Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 02 - Capitol Offense

by Mike Doogan

  Cocoa nodded.

  “No surprise,” he said. “Don’t need a license for much of anything. You figure Hope’s got a chance?”

  Kane shrugged.

  “Too soon to know,” he said. “He’s got himself a good lawyer and there’s no conclusive evidence.”

  Cocoa snorted.

  “Conclusive evidence,” he said. “I like that. Since when do they need conclusive evidence to put an Indian in jail?”

  Kane didn’t have an answer to that, so he let the rest of the ride pass in silence. About fifteen minutes later, Cocoa wheeled the cab up to the prison entrance.

  “I hate to ask you to wait,” Kane said, “but I’ve got no idea how long this will take.”

  “No problemo,” Cocoa said, “you’re paying for it. I’m going to drive on down the road and find some coffee. When do you want me back?”

  Kane thought for a moment.

  “The lawyer’s secretary was supposed to call and tell them I was coming,” he said. “So it’ll probably only take twice as long as it should. Give me your cell number and I’ll call you.”

  Cocoa laughed.

  “You’re used to dealing with prisons, then?” he said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Kane said.

  He punched the cabbie’s number into his cell phone and got out of the cab. Cocoa pulled away. Kane stood looking at the prison. This was his first visit to a prison since he’d gotten out himself.

  You can do this, he thought. They can’t keep you. You can leave anytime you want.

  The prison was a set of low buildings surrounded by fencing on a large tract of land in the valley carved by the Mendenhall Glacier. Even though he was a couple of miles from the channel, Kane could still smell the ocean. He stood sucking fresh air into his lungs, then walked through the entrance doors and across the lobby to the desk. A short, broad-shouldered woman in uniform sat there leafing through papers. She did a good job of ignoring him.

  “I’m here to see Matthew Hope,” he said at last.

  The woman looked up from her papers.

  “Too late,” she said, pointing to the clock on the wall behind her. “Morning visiting hour’s pretty much over.”

  “Not for me,” Kane said, taking Doyle’s authorization letter from his pocket and waving it at her. “I’m from his lawyer.”

  The woman glared at him, got to her feet, and took the letter. She looked at it for a long time, her lips moving.

  “I’ll need to make a copy of this,” she said, and went through a door behind the desk.

  Kane looked around the room. Beige paint. Cheap couches. Worn carpet. The smell of cleaning fluid. An old Native man asleep in one corner, cap pulled down over his eyes. Kane walked to the front window and looked out. A vast swath of snow-covered open land and a few industrial-looking buildings in the distance. Not very pretty, but a good field of fire. He walked back to the desk and leaned on it.

  She’s playing stall ball, he thought. But she doesn’t know who she’s dealing with. One thing I learned how to do is wait. He focused his eyes on a spot a couple of feet in front of him, emptied his mind, and waited.

  The woman came back about fifteen minutes later. She handed Kane the letter.

  “He’s at lunch,” she said. “You’ll have to wait.”

  Kane pointed to the clock. It said 10:15.

  “Lunch?” he said. “The guy’s a state legislator and I’m a duly authorized member of his legal team. You sure you want to jack me around? On a case the newspapers are so interested in? What do you think your boss would say about a story detailing how you tried to prevent a prisoner from getting his proper legal help?”

  The woman glared at Kane, opened her mouth, closed it, picked up the telephone on her desk, muttered into it, listened, and put it down.

  “Take a seat,” she snarled. “They’ll bring him to visiting.”

  By the time the second door clanged shut behind him, the hair on Kane’s neck was standing straight up. The guard, a young, beefy guy with a mullet, led him down an empty hallway and opened a door.

  “In here,” he said.

  Kane entered the small room.

  “Buzz when you want out,” the guard said. He couldn’t have sounded less interested.

  Kane took a seat in one of the chairs that faced a thick glass partition. His ears picked out the familiar sounds of prison: muffled thumps, the ringing of a bell, the scraping of an amplified voice making announcements. His nose picked up the smell of disinfectant, cooking, and human bodies. All around him, 150 or so men and women went through the motions of life without freedom.

  I’m not one of them, he thought. I can leave anytime I want.

  He took deep, slow breaths.

  I can leave anytime I want, he thought.

  A door opened on the far side of the partition. A man in a bright blue jumpsuit and handcuffs came through it, followed by a tall, sandy-haired guard. The prisoner looked to be about five feet ten and slim. His face was puffy and his dark hair lay flat on his head. Must have missed a shower, Kane thought.

  Matthew Hope looked like his picture in the newspaper, but older.

  Must be the lines around his eyes and mouth, Kane thought. I know how he got those.

  The guard removed the cuffs and left the room. Hope sat.

  “Handcuffs, huh?” Kane said. “They’re giving you the full treatment, aren’t they.”

  He took Doyle’s letter out of his pocket and held it up to the window.

  “Read this,” he said. He held the paper up for a minute, then, at Hope’s signal, replaced it in his pocket.

  “So you can see that I work for your lawyer,” he said. “I’d like you to answer some questions.”

  Hope said nothing. When that had gone on for a while, Kane said, “Okay. You can do the stoic Native thing if you want. But you’re in a pile of trouble, brother, and you’re not helping yourself by not talking to the people who are trying to help you.”

  A smile flicked across Hope’s lips.

  “That statement is so convoluted that it would fit right in on the floor of the Senate,” he said, his voice tinny through the speaker. “Besides the fact we can both talk around a subject, what makes us brothers?”

  Kane shrugged out of his suit coat, rolled up his left sleeve, and showed Hope a small tattoo. Hope leaned forward to examine it.

  “Raven,” he said. “Tlingit.”

