Restless in the Grave

by Dana Stabenow

Mason meditated, hands clasped loosely in his lap. “We’ve always been worried about western Alaska.” He raised his eyes and gave a faint smile. “It’s just so damn big, and so wide open, and so close to Russia. It’s the fucking Wild, Wild West,” he said, unconsciously echoing Campbell’s words spoken in another context a week before in the Park. “The Russians are broke, and the Russian Mafia pretty much owns the infrastructure. Since it doesn’t look like they’re ever going to give the Russian army a decent retirement plan, the Russian army officer corps has been providing for itself by selling everything from small arms to tanks on the black market ever since the Wall came down.”

  “Eventually, they’re going to expand their horizons,” Campbell said.

  Mason nodded. “And one of those horizons would be right off their eastern coast. There’s already an infrastructure of sorts. People in eastern Russia would starve without a black market. It’s just a matter of Finn Grant and Eagle Air tapping into what’s already there.”

  “And who says no to the Russian Mafia,” Campbell said, “especially on their own ground. It would be, what, a thousand air miles from Adak to, what’s the nearest Russian port?”

  “Petropavlovsk,” Kate and Mason said at the same time.

  “A town of about two hundred thousand people,” Mason said. “With a history of moving goods in and out unobtrusively. And most conveniently placed for Asian markets.”

  “How many miles from Eagle Air to Petropavlovsk?” Kate said.

  “Fifteen hundred,” Campbell said, looking up from his computer. He sat back with his hands linked behind his head, meditative eyes on Boyd’s sweating countenance. “And on the U.S. side, no prying eyes at a remote FBO three hundred miles from the nearest population center big enough to support a regulatory and enforcement structure. All the runway you needed. Plenty of fuel storage. Accommodations for pilots and crews on layover.”

  “And, no offense,” Mason said, “there’s only, what, three hundred and fifty Alaska State Troopers?”

  “Three hundred and eighty,” Campbell said. “And at present only one in Newenham.”

  His and Kate’s eyes met and held. “You might want to ask around,” Kate said. “Maybe your getting no help on the job wasn’t an accident.”

  He wanted to deny it. It was right there on his face for all to see. But he didn’t.

  “So, a wide-open frontier, a rudimentary law enforcement presence concentrated on local offenses, and a modern air base,” Kate said, thinking out loud. “A smuggler’s dream.”

  “None of this was cheap,” Mason said.

  “Yeah,” Kate said, “I’d like to know where he got the money, too.” Again, her gaze met Campbell’s.

  “I may have a line on that,” Mason said unexpectedly. “I got a message from a friend yesterday. You know her,” he said to Campbell.

  “Let me guess,” Campbell said, reaching for his phone. “Jo Dunaway?”

  Ten minutes later, Jo Dunaway walked in the door. She stopped short at the sight of Mason. “James,” she said.

  “Hey, Jo,” James Mason said, looking pleased, and not in a platonic way, either. “I, ah, got your message.”

  “Oh, hell no,” Kate said.

  “I have to say I wasn’t expecting this quick a response,” Dunaway said. “I thought you got transferred out of state.”

  “Ah, overseas, actually,” Mason said, gray eyes warm behind his glasses. It looked to Kate’s critical eye as if, absent present company and press of business, the special agent might be inclined to get a room.

  Dunaway looked at Campbell, green eyes narrowed, blond corkscrews bristling with hostility. “What’s going on, Liam?”

  “Tell us about the embezzlement story you’re following, Jo.”

  “Why should I?”

  Campbell sighed. “Because it might be a lot more than just an embezzlement story.” He glanced at Mason. “And if it is, you get it all.” He raised an eyebrow.

  Mason looked from Campbell to Dunaway, lingered for a long moment, and then gave Campbell the nod.

  Dunaway thought about it long enough for the others to get restive, Kate thought not because she was thinking it over but because she was enjoying having a hold over three law enforcement professionals, and said, “Okay. You know I used to report on the criminal courts,” she said.

  “To my cost, yes,” Campbell said.

