by Breakup(lit)
"So," Bobby said.
"Carol Stewart," Dinah said. "Actually Mark, because you're supposed to
say whodunnit first."
"In the Park," Bobby said.
"With a bear," Dinah, Dan and Jim said together.
Nobody laughed this time. After a pause, Jim added, "We know he did it,
Kate. You know how. Tell."
She rubbed a hand over her face and sighed again. "I never would have
figured it out if Earlybird hadn't dropped that engine on me," she said.
"But it was the sardine that really put it all together. Finally."
"Sardine?"
"Sardine?"
"You didn't tell me about any sardine," Dan said accusingly.
"Wait a minute," Jim said. "Last night, when Viola-"
"Yes." Kate nodded. To the others she explained, "Auntie Vi
229 said Sardine was the name of the guy Carol Stewart came to the Park
with last spring. But then she said no, that wasn't right, and then she
couldn't remember what was."
Bobby thought it over and didn't get it. He said so.
"I didn't, either, at first. Then there was the shoot-out." She
fortified herself with a Fig Newton. There was a forty-eight-ounce bag
of chocolate chips in the cupboard but what with one thing and another
she had yet to get around to baking. With luck, she could seduce Jack
into baking for her, chocolate chip cookies being his specialty.
"And," Jim prodded.
"And, I've always found that flying bullets really focus my attention,
you know? I was lying there in back of the bar, and I remembered sardine
is a kind of herring."
The other four exchanged speaking glances. "Hooligan," Kate said,
unperturbed, "is also another name for herring, right?"
"Yeah," Dan said, brow furrowed, "or it's a family member, or something
like that."
"And hooligan sounds pretty close to Harrigan, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
Kate leaned back and stared at him. "Ring any bells?"
Dan stared back, bewildered. "No, I-"
"Kate-" Jim said.
"Wait a minute!" Dan said, sitting bolt upright. "Of course! Harrigan,
Nathan Harrigan! That was the name of the pilot! The one who flew
Stewart into the Park last fall!"
"Yes." Kate waited for Dan to fill in the rest of them on his first
meeting with Stewart and Stewart's pilot.
Jim's brows snapped together. "Wait a minute. You mean Nathan Harrigan,
your DB"- he pointed at Kate -"was the same guy you"- the trooper
pointed at the ranger -"saw with Mark Stewart in the Park last fall?"
Kate refrained from repeating yet again that Nathan Harrigan wasn't her
dead body, and simply nodded. "Yes. And, according
230 to Auntie Vi, Harrigan was also in the Park with Carol Stewart last
spring. According to Dan, he was back, this time with Mark, Carol's
husband, six months later." She drank coffee. "And Stewart, Dan informs
me, has had permits for moose, caribou and bear, not to mention fishing
licenses, in this game management unit for the last ten years. You were
right, Dan, he's an experienced hunter. There was no excuse for him to
go up to the mine unarmed."
"Wait a minute," Jim said. "Wait just a damn minute. Are you talking
about a double homicide here? You think Stewart killed his wife and
Harrigan, too?"
"I know he did," she said, and polished off the cookie and reached for a
second. "You said the coroner said Harrigan was an electrician in
Anchorage. Bernie says Mark Stewart is a longtime contractor, also in
Anchorage, one of the good old boys who went into business during the
oil boom in the seventies. He put up the Roadhouse back when they were
both starting out."
"I didn't know that."
"Bernie was telling us about it, day before yesterday," Bobby said.
Kate nodded. "Anyway, Anchorage isn't that big a town, so my best guess
is Harrigan probably worked for Stewart at one time or another. Probably
how Harrigan met Stewart's wife, too."
Bobby and Dinah and Dan exclaimed together, but Bobby's stentorian
bellow naturally won out. "Harrigan, who you're saying is the dead body
got found out here the day the sky fell, was screwing Carol Stewart?"
Kate nodded again. "Yeah, and right here in the Park, too. Auntie Vi
said she'd met Carol before, on a visit to the Park last spring, only
she wasn't with Mark, she was with some guy called-"
"Sardine!"
"Only she remembered by association, a sardine is a hooligan, and
hooligan sounds close enough to Harrigan."
