Restless in the Grave

by Dana Stabenow

  Chouinard was seated at a computer. There was a window open with a man’s face looking out of it. She glanced over her shoulder to give Kate a welcoming smile and turned back to say, “Five o’clock sounds fine, Ephraim, I’ll see you then.” She signed out and removed her headset. “Don’t know how I ever ran the business without the Internet. Morning, Kate.”

  “Morning.”

  The phone rang and Chouinard answered it. “Nushugak Air Taxi. Hey, Brad.”

  Under cover of the subsequent one-sided conversation, in a low voice Kate said to Liam, “Mind telling me what I’m doing here?”

  Before Liam could answer, Chouinard said, “Sure,” into her headset. “I’ve got a five o’clock flight scheduled for Silver Horn, I can pick him up right after. Say six o’clock? Great.”

  She hung up and the old man came out of the bathroom dressed in some kind of black costume that made him look like a ninja, without the mask. “Well,” he said testily, “let’s get to it.”

  Campbell turned off the grill, put the plate of pancakes into a warm oven, and removed his apron. He and Wy both donned rope-soled slip-on shoes and followed Moses out onto the deck, which seemed to float over a bank that dropped about a hundred feet to an ice-encrusted gravel beach below. Kate hadn’t eaten since the burger the day before and she made an instinctive move for the oven, only to be bellowed at from the deck. “Get your ass out here, Saracoff, goddammit!”

  There was something awfully familiar in the echo of that bellow.

  She got her ass out there to find Moses facing Chouinard and Campbell, the three of them standing with their knees bent and their arms bent at the elbow, hands cupped with the palms facing each other. Moses was glaring at her. It seemed to be his default expression.

  Maybe her defenses were down due to starvation and sleep deprivation. Maybe the old man reminded her too much of Old Sam, in attitude if not in stature. Maybe it was cultural, she just couldn’t go up against an elder. Whatever the reason, Kate found herself planting her feet, bending her knees and elbows and raising her arms to cup her hands. When they started to move, she followed along as best she could, succeeding in tying herself into several spectacular knots and one time stepping momentarily off the edge of the deck. Luckily there was a railing, or next stop Dutch Harbor.

  Kate did not believe organized exercise was necessary. She led an active life, and chopping enough wood to keep the fireplace in business through the winter was all by itself enough to keep a three-toed sloth fit for a gold medal in any Olympic sport you cared to name. She cross-country skied when she wanted to get somewhere without the aid of an internal combustion engine, she hunted out the back door of her house when she was hungry, and she’d taken her turn water-skiing on deck boards during Fourth of July celebrations on Alaganik Bay. There was the occasional run in Anchorage when she was restless and Mutt needed to shake out the urban fidgets, but she didn’t skip rope or do yoga or dance around in leotards to synthesized music with a bunch of other robots in the Niniltna gym on Monday and Wednesday evenings.

  This was something else entirely. The cranky little demon seemed to be suspended on wires, his limbs manipulated by an invisible puppet master with, she had to admit, a considerable amount of grace and style. It looked easy. It wasn’t. For one thing, you didn’t stop until you got all the way through the exercise, and it had thirty-six separate movements. For another, you didn’t get to straighten your legs until you were done.

  Moses named the movements as he performed them, which to Kate was the most ridiculous part of the exercise. Stork Spreads Its Wings? Turn and White Snake Puts Out Tongue? Shoot a Tiger with Bow? None of them made any sense, and half the time the movements had her looking the wrong way anyway, so she couldn’t see what she was supposed to be doing.

  Moses was not content with having her follow along, oh no, he was constantly in her face, pushing her arms into position, pulling her shoulders back, kicking her feet apart, poking at the backs of her knees. This was accompanied by a steady stream of running commentary. “Bend those knees!” “Extend that arm!” “Root from below, suspend from above!” “Jesus, you look like you’re about to mate with a porcupine!”

  She was so glad Mutt hadn’t followed her inside.

