Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 02 - Capitol Offense

by Mike Doogan

  Kane could smell burned rubber from where the left rear wheel had rubbed against the damaged bodywork, and hear the grinding of the pickup’s starter as Bland tried to get going again.

  Got to get out of here, Kane thought. The air bag, which was supposed to deflate after deployment, clearly wasn’t going to. He dug into his pocket for his Buck knife. His left arm was trapped by the air bag, so he sat on the knife handle, pried the blade open one-handed, and stabbed the air bag repeatedly. Air hissed from the holes as it began to deflate. When he had clearance, he flipped the knife to his left hand and attacked Winslow’s air bag. It began to deflate, too.

  Kane tried his door handle. Stuck. The impact had torqued the car’s frame, he thought. He heard the pickup’s engine catch, then roar. He reared back and smashed his shoulder into the door. It popped open. Winslow was wrestling with his seat belt. Kane jumped out of the car, grabbed Winslow by the collar, and pulled. Winslow’s seat belt popped open and he came out of the midsize like a cork out of a bottle. The two men stumbled and fell away from the car.

  The pickup T-boned the midsize with a noise like the end of the world. The car bounded in their direction. They threw themselves behind a tree. The midsize glanced off the tree and hopped away.

  “Mother jumper,” Winslow said, “the crazy bastard’s trying to kill us.”

  The beater pickup sat there, its bumper pushed in where it had hit the midsize, roaring like some prehistoric beast as Bland fed it gas to keep the engine from dying. Kane looked over at Winslow. The younger man had his left palm flat against the tree and was using his forearm as a rest for a revolver as he sighted along the barrel. Kane reached over, grabbed Winslow’s gun hand, and wrenched it so that the barrel pointed straight up.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he rasped.

  “Defending myself,” Winslow said, trying to pull the gun away.

  Kane slid his grip to Winslow’s thumb and pried it back.

  “Give me the gun, kid,” he said.

  Winslow grunted and let go of the gun. Kane took it, uncocked it, and laid it on the ground.

  “We’re going to take enough guff for having been made,” he said to the younger man, “and the paperwork on the car alone is going to be a nightmare. What do you think the agency would do if you shot somebody you were supposed to be following?”

  Winslow shrugged.

  “So what we going to do?” he asked.

  “You go for the passenger’s door, I’ll go for the driver’s,” Kane said. He bolted from behind the tree and ran for the truck. Bland sawed the wheel toward him and popped the clutch. The pickup died. Kane pulled the door open, reached up, grabbed Bland’s arm, and jerked. Bland was held in place by a lap belt and shoulder belt. His right hand scrabbled for something. Using his grip on Bland’s arm, Kane hoisted himself up and flopped into the cab, putting his momentum behind a right hand to Bland’s jaw. Bland’s head snapped back and his right hand came up clutching a tire iron. Kane reached across Bland’s body and grabbed his wrist to pin the tire iron.

  “I’ll fucking kill you,” Bland screamed. “I’ll fucking kill both of you and that no-good whore I married and the dyke she’s with. I’ll kill you all. Kill you all.”

  He tried to hit Kane with his left hand, but the shoulder harness got in the way. Kane could hear Winslow wrenching the handle of the pickup’s other door. Bland threw his head forward and tried to bite Kane’s face. His breath smelled like the inside of a whiskey barrel. Kane head-butted him and felt Bland’s lips split. Bland’s head snapped back. Both men were breathing hard. Bland was repeating “kill you all” over and over.

  Bland had the strength of a madman and it was all Kane could do to hang on. He heard the passenger’s door open and felt the truck shift as Winslow climbed into the cab.

  “Duck,” Winslow yelled.

  Kane buried his face in Bland’s midsection. He heard the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh and felt Bland jerk. He heard the sound again and Bland went slack. Without letting go of Bland’s wrist, Kane reached across his body and took the tire iron from his limp hand.

  “Let’s get him out of here,” Kane said.

