The probing hurt enough to cause silent tears to roll down her face. This terrified him, and he overcompensated by donning a bluff and hearty demeanor. "Not much harm done," he said in a tone determined to be cheerful. "You've got a lump the size of a baseball but the skin wasn't broken. You must have a skull like a rock. You'll be fine in a day or two." He rolled a towel and put it around her neck so she could relax without leaning her head against the wall. "Don't suppose you saw the asshole that did this?"
"No." She almost shook her head. "I was climbing up over the gunnel when Wait." She paused. "No. I was already on deck, I think." Her eyes closed against the glare of the galley light, and she said, spent, "I don't know."
He grunted. "Well, whoever it was was looking for something."
She struggled to take an interest. "What do you mean?"
"I mean he thoroughly trashed my boat, is what I mean," Old Sam said grimly. "Look at 'er."
Painfully, Kate opened her eyes. It was true. Everything in the lockers was now out on the floordishes, pots and pans, canned goods, fish tickets, tender summaries, pens, pencils, tide books, a mending needle, a sliming knife. A bright orange swath that resolved itself into a survival suit sprawled awkwardly across the table. The color hurt her eyes. She closed them again. "How about above?"
Old Sam's voice hardened. "The same. He yanked the charts out of the shelves, he busted the goddam compass, your stuff's scattered from hell to breakfast." He paused, and added with menace, "I sure wish you'd caught him in the act, Shugak."
"I think I did," she murmured, slipping into a doze.
She woke up sprawled across Old Sam's bunk, and turned her head to find Chopper Jim standing there, staring down at her, hat for once in hand. "Hey," she said.
"Hey backatcha," he replied.
She ran her tongue around the inside of a mouth that felt as if it were stuffed with cotton wool. "Water."
He left and returned with a full glass, putting an arm around her shoulders and holding it to her lips. She gulped gratefully. "Thanks," she said, stretching back out.
The tiny stateroom boasted a single chair. The trooper tipped it forward to let the dirty clothes heaped on it slide to the deck and seated himself next to the bunk, unzipping his jacket and adjusting his holster. "Tell me about it."
"Nothing to tell," she said, wincing when an unwary movement made her head throb. "I came back to the boat after one. Somebody coldcocked me coming on board. I never saw him."
"Amateur," he said.
A reluctant smile widened her mouth. "Prick."
They sat in peaceful silence. After a bit she felt well enough to scoot up against the bulkhead. Jim shoved a pillow behind the small of her back. "Thanks." She closed her eyes again. "What did you find out in Cordova?"
He produced a notebook and thumbed through it. "First off, the boy's alibi holds up. The beach gang saw him leave the dock with his father alive and well on the deck of his drifter, and the Wieses say he showed up at their house right after and stayed the night."
Unconsciously, Kate's breast lifted in a long, relieved sigh. "Good. How about the autopsy?"
He flipped a few pages. "Time of death, roughly midnight."
"Roughly?"
He shrugged. "The Gulf of Alaska's mean temperature is forty-two degrees. The body was floating around in it for at least six hours. It tends to foul up all the techies' fancy-dandy tests. And Kate? He drowned."
"What?"
He held up a hand, palm out. "He had help. His trachea was crushed, and there was water in his lungs."
"What kind of water?"
"Salt."
"So. Could have been either the harbor in Cordova or Alaganik Bay. Any way we can find out which?"
He shrugged. "Lab's running more tests. It won't help," he added with the jaded wisdom of long experience. "They'll find trace amounts of oil and gas in the water, but with as many boats as have been fishing Alaganik there's probably not much difference in composition between this bay and the harbor."
"There's a lot more glacial silt in Alaganik Bay, washed down from the Kanuyaq. They ought to be able to identify the water from that alone."
"Maybe." He didn't sound convinced. In his years as an Alaska state trooper, Chopper Jim had not had much cause to put a whole lot of faith behind forensic evidence, which in his experience led, in court, to a face-off between opposing so-called expert witnesses, each of whom contradicted everything the other said, leaving the jury more confused than enlightened and, consequently, resentful enough to take it out on the prosecution. Like most in law enforcement, he leaned toward catching the perp at the scene, weapon in hand, preferably in the presence of three eyewitnesses, one of whom was a priest.