  Kate just looked at her.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Dunaway waved off both of them. “I’m doing more general reporting now, but I made a lot of contacts over the years and they keep in touch. A source, and that’s as close as I’ll come to naming them, a source at Chapados, Reid, Reid, McGillivray and Thrall told me they thought there were some shenanigans going on with Alexandra Hardin’s trust fund.”

  Mason looked puzzled. “Who’s Alexandra Hardin?”

  “The heir to one of the biggest fortunes ever made during the Klondike Gold Rush,” Kate said, “and doubled over the next three generations in natural resource exploitation and transportation. I think her dad was a lease-owner at both Swanson River and Prudhoe Bay.” Along with Emil Bannister, Erland fucking Bannister’s father.

  “What’s the estate worth?” Mason said.

  “Half a billion dollars,” Dunaway said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Mason said.

  Campbell’s jaw simply dropped.

  “More than enough to finance the overthrow of half a dozen third-world nations,” Kate said, who was made of sterner stuff. “Who or what is Chapados, Reid Squared and Whoever?”

  “The law firm handling the Hardin estate. A very old firm, in Alaskan years, and very reputable.”

  “Alexandra not watching her own bank balance?” Mason said.

  “I’m sure she would be,” Dunaway said, “were it not for a little problem of early-onset Alzheimer’s.”

  Everyone winced.

  “As it happens, Chapados, Reid is also—” Dunaway paused for effect. “—the law firm for Dagfin Arneson ‘Finn’ Grant and Eagle Air Enterprises, Limited.”

  “Who’s Grant’s lawyer?” Campbell said.

  “Hugh Reid,” Kate and Dunaway said at the same time.

  “Who is administering the Hardin estate?” Campbell said.

  “Hugh Reid,” Kate and Dunaway said again, and frowned at each other.

  Kate thought back to the safari-clad suck-up she’d met at Eagle Air her first day on this job. “I met him,” she said. “He doesn’t seem like the type to orchestrate a massive embezzlement scheme and parlay it into an international arms-smuggling operation.”

  “He’s a halfwit,” Dunaway said. “He flunked the bar exam five times and the rumor is that he passed the sixth time only because his father, the first Reid in Chapados, Reid, Reid, McGillivray and Thrall, finagled it. The first Reid took our Reid into the firm because chances were he wasn’t going to get a job anywhere else. My informant says he got the Hardin estate because it was supposed to be a no-brainer, just counting the money coming in and out, and making sure Alexandra Hardin was well cared for.”

  Mason’s brow furrowed. “Where is Alexandra Hardin?”

  “That,” Dunaway said, with all the air of one who knew she was about to create a sensation, “is the half-a-billion-dollar question.”

  Kate didn’t know Campbell very well, but she saw the slow burn. “Where is Hardin?” he said.

  Dunaway looked like she was thinking about sulking, but the story was too good not to continue. “My source didn’t have much except for a printout from the Hardin trust account showing transfers of figures in six and sometimes even seven zeros moving out of the account into a dozen different accounts scattered all over the planet. Each transfer was authorized by Alexandra Hardin. As it happens, Alexandra Hardin left the state of Alaska over two years ago, almost immediately after her father died. It took three months, a forensic accountant—and she wasn’t cheap—and a lot of sweat equity before I could even locate the banks that held the transfer accounts. Usually by the time she got the
re, the funds had moved on. But I kept looking.”

  Kate couldn’t resist. “Many Bothans died to bring us this information.”

  Campbell laughed. Mason looked like he wanted to but didn’t dare. Dunaway ignored her. “One transaction was the same amount every month, and it went to the same account. In Bermuda.”

  She waited for someone to ask her. No one did. She huffed out an indignant sigh, and Kate saw Mason hide a smile. If the FBI agent actually had a thing going with the muckraker, Kate might have to take remedial action of some kind. Maybe get the special agent into the hands of a deprogrammer. That or pluck out her own eyes.

  “It’s a place called the Circle of Life,” Dunaway said. “It’s a long-term full-care facility for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.”

  “Is it the real deal?” Campbell said.

  “So far as I can tell from here, yes,” Dunaway said. “I talked to someone in the Bahamian government with oversight responsibility for social services and he says he’d put his grandmother in Circle of Life if he could afford it.”

  “Who signed her in?”

