Hunter's Moon

by Dana Stabenow

  She gave a faint sigh and shook her head, her smile rueful. “So I let myself be seduced by this guy who knew as much about it as I did, which was nothing. It wasn’t a great success. Later on, I found someone who did know all about it.” She grinned.

  “I am forever in his debt,” Jack said courteously. He was lying through his teeth, and they both knew it.

  “There was a guy at Quantico, a few others. You know about Bobby.” She looked at him with a sudden smile, and his heart turned over. “And then I came to Anchorage, and there was you.”

  “I remember,” he said.

  He did, he could remember that day as if it had happened five minutes before. She had walked into his office and he had been struck with a need so sharp, so intense, so great it had caused an immediate physical reaction he had to stay seated to hide. It didn’t help when he looked up to see her eyes fixed on him in recognition, alarm and, above all, a reflection of his own hunger.

  Fresh out of a hellish marriage, struggling to stay close to his only child, mindful of the necessity for professional distance between supervisor and employee, he managed to stay out of her bed for ten of the longest days of his life. It helped that her first day on the job a particularly nasty child abuse case had fallen apart in mid-trial due to negligence on the part of the arresting officer. The judge had granted the DA a one-week extension with the caustic admonition that the case would be summarily dismissed if at that time probative, as opposed to prejudicial, evidence was not produced. The assistant district attorney assigned to the case had been demanding results of Jack’s office as in yesterday, or his job as in tomorrow.

  Working together only strengthened the attraction. He was very good at what he did, and she was a natural born snoop with an uncanny ability to get anyone to talk. They found their probative evidence and better, an eyewitness the police had missed, and the jury was out of the room for approximately nine minutes. The investigator’s office celebrated the conviction that evening at the Fly-By-Night Club, where Kate and Jack discovered a mutual devotion to Jimmy Buffett. There was no going back after that.

  The truth was, Jack reflected, that Kate was a little too good at what she did, and had burned out on the sex crimes cases that invariably came her way. Her conviction rate was over ninety percent, a statistic she wasn’t proud of because she thought it should have been a hundred. Yes, when Kate was good, she was very, very good, and when she wasn’t, she quit. It had led to an eighteen-month hiatus in their relationship, during which time they had both experimented elsewhere, pallid flickers that only mimicked the incendiary blaze that resulted when they came together.

  And now here they were, ten years later, still together, although he lived in Anchorage and she lived in the Park, hundreds of miles apart. He’d learned to fly, he’d bought a Cessna 172 so he could fly into the Park to spend weekends and vacations on her homestead. If she’d lived in Atlantis, he would have become a submariner.

  “I guess what I’m trying to say,” Kate said, bringing him back to the present, “is that I haven’t had a lot of object lessons in … well, in coupling.”

  He grinned at her, and she had to laugh. “I didn’t mean that, idiot. I mean I haven’t seen a lot of relationships that made me think, Hey, I want something like that.”

  He knew a sinking feeling. “So? What’s the verdict?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated. Screwing up every ounce of courage she had and reaching for more, she took a deep breath, let it out and said with a rush, “Maybe I won’t know until and unless we try it.”

  Jack appeared to cease breathing. The next moment Kate found herself snatched up and nose to nose with him. “You mean it?”

  She wasn’t sure she did, but she made another terrific effort. “I think so.”

  He kissed her then. He’d had a lot of practice and he was very good at it, and by the time he was done they were missing most of their clothes and breathing hard.

  “Yeah,” Kate wheezed, “I’m real sure I mean it now.”

  He laughed, a deep rumble full of happiness and satisfaction. “I take it that was my rent?”

  “Let’s call it the first installment.” She smiled up at the moon. “Although I have had other offers.”

  He raised up on his elbows and inspected her face. “What’s this, I’m involved in a bidding war?”

  “Not exactly.” She told him about Crazy Emmett.

