trailer,

  trying to figure out what had happened? Five minutes? Ten? How fast had

  the green truck been traveling? Fifty, sixty miles an hour? Faster?

  There was only one highway, but there were hundreds of roads, marked and

  unmarked, leading off it. How far? Which one? Mutt, her nose into the

  wind, barked encouragement. SuperMutt, his own personal DEW Line, his

  Early Kate Detector.

  He didn't want to call what he felt panic. He didn't want the

  disappearance of one woman, of one person, to have this clutch on his

  gut. He was worried, of course he was. He would be worried about anyone

  he'd gone looking for and been unable to find. Leaving a Force 10 mess

  behind. Leaving her canine soul mate behind.

  Get a grip, Chopin, he told himself, and made a desperate effort to

  think rationally. Who had come on Kate at the trailer? Had they

  kidnapped her? If so, why? Had she seen them? Were they disposing of a

  witness? If that were the case, what possible reason could they have for

  keeping her alive?

  An ancient Ford Ranchero pulled onto the highway a foolish three hundred

  yards in front of him, and Jim pulled into the left lane and slowed down

  to eighty miles an hour

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  to pass. There was a white, frightened blur in the driver's side window

  and then it was gone.

  His lights picked the letters of signs out of the dark as they flashed

  past. 14 miles to Ahtna. food, phone, lodging, rv dump, arrow pointing

  right.

  The truck spit gravel in every direction as he wheeled into the parking

  lot of the Ernestine Creek Lodge. Two campers, one Winnebago, a pickup,

  and a van. No green truck. No road around the back. He pulled into a

  circle and roared back out to the highway.

  Fluorescent snow guide on the left, marking an access road. He pulled

  in, drove a hundred feet over a series of rocky craters, saw nothing,

  heard nothing (Mutt was growling and snapping at the open driver's

  window, her teeth five inches from his ear), put the truck into reverse,

  and backed out onto the highway again.

  rest stop, one thousand feet. No cars in front of the toilets. He got

  out anyway and ran to open the doors, Mutt barking at him, she didn't

  smell Kate, had to check anyway, had to, great place to dump a body.

  Women's, empty. Men's, empty. Dumpster, a few empty cans and bottles, a

  few candy wrappers, an empty box of Kleenex, nothing else. Back in the

  truck, back on the highway.

  Miles flashed past. He almost hit a cow moose and calf crossing the

  road. He left his foot on the gas. scenic viewpoint, one mile. No cars,

  no trucks, no one. When he slowed, Mutt barked once, sharp, admonitory.

  Don't stop here. He stepped on the gas.

  AHTNA LANDFILL, NEXT RIGHT.

  Mutt exploded, and when he hit the brakes she didn't wait. She went over

  the side and vanished down the access road. The truck skidded to a halt

  twenty feet past the turnoff.

  Landfill. Dump. Mountains of discards of modern life. Great place to

  lose a body.

  He cursed the truck into reverse and didn't bother turning

  174

  around, just backed down the road to the Ahtna landfill with the gas

  pedal all the way down. He over steered and almost hit a tree on one

  side of the road, overcorrected and almost hit another on the other

  side. He came into a clearing at full throttle. He hit something,

  bounced the ass end of the truck up in the air, came down again, hard.

  It sounded like something might have fallen off. Might not. He snapped

  off the engine without bothering to let out the clutch. It bucked and

  snorted, and he baled out before it dieseled to a halt. "Mutt? Where are

  you, girl? Mutt? Kate? Are you here? Kate? Kate!"

  The truck had highcentered on a pile of garbage that looked as if it had

  been pushed off the back of a pickup truck similar in size and height to

  the one he was driving. The driver's side rear tire was off the ground.

  Worry about that later. "Mutt? Mutt? Kate!"

  The Ahtna Landfill was a hole in the ground, a natural one, falling off

  from a steep, crumbling wall of hard-packed dirt. The stench was strong

  and sour. He stood on the edge and squinted into the twilight. "Mutt?"

  He heard a yelp, and cursed himself for leaving his flashlight in the

  Cessna. "Mutt?" A movement caught his eye, off to his right. "Mutt, is

  that you?"

  She yelped, and he broke into a stumbling run, around the edge of the

  drop-off to where it degenerated into a steep, jumbled slide of debris.

  He scrambled down into the pit, grabbing at handholds wherever he found

  them, a tree root, a poushki bush that gave beneath his weight and sent

  him slipping into a mess of something that smelled like he didn't want

  to know what it was, a rusty old bedspring that cut his hand. Mutt

  barked encouragement, providing him with a beacon and he moved toward

  it, stepping from a mound of garbage bags to the top of an old gas

  range. He tripped on a floor lamp minus a shade and fell face forward,

  picked himself up, and went on.

  Mutt sounded nearer. "Where is she, girl?" he said, panting.

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  Mutt let loose with a flurry of barks and yips and yells, interspersed

  with worrying at a dark lump laying between two mountains of trash. She

  growled at him whe
n he got to her finally. No gratitude.

  "It's all right, girl," he said, praying it was, falling more than

  dropping to his knees. He touched the lump and felt plastic, and

  remembered the dark green trash bags strewn across the kitchen floor of

  the trailer. "Oh shit, no," he said and tore at it. She was curled

  inside in a fetal position, and she was wet, he thought with sweat. He

  found her throat, felt for a pulse.

  There was one, strong and slow and steady, and the wave of relief that

  swept over him then made him feel like he was drowning. Immediately in

  its wake was anger, so powerful and so vicious that he wanted to kill

  her. How had she let herself be sandbagged like this? How could she have

  been so careless of her own safety? Anybody would think she had a death

  wish, last September at George Perry's hunting camp, now here in Ahtna.

