Hunter's Moon

by Dana Stabenow

  They turned to face the creek and regarded the body in silence for some minutes. Finally Jack stirred and said, “I’m starting to feel like we’re marooned on Ship-Trap Island.”

  “Huh?”

  He sighed. “Never mind. Just call me Rainsford.”

  It took her a minute. “Oh. The Most Dangerous Game?” He nodded. “So who’s Colonel Zaroff?”

  “We’d better find out,” he said, his voice bleak. “Fast.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “You see anything in the way of tracks?”

  He shook his head. “The gravel’s all churned up from my search party. It’s been dry lately, so as long as you didn’t wade in the creek you weren’t going to track a lot of mud around.”

  “Let’s look at his feet.”

  “Okay.”

  They squatted, looking at the bottoms of Hendrik’s shoes—thick-soled hiking boots, so new the spaces between the treads were still relatively free of sand and dirt. “Pretty clean,” Jack said.

  They stood up again. “You think that point was sharpened?” she said.

  “It’s possible. First thing I thought when I saw it.”

  “Me, too.”

  He sighed. “You want to finish that story you started to tell me this morning? Something about bumping into Hendrik on the way back from the John last night?”

  “Yeah.” Kate leaned forward and tried to flex Hendrik’s foot. It wouldn’t budge. “Rigor’s fully developed.” She looked at her watch. “So, what, six to twelve hours ago.”

  Jack raised Hendrik’s foot and pushed back the cuff of his pants. “Lividity’s fully developed, too. What time is it?”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  Jack pulled the pants leg back into place and set Hendrik’s leg down gently. “What is it, fourteen hours before the body temp falls to the ambient temperature?”

  “More like eighteen to twenty.”

  “Well, he’s cool, but not cold yet. It hasn’t frozen overnight yet, has it?”

  Kate shook her head. “Not even close. It’s been an unusually warm fall.” She looked to the west. The bank of gray had crept higher in the sky, high enough to be seen, barely, over the treetops. “That could change with the storm.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jack followed her eyes. “Nasty.” He looked back at the body. “So, we’ve got a time of death roughly anywhere between ten last night and four this morning.”

  “Yeah. I was probably the last one to see him alive.”

  “Next to last.”

  “Right.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much,” Kate said. “We heard a noise. It was only the porcupine that lives under the garage, but it spooked Hendrik and he took off.”

  “What did he want to tell you?”

  “He said Dieter had Klemens kill Fedor because of the lawsuits.”

  “The lawsuits?” Jack’s brow creased. “You mean the legal action being taken against DRG for unfair trade practices?”

  “He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have time. We can’t leave him here, Jack.”

  He looked at her, an eyebrow raised. “And this from the woman who reamed me out for letting Fedor be moved?”

  Kate pointed. “There are four eagles sitting in that cottonwood, just waiting for us to walk away. They must be too stuffed with salmon to fly or they would have been on him already. I haven’t seen a bear yet but I’d bet everything I own there is one inbound right now.”

  “And the troopers?” “There’s a pad of paper back at the lodge. We’ll write everything down.” She snapped her fingers. “I’m an idiot. Every one of those Germans has his own personal Leica. Gunther’s is a little automatic, isn’t it? I’ll be right back.”

  She headed down the trail to the lodge, where she found everyone sitting around the dead campfire in morose silence. When asked, Gunther produced his camera and voluntarily offered extra film. She took both, along with a handful of gallon Ziploc bags.

  She found Jack standing on the bank where the top of the cottonwood deadfall had landed, scrutinizing the ground. At her look he shook his head. “No. Some impressions of footprints, but nothing definite, and we’ve all been doing a lot of walking up and down this trail. You get it?”

  She held up the camera. “And extra film.”

  “Is it a point and shooter, or do we have to fiddle with f-stops?”

  “Point and shooter with a built-in flash.”

  “Better and better. Shoot some from down there first. You got anything for scale, for closeups of the wound?”

  Kate pulled out her trusty Swiss army knife. “Here. Try this. It’s almost exactly three and a half inches long.”

