“I’m listening.”
“You know Frank and David are Annie Mike’s nephews.”
“Yes,” Kate said.
“She’s pretty shook by this, as you might imagine. And…”
“And?”
“And, just looking at it from the outside in, you understand, not being a shareholder and all…” It didn’t take telepathy to hear him thinking, And thank god for that.
“Yes?” Kate said, although again telepathy wasn’t required to guess what was coming next.
“Yeah, well, I think the board’s giving her first days as chair a rough ride. Things I hear indirectly, you know, and she looked pretty frazzled even before I told her about the twins. She could probably use a phone call about now.”
“No,” Kate said.
“Ah, come on, Kate—”
“No,” Kate said, even more firmly. “I took this job for this exact reason, so she couldn’t lean on me and so the shareholders couldn’t end-run around her to me and undercut her authority. I know it’s tough, but she has to learn, and she can only learn by doing. And everybody else has to learn to go to her, not come to me.”
“Yeah, well, there’s been some of that, too,” he said grimly. “Johnny and I should have left town with you.”
Someone hammered on the door. She knew instantly who it was. “Shit,” she said, with feeling.
“What?” he said. “What now?”
“Just a little gnat I have to swat,” she said. “Call you later.”
She hung up, pulled on her sweats, and went to the door.
“Get your ass in gear,” Moses said, “I ain’t got all goddamn day.”
Mutt didn’t exactly whimper, but she did retreat again to the far side of the room. “Look at that, you even scare the dogs.” Kate started to close the door in Moses’ face.
“Fry bread,” he said.
The door halted in midswing.
“With nagoonberry jelly.”
The door opened again. “I really do hate your living guts,” she said.
* * *
At least he hadn’t been lying about breakfast. Only ninety minutes of torture later and Kate had a heaping plate set before her. “How come Bill doesn’t have to do whatever the hell it is?”
“Tai chi,” Chouinard said.
“Yang style,” Campbell said.
“I could really give a shit,” Kate said.
Both of them snickered. Moses ignored all three of them, head down in his own plate. His table manners were neat but efficient and he was done before the rest of them were halfway through. He grabbed the bag holding his ninja outfit and gave Kate a hard stare. “Some people can fly no hands, you know,” he said, and marched out.
Kate meditated on the door. “I don’t understand why he feels the need to speak at me in tongues,” she said.
Campbell and Chouinard exchanged a glance and kept their mouths full.
“I got tossed into a Dumpster last night,” she said.
Campbell choked on his fry bread and only narrowly missed spitting nagoonberry jelly down the front of his pristine uniform. “Really,” he said, coughing, his eyes watering.
“Really,” she said, and told him about it.
When she was done he said thoughtfully, “Describe the guy at the library.”
“Mid-forties, medium, medium, brown, brown,” she said. “I’d say there was a little Native going on there, maybe Yupik as his torso seemed a little longer than his legs.” She thought. “Oh yeah, and he was missing a finger on his left hand. Or part of one, the top half of his middle finger.”
“Artie Diedrickson,” Campbell and Chouinard said at the same time. “And the other guy was probably his boon companion, best friend, and co-conspirator, Leon Coopchiak,” Campbell said.
“The guy in the video,” Kate said.
“Okay,” Campbell said, brightening in much the same way Jim Chopin did whenever he had a clear line on a perp. “Let’s go find Artie.”
Kate shook her head. “I’ve got other plans.”
He knew her MO well enough now to be immediately suspicious. “Other plans? What kind of other plans?”
She shrugged, noncommittal. “Might be another lead. Might not be. Want to check it out.”
“Another lead?” Campbell looked at Chouinard. “Ten—eleven if we’re being strictly fair—blackmail victims not enough motive for murder for you?”
She spread her hands. “I got an itch. I want to scratch it. It’s likely nothing. If it’s something, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, you’ll run down the perps off that list?”
“Which, absent a confession, cannot be admitted in court,” he pointed out. “Since I can take no official cognizance of how it came into my possession.”