"So the knife went in after the fact?" Kate said.
"Yup."
"After he was strangled and drowned, somebody stabbed him."
"Uh-huh."
"I hate the weird ones." Kate tried to figure out a scenario to fit the evidence, but the effort made her dizzy and her head started to hurt again. "What else? What about the cuts and bruises on his face and torso?" Something in the quality of the ensuing silence made her eyes snap open. "What, Jim?"
He made a pretense of consulting his notes. "After Meany delivered, he went over to the fuel dock and topped off his tanks. Shortly after which he had a visitor."
Kate made a face. "Female, no doubt."
"You're such a prude, Shugak," he complained. "Anyway, they both left the boat about six-thirty, according to Otis Swopes, the Standard Oil guy. Otis identified the lady as one Myra Sarakovikoff. And, of course, Otis lost no time in telling the tale to the first guy to wander by, in this case one Wendell Kritchen, also known as the Mouth of the Sound."
Kate closed her eyes again. "Shit."
"Yeah. You can almost guess what happened next."
"Tim Sarakovikoff came home."
"You win first prize. Not only home, but he tied up to the fuel dock right next to Meany's drifter, and took on the story from Otis and Wendell while he was taking on fuel." Chopper Jim smoothed his already immaculate hair. "Tim took off uptown. According to approximately twenty eyewitnesses, he caught up with them at the Cordova House. Whereupon he proceeded to beat the living shit out of Meany. Dick Bynum's words, not mine," he added. "Dick seemed kind of admiring. One might even say jubilant. He got a good-looking wife?"
"Yes."
"Thought so," Jim said, satisfied, and making a mental note to check out Dick Bynum's good-looking wife at his earliest opportunity.
"What happened next?"
"Near as I can figure, everybody went into the bar and celebrated, leaving Meany bleeding on the sidewalk. This was the Fourth of July, Kate, and the celebrating started early on."
"No one's memories are all that clear," Kate suggested, and he nodded. "Shit," she said again.
"I heard that," he agreed.
"Myra?"
"Myra was on the first plane out of Mudhole Smith this morning, on her way to Anchorage."
"Did you talk to her first?"
"No," he said regretfully. "But I phoned APD, talked to Sayles. He said he'd track her down, get her statement."
She had to ask, even if she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer. "What does Tim say?"
"I haven't talked to him yet. He wasn't home, he wasn't at his mother's house, and his boat's gone from the harbor."
She sat where she was for a few moments, and then swung her legs over the side of the bunk.
"Whoa there," he said, stretching out a hand.
"Help me up." She grabbed his arm and pulled herself upright. With this sudden ascent to the vertical her head felt as if there were no more than three jackhammers working on it at the same time. "Come on."
"Sure, Shugak," he said, the drawl back. "You might want to put on some pants first, though."
She looked down and saw that Old Sam had stripped her to T-shirt and panties. She swore halfheartedly and went to lean up against the wall. "In the chart room."
She managed a grin. "Not even if you crawl in there with me, Old Sam."
He swore and snorted and in the end stamped off, outrage evident in the set of his shoulders. Chopper Jim returned with a pair of Kate's jeans in one hand and socks and Nikes in the other. He held the jeans for her to step into, and waited until she was working on the second leg before observing, "I've always dreamed of doing this. It's just that in my dreams I'm helping you out of your pants, not into them." She had no comeback and he was mildly alarmed.
Leaning heavily on his arm, Kate shuffled out on deck and up into the bow, trying not to throw up along the way. What with the strike, most of the boats were back in the harbor. There couldn't have been more than ten left, and it was easy to pick out the neat lines of the Esther. She pointed it out.
"Think Old Sam'11 loan me his skiff?" Jim said.
"If I go along," she said, lying in her teeth.
He turned his head and looked at her. The cost of remaining upright was reflected clearly in the pale, taut lines of her face. "You know, Shugak, you give the word 'stubborn' a whole new meaning."