  “And bright red,” Jack said approvingly. “It’ll show up well. I believe you’ve done this before, Kate.”

  “I believe I have,” Kate said.

  “You’re lighter, you get up here on the trunk and take the pictures of the body.”

  “I’ve always loved how you save the best jobs for me.”

  “It’s nice working with you again, too, Shugak.”

  It didn’t matter that the creek was no longer very full or very wide. Kate hated getting her feet wet. She stepped very carefully onto the log.

  Hendrik lay in a splayed position, his head lolling back, his sightless eyes staring at the sky, mouth open, arms extended, fingers slightly curled, legs spread. All his body weight was suspended from the tree limb driven through his body, although he had not slid all the way down the limb to the trunk, giving the eerie impression that he was floating a foot above the log. “The count, with a stake through his heart,” Kate said. “Who saw him first, Jack?”

  “I did,” Jack said.

  She looked at him. “Poor baby.”

  He managed a smile, faint but there. “I did kinda clutch for some garlic, there at first.”

  “Must be a knot or something holding him up.”

  “I thought that myself,” Jack said. “We’ll see when we get him off it.”

  “Goody,” Kate said. She took a delicate step forward, another, until Hendrik’s crotch impeded her forward movement. She leaned down to place her knife next to the wound, leaning precariously to one side to avoid poking herself in the eye with the pointed end of the stick impaling Hendrik. The blood on it was dried brown. So was the blood staining his wound and shirt. She stepped back and began shooting again, using up the roll of film in the camera and a second roll as well. When she was done, she pocketed her knife once more, removed the second roll of film from the camera and handed both to Jack.

  “A big man could do it.” Jack said, buttoning a vest pocket over the rolls of film and frowning at the scene. “Look.” Jack demonstrated with his hands on Kate’s shoulders. “They’re walking along the bank, Hendrik in front, whoever behind. They get to the log, with the branch. Whoever says something to make Hendrik turn to face him. Whoever shoves Hendrik backward and the sharp end of the stick pierces Hendrik’s torso.”

  Kate, dangling from his hands, said, “I get it, I get it.”

  He raised her upright. “Sorry. A big man could do it easily. A smaller man could do it, too, but his timing would have to be just right.”

  “Or a woman,” Kate said.

  “Or a woman,” Jack agreed.

  “Or it could have been an accident,” Kate said. “He could have tripped and fell.”

  Jack considered. “He could have. Most trippers and fallers I know fall forward, but it could have happened. He could have gone out for a midnight walk, he could have wanted to commune with the moon from the middle of the log, he could have tripped and fallen backward on that tree limb on his way back.”

  They looked at each other. “Okay,” Jack said, “I was willing, even eager, to call Fedor’s death accidental: Hendrik’s, now, makes me look at Fedor again. What’s that great line Auric Goldfinger gave James Bond? Goes something like, ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.’ You take a look at that stick while you were up there?”
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br />   Kate nodded. “You think it was sharpened?”

  “Do you?”

  “We’ll never be able to raise the body high enough to get it loose,” Kate said. “There’s a saw on my knife, we’ll use that to take the stake off first.”

  “The all-purpose, super-duper, utility knife,” Jack said. “It slices, it dices. Don’t mess with the wound.”

  “Did you want to do this, Jack?” she said sweetly.

  “No,” he said, “no, indeedy, you may have that little task all to yourself. Just don’t slip or you’ll become one of Dracula’s brides.”

  It wasn’t funny, none of it, but humor, however dark, was the only thing that stood between sanity and madness in the face of violent death. Law enforcement officers were especially adept at this honorable craft, and Jack was a master practitioner. He kept up a steady patter of nonsense as Kate kneeled gingerly between Hendrik’s legs, placed a steadying hand on one of his hips and began to saw at the protruding tree limb. It had been dead a lot longer than Hendrik and was dry as a bone, and it did not yield easily to the tiny saw. Besides, Hendrik’s body, suspended as it was from that one focal point, had a tendency to rotate, and Kate was sweating by the time the branch finally snapped in two. Jack was standing ready with a Ziploc bag on the gravel below, water running freely over his boots. He didn’t mind wet feet.

