Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 08 - Killing Grounds

by Killing Grounds(lit)

  "And on the way home from Anne Flanagan's on the night of the Fourth," she said, nudging him back to the narrative, "you saw your brother's boat arrive."

  "And on the way home I saw my brother's boat arrive," he said obligingly, "and I went out to talk to him."

  Before she could stop herself, she said, "How on earth did you get out there without anyone seeing you?"

  His smile was sly. He sang, "And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave no proof through the night that my skiff was still there. They were partying so hearty on the bay that night that I could have stripped naked, painted myself purple and set fire to the skiff and no one would have noticed."

  Lost in the crowd, Jack had said. "What did you say to your brother?"

  "I told him I wanted to go back to school. I told him I'd overheard his conversation with Bill Nickle, that I knew what he was trying to do"

  "Conversation with Bill Nickle?" Kate said sharply. Neil Meany looked surprised, and she apologized at once. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Meany. Please continue."

  "I told him I knew what they were up to," he said, like a child reciting his lesson for the day. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. "A single-destination resort, that's what they called it. Can you imagine? 'Down the mountain walls from where Pan's cavern is'? He was going to bring in tourists to copulate in the foam with the nymphs and satyrs. Can you imagine?"

  Kate couldn't.

  "I may not want to live here," he said, "but I can certainly appreciate what is and what isn't appropriate to the region. My brother," he added disdainfully, "was planning some kind of northern Las Vegas. Really."

  "He laughed at me," Neil Meany said, his face flushing. "That night? He laughed at me, just like he always laughed at me. I hit him with the boat hook, and he stopped laughing." He paused. "He was surprised, I think, that I was strong enough. But I was. Of course," he added, with the true scholar's meticulous regard for the truth, "somebody had been before me. He looked like he'd been in a fight. He was all bruised and bloody." His smile was blinding. "It was wonderful."

  Especially wonderful that he wasn't moving as quickly as he usually did, Kate thought. "You didn't quite kill him."

  He stared at her. "What?"

  "There was water in his lungs. He was still breathing when you pitched him overboard."

  "Really." His brow furrowed. "I strangled him with the boat hook. I pressed him back against the cabin, right here" he pointed to a spot that Kate didn't bother to look at"and pressed the handle against his throat, as hard as I could. He made the most awful gurgling sounds. I was certain he was dead before he went over the side." He thought it over in frowning silence, and then dismissed it with the wave of a hand, clearly deciding it didn't matter. He hadn't denied pitching his brother overboard, so Kate decided that cause of death didn't matter, either. "Where did the knife come from?"

  He shrugged. "He grabbed it off the deck. I took it away from him and stabbed him with it before I threw him over."

  "Why? If you thought he was already dead?"

  He smiled again. "I liked killing my brother, Ms. Shugak. I liked it so much I wanted to do it again." The smile widened into a wholehearted grin. "If I could have figured out a way to hang him from the yardarm, I would have done that, too."

  "How about Dani, Meany?" she said, abandoning formality now that she had his confession. "Did you like killing Dani, too?"

  The grin vanished, and the bastard actually got tears in his eyes. "No, Ms. Shugak. No, I didn't. But they saw me."

  "Dani and Mac?"

  He nodded. "They saw me come ashore that morning, on their way back from their little beach."

  "You didn't know they had at first, did you?"

  "No." He said it sadly. "They told me. They told me they wouldn't tell if I gave them money. Money to get away, they said." He looked at her, earnest, sincere, lethal. "But I couldn't give them money, could I? I needed it for tuition and fees." He smiled again and it was all Kate could do not to flinch away from what it did to his face. "So I said I would, and then last night I followed them upstream. Mac ran when I killed Dani. I had to run after him. He made me run after him. I had to chase him all the way down the trail to the beach. He was at the skiff when I caught up with him. This was in the skiff." He held out the boat hook, made a face and gave a little-boy shrug. "I was angry. He made me angry."

  “ You hit me, too, didn't you?" she said. "You were on board the Freya last night, looking forwhat were you looking for, anyway?" The smell of gas fumes was growing stronger by the minute, she thought, vaguely alarmed. There had to be a leak somewhere.