  “Her nephew,” Dunaway said, and smiled. “Hugh Reid. His father, the senior Reid in the firm’s name, was Alexandra’s mother’s brother.”

  “They certainly kept it all in the family,” Campbell said after a momentary silence.

  “I talked to the admitting nurse,” Dunaway said. “The nephew brought a friend along to help him with his aunt on the journey from Alaska. A big man with a buzz cut and a loud voice. They had to tell him to keep it down because he was disturbing the patients.”

  “Finn Grant,” Campbell said.

  Dunaway nodded, too caught up in the story now to resent interruption. “I didn’t know it was him right away. After I found Alexandra, after I learned she was in no shape to sign checks, I started following the money again. The forensic accountant finally managed to trace one of the sums through half a dozen dummy corporate accounts and I think it was like a dozen banks and then—”

  “Bothans, dying,” Kate said.

  Dunaway glared at her. “It was deposited in the Eagle Air corporate account in the Last Frontier Bank in Anchorage. Where Finn immediately started writing checks on it. Big ones, I think mostly for planes, and payroll.”

  “Pilots and mechanics,” Campbell said.

  “The guy I talked to in the Bahamas?” Dunaway said. “The one in social services? I got him to contact his opposite number in whoever oversights aviation in Bahamian airspace and I got the tail number off the jet they flew in on.”

  “Who was the owner?”

  For the first time Dunaway looked a little disgruntled. “Haven’t been able to trace that yet.” She rattled off the number without referring to her notes. The first letter of its registration number was a C.

  “Not American-owned, then,” Mason said. He sighed. “We can probably help with that.”

  Campbell looked puzzled. Dunaway looked exasperated. “I don’t even believe you’re married to a pilot.”

  “All U.S. tail numbers begin with an N,” Kate said to Campbell. She jerked her head. “Talk to you a minute?”

  They went out on the porch. “Did you run down all those names on Grant’s thumb drive?” He nodded. “Anything?”

  Campbell shook his head. “They were all dead, in jail, or out of town in the twenty-four-hour period surrounding Grant’s death, or they have strong alibis with credible witnesses. I tracked down Artie Diedrickson and Leon Coopchiak. They put you in the Dumpster, by the way.”

  “Figured,” Kate said.

  He laughed, and shook his head. “They were looking for the thumb drive. Leon saw Finn with it once. And then Artie saw part of Leon’s starring role over your shoulder at the library. And Artie and Leon winding up at Bill’s at some point during every day is pretty much a given.”

  “Now I think about it, I think I sold them both a beer,” Kate said.

  “You could have suffocated and died in that freezer,” he said.

  “But I didn’t,” Kate said. “Fortunes of war.”

  Campbell shook his head again, maybe in disapproval, maybe in admiration, maybe both. “Finn was definitely blackmailing everyone on that list, and successfully, too. They all had plenty of motive, most of them had means, but none of them had opportunity.”

  “Then I’m done here,” Kate said. “This—” A wave indicated the other side of the door. “—puts a whole different light on Finn Grant’s death. When you hired me to investigate it, you had a guy dead in a plane wreck who had had a very public fight with your wife the day before. Now you’ve got a guy who made a career out of bullying and blackmailing everyone within a two-hundred-mile radius, who is also an international arms smuggler.”

  “You have certainly expanded the list of suspects, I’ll grant you that,” Campbell said.

  “Which takes the heat off your wife,” she said. “Which was why you wanted Grant’s death investigated in the first place.”

  “I suppose so.” Campbell considered. “There’s still the matter of the wreck, and if it was an accident.”

  “If there is a way to prove a certain person loosened the nut on that oil screen,” Kate said, “the FBI, god rot ’em, is a lot more likely to find it. It is possible, hell, even given his reputation as a pilot and a mechanic, it is far more likely that Finn did it to himself. Even the best pilot screws up now and then. Mostly it doesn’t kill them. Sometimes, though…” Her voice trailed off, as she thought about that cold winter day. It would still have been dark at that hour of the morning, and freezing cold, but Grant would have had his Super Cub parked in Eagle Air’s Newenham hangar, where there would be heat and light. Of course, that’s why the lone toolbox was still there, so Grant would have tools at hand should repairs be necessary.