  Carefully, Kate backed down the log to the bank and mopped her face with the arm of her sleeve. “That was fun.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, “and this is going to be even more fun. But I promise, you don’t have to get your feet wet.”

  “For the first time in my life, I’m glad I’m short.”

  Standing in water up to his knees, Jack boosted Kate to a section of the log beyond Hendrik’s head. There were plenty of branches to grab onto and she scrambled up without difficulty. She took Hendrik’s shoulders, Jack look the legs of his pants and they managed with a maximum of concerted effort to lift the dead weight straight up enough to free Hendrik’s body of the spike.

  “Keep going,” Kate said, panting.

  “I’m going, I’m going.” Jack backed off the log, Kate following, and when they were both safely on the bank, Hendrik’s body was laid down with possibly less ceremonious dignity than the occasion required.

  “Let’s not do that again,” Kate said, puffing.

  Jack waved a hand. “Deal.”

  “Look,” Kate said, pointing. “It wasn’t a knot, it was a bend in the branch.”

  Jack squinted up. “Used to be two branches. The other one either broke off or was cut away.”

  Kate looked at him.

  “Oh hell,” he said heavily. He took the knife she held out and slogged back up the bank. He edged out onto the tree trunk, grasped the branch where it had sprouted from the trunk and sawed laboriously.

  Kate went back down to the creek to splash some water on her face. It was past eleven and the sun glittered off the water drops on her eyelashes. Something else was glittering, too, winking up at her from beneath the rippling stream.

  “Jack?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Come here.”

  “In a minute,” he said testily. The log was only eight feet up but that was about seven feet too high for Jack, who didn’t care for heights. It added enthusiasm to his efforts with the saw. It cut through the branch, the branch toppled and Jack caught it just before it fell into the creek, and himself just before he was about to follow it. Muttering curses, he backed off the log, snatching up a Ziploc bag and shoved the length of wood inside.

  When he got to her she was holding it up, a cartridge, its nickel-plated case gleaming wetly in the sun. They had both seen more exactly like it the day before, being loaded into a Gebrüder Merkel rifle.

  “Well, well,” Jack said. “I believe what we have here is a clue. A 293-grain RWS clue, to be exact.”

  Kate held the bullet up. “Awfully convenient, finding it right here. Real close in to shore, too, where you can’t miss it.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jack said thoughtfully. “Especially when he made such a point of taking only five on the hunt.” He scratched his chin. “Tell me, Kate. What do you need for a lawsuit?”

  “Evidence,” Kate said.

  “And where do you get evidence?”

  Kate thought this over. “You think one of Dieter’s employees was going to rat him out?”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s why not,” Kate said grimly, nodding at what was left of Hendrik.

  “Every time you turn around,” Jack said, “somebody at the White House is swearing to something or other in front of a congressional committee or a special prosecutor. The easiest way to keep yourself out of jail is to put your boss there instead. They got Al Capone through his bookkeeper.” Her expression changed. “What?” he said. “What, Kate?”

  She met his eyes. “Fedor and Hendrik were lovers.”

  “That was obvious and is not news. So what?”

  “We can assume a fair amount of pillow talk.”

  “Right again.”

  “Fedor worked for Klemens.”

  “Really? And what does Klemens do?”

  “He’s the head of the finance department,” Kate said.

  “Is he,” Jack said slowly. “Is he indeed. Isn’t that interesting.”

  “Almost as interesting as Klemens’s being the one to shoot Fedor.”

  He nodded. “Which would make this—” a jerk of the chin indicated Hendrik “—more understandable. If Whoever is still thinking they can get away with this, Whoever has to know that you could only get away with one accidental shooting on a hunting trip.”

  Kate’s lips quirked. “I think George has it in the contract.”

  His grin was quick and brief. “I wouldn’t doubt it.”

  Kate slipped the bullet into her shirt pocket, where residual traces of water soaked through and chilled her breast.