  "You frightened me with your questions," he said reproachfully. "I wish you hadn't, but you did. I had to know what you knew. And then you came back, and the only way off the Freya was through you." He raised a hand, palm up, as if to say, What else was there for me to do?

  She didn't bother asking him if he'd meant to kill her. She'd been waiting, on alert, for an opportunity to jump him, but the toxic vapor from the leaking gas made her head swim. She fought off a wave of nausea, and asked a question at random. "How did you get to and from shore without my hearing or seeing your skiff?"

  The sly expression was back. "I wasn't in the skiff. Or I was only in it as far as this old girl." He patted the bulkhead affectionately. "Then I put on a survival suit and swam over, holding on to a log. Nobody saw me, did they?"

  Once Kate had donned a survival suit herself, only she had done so to find a killer, not become one. First the boat hook, and then the survival suit. Deja vu all over again. Kate suddenly felt very tired. "No. No one saw you." No one had seen him go up the path after Dani and McCafferty, no one had seen him chase McCafferty back down to the skiff, no one had seen him haul McCafferty out of the skiff and drop him into the no-name drifter's hold, no one had seen him climb over the side of the drifter, clad in a survival suit, and swim over to the Freya and no one had seen him swim back. McCafferty had seen him kill Dani, but it didn't seem tactful to say so at the moment. "You certainly had an active night," she observed. Her head felt increasingly light on her shoulders. "But no. No one saw you."

  He gave a satisfied nod. "I didn't think so. My brother told me I couldn't do anything. I guess I showed him, didn't I?"

  "I guess you did," Kate agreed, and this time she didn't feel in the least little bit like laughing. Her tongue felt oddly thick in her mouth. She groped for words. "Meany. You have to know it's over. You might get away with clobbering me, you might even get away with murder, but you'll never get away with hitting an Alaska state trooper over the head with a boat hook. They'll hunt you down whatever hole you bolt into, with ferrets if they have to."

  "Over?" he said indignantly. "Nothing's over."

  He patted the bulkhead. "I'm driving this baby to the nearest harbor and selling her for the most cash I can get, and after that I'm flying straight back homefirst-class, mind youand enrolling at the University of Chicago." He straightened and turned toward the control console.

  "I'll give you a ride into town, if you want." He looked over his shoulder. He was smiling again, a glitter in his eye she could see even through the gloom.

  " 'Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,' " he said, and stretched out a hand to press the starter button.

  His last words registered, along with the now omnipresent smell of gas, and suddenly she knew what he meant to do. "No!" she screamed, and leapt from the deck chair, too late, too late.

  The engine turned over and, finely tuned piece of machinery that it was, caught at once. A split second later the deck of the drifter disappeared in a roaring burst of flame. Kate felt herself raised up as if by a mighty hand, as if by Old

  Sam's mighty hand, as if he were rendering a second and, this time, a final judgment.

  Up, up, up she rose, ascending past the fog and the rain and the clouds unto the heavens, unto the stars themselves, and then down, down, down she came, down and down, and the cool, clean waters of Alaganik Bay closed over her he
ad, and she knew no more.

  "It'll only make her wet the bed, Lauren, don't be such a baby. You get her hand out from under the covers, I'll fill the pan with water."

  "Lauren! Caitlin! I've told you before, do not be drawn to the dark side of the Force. A Jedi knight does not these things."

  She drifted, lost on a sea with no shore, although every now and then she heard the surf, and within it, the sounds of different voices.

  "Katya, you know we are here. We stay here and wait for you to come back. Young lady with sword, you stab me again, I sacrifice you to Raven for a good silver run."

  "Wake up, lover. You and me, we got some unfinished business on the bank of that damn creek."

  An anxious whine, a cold nose pressed to her cheek, and she was almost tempted to rise to the surface. Almost.

  "Goddam you, girl, get your ass outta that goddam bed. The fish hawks give us a period and canneries come up with a semidecent price and the fish are humping each other up the goddam river. I'm supposed to take delivery of the whole frig-gin' fleet all by my goddam self?"