“Then get a confession,” Kate said, and smiled at him.
He looked at her, and she looked back, the picture of innocence, if a cobra with its hood extended could be called innocent. He shook his head. “Jim didn’t tell me the half of it, did he.”
“Where would be the fun in that?” she said sweetly.
He looked wary, as well he might, but he didn’t ask and she didn’t tell. He left and Kate and Chouinard cleaned up the kitchen. On the wall Kate saw a photograph of Chouinard and Campbell and a teenage boy. “Who’s the kid?”
“My son,” Chouinard said, looking over her shoulder. “Adopted.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember,” Kate said. “As it happens, I’ve got one of those myself. How old?”
“Sixteen.”
“Mine’s seventeen. Going to graduate high school this year. Where’s yours?”
“At AVTEC at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, getting his A&P certificate and, I hope, a degree.”
Kate raised her brows. “At sixteen.”
At first she thought Chouinard wasn’t going to answer. “He had a pretty hairy childhood. After I, ah, found him, he got into some trouble. Liam got him out of it, and I thought he was going to be okay. Then he lost a girlfriend. As in, she died.”
“I think I read something about it.”
Chouinard gave a short laugh. “You and everyone else in the state of Alaska.”
The series of articles on Clayton Gheen had short-listed Jo Dunaway for a bunch of prizes, and maybe even a Pulitzer, if Kate remembered rightly. It didn’t make her think any better of the reporter, of course. “Teenagers are already one gigantic hormone banging off the walls. Couldn’t have helped to have his life put under a microscope for everyone to see.”
“Jo kept him out of it as much as she could, but…” Chouinard shrugged. “He wanted to talk to her. Wanted to talk about Amelia. And Christine, another of Gheen’s victims that Tim knew. So I let him. Maybe it was a mistake, I don’t know.” She shook her head and tried for a smile. “Remorse is the ultimate in self-abuse. Who said that?”
“Travis McGee. Well, John D. Macdonald did, channeling McGee.”
Chouinard smiled, a real one this time. “Right. Anyway. Tim tried to go back to school, but it just wasn’t working for him. He’d grown up too much, too fast. He came home one day and told me all the other kids were fuckups and fuckoffs—his words—and he wanted to get his GED and learn a trade. I’d already been teaching him to fly, so I pulled some strings and got him into AVTEC. When he gets his degree, he says he’s coming back to work for me.” Chouinard smiled, looking out the window at the river. “I’d like that. I’d like it a lot, but two years in the big city might change his mind.” She turned to Kate. “How about your boy? He have plans?”
Kate laughed. “He’s either going to be a wildlife biologist, the next Bill Gates, or married and the father of five before he’s old enough to drink.”
“Yikes,” Chouinard said. “You have the talk with him?”
“Yep. You?”
They shuddered simultaneously, and laughed together.
“You should call me Wy,” Chouinard said.
“You should call me Kate, Wy,” Kate said.
They shook on it.
Thighs aching, stomach full, strangely at peace, Kate, with Mutt perched behind, headed out once more to Eagle Air.
In her strange exalted mood, she was unsurprised to see a Cessna Caravan Cargomaster touching down on the runway as she crested the edge of the gravel berm. She pulled correctly around to the front, every inch the legitimate visitor, and to any interested observer was just about to go inside when Tasha Anayuk came trotting out on her four-inch heels. She flashed Kate a smile and said in her perpetually breathless voice, “Hi! Be right with you!”
“No problem,” Kate said, “take your time.”
The Cessna pulled up to the fuel tanks. The engine stopped and the pilot climbed out. He was a balding, middle-aged man dressed in plaid shirt and blue jeans, a small paunch bulging over a wide leather belt with a flashy brass buckle.
Tasha pushed over a ladder on wheels. He said something and Kate heard her giggle. She started back toward the office and pivoted to say, “Don’t forget to come in and sign your invoice, Boyd!” She arched her back so as to show off her admittedly lush figure to the pilot, who fully appreciated it. He was no Gabe McGuire, but maybe Tasha had a nervous tic that caused her to flaunt the merchandise before any male standing in line of sight.