"Let me get this straight," Jim said. "You're saying Harrigan actually
came out hunting to the same place he'd been screwing the wife of the
guy who invited him on the hunting trip?"
231 Kate shrugged. "I don't know much about Harrigan, but I do know
enough about contract hiring that he'd think there might be a job in it
if he accepted Stewart's invitation."
"He was taking an awful chance," Dan said.
"Dumb," Bobby said. "Dumb to come back to the Park with Stewart, dumb,
dumb, dumb."
Kate's smile was thin and noticeably lacking in amusement. "Stewart
probably insisted on it."
The three men didn't get it, but Dinah did. "Returning to the scene of
the crime?"
Kate nodded. "First with Harrigan, then with his wife. Rubbing their
noses in it."
They thought about that for a while. "If you're right, this guy's some
kind of sadist," Dan said.
"Some kind," Kate agreed.
Dinah shuddered.
"Dumb," Bobby insisted. "If I'd been Harrigan, I would have run a mile
from the guy."
"Maybe," Kate said. "Maybe not. You read the papers. The state economy
hasn't been the same since the pipeline years. Construction jobs are few
and far between. If he needed the work, and if he thought the hunting
trip meant work, Harrigan would want to believe Stewart knew nothing of
the affair. He'd will himself to believe it."
"You're guessing," Jim said flatly, leaning back in his chair. He
sounded disappointed.
"About all the Anchorage stuff, yes," Kate said. "Did you get a positive
ID on the body?"
Jim nodded abstractedly. "It came in this morning. It is Nathan
Harrigan. But-" He fell silent.
Kate finished her cookie. "Two wounds, the coroner said. One blow to the
head, hard enough to knock him unconscious, not hard enough to kill him.
While he was out, another blow to his leg, hard enough to break it, to
incapacitate him, so Stewart could walk away and let it look like an
accident."
232
Jim thought about it, and gave a slow nod.
"Maybe Stewart waited until Harrigan woke up, maybe he was gone when
Harrigan woke up, and so was anything Harrigan could have eaten, or used
for warmth, or for shelter. So Harrigan lay where he was and waited for
death."
Her voice lowered, her words taking on an unconscious rhythm.
"Maybe Agudar was kind, and let him slip into the long sleep in peace
with the cold of the night.
"Maybe Raven led the bear or the wolf there first.
"I don't know."
She paused. "All
I know is it took a while, and during that time he knew
who, and he knew why, and Stewart wanted it that way."
The room was silent. In the distance a raven croaked at a squirrel, and
got a chatter of outrage in return.
Dan stirred. "The murder weapon?"
"I imagine the coroner's report will say a blunt instrument of some
kind." Kate looked at Chopper Jim. "Used properly and with enthusiasm,
the butt of a gun is a fine offensive weapon. They teach you how to use
one in the service, I hear. Stewart didn't need any special tools.
Enough fools out here already fall over their own guns and shoot
themselves; it doesn't take much imagination to turn one into a murder
weapon."
Dinah shivered, all trace of fun wiped from her face. "It's so- so cold."
Kate nodded. "Literally." She reached for another cookie.
Incredulously, Jim said, "Did Stewart admit all this to you last night?"
"God, no." Kate shook her head. "He's too smart for that. This guy
diagrammed the whole operation, like a military exercise. You might want
to check on that, Jim," she added dispassionately. "Be interesting to
know if he's ever seen military service, and if he did time in tactical
command."
Jim's expression was pained. He hated it when a soldier went bad.
233 "Yeah," Kate said, thinking it over some more, "he was smart enough
to take a rifle when they went up to the mine-"
"But he said-" Dan burst out.
"He lied."
"You don't know that."
"Yes," Kate said. "Yes, I do." And she did. "He's too smart not to. He
broke it down and carried it in his pack. He waited until they were out
of sight of the village, maybe pretended he heard a noise and stopped to
assemble it. Carol Stewart probably watched him do it. For their
protection, I'm sure he said. For his protection, really. So whatever he
suckered out of the woods to eat on her wouldn't turn on him." She used
a swallow of coffee to wash the bitter taste out of her mouth.
"What did he do with it?"
"He tossed it. Probably used it first to scare the bear off. We never
would have heard the shots over the noise of the road or the truck's
engine."