  There was a rustle of brush and a warning growl. They looked up to see Senta standing on the edge of the bank, nose to nose with Mutt.

  Kate had to hand it to her; Mutt was on full alert, teeth bared, a steady growl issuing from her throat, and Senta didn’t turn a hair.

  “I thought I told you to go back to the camp with Old Sam and Demetri,” Jack said shortly.

  “I did,” she said. “I came back. Can you shut up this dog?”

  The first trace of nerves she had displayed, Kate thought. “Mutt. Off.”

  The growl shut down and the fangs disappeared but Mutt stayed where she was, between Senta and Kate.

  “You are wrong,” Senta said. “Dieter has bought his way out of much worse trouble than this. He would not risk his inheritance over a little legal matter. Lawyers are for sale. Dieter buys them. Beginning with Eberhard.” Her eyes were like blue diamonds, and her voice had an edge of contempt sharp enough to cut glass. “Klemens shot Fedor. Maybe that wasn’t an accident. Klemens was in the Wehrmacht. He knows his way around a rifle. Maybe Hendrik saw or heard something to prove it wasn’t an accident, and maybe that’s why he’s dead now, too.”

  She turned and walked back up the trail. They watched until she was out of sight.

  “What do you think?” Jack said.

  “She makes a certain amount of sense,” Kate said slowly. “I suppose Fedor getting killed and Hendrik dying because he knew why Fedor died is the most reasonable explanation. They were sharing a cabin. Fedor didn’t have to tell Hendrik anything. Hendrik could have seen something.”

  Jack stared after Senta. “Maybe.”

  Kate nodded. “Maybe. And maybe she wants us to think it’s Dieter.”

  “How so?”

  Kate shrugged. “Notice how she slid in that business about Dieter always buying his way out of trouble. Makes you wonder what kind of trouble Dieter gets himself into, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s too Byzantine even for you, Shugak.”

  They stood in silence for a few moments, contemplating Hendrik’s body as they listened to
water gurgle lazily down the creek.

  “Jack?”

  “What?”

  “When we get back, I think we need to seize all the weapons and lock them up.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “And then I think Demetri or I need to climb in the Cub and get enough altitude to send a message to George, telling him we’ve got another body and to come a running, with help. Lots of help.”

  “Works for me.” She looked down at Hendrik. Jack had closed his eyes, and his lashes lay like thick blond fans on his cheeks, cheeks that had faded from a healthy pink to a waxen white. “Poor little boy. Poor little lovesick boy.”

  Eleven

  Feeding someone peanut butter on pilot bread isn’t just manslaughter, it’s premeditated murder.

  OLD SAM GRINNED his evil grin, “I get to play detective again, do I, girl?”

  “Why?” Demetri said, stolid as ever.

  “For the hell of it!” Old Sam said. “For the fun of it, dammit!”

  Kate, interpreting for a baffled Jack, said, “Demetri doesn’t understand why we don’t just lay low and wait for the cavalry to arrive.”

  “Oh,” Jack said. “Because,” he told Demetri, “we’ve got two dead guys on our hands, and their deaths might be related. Plus, we don’t know what the weather is like in Anchorage, or how many hoops the troopers are going to make George jump through before they get the lead out, so we don’t know when he’ll get back.”

  “Accidents,” Demetri said. At times he rivaled Berg for loquacity.

  “Maybe,” Jack said. “I sure as hell hope so. But we’re marooned here—”

  “On Ship-Trap Island,” Kate murmured.

  “—we’re marooned here with what may be at least one big-time loony on the loose, and I want us to take every precaution. That means trying to figure out for ourselves what’s going on.”

  Demetri thought it over. “Okay,” he said finally.

  “Okay,” Jack said, relieved. “We know DRG has big-time legal problems and is being investigated for fraud. Any idiot investigator knows to follow the money, and we’re talking seven or eight and maybe nine zeroes here, so the logical place to start is with an audit of the numbers coming out of DRG. Klemens is the head of finance for DRG. Fedor worked for Klemens and he slept with Hendrik. Klemens works for Dieter and Klemens used to be in the army, according to Senta.”