  Convenient for a killer wanting to loosen the nut on an oil screen, too.

  In her mind’s eye she watched over Grant’s shoulder as he preflighted his craft, checking the fuel, doing the walkaround to check the control surfaces, unbuttoning the cowl to check the oil and for leaks. He’d been flying all his adult life. It would have been second nature to him by then.

  Kate remembered a chapter in a book on flying written by William Langewiesche, the son of the man who had written Stick and Rudder and a pilot in his own right. He’d said that one of the biggest mistakes an experienced pilot could make was getting too comfortable in the air. She thought that might hold true for a pilot who commuted to work in a Piper Super Cub he maintained himself.

  “So,” Liam Campbell said, “should I ask how much this is going to cost me?”

  “You should not,” Kate said, and smiled. “I just connected the dots for the FBI on an international arms-smuggling ring. I see a large check coming my way from the federal government. I’ll just head on home and get right to working up my bill.”

  He laughed, and she admired the scenery when he did. The creases on either side of his laugh were so deep, they were almost dimples. He really was totally hot. Gabe McGuire, movie star–matinee idol–People magazine cover icon that he was, wasn’t anywhere near as good-looking.

  As if he had plucked the name out of her mind, he said, “You want me to whistle up Gabe for a ride home? Least I can do.”

  “No,” Kate said. Perhaps she spoke with more force than absolutely necessary because his eyebrows went up. “You seem pretty sure he’s in the clear. I’d be curious to know why. He is a partner in Eagle Air.”

  “Coerced,” Campbell said. “Gabe talked to his attorney this morning, and they turned over the entire Outouchiwanet correspondence, emails, text messages, phone logs, offers, counteroffers, every substantiated word Gabe McGuire and Finn Grant exchanged on the subject of Outouchiwanet Mountain Lodge. It’s pretty clear that Finn wasn’t going to sell Gabe the lodge unless Gabe became a partner in Eagle Air, and unless Finn could use Gabe’s name to publicize the business.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “You couldn’t call it blackmail, precisely, but it’s
making someone else do something they don’t want to do to get what he wanted. And as we know now, Finn was very good at that.”

  “There are other lodges,” Kate said. “McGuire could have walked away.”

  “He could have,” Campbell said. “He didn’t. It’s also pretty clear from the evidence they turned over that Gabe is a minority shareholder who was many steps removed from operations. What’s with you, anyway? You’ve really got the needle for poor old Gabe. You’ve already had one ride more than I have in that very nice private jet of his. You that sure you don’t want another?” He seemed a little amused about something, but he didn’t offer to share the joke.

  “No thank you,” Kate said, more politely this time but no less decidedly. “I’ll grab the last commercial flight to Anchorage.”

  “Have you checked to see if you can get a seat?”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “It sounds like you already know the answer to that.”

  “Mason already called,” he said.

  “Crap,” she said. “And I gave my room away.”

  “Well, as it happens, Mason hired Wy to take him and his two prisoners to Anchorage this evening. Her Cessna’s a six-seater. Room for all, and—” He nodded at Mutt. “—Mason gets help riding herd on Boyd and Shorty.”

  Kate smiled. “Got her number?”

  Thirty-one

  JANUARY 22

  Newenham

  Jo Dunaway was still interrogating what Kate felt was a very patient Special Agent Mason. She was just relieved they weren’t in a clinch when she and Campbell walked back in the door.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said to Campbell. “And you,” she said to Kate, although getting the words out seemed to hurt her.

  “Love to,” Kate said with as much insincerity as she could infuse into her voice, “but I’m outta here.”

  * * *

  An hour later Chouinard was preflighting the Cessna at the Newenham airport as her passengers arrived in two vehicles, one a rental driven by Dunaway, and Chouinard’s pickup, which carried an extra passenger, a woman with long, dark, not very kempt hair sitting in the front seat of the darkened cab. Kate got only a glimpse of her. “My stepmother,” Campbell said in passing, “Wy said she wanted to get out of the house.” He escorted Boyd and Shorty into the middle row of the Cessna and strapped them into their seats. Mutt and Kate climbed into the back and Mason rode shotgun.