Dan sat up straight in his chair. "Remember, Kate, when we said we'd
called the trooper? Stewart was surprised. He didn't think anyone
official could make it to the scene so quick."
"He was probably counting on it," she agreed.
"Maybe we could go back up there," Jim said, "run a search pattern, see
if we can dig that rifle up."
"You know that nine-millimeter Cindy took out after Ben with?" At their
nods, Kate said, "She told me she pitched it into the river. Hell, it's
right there, all you have to do is step to the edge of the cliff and let
go. Stewart's rifle is probably offshore of Port Dick by now, and
probably the pack with it, so we can't look for gun oil or anything on
the fabric."
"But-"
"It's in the river," Kate said flatly. "I'd bet every dime I've got on it."
Her eyes fell on the fat manila envelope reposing innocently on one
shelf. Well. Maybe not every dime.
234 There was no dragging the Kanuyaq, which emptied into the Gulf at a
gallop during a spring thaw with heavy runoff. "So," Jim said heavily,
breaking the glum silence, "Harrigan and Carol Stewart were having an
affair."
"His landlord said there had been a girlfriend," Kate said. "He said she
was blonde. Carol Stewart was blonde."
"The landlord also said the girlfriend might have been a brunette," Jim
said. "So, Stewart finds out about Harrigan and his wife, and he plans
his revenge. He brings Harrigan up last fall, breaks his leg and leaves
him for dead, and brings his wife up this spring and feeds her to a
bear? This what you're telling me here, Shugak?"
"Yes."
"How did he kill her?" Jim asked. "He couldn't have used the rifle,
there's no way you could hide that from the coroner. You're the one says
he's so smart, he'd have to have known that. So how did he kill her? You
hardwired into that, too?"
She ignored the sarcasm in his tone because she knew it wasn't really
directed at her, and reached in her pocket. The Swiss Army knife
clattered to the table. They stared at it, mesmerized. "Auntie Vi says
he had one of these. Maybe even this one. Cindy stumbled over it the
morning of the attack, when she chased Ben up the road."
Chopper Jim picked up the knife and located the blade. Over it, his eyes
met Kate's. "You didn't think to bag it?"
"At the time, I didn't know it might be important. Besides, it'd been
lying in the slush and the mud before Cindy found it. Cindy's handled
it, I've handled it, Auntie Vi's handled it."
"Hell, I remember now, I watched you clean it yesterday afternoon."
She nodded.
"Not much of a killing machine," Dan said, examining the two and a half
inch blade critically.
"One slice from behind." Kate's hand went to the scar on her
235 throat, a thin ridge of roped flesh that had healed badly and now
would never fade. "You take the victim by surprise, you're stronger than
she is anyway-" Her hand dropped. "You don't need a bowie knife to get
the job done." She added dispassionately, "He would have waited to kill
her at least until he heard the bear. Fresh blood, hungry bear.
Unbeatable combination."
Dinah shoved her chair back. "Excuse me," she said, and left the cabin.
Bobby started to go after her. "Don't," Kate said.
He scowled at her.
She shook her head. "Don't," she repeated.
He looked at the open door, hands resting on the wheels of his chair.
With an oath, he brought them back up to the arm rests. "And if Stewart
hadn't heard a bear?"
Kate's shoulders rose and fell. "It didn't have to happen the first day.
Auntie Vi said they were booked in for a week. He had time to wait for
the perfect opportunity. He just lucked out the first day. A bear showed
up on schedule, Stewart killed Carol, let the bear chew on her enough to
obliterate the evidence." She reflected. "Then he heard us coming, and
either chased the bear off or it ran off. Stewart didn't have time to
break the weapon down again, so he pitched it into the river and came to
meet us." She frowned down at her coffee. "Too bad we couldn't have
tested his hands for residue."
"I don't know." Dan crossed his arms and frowned. "Seems awfully iffy to
me."
"Then he would have fallen back on plan B."
"There was a plan B?"
"Dan," Kate said with finality, "there is always a plan B for the Mark
Stewarts of this world."
"Hell." Jim sat back, lips flattened into a thin line. "It doesn't
matter much whether he used the knife. Even if we found his fingerprints