  "Kate, um, they say I'm supposed to talk to you." A pause. "You look out cold to me, but here goes. We're taking you in shifts." Another pause. "You're shift work, Kate." A snicker. "I get the first shift, Auntie loy gets the second, Dad gets the third, and like that until you wake up. Anyway, I'm first. Remember those Heinlein books you gave me last fall? I brought Between Planets with me, and I'm going to read it to you." He cleared his throat and began the tale of the planetless boy, and Kate listened, drowsy, drifting.

  She did surface, eventually and in her own time, swimming up through deep green depths filled with silver schools

  of salmon that darted out of her way, tickling her cheeks with their fins as they passed. Her head broke the surface of the water and she heard voices.

  "Never, never, never put money in Free Parking," said one. "All it does is keep it out of circulation. If somebody goes broke in real life, they go broke."

  "But this is a game," another voice objected.

  "You want to win or not?" the first voice demanded.

  "We want to win," a third voice said firmly.

  "Okay, then. First thing is, you buy everything you land on."

  "Even railroads and utilities?"

  "Absolutely. If you wind up with all four railroads, that's two hundred bucks every time another player lands on them. You can clean somebody out of their Go money every round, and that's four safe places for you to land, don't forget. Utilities, okay, they're cheap, but they pay for themselves, especially if you have both, and if you own them, that's two more safe places for you. The most important thing is, you buy everything, and I mean everything you land on. Because if you don't, the property goes up for auction before the other players."

  "What?"

  "I never heard of that!"

  "It's in the rules," the first voice said firmly. "Second most important thing is, buy houses but don't buy hotels."

  "Now this I do not understand," a fourth, older voice said. "You get more rent with hotel when someone land on it."

  "That's true, Auntie Edna, but if you have three properties with four houses each on them, that's twelve houses the other players can't put on their property and charge you rent for. Get it?" There was a brief pause. "Alaqah, poijken, no wonder you all the time bankrupt us. I don't play with you no more."

  "But you're getting good at it, Auntie Edna."

  "I am, too, aren't I?"

  "No, Lauren, if I take the battleship, you take the cannon. If both are gone, take the racecar."

  "What's wrong with the horse and rider?"

  "Who cares? A token's a token, isn't it?"

  "Hey," the first voice said sternly. "Attitude is everything."

  "Jedi knights play Monopoly?" Kate said.

  There was an instant of silence, followed by a rustle of movement. A warm hand felt Kate's forehead. "You're awake then," a new voice said.

  Kate opened her eyes and blinked up into a face that resolved into Anne Flanagan's calm features. "I'm an asshole," she said. "I'm sorry."

  Anne Flanagan's face broke into a wide and very unministerlike grin. "I'm sorry you're an asshole, too."

  Kate smiled back, and slipped down again into the warm green depths.

  The second time she surfaced, the subject had switched from commerce to faith.

  "What I hate," said a voice, "is when you go to a wedding, and the minister tries to convert from the pulpit."

  "What, are you kidding?"

  "Nope. One of my co-worker's daughters got married last February, and the minister raced through the 'dearly beloved' stuff and settled into a nice long harangue about how marriage was the natural order of things, and how unnatural it was to be single. Where do they get off doing that during a wedding?

  Everyone has friends of different faiths. Of all ceremonies, a wedding has to be the most cross-denominational religious event there is. Or it should be."

  "Try a funeral," a third voice said. "Don't look at me like that, I swear it's the truth. One of my department head's kids got killed in a car wreck. We all turned out for the funeral, and the preacher said maybe two words about the kid and then ran what pretty much amounted to a revival meeting standing over his coffin. No lie, he actually said that if anyone wanted to be saved during the service, all they had to do was come forward to the altar."

  "Jesus. That deserves a gold medal in bad taste, at least."

  "There's a line from a poem by Yeats," the second voice said thoughtfully. " 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.' "

  Another Yeats fancier, Kate thought dreamily. Who had been talking to her about Yeats? She couldn't quite remember, and she let it go before it began to worry at her.