  The two of them got Bland’s seat belt undone and lowered him to the ground. Kane sat in the snow next to him, took out his cell phone, and called the police. Winslow leaned against the truck. For several minutes they did nothing but breathe. Then Kane reached over and rubbed snow in Bland’s face. He groaned and tried to sit up.

  “I knew you were following me,” Bland said. His lips were puffy from Kane’s head butt and he was hard to understand. “Bitch told me.”

  “What?” Winslow said. “Our client told our subject she was having him followed? Why would she do that?”

  “Who knows?” Kane said, shaking his head. “Human beings are unpredictable. The same heart that was full of love can be full of hate. Even mild-mannered accountants can turn violent.”

  That sounds profound, he thought, but what do I know? I’m the one who thought this job was too boring.

  4

  Nothing in politics is ever so good or so bad as it first appears.

  EDWARD BOYLE

  Kane walked up the short flight of steps and rang the doorbell. The wind that always blew down by the lagoon cut at his face. March, coming in like a lion. He buried his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and waited.

  The house was big and built of pale wood, a collection of rectangular boxes pointing this way and that, all with large windows that looked out over the lagoon, the railroad tracks, and the Inlet beyond. It was clearly a house that had been designed by an architect, but Kane couldn’t tell what effect the architect had hoped to achieve. Pik-Up Stiks? Driftwood stacked up on the beach? A structural metaphor for the anarchy of modern life?

  The front door was opened by a brown-skinned man the size of a small car. His black hair was cut to stubble and he had surprising blue eyes in his round, strong face. He wore a black suit with a fine blue stripe, a shirt as white as new snow, and a neatly knotted black tie. He looked Kane over carefully from head to foot, his gaze moving neither faster nor slower over the scar that ran the length of Kane’s face. He gave Kane a half-smile and cocked one eyebrow quizzically.

  “Aleut?” Kane said.

  “Eskimo,” the man said.

  “Yupik?” Kane said.

  “Inupiat,” the man said.

  “You can tell I know my Natives,” Kane said with a laugh. “You’re big for an Inupiat.”

  “Swede in the woodpile,” the man said, and they both laughed.

  “I’m here to see Mrs. Foster,” Kane said. “She’s expecting me. I’m Nik Kane.”

  The man stepped back to let Kane enter and motioned for him to hang his coat on a wrought-iron coatrack. Kane did, then sat to remove his overshoes. No Alaskan would track snow and dirt through a house as ritzy as this.

  “If you are armed, I’m afraid I must ask for your weapon,” the man said when Kane stood up. His voice was deep and rich, almost a stage voice.

  “I’m not,” Kane said, raising his arms, “but you’ll want to check for yourself.”

  After patting him down, the man led Kane back into the house. Although he was a good four inches taller than Kane and a hundred pounds heavier, he moved with the grace of a ballet dancer. After they’d passed through several large rooms, he opened a set of double doors and motioned Kane through.

  “That suit’s a good fit,” Kane said as he passed the man. “You can hardly see a bulge from your shoulder holster.”

  The man gave Kane a smile, showing teeth as white as his shirt.

  “That’s Mrs. Foster, by the fireplace,” he said, and pulled the doors shut behind him.

  Kane advanced toward a fireplace big enough to roast a moose in. A woman sat next to it in a high-backed, soft, rose-colored chair. The veil hanging from her small, black hat hid her face, but her long, black dress couldn’t hide the suppleness of her body as she rose to greet him.

  �
�Sergeant Kane, how nice to see you again,” she said, offering a black-gloved hand.

  “We know each other?” Kane asked, trying to see through the veil’s black mesh. He wasn’t sure what to do with the hand, so he held it lightly.

  The woman gave a musical laugh.

  “You men,” she said in a teasing tone. “How soon you forget.”

  Withdrawing her hand, she resumed her seat with a motion so smooth and liquid it was like she was being poured into the chair. She waved Kane to a gray leather sofa that faced the fireplace.

  Kane sat and looked around the room. It was expensively furnished and dimly lit, soft spotlights illuminating paintings here and there. A Sydney Laurence McKinley took up most of one wall, a couple of bucks’ worth of canvas and oil paint that was probably worth $100,000 now. He turned his attention back to the woman.