“Now, how may I help you?” she said to Kate. “Oh wait, I remember. Kathy?”
“Kate. And you’re Tasha,” Kate said.
“Well, come on in, Kate,” Tasha said.
“Thanks,” Kate said, but she paused briefly after Tasha had gone inside. There was a stick on the ground near the door, and she picked it up and threw it to land next to the Cessna. “Mutt,” she said in a low voice. “Go make friends with the nice pilot.”
Mutt gave her a quizzical look, but she headed for the stick. Kate went inside.
“Is that your dog?” Tasha said when Kate came in. “Gosh, she’s just beautiful. She looks like a wolf.”
“Only half,” Kate said.
“‘Only,’” Tasha said, giggling. “Well, that’s okay, then. I guess she won’t eat Boyd alive.”
I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Kate thought.
“So what are you doing out here?” Tasha said, bustling around in back of her desk.
“I told Wy Chouinard I was looking for work, and she mentioned Eagle Air might be looking for another girl.”
“I heard Bill gave you a job,” Tasha said.
Tasha was evidently too blotto to remember Kate bringing her a beer on dividend night. “Everyone in Newenham knows everyone’s business, I guess.”
“It’s not that big a town,” Tasha said with an engaging twinkle.
“No, and I really appreciated being able to go to work as soon as I hit dirt, but I don’t go to work at Bill’s until four in the afternoon. Maybe you need some morning help?”
“I could use it,” Tasha said, sighing. “This one-woman-operation thing is getting old fast. I don’t get hardly any time off. Finn was going to hire four of us, and then … well.”
“He died, I heard. Who’s running things now?”
“Mrs. Grant, sort of, but mostly Mr. Reid. He was here the first time you came through.”
“Oh yeah, I remember, skinny guy, safari suit, seemed like the nervous type. Where does he live?”
“Anchorage. He’s been back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball, though, ever since Finn died.” Tasha nodded to herself. “I’ll have to talk to him, see if he’ll let me hire you. He has to know that if we’re going to keep this operation going, we have to have some more people on the ground. I’m already taking reservations for bear hunts in the spring, and then it’ll be the fishermen, and all those everlasting board retreats, and the ecotourists, and on top of that we’ve got all these cargo contracts that Finn signed that we have to honor if we don’t want to give them all their money back.” She looked worried. “Plus Mr. Reid thinks they could sue.”
Kate nodded in the general direction of the Cargomaster. “You’ve got enough people in the air, I take it.”
Tasha nodded again, vigorously. “Gosh, yes, that’s the first people Finn and Mr. Reid hired. Well, they bought all those planes as soon as we moved out here, and as Finn says—excuse me, used to say—they weren’t earning money if they weren’t in the air. And with the new, bigger planes coming in—”
“Bigger planes?” Kate said.
Tasha shrugged. “Finn was talking about buying some big cargo plane. Like buying it from the Greeks.”
Kate had been unaware until then that Boeing and Airbus had competition, especially in the land of Hermes. “Greeks?”
Tasha frowned. “Maybe it had a Greek name?”
“Hercules?” Kate said.
Tasha brightened. “That’s it!”
A few years back Kate had worked for an air taxi outfit out of Bethel with a Herc on the equipment list. A venerable aircraft that had been around for almost sixty years, the Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft was a four-engine clamshell with a three-hundred-mile-per-hour cruising speed and a two-thousand-mile-plus range. It had been originally designed as a troop and weapons carrier for short takeoffs and landings in combat zones. What was far more interesting to Kate was that the Herc could carry up to thirty-six tons of freight, but before she could ask Tasha what she thought Finn Grant was planning on carrying thirty-six tons of, the door opened and Boyd walked in.
He was closer to sixty than fifty, and whatever salary he was earning wasn’t going for clothes or grooming. He was a little out of breath. Mutt shouldered in between him and the door and went to stand next to Kate.
“Your dog?” Boyd said.