  "They get all the press, too, the born-agains."

  "Not the born-agains, the born-again fanatics. The crazier they talk, the more likely they'll end up on film at eleven. The news media just eats up stuff like that. Look at Jim Jones."

  "David Koresh."

  'Tan Paisley."

  "The Ayatollah."

  "And the anti-abortionists. Pictures of a bomb blowing up an abortion clinic are a lot more productive of advertising revenue than a bunch of people working hard, raising kids and going to church every Sunday."

  "You're such a cynic, Dad."

  "Just a realist, son."

  "It's got so anymore the fanatics are denning the parameters of the debate. You can't be pro-choice without being a murderer, and you can't be anti-abortion without being a zealot."

  Like Simon Seabolt, Kate thought, and realized by the cessation of conversation and a scramble of feet that she had spoken the words out loud. She opened her eyes and found a ring of faces staring down at her.

  "I'm hungry," she said.

  Jack's laugh masked the wave of relief that washed over him.

  Johnny grinned. "She's baa-aack!"

  "Some tomato soup to start?" Anne Flanagan said.

  Mutt reared up and began to wash Kate's face with a lavish tongue.

  The twins looked as if they had not had cause to doubt Mutt's taste in humans, until now.

  The next day Kate demanded up and got as far as the front porch. There were fluffy clouds scudding across a blue sky with bright sunshine winking between. There was a breeze brisk enough to ruffle her hair and keep the mosquitoes off, but not brisk enough to cause a chill. Or so Anne Flanagan said, anxiously tucking a blanket around Kate's shoulders. Kate parried offers of Red Zinger tea, Crystal Light lemonade and just plain water, and waited for Anne to stop fussing before asking, "What day is it?"

  "Monday."

  "I was out for two days?" Kate said, appalled.

  "More like a day and a half."

  "How did I get here, anyway?"

  The minister sat down next to her and brought out yarn and knitting needles. "Jim Chopin picked you up out of the water."

  "How did he find me in all that fog?"

  "
He said you practically landed on him when the drifter blew up. He hauled you in and headed for shore."

  "Again, how'd he find it in all that fog?"

  Anne smiled, twisting yarn over her right hand to cast onto the needle held in her left. "After that bang on the head, he wasn't thinking any too clearly himself. He thought he was headed for the Freya."

  "We're lucky we didn't wind up aground on Middleton Island."

  "Yes," Anne said somberly, "you are. It took Jim a while to regain planet Earth."

  "I wish I could have seen that," Kate said wistfully.

  "George brought Euniceyou know, the public health nurse from Cordova? George flew Eunice out to take a look at you, and she said that other than some scrapes and bruises, all you had was a slight concussion and to let you sleep until you were ready to wake up." She took up a loop of yarn and began a knit row. "Is it really true? Did Neil Meany kill his brother, and Dani?"

  Kate stretched, testing the new skin growing over fresh wounds, and leaned back carefully so as not to aggravate the sore spot on her head. "Yes." The bay was once more filled with boats, shore to shore, cork lines strung out behind them like beads on a string. To the west the Freya sat at anchor, the Dawn to port, the Esther to starboard. Kate hoped Tim had a hold full to overflowing. "Who did Old Sam get to replace me?"

  "A young guy, I can't remember his name. Oh yes. Billy Mike. Or no, that's your tribal chief, isn't it. His son, that's it, Dandy Mike."

  "What!" Kate sat up straight in her chair.

  "Sit back and relax," Anne said, in a voice that brooked no refusal.

  Kate sat back, grumbling. "Easy for you to say. Dandy's probably seducing Ellen Steen in the focsle even as we speak."

  "That would be Old Sam's problem, not yours. And Mr. Steen's, if there is one."

  There had been a smile in Anne Flanagan's voice when she replied, and Kate looked across the deck to find no distaste or censure in the minister's expression. Humor, yes, sympathy, understanding, kindness, tolerance, yes, all these things in abundance, but no rush to judgment, no disapproval, no condemnation. She didn't look much like an Old Testament prophet, either. "You're an odd sort of minister."