  “If I’m starting to forget women like you,” he said, “I’d better check myself into the Pioneer Home.”

  The woman laughed again and shifted in her chair, her body doing interesting things beneath the material of her dress.

  “That’s very gallant,” she said, giving the last word a French pronunciation. “I hope you’ll forgive me for not removing my veil. I’m still in mourning.”

  Kane was surprised; Rip Foster had been dead for nearly a year now.

  “Isn’t this a long time to mourn?” he asked.

  The black-veiled head shook slowly back and forth.

  “I loved my husband very much,” the woman said. “I don’t think a traditional mourning period is inappropriate.”

  The death of Rip Foster had been a major media event. Instead of the regular obituary, the Anchorage newspaper ran a big, front-page story complete with a series of photographs of Foster, many of them with beautiful women. Foster was ever older in the photographs, his grin ever more wicked.

  Kane had run into Foster now and then around town. He was usually drunk and always happy. He had plenty to be happy about. He was, by the time Kane knew him, already an Alaska legend. He’d lived the kind of life Jimmy Buffett might write a song about, and many of the more colorful stories had found their way into the newspaper.

  Rip Foster was born in the early 1920s in the mining town of Flat. He hadn’t gone beyond the third grade, but by the time he was sixteen he was already making a name for himself in mining circles by buying up old buildings and sluice boxes, burning them, and treating the remains with mercury to extract the gold. The story was that he’d made upward of $10,000 from the floorboards of the old Flat saloon alone.

  Like many rural Alaskans, Foster had also learned how to fly early. When the Second World War broke out, he entered the Army Air Corps, was made a flight instructor, rebelled, managed to get himself transferred to the Pacific Theater, and quickly became an ace flying P-38s. When the war ended, he returned to Alaska with a chest full of medals and a big, brassy, blond Aussie sheila for a wife.

  She was the first of several.

  Foster bought a couple of surplus DC3s, hired a second pilot, and started hauling freight around the state. He claimed he’d won the money for the aircraft in crap games across the Pacific. He was living large when the sheila caught him with a nineteen-year-old brunette who soon became the second Mrs. Rip Foster. He sold most of the airline. The rumor was that the sheila got most of the money.

  The pattern repeated itself as Foster worked his way through a riverboat company, a couple of construction outfits, a multitown car dealership, a big hotel, and, not coincidentally, the brunette, a redhead, and another pair of blondes. He served a couple of terms in the territorial legislature, and traveled throughout rural Alaska, trading in furs and Native handicrafts. If you believed rumors, he also trafficked in booze and, in Fairbanks and Anchorage, gambling houses, women, and after-hours joints.

  Just reading about Foster’s life had made Kane dizzy. He lost count of the businesses, wives, and alleged shady dealings, but noticed that Foster always kept a piece of whatever legitimate business he sold. When he died at last at eighty-five, worn out by living, there was a big funeral in Anchorage, memorial services in Fairbanks and Juneau, and potlatches in half the villages in the state. His death was thought to have made his final young wife very rich indeed.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Kane said. “I knew your husband slightly. He was quite a man.”

  Kane could hear the humor in her voice when the woman said, “He was more man in his eighties than most men are in their twenties. I miss him very much.”

  She cleared her throat.

  “But you didn’t come here to hear me feel sorry for myself,” she said. “Shall we get down to business?”

  Kane nodded, and the woman went on.

  “I want you to prove that Matthew Hope isn’t a murderer,” she said.

  She paused as if waiting for a reaction, so Kane gave her one.

  “From what I know, that might not be easy,” he said.

  The woman nodded.

  “Perhaps you could tell me just what you do know,” she said.

  “Just what I’ve read in the newspaper,” Kane said. “Matthew Hope is a Democrat who represents several thousand square miles of Interior Alaska. A couple of days ago, he was discovered in another legislator’s office, standing over the body of a woman who worked there named Melinda Foxx. She wasn’t wearing much and had been bludgeoned to death. The murder weapon was a crystal paperweight that had been given to the legislator by a civic group. Hope was holding it when he was discovered. He is being held for murder and should be indicted by a grand jury soon.”