  Displaying a complete lack of the manly man’s need to defend his own, not to mention the law enforcement officer’s sworn duty to protect, he laughed so hard he came out of her. “Damn,” he choked, “why does all the fun stuff happen when I’m not there?”

  “I’m nearly raped and you think it’s funny?” She shoved him and he rolled off her.

  She pulled her clothes on, smoothing her hair back and assuming an expression of wounded dignity, which wasn’t easy because Jack was still laughing. “Yuk it up, jerk,” she said, and marched off down the runway, or she did until he grabbed her hand and yanked her into his arms.

  He grinned down at her. “Crazy Emmett must really be crazy,” he observed. “You’d have had his balls for breakfast.”

  Because it was true, she relented. Seizing the moment, Jack yanked on his clothes with hasty hands and they walked back down the runway, Jack almost skipping with joy, Kate already wondering if she’d done the right thing. But she could always kick him out again, couldn’t she?

  Nobody said this had to be permanent. He was so big he was bound to fill up the cabin more than she liked.

  And then there was Johnny. Any teenager took up all the space they occupied, ask any parent.

  But as Jack had pointed out, they could always build on an extension. She’d been thinking of adding on a bathroom anyway, with running water and maybe even a water heater she could run off the generator.

  But what if they wouldn’t let her read in peace? What if Johnny insisted on listening to, what, Aerosmith or Kiss or some band of heavier metal at all hours? At least Jack liked Jimmy Buffett.

  His cooking skills were rudimentary at best. But he did have the endearing habit of cleaning up after she cooked, and unlike other men of her acquaintance the dishes were actually clean when she went to get them out of the cupboard again. Johnny was house-trained, too.

  He used her hand to pull her to a halt. “I can hear you thinking,” he said. “Stop it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  He threw back his head and laughed so loudly Mutt came trotting up to see what was going on. “Don’t bullshit me, Shugak, you’re practically fossilized with fear.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and raised her up so that they were eye to eye. “Don’t even think about taking it back. We’re going to do this, and we’re going to make it work.”

  Sez you, Kate thought.

  “Says me,” Jack agreed, and she gaped at him. He laughed again. “Don’t you know everything you think is written all over your face? Don’t worry,” he added as he set her back down on her feet, “the only other person besides me who could read your face is dead.”

  “Good,” Kate said. “I mean—”

  He laughed again, and Mutt sneezed once and trotted off, shaking her head. “Don’t strain yourself. I know what you mean, and so would she.” He grinned down at her. “And I guarantee you, your grandmother would be laughing her ass off, too.”

  *

  Back at the lodge, Kate made up an excuse to make a pit stop in the outhouse. In truth, for some reason she could not specify, she was shy about climbing into bed next to Jack this evening. Something in their relationship seemed to have passed out of her control and into his, and she knew a sudden strange skittishness in his company. Over what, she couldn’t precisely say.

  She covered it up with a matter-of-fact gruffness that, if his wide grin were anything to go by, didn’t fool him for a New York minute. She stamped off to the outhouse, grumbling to herself. She didn’t walk in and out of his mind like it was her backyard; h
ow dare he do it to her? “A woman,” she informed Mutt, “is entitled to some privacy, at the very least between her ears.”

  Mutt gave her a quizzical look. She escorted Kate to the outhouse and then vanished silently into the brush—raiding the refrigerator for a midnight snack.

  Kate meditated with the door open for a while, looking at the stars tangled in the treetops, listening to the night sounds. For a moment she thought she heard voices, one male, one female, but it was only the murmur of water running downhill all the way from Denali.

  When she had achieved once more her normal state of placid serenity she congratulated herself, pulled up her jeans and picked up the .357 Jack had handed to her before going off to the main lodge. She stepped outside and nearly jumped out of her skin when a voice said, “Hello?”

  She had the gun out of the holster and the hammer back before she saw that it was only Hendrik. “Christ!”

  “It’s okay, it’s only me,” Hendrik said meekly.

  At that moment Mutt crashed out of the brush and streaked to stand on tiptoe in front of Kate, head down, haunches quivering, lips curled back and teeth gleaming in the moonlight. She didn’t look friendly.