  What the hell was wrong with the woman? Plenty, and he couldn't wait to

  tell her, in detail.

  He struggled for control, for breath. Mutt licked at Kate's face,

  whining. When he thought he could lay hands on her without doing serious

  bodily injury, he managed to get Kate into a fireman's lift, how later

  he would never know. Then began the nightmare journey back, during which

  he found even more things to trip over and fall into than he had on the

  way there. Almost to the edge of the pit, he thought close to where he

  had climbed and slid down, he heard the sound of a engine. "Hey," he

  yelled. "Down here!"

  He was answered by a thrown garbage bag, which exploded on contact four

  feet away and which sprayed all three of them with something liquid that

  smelled like sour milk.

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  "Hey!" he bellowed. "there's somebody down here!" but the vehicle was

  already leaving.

  "You miserable-" Jim stood where he was and called the driver every name

  he could think of and some he made up on the spot. He threatened him

  with arrest for assaulting a police officer, fleeing the scene of an

  accident, and being a deaf motherfucker whose father's identity was in

  serious doubt. He promised him no bail and no parole. The driver didn't

  hear him, and didn't come back, on the whole a good thing for both of them.

  When he ran out of steam, he felt better. Over his shoulder, Kate

  uttered a faint groan.

  "Hang on, girl," he said, and began the grim climb up the steep bank, in

  the dark, with a hundred-pound sack of potatoes over his shoulder. When

  he got back to his truck, he set her down carefully in the cab and told

  her, "You have not been a fun date."

  The potatoes stirred. "Jim?"

  His heart leaped. "Kate? Can you hear me?"

  "Of course I can hear you," she said, sounding fretful "I can smell you,

  too."

  His laugh was short but heartfelt. "You should talk."

  "Where are we? What are you doing here? What- where's Mutt?"

  Mutt wormed her way in between them and lavished Kate's face with her

  tongue. For once, Jim envied her.

  "What happened?" Kate said, when Mutt finally calmed down. "Where are

  we?" She blinked at her surroundings. "Whose truck is this, and why am I

  laying in it?"

  He told her.

  She was silent.

  "Was somebody in the trailer with you?"

  "No, I-no."

  "What is the last thing you remember?" A brief silence. "Kate?"

  "I was reading a book, I think."

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  "Reading a book?"

  "Well, she had a lot of them, and I didn't find anything else, and I was

  there and so were they, so. .." Her voice trailed away.

  "I see. You were reading a book," he said, his voice very calm. "Did

  you, while you were reading this book, notice if anyone joined you in

  the trailer?"

  "I-no."

  "No one did, or you didn't notice?"

  "No one did."

  "Right. You didn't notice. Either that, or you stuffed yourself in a

  garbage sack and dumped yourself in the landfill." The rage was back. He

  tamped it down.

  At every scene, your first act is to establish your authority. State

  Trooper 101, first day. For some reason, Kate Shugak could make him

  forget every rule he'd ever learned in class or on the job. For one

  brief, sweet moment he was tempted to finish the job whoever had started

  that afternoon. He mastered the impulse, and was proud of himself, and

  then was mad all over again.

  In a level voice he said, "Did you find anything in the trailer?"

  "I don't know. Let me think a minute. No, I-no. Nothing but books.

  That's what she had most of."

  "Did you dump them on the floor?"

  "What?"

  "Pawlowski's books. Did you dump them on the floor?"

  "No! I would never-she had some old books, one was ... do you mean

  somebody pulled them off the shelves?"

  "Yes. All of them."

  "The same person who attacked me?"

  "That would be my professional opinion, yes."

  She grabbed the steering wheel and pulled herself erect. The dome light

  was burned out, and she couldn't see Jim's face. "Come on, we have to

  get back there."

  "Like hell, we have to get you to a hospital."

  178

  "You don't understand, Jim. Some of those books were really valuable."

  "I don't care if the covers were made of gold and the pages were made of

  silver! Your shoulder's messed up, something could be broken, you've got

  scrapes and bruises everywhere. When's the last time you had a tetanus

  shot?"

  "Last year," she said, annoyed, her voice stronger now. With Jim

  bellowing on one side and Mutt yipping anxiously on the other, she was

  not feeling at the top of her game. "It's okay," she said to Mutt.

  "Okay my ass! You-"

  "Jim," she said. It was one word, his name, flat, devoid of emotion. It

  meant business.

  It stopped him, mercifully, at least for the moment. "What?"

  "Shut up. Please. I've got a hell of a headache, and you yelling and her

  yipping makes it worse."

  He dropped his voice but he was still mad. "Why won't you go to the

  hospital? Give me one good goddamn reason!"

  She felt an insane desire to laugh at the hissed whisper. That way lay a

  descent into hysteria, and she fought it back. "If you'd been stuffed

  into a trash bag and tossed into the city dump like last week's garbage,

  would you be in a hurry to tell anyone about it?"

  They compromised, and went back to Ahtna. As Jim pointed out, they were

  all in need of a change of clothes. Kate took a shower. Mutt took a

  bath. Jim borrowed jeans and a sweatshirt from Kenny Hazen, who dropped

  Jim's uniform off at the only dry cleaners in town the following

  morning. There was no ridding his boots of the smell, though; for months

  afterward he would look down and see flies buzzing around his ankles.

  Kate checked on the whereabouts of the other campaign staffers, who were

  all present and accounted for at another

  179

  basketball game at the gym. Halftime and Anne was working the bleachers,

  Darlene at her elbow, Erin in tow, Doug chasing some skirt on the

  opposite side of the room, Tom at the center of an admiri
ng group of

  teenage girls, Tracy snapping pictures, getting names, keeping one eye

 

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