  As they worked, the light increased across the horizon, highlighting the far bank of the river. The Kanuyaq River was not a small river, navigable at least by small boats all the way to Ahtna in summer. This river was immense by comparison, kingly even. It looked like cold molten rock, thick and roiling with gray glacial silt, moving in slow and stately fashion steadily downstream. The occasional glint from the rising sun sparkled from the small pieces of brash ice bobbing in its current.

  On the left, upriver, mountains emerged from the night sky, shorter than her own but just as sharp edged and menacing. At first white ghosts against the dawn, with the rising of the sun they turned a slow, pale magenta, the brief glorious alpenglow of sunrise and sunset on a clear arctic day, before coalescing into the icy, ravenous peaks and ridges of their everyday clothes.

  “You wanna do form or you wanna admire the view?” Moses said, glaring when he caught her not looking at him.

  “I want to eat breakfast,” Kate said, glaring back.

  He kept them at it for an hour, barking corrections to what he called everyone’s “form,” before snorting out a contemptuous, “Well, I guess that’ll have to do. Practice, practice, practice.” He brought his right fist into his left palm and bowed. Wy and Liam did the same in return, and Kate did her poor best to imitate them. When she straightened up again, painfully, he’d already gone back inside the house.

  “What the hell were we just doing out here?” Kate said, massaging her thighs, trembling in their own personal earthquake. One way and another, she’d taken a hell of a beating over the last twenty-four hours. “And who the hell is that guy?”

  Chouinard and Campbell exchanged a glance, and Kate couldn’t help but notice that both had barely broken a sweat, whereas her T-shirt was soaked through. “Beelzebub,” Campbell said. “Lucifer. Satan. He is called by many names.”

  “Liam!” Chouinard said. To Kate she said, “He’s my grandfather. He, ah, takes some getting used to.”

  “No shit,” Campbell said, and gave Kate a sympathetic look.

  “I don’t understand why he brought me here,” Kate said. “I don’t even know how he knew I was here at all. Bill mentioned something about a Moses Alakuyak at work last night but he didn’t come into the bar. Did you tell him about me, or what?”

  “Moses picks his own students,” Chouinard said.

  “You mean victims,” Campbell said not quite beneath his breath.

  “Liam!” To Kate, Chouinard said, “No telling with my grandfather. He—” She hesitated. “He knows things.”

  Kate gave it up and limped back inside and Moses slammed out of the bathroom, his ninja costume back in the bag and himself dressed once more in his denim bibs. “What’s a man gotta do to get fed around this dump?”

  They ate pancakes slathered in butter and maple syrup, the real stuff from Canada—“I’ve got a friend in the Mounties,” Campbell said—and link sausage on the side.

  Kate had a chance to look around between bites, and liked what she saw. A small house, and an old one, with comfortable mismatched chairs, each with its own reading light, and books sitting on every available horizontal surface. The largest focal point on the wall was a map of Southwest Alaska, much annotated with ruled route lines and pinholes and pencil scribbles. There were a few family photographs. A stubby little potbellied woodstove stood next to the Nushugak Air Taxi office. There was a television but it wasn’t the focal point of the room, instead tucked into a corner on a triangular three-wheeled cart, looking as if it had been there for a while and might be there awhile longer.

  The living room was separated from the kitchen by a counter with stools. Behind the kitchen a hallway led to bathroom and bedrooms.

  There were no curtains on the windows,
which all faced east, toward the glorious view of the river, the opposite bank, and the rising sun.

  Moses mopped up the last of his syrup, pushed his plate back, and stood up. “Not bad. Little heavy-handed there on the buttermilk, Campbell. You.”

  Kate looked up to see Moses fixing her with that glare. “You know he didn’t do it, right?” It was more of an accusation than a statement, and he didn’t wait for an answer, grabbing his bag and slamming out of the house. The engine of the longbed started up and receded into the distance.

  “Don’t worry, I can drop you off at Tina’s on my way to the airport,” Chouinard said.

  Great, Kate thought, one of the chief suspects in this non-murder giving me rides home. Not to mention her grandfather picking me up.

  She caught Campbell’s eye, and knew he was thinking the same thing. “I’ll drive you,” he said.