  “It’s okay!” Hendrik said hoarsely. “It’s only me!”

  It took Kate two tries to get the pistol back in the holster. She snapped the flap and gave Hendrik a stern look that belied the knocking of her knees. “Don’t sneak up on people like that, Hendrik. It isn’t safe, not in the Bush, and especially not at night in the Bush.”

  “I’m sorry.” The moon turned his face a sickly white. His eyes were swollen from weeping. “It’s only me,” he repeated forlornly.

  Kate pressed the heel of her hand against her thumping heart. “Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. Mutt, it’s all right, relax.”

  If she didn’t quite relax, Mutt did retire a few steps to stand next to Kate, her eyes fixed on Hendrik in a yellow, unwinking stare.

  “Did you want to use the head?” Kate said, waving a hand. “I’m all done.”

  “No,” Hendrik said. He was whispering, his voice husky, Kate thought also from crying. “I saw you come back with Jack. I was waiting to talk with you.” He looked around furtively. “Can we go somewhere else?”

  Going somewhere else in the middle of the night in a grizzly bear habitat did not sound like a good idea. Kate humored Hendrik by leading him behind the garage. Mutt, curious, tagged along. Hendrik gave the big gray half-husky half-wolf as much room as she wanted, and she grinned at Kate, tongue lolling out between sharp incisors. There was nothing Mutt enjoyed more than putting the fear of beast into a cheechako.

  Kate swallowed a return grin and said, “Okay, Hendrik, what’s up?” When he was silent she said impatiently, “Come on, it’s late, I want to hit the sack. What do you want?”

  He swallowed hard. “I loved him.”

  Oh no, it was going to be that kind of conversation. Kate stifled a groan. “Who?”

  “Fedor.”

  “That was kind of obvious, Hendrik,” Kate said, raising a hand to hide a yawn. Jack’s attentions, while ranging anywhere from ten to ten and a half on the applause-o-meter, did tend to leave one with a lack of enthusiasm for anything but a full night’s sleep. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  Hendrik pitched forward so suddenly that Kate had no choice but to grab him, staggering slightly beneath his weight, as the whole story of his lost love was sobbed out against her shoulder.

  They had met at work, he said, and it had been love at first sight. They had tried to take their time, to be responsible in their work and in their personal lives, but they were in bed together within the week—in spite of herself, Kate was put forcibly in mind of those first days with Jack—and living together within the month. They would have married if they could have, but in Germany—

  “Alaska, too,” Kate said, moved, albeit reluctantly, to sympathy by the intensity of the man’s grief.

  They had kept it as quiet as they could at work, but “Everyone knew,” Hendrik said, tears soaking through Kate’s shirt. “Fedor was scared we would lose our jobs. But Dieter, he said nothing, and no one else said anything, and we think, Okay, we’re safe.”

  And you were until you went wandering around in the Alaskan Bush without a clue as to what you were doing, Kate thought. He mumbled something she could barely understand into her shoulder. With less than motherly concern she shoved him upright and away from her. “Hendrik, look, I’m sorry for your loss—” those awful, standard-issue law enforcement professional words “— but there isn’t anything we can do about it now. Fedor is dead, and—”

  “And Dieter killed him,” Hendrik said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  Kate looked at him and said patiently, “Hendrik, Dieter was eight or ten miles in the other direction at the time Fedor was shot, reducing the Alaska moose population by one. I know because I was with him. Besides, Klemens has already admitted to doing the shooting.”

  “Dieter had him killed,” Hendrik said stubbornly. “He told Klemens to kill him.”

  Kate studied him. His eyes were swollen to slits but his mouth was set in a determined line. “You mean Dieter had Klemens kill Fedor?” He nodded violently. “Why? Why did Dieter have him killed?”

  “Because of the international lawsuits. DRG is under investigation, and someone is giving information to the investigators. Dieter thought it was Fedor. But it wasn’t.”