  The woman nodded again.

  “That’s a good summary,” she said. “What do you think?”

  “Of the case?” Kane said. “I think Matthew Hope is in a lot of trouble. The evidence is circumstantial, but I’ve seen people convicted with less. And if there’s any evidence that casts doubt on his guilt, it hasn’t made it into the newspaper. And the papers have been throwing plenty of ink at this.”

  The woman was silent for a moment.

  “I’m afraid I’ve let my concern for Senator Hope distract me from my duties as a hostess,” she said. “Would you like something to drink?”

  She made no signal Kane could see, but the Native man appeared. Kane asked for coffee, the woman for tea. The big man brought their drinks and a plate of small cookies. He looked as incongruous handling the delicate cups and saucers as an elephant crossing a tightrope, but he got everything arranged without spilling a drop. When he withdrew, the woman took up her teacup, slid the edge under the veil, and sipped from it.

  Didn’t show a square inch of her face, Kane thought. She must have practiced that in front of a mirror.

  “I will pay you a hundred thousand dollars to prove that Senator Hope is innocent,” she said. “Plus your expenses.”

  Kane sat back in his chair. Thoughts chased themselves through his mind.

  “That’s a lot of money,” he said.

  “Not really,” the woman said. “Not anymore. Not in politics. A state representative spends that much to get elected. And I think that you will find earning it isn’t easy. A lot of powerful people would be happy to see Senator Hope convicted of this crime.”

  “How well do you know Senator Hope?” Kane said.

  “Not well,” the woman said. There was something in her voice Kane couldn’t quite identify. “Not well at all.”

  “Then what’s your interest in his guilt or innocence?” Kane asked.

  The woman sipped more tea.

  “How much do you know about Alaska politics?” she asked.

  Kane shook his head.

  “Almost nothing,” he said. “My attitude toward politics was best summed up by the old lady who said, ‘I never vote. It only encourages the bastards.’”

  The woman chuckled.

  “I wish it were that simple,” she said, “but it’s not.”

  She took another sip of tea and set her cup and saucer on a small table at her elbow.

  “When m
y late husband was young, Alaska was a progressive place,” she said, “but the coming of big oil changed all that. Alaska is now one of the most reactionary states in the nation.

  “It is also becoming increasingly corrupt. Senator Hope speaks out against the reactionaries and the corruption, and that has made him enemies. One of his biggest enemies is, or was, Melinda Foxx’s employer, O. B. Potter. Senator Potter caters to the religious right and to the rich and powerful. The joke in Juneau is that his goal is to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.”

  She picked up a cookie, broke off a small piece, popped it into her mouth, chased it with tea, and continued.

  “So Senator Potter and Senator Hope disagree on almost everything. And if their ideological differences weren’t enough, Senator Potter also has been featured prominently in two of the more recent scandals uncovered by Senator Hope, and would like nothing better than to see him discredited.

  “Be that as it may, Matthew Hope is the leading light of Alaska’s progressives. Even though he is quite young—in his early forties, I believe—he has been in the state legislature for a decade and is widely rumored to be considering a run for the governorship next year. His loss would be a crippling blow for all of us.”

  Kane understood what Jeffords had been trying to tell him better now. If Hope was the leader of the outs, Jeffords was very much one of the ins. The chief couldn’t be seen to be helping the other man. So why was he helping him, or asking Kane to help?

  “‘A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,’” Kane muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?” the woman said.

  “Sorry,” Kane said. “Bad habit, talking to yourself. Anyway, I take it you are a supporter of this Senator Hope.”

  The woman nodded.

  “Of progressives in general,” she said. “It’s something I inherited from my husband. He was very successful in business, but he never lost the political convictions of his youth.”

  Kane took a sip of his coffee. It was cold.

  “You’re willing to part with a hundred thousand dollars to support your late husband’s political convictions?” Kane asked.