She nodded.
“Thought she was a wolf when I looked down from the ladder and saw her sitting there.”
Kate opened her mouth. “Only half,” Tasha said.
“She’s gorgeous, whatever her heritage, and she teaches a pretty good game of fetch.” He looked at Tasha. “Figured I’d put my feet up in the break room for a bit. Reid around?”
Tasha shook her head.
“Good.” He looked at Kate and gave her a once-over. “Buy you a drink?”
The smile that spread across Kate’s face was one part predator to two parts siren. “Sure,” she said, and she and Mutt followed him into the luxurious ready room Tina had hosted her in.
“Want a beer?” Boyd said, already at the refrigerator. “I’m flying, I can’t.”
“Diet anything works.”
“Ice?”
“Sure, if there is some.”
“Whatever you want, we’ve got it.”
Kate noticed the possessive. “Are you a partner in the business?”
He nodded, his back to her as he filled two glasses with ice and split a Diet Coke between them. “All the pilots are.” He found a lime and cut it into wedges and squeezed in one each. He turned. “Sit, sit,” he said. “Boyd Levinson. What’s your name?”
“Kate,” she said. “Kate Saracoff. And this is Mutt.”
Boyd gave Mutt’s head a good scratching, which she appreciated, tail thumping the floor hard enough to set up a symphonic resonance with the glassware in the cupboard. Slut, Kate thought. “Where are you flying to this afternoon?” she said.
“Adak,” he said.
“Wow,” she said. “That’s way the hell and gone out the Chain.”
“Eight hundred sixty-four miles,” he said, and toasted her, giving her another once-over that was appreciative without giving offense.
If he’d been twenty years younger and fifty pounds lighter, it might even have elicited a positive response from any reasonable female, and may well have, once. But hope springs eternal in the male of any age or condition. It was one of those verities of life.
It was one of the surest bets you could make. Kate raised her glass in return to his toast and accompanied it with another of her very best smiles. Even Mutt’s ears pricked up at that vast expanse of gleaming enamel. Boyd looked like he might thump his tail, too, if he had one.
“I’ve never been to Adak,” Kate said.<
br />
Twenty-three
JANUARY 21
Newenham
Liam went first to Artie Diedrickson’s home. His wife—soon to be ex, she informed Liam—didn’t know where he was and didn’t care, but if Liam really wanted to talk to Artie—she couldn’t imagine why—he could frequently be found at the home of that useless asshole, Leon Coopchiak, if Leon’s grandmothers hadn’t finally gotten a clue and thrown Leon out on his own worthless ass.
He escaped with his life if not his ears intact and went from Artie’s to Leon Coopchiak’s. Leon wasn’t married, not surprising when his establishment was home to two grandmothers, three uncles, his mother, four sisters, and assorted offspring. None of them knew or would admit to knowing where he was, and one of the sisters even said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sergeant Campbell, we don’t have a brother.”
He was just as glad when she closed the door in his face. Hostility times that many people was more than he could take this early in the morning. The upside was nobody shot at him to help him on his way.
He decided to put Artie and Leon on hold for the moment, and started working his way down the list of other victims on Finn Grant’s thumb drive.
Lucy Nick opened the door, saw him, and started to cry. Feeling like an ogre, he followed her into the house, a small, painfully neat clapboard building on the edge of town. It was surrounded by trees, right up to the eaves, which darkened the interior but which undoubtably also made her clientele feel more secure, most of them being married.
“How did you find out?” she said, sinking down into a sunken couch. It was covered in a bright floral print that looked ordered out of the JCPenney catalog. She’d covered it in Visqueen to protect it from stains.
“Finn Grant,” he said.
She put her face in her hands and rocked back and forth. “He promised,” she said. “He promised he wouldn’t tell if I just gave him what he wanted.”
He chose a straight-backed chair, circa the same designer as the rest of the room, and balanced his cap on his knee, looking, he was sure, as uncomfortable as he felt. He was pretty sure she was still crying behind her hands. It just didn’t get any worse than that.
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