  Not that it was going to be any better for her cover to be seen in the local trooper’s company. Surely no one would notice that, either.

  Campbell grinned. “We could always phony you up a record. GBH, maybe. I can think of at least one likely victim.”

  “Very funny,” Chouinard said, thinking that Kate was naturally reluctant to be seen getting driven home by the state trooper, and probably not happy about the rumors that would spark about her husband, either. As Campbell went to change into his uniform, she said, “Or we could make you my cousin. We probably are cousins, anyway.”

  “Are you Native?” Kate said in surprise.

  “A quarter Yupik, from Moses.” Chouinard smiled. “And aren’t all Alaska Natives related?”

  Kate laughed.

  “What’s the joke?” Campbell said, coming back into the room, immaculate in his uniform, which had to have been tailored to fit, because it fit so very well. What was on the inside of it didn’t necessarily need embellishment, but packaging in this case didn’t hurt the contents one bit. Until this moment Kate had believed that Jim Chopin lacked any competition for poster model for the Alaska State Troopers.

  She realized she was staring and gave herself a mental kick. It didn’t help when she saw that Chouinard had a sly smile on her face. You should see my trooper, she thought, and smiled back. They both laughed, albeit at different things.

  This time Campbell didn’t bother asking, although Kate was sure anyone who spent that much time on their appearance had to be at least minimally aware of its impact. At least he didn’t preen.

  “Time for me to go make a living.” Chouinard grabbed a daypack, kissed Campbell, raised a hand to Kate, and was gone.

  “How much does she know?” Kate said.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Why? She say something to you?”

  “No, but I wondered when we stopped at Eagle Air on the way here. Seemed, well, convenient.”

  He shook his head. “She’s got the first class mail contract for these parts. Eagle Air’s on her route. And the less she knows about what you’re doing in town, the better, at least up front.”

  “Agreed,” Kate said. “However, Bill Billington pretty much figured it out for herself. She braced me about it after work last night. I told her the truth.”

  If anything, he looked relieved. “Good. I was willing to keep it on the lowdown but she really would have been pissed if you’d lied and she found out about it. Pissed at me,” he said, clarifying matters. “Really don’t care if she’s pissed at you.”

  Kate laughed. “Understood.”

  “So what’s up?” Liam refilled their mugs and they drew up stools on either side of the counter. He spilled a little coffee when she told him about last night’s attack. “Jesus Christ,” he said, mopping up.

  “What I said,” Kate said.

  “You haven’t been in town a day,” he said, shaking his head. “Is this what Jim meant when he said you’d shake things up?”

  “Maybe,” Kate said. “Maybe not. I haven’t spent any time in the Southwest, but I worked almost six years in Anchorage and I’ve been to enough AFN conventions. Someone here could have recognized me, and could be aware of what I do for a living. Could even have been someone I’ve testified against. You’re a trooper, you know every time you bag a bad guy, you make an enemy. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But I’m wondering if the attack didn’t have more to do with the place than the person staying in it.” She explained why.

  “Okay,” he said when she finished, “but if that’s so, why wait until the space was occupied before searching it?”

  “Could be they didn’t know it was occupied.” She smiled. “After all, I haven’t been here a day.” Her smiled faded. “All I’ve got on me traceable back to Kate Shugak is my cell phone, and I was carrying that, so I haven’t been outed yet, that I know of. They made a hell of a mess of the place, but I think I surprised them before they could start ripping up floorboards. It had that kind of feel to it. You know?”

  He did. “You keep saying they. Was there more than one?”

  “I’m pretty sure it would have taken two people working together to tackle Mutt.”

  They both looked at Mutt, who had infiltrated cautiously into the house when the diminutive demon left. She blinked back at them, ears up at the sound of her name.

  “I see what you mean,” Campbell said. He earned Mutt’s undying devotion by putting down the plate holding the last of the sausages.

  “Something else,” Kate said.

  “What?”

  “Why I was so late getting back to the apartment. I, ah, got access to some of Grant’s records last night.”