Tim saw them aboard with an impassive expression belied by the shiner he was sporting, and returned to his work. He was mending a hole in his net, and the green plastic needle with the Gothic arch to its tip looked tiny and fragile as he wove it deftly back and forth. His knuckles were swollen and bruised, which could have been from launching and hauling a hundred feet of gear every six hours, with or without salmon in it. Picking fish was as hard on the hands as it was on the back.
He didn't seem surprised when Jim told him why they were there. He even admitted to the fight.
Of course even the weather knew better than to rain on Chopper Jim, and the overcast had turned into a high, broken layer of cumulus clouds with enough blue sky between to allow shafts of golden sunlight to ripple across the water, illuminate the peaks of the Ragged Mountains and the erect figure of the trooper, dwarfing the deck of the bowpicker. The Alaska state trooper uniform was very distinctive, and even if it hadn't been, there was no mistaking that hat. Every boat left in the bay had its whole crew on deck, and Kate wondered how far their voices were carrying.
As if she'd spoken aloud, Tim's voice was low. "I wanted to kill him."
"But you didn't," Chopper Jim said, "is that what you're telling us?"
Tim's smile was lopsided and rueful. Not much was left of the joyous high boat of the season opener. "Didn't get the chance."
"Why not?" Kate said.
"Auntie Joy made us quit," he said.
Kate's heart skipped a beat. "What?"
"That would be Joyce Shugak?" Jim said.
Tim nodded, contemplating his hands, the bruises already fading to yellow, the scrapes drying to black crusts.
"Tell us about it," the trooper said. "All of it."
It was a short story. Tim Sarakovikoff had left Alaganik Bay at one minute past six p.m. precisely on Wednesday afternoon, when it was evident that the Independence Day celebration had reached a point where no one was going to be doing any fishing. By eight, maybe a little past, he was tied up at the fuel dock and, as they already knew, had been met by Otis and Wendell, eager harbingers of humiliation.
Tim's face, so open, so honest, so completely without guile, darkened like a thundercloud. "They'd seen him, they said, and her, going at it right on the deck of his boat. Right in the harbor!" His voice went up an octave, and all at once Kate was reminded of how young he was.
Jim gave one of those all-purpose trooper grunts that indicated comprehension, sympathy and the determination to slog away at the facts until the whole truth and nothing but was arrived at, if they both had to sit there till the last trump.
Tim must have recognized it for what it was because it didn't require any further prompting for him to continue. "I caught up with them on First. Looked like they were headed for our house. Probably wanted to try out our bed." Tim's broad shoulders moved in a shrug. "I didn't let them get that far."
"You confronted him?"
Tim gave a short, unamused laugh. "Yeah, I guess you could call it that." He looked down and picked up a section of mesh that was lying on the deck between his feet. The green twine was tangled and torn, a piece he'd taken out of his gear and replaced. "Myra was scared. She ran. Meany didn't even try to deny it. He laughed at me, said Myra wouldn't have come prowling around him if I'd been taking good enough care of her at home. So I hit him." He raised his hands, backs up, displaying the wounds of honorable battle. "Guy had a jaw like the blade on a D-nine. I thought every bone in my hand was broken, but I didn't stop. I keep hitting him, and I guess I was so angry he couldn't get through, except the one time." He touched his shiner. He raised his head and looked at Jim.
"To tell you the truth, Jim, I don't know what would have happened if Auntie Joy hadn't stopped me. I just hit him, and hit him, and hit him. It felt good. It would have felt even better to have kept on hitting him."
"But Joyce Shugak broke it up."
Tim nodded, looking suddenly exhausted. "I think she came out of the Cordova House. There were a bunch of people in there. Anyway, she brought out a pitcher of ice water and threw it on me. It shocked me, and I stopped."
Jim made another note. "What kind of shape was Meany in?"
Tim shook his head. "On his hands and knees. He was okay enough to call me a bunch of names."
"And then?"
"And then Auntie Joy chewed on my ass for ten minutes, and then she picked Meany up and took him away."
Kate jerked erect in a movement that made her head throb and the low-level nausea surge threateningly to the back of her throat.
Jim noticed the sudden movement and eyed her curiously. She said nothing, and he turned back to Tim. "And then?"