  He was absolutely sincere and deadly serious, willing her to believe, as he believed, that his lover’s death wasn’t just a terrible accident, that it had served some purpose, however sinister. Useless, accidental death was something with which it was very difficult for anyone who loved to come to terms with. It hit the young hardest of all. The young were convinced that they were immortal, invincible, unstoppable. Kate had been young and immortal once herself, and she remembered how resentful she had felt when life had showed her otherwise.

  Hendrik swiped his sleeve across his nose, gulped and took a step back. Mutt relaxed. Kate belonged to Mutt, and Mutt was nice enough to share her with Jack. She didn’t like it when anyone else got too close.

  The moon streamed down the way the sun had during the day, casting velvety shadows in every direction. The night looked amorphous and somehow suddenly menacing. Suppose this poor little lovesick boy was telling the truth? Suppose Fedor’s death had been deliberate? Kate remembered the triumph in Dieter’s bray after he had seen Fedor’s body. He certainly hadn’t been unhappy over Fedor’s passing, but it didn’t necessarily follow that he had arranged the boy’s death.

  What was it Jack had said, something about DRG being involved in legal action of some kind? Mention had been made of the FBI and SEC, she remembered that much, and American assets being frozen by the IRS. That would certainly clear sinuses at the executive level but it wasn’t especially a novelty, or even something to be overly concerned about. Big corporations had entire law firms on retainer for the purpose of fending off legal attacks of one kind or another; look at RJR Nabisco, or RPetCo Oil after the oil spill in Prince William Sound. Generally speaking corporate executives didn’t murder to make those kinds of problems go away, not because they lacked the basic amorality to commission such a task but because of the difficulty in justifying the expense of a hit man before the annual stockholders’ meeting. In corporate life, bookkeeping was all.

  Bookkeeping. Finance. Senta had said that Fedor worked for Klemens in finance. “Hendrik,” Kate said, “why tell me? What do you want me to do about it? Why don’t you just wait until we get back to town and tell the police?”

  His voice rose. “Because he will kill me next! Fedor and I, we lived together, we worked together, we talked. Dieter will know what Fedor told me.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  He remained silent. Kate sighed. “Surely you’re safe enough until we get back to Anchorage. Then you can tell your story to the police.”

  “Why should Dieter wait? He’s already gotten away with it once. And th
ere are so many guns here, so many.” He clutched her with grasping hands. “And just now, down by the creek, I heard the others talking. They will kill me, Kate. I know too much. They won’t let me get back home alive.”

  “What others?” Kate said sharply, remembering the voices she thought she’d heard. “Was someone down by the creek just now?”

  “You must help me,” he babbled, “you must or—” His head swiveled around. his eyes gleaming whitely in the moonlight. “What is that?”

  She had heard it, too, a sound like clothing brushing and catching against wood. So had Mutt, who growled, low in her throat. Kate held up a silencing hand, and moved carefully to the corner of the garage, waiting for a moment before looking around it, back toward camp.

  There was a sudden rustle at her feet and she took an involuntary leap backward.

  It was the porcupine, his quills rattling an indignant protest. The night was his, to seek out nice salty things like fan belts, and what did they mean by disturbing his regular rounds?

  Kate felt an insane giggle rise to the back of her throat and swallowed it down. “It’s all right,” she said, turning. “It’s just the porcupine who lives under the garage. Now what were you saying about—”

  She stopped.

  Hendrik was gone.

  Nine

  Dieter likes to party with large quantities of money and nubile and preferably famous young women.

  “JACK,” SHE SAID as they were getting dressed the next morning, “tell me again what you know about DRG.”

  He grinned. “You’re worse than a ferret at a hole.”

  “This is a hole I want to go down,” she said pointedly. “Preferably sometime in this century.”

  He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Fine, fine, I’ve always been one for a quiet life.” A bald-faced lie for anyone who would willingly tie themselves to Kate Shugak’s tail. “DRG stands for Deutsche Radio Gesellschaft.”