  “Did you,” Campbell said, and took a fortifying gulp of coffee. “Notice I do not ask how.”

  Kate grinned. “The books are in order, so far as I can tell, but I still don’t see where the money is coming from. He was spending it like water before he died, and now Tina’s acting glad to get cash to rent out her garage apartment. Doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Ah,” Campbell said.

  Kate raised her eyebrows and waited.

  “Yeah,” Campbell said, “it may be I have a line on where Finn was getting his money.” He explained Jo Dunaway’s theory.

  “If Finn Grant got his hands on any part of Alexandra Hardin’s inheritance,” Kate said, “he could afford to overthrow the government of Taiwan if he wanted.”

  “As was explained to me,” Liam said, his grimness matching her own.

  “Who explained it?”

  “Ah, yeah,” he said, an expression consisting of one part helpless fury and one part acute misery passing over his handsome countenance. “Ever heard of a reporter named Jo Dunaway?”

  Her mug set itself down on the counter of its own volition. “What about her?”

  “I see that you have,” he said, misery increasing. He sighed. “She was my wife’s college roommate. And her lifelong best friend. She has bigger ears than anyone else in the entire state and she may—” He ran a finger around the inside of his collar. “—she may have heard a rumor that Finn Grant’s death was less than accidental, and that Wy was a possible suspect.”

  “That’s why she’s here,” Kate said without thinking.

  His head came up like a hound’s on the scent. “You’ve seen her?”

  “She reported on a case I testified in back a ways,” Kate said. “She recognized me when you brought her in the bar last night.”

  He sat up straighter. “You’ve talked to her?”

  “I wouldn’t call it talking, exactly,” Kate said. “She accused me, I insulted her. Honors were about even, I thought.”

  “And you were going to tell me this when?” he said.

  “Any minute now,” Kate said.

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  They sat in mutual gloom for a few moments.

  “However,” he said, cheering slightly, “no one has come looking for that money yet, and until they do, I am less concerned about how he paid for anything than in how Finn Grant died.”

  “Money is a powerful motive,” Kate
said. “Especially a lot of money.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Campbell said, “about motive,” and explained about how the local Native association might be interested in acquiring Grant’s FBO.

  She looked at him. “And you were going to tell me this when?” Her tone of voice was enough to pull Mutt straight up off the floor. She gave Campbell an accusing glance.

  He patted the air at both of them. “I didn’t hear about it until the day I got back, and we haven’t had a moment to talk until now.”

  She was steaming. “So not only do we have a reporter dogging us, the suspect list might just have increased by a couple of hundred shareholders? Especially if Grant was steamrolling over them the way he did everyone else?”

  He winced. “That’s about the size of it, yes.”

  She tapped out a tattoo with her fingernails, thinking. “Is Tina Grant looking to sell?”

  “I don’t know,” Campbell said. “She’s been tried pretty hard over the past two months. I don’t know that she has plans to do anything about anything yet.”

  Not quite at random, Kate said, “I met Gabe McGuire at Eagle Air yesterday.”

  “Really? I didn’t know Gabe was back.”

  “Why,” Kate said with what she felt was pardonable annoyance, “does everybody in Newenham call Gabriel McGuire, movie star, number one box office draw, and Oscar nominee, by his first name?”

  Campbell looked taken aback. “I don’t know, I—he’s been vacationing here regularly for the last four years or so. He’s pretty well known locally.” He reflected. “He spends a lot of money here, which naturally endears him to the business community. And—”

  “What?”

  Campbell met her eyes squarely. “He’s a good guy, Kate.” He held up a hand. “I know, I know, you don’t think of someone you’ve seen on the cover of People magazine as a regular guy, and okay, he isn’t. Obviously. But he doesn’t walk around like his shit don’t stink, either. He doesn’t expect people to kowtow, he doesn’t screw all the women within a hundred-mile radius, he keeps his posse in line. So far as I know, he doesn’t import illegal substances into the borough, for either resale or recreational use, although I admit I haven’t visited him at Outouchiwanet. Pretty upstanding citizen, at least on the face of it.”