Tim shrugged again. "And then I went up to the house and kicked Myra out."
Good for you, Kate thought, momentarily diverted. As young as Tim was, she had feared the romantic in him would be willing to forgive all for love.
"If there was one guy, there would have been others," Tim added. "I can'tI won't live with that."
Jim gave the grunt again, examining his notes with a critical air. "About what time was this, do you remember?"
"Oh hell." Tim let his head fall back on his shoulders and thought. "Had to have been eight-thirty, nine o'clock anyway. Maybe a little past. I don't know for sure. I pulled the plug on Alaganik at six."
"Where did you go after you left Myra?"
"Out to the Powder House. Got drunk as a skunk. I don't remember the rest of the night too well." Tim tied off a knot, cut the twine and set the needle aside. "I woke up the next morning on the Esther. I couldn't stand being around town, with everybody probably talking about it and all. So I came on back out. Been here since." He sighed. "Might never go back."
Jim made another note. Tim watched him. "Could have been worse, I guess," he said.
"How so?" Jim said.
Tim gave a wan smile. "She could have been screwing you."
As he was assisting Kate up over the side of the Freya, Jim said casually, "What's bothering you about Joyce, Kate?"
Damn him, he'd always been quick as a snake. Not that Kate had ever seen a snake, but she could well imagine one with Chopper Jim's sly expression on it, and with Jim's habit of striking out at precisely the one thing in a conversation you hoped he would miss.
"What?" Old Sam said, hauling up Kate from the other end. "What are you talking about, what's wrong with Joyce?"
"Nothing," Kate said, shaking off her tugs. She was feeling better; she could inhale without wanting to barf the air right back out. Upon investigation her belly felt hollow. "What's for breakfast?"
"Try lunch," Old Sam said. "How about pork chops and applesauce?"
Pork chops and applesauce was Kate's favorite meal in the wh
ole world. As a child she'd gotten it only as a special treat because none of the Park rats raised pigs and, after you added on the air freight, pork in the Park was more expensive than filet mignon in New York City. Old Sam knew this perfectly well, and Kate realized that the offering of pork chops and applesauce was his way of showing his affection, alleviating his anxiety and ministering to her needs. Not that he would for a moment outwardly demonstrate anything of the kind; if challenged, he would have said the goddam chops were freezer-burnt and they might as well start using up some of the applesauce before the whole goddam case rusted out in the damp air of the focsle. "Sounds great," she said. "Good," he said gruffly. "I'll serve it up." When Old Sam cooked, he cooked comprehensively. There were, besides the aforementioned pork chops and applesauce, chicken adobo, sweet and sour spareribs (Old Sam had taken a course in Filipino cooking from his previous deckhand, a man from Seldovia who left him to open a restaurant in Homer), mashed potatoes, creamed corn, green beans with bacon and onions, and fruit salad. Kate spooned some of the fruit salad on her plate and said, "Hey, great, no marshmallows. You remembered."
Old Sam frowned ferociously. "We're out." "Oh." Kate prudently said no more on the subject and fell to without delay. Chopper Jim had laid hat and jacket aside and tucked a napkin into his collar; the view from her end of the galley table indicated that he only just managed to refrain from wallowing in his plate like a hog in a trough. Kate didn't blame him. Everything was delicious, and when she finished she sat back and reflected on how nearly impossible it was to despair on a full stomach.
That comfortable, almost complacent thought was challenged in the next thirty seconds, when Trooper Chopin pushed back his plate, complimented Old Sam extravagantly on his table d'hote and announced his intention of visiting Joyce Shugak at the fish camp. Kate's head snapped up. Chopper Jim met her gaze with an unwavering stare. He was determined, and she knew he was not going to be sweet-talked, sidetracked, misled or otherwise diverted this time. "Okay if we take the skiff again?" she asked Old Sam.
Jim took this determination to accompany him without a blink, although he did say, when they had cast off, "You remind me of this German shepherd I used to know, the better half of a K-nine team. Ornery, overprotective of his handler and frankly a colossal pain in the ass." He smiled gently at her stiffening expression, and pointed out, "I did say he was the better half."
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 08 - Killing Grounds Page 16