  “Yeah,” Kane said, rolling the sleeve back down and fastening the button. “Drawn by a fellow named Peter Benson, who’s doing what’ll probably be the rest of his life for killing a couple of guys in a bad dope deal. He inked it for me after we all did banya together in Wildwood.”

  Hope looked Kane over carefully.

  “You’re not Alaska Native,” he said.

  Kane shook his head.

  “Out in the world, I’m just another gussik,” he said. “But you’ve got to talk to somebody.”

  Hope’s smile came and went again.

  “Don’t overestimate Native solidarity,” he said. “Like everything else in politics, it’s relative. For instance, did you know that the Tlingit once exercised a trade monopoly over my people?”

  He smiled once more.

  “Besides, why should I trust someone who’s been in prison?” he asked.

  Kane laughed.

  “Well, you’ve still got a sense of humor,” he said. “That’s a good sign.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “I’ll bet if you ask around in here you’ll find somebody I did time with who can tell you whether I’m trustworthy or not,” he said. “But that’s not really the point. As far as I can tell, the authorities like you for this murder. That means they might not be motivated to look too hard for evidence you didn’t do it. But me? I’m motivated to help you by the best motivation there is—money. And if I’m going to help you, you’re going to have to tell me a whole lot of stuff, including some things you probably really don’t want to tell me.”

&n
bsp; The two men sat in silence while Hope seemed to consider what the detective had said.

  “I went to a reception after work,” he said at last. “City of Petersburg. They serve good shrimp. I talked to some people there, ate a mess of shrimp, left. Went back to the Capitol to finish reading up on the next day’s bills. Then I went looking for Senator Potter to discuss a bill of mine that’s stuck in his committee.”

  Hope stopped talking. Kane waited. He knew from experience that Natives spoke in a different rhythm than whites and that silence, even prolonged silence, didn’t necessarily mean that Hope was finished.

  “A light was on in the senator’s office,” he said. “Miss Foxx was lying there. There was a lot of blood. I guess I kind of blacked out then. The next thing I remember was a policeman reading me my rights. Just like on TV. Law and Order or one of those shows.”

  Hope went silent again. Kane waited. When he was convinced Hope was done talking, he said, “Had you been drinking?”

  Hope looked at the detective for a long while.

  “You think because I’m Native I must have been drinking?” he said.

  Kane shook his head.

  “No,” he said, “because you say you blacked out. In my experience, blackouts and booze go hand in hand.”

  “Your professional experience,” Hope said, “or your personal experience?”

  “Both,” Kane said, and waited.

  “I don’t drink,” Hope said. “I’ve seen too many people fall into the bottle and not be able to climb back out. I can’t explain the lost time. Shock, maybe. I haven’t seen very many dead people before. And there was a lot of blood.”

  Kane nodded and made a note in his notebook.

  “When did you get to the reception?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe about five-thirty, six o’clock,” Hope said.

  “When did you leave?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “When did you find the body?”

  “I don’t know for sure.”

  Kane sighed.

  “You went to the reception at six o’clock and discovered the body near eleven,” Kane said. “That’s a lot of time to account for with eating shrimp and doing paperwork.”

  Hope sat silently. Kane sighed again.

  “You got any friends in the legislature?” he asked.

  “Friends?” Hope asked. “Why do you need to know that?”

  Kane slapped his notebook against an open palm.

  “Because,” he said, “whether you like it or not, I’m investigating this killing, and I don’t know the first thing about the legislature. I’d ask you, but you don’t seem very talkative. So do you have any friends there or not?”

  Hope shook his head.

  “Friends,” he said. “You know what Harry Truman said about friends in politics, don’t you? He said, ‘If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.’ Same thing’s true in Juneau.”

  It was Kane’s turn to sit without saying anything. Finally, Hope went on, “But if you want to know how the legislature works, go talk to the Senate minority leader, Toby Grantham. He’s been in there for thirty years or so, and he’s a Democrat like me, so he might help.”

  Grantham’s had been one of the names on Mrs. Richard Foster’s list. Kane closed his notebook and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He followed it with his pen.

  “Let me tell you how this is,” he said. “When we’re finished talking, I’ll walk out of here, get in a cab, and go back downtown. I’ll maybe get a coffee, then I might go up to the Capitol and talk to some people. Then I’ll pick a place and have lunch. Tonight, I’ll decide where to get dinner, whether to go to a movie or watch a little TV. Then I’ll choose when to call it a night, turn in, get some sleep.”

  He paused, but Hope just sat there.

  “What you’ll do is very different,” Kane said. “You’ll do exactly what you’re told to do exactly when you’re told to do it. Eat, sleep, work, go to the bathroom. You’ll see the same people and the same rooms and the same walls. Over and over and over again.”

  He paused again.

  “There’s going to be a bail hearing,” Hope said. “I have a right to get out on bail. State law says so.”

  Kane looked at the other man for a long moment.

  “You get out on bail,” he said, “and you’ll think everything will be all right. You’ll lead an almost normal life, if you don’t think about it too hard. But then there will be a trial, and if you stick to this sorry story you just told me, the jury will convict you and you’ll spend the next twenty years or more doing exactly what you’re told to do exactly when you’re told to do it. And staring at the walls in between. Maybe you’re tough enough to take it. Maybe you’re not. Some people are. Lots aren’t. And maybe your people on the outside will wait and maybe they won’t. You married?”

  Hope’s gaze was steady, but Kane could see the pulse throbbing in his temple.

  “No, I’m not,” he said, “but I’ve got family, lots of family who would wait for me. But they won’t have to. I didn’t kill that woman.”

  Kane waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t said, “That’s it? That’s the best you’ve got? I didn’t do it?”

  Hope remained silent.

  “So are you going to tell me the truth now?” Kane said.

  The two men looked at each other for a long time.

  “I’ve told you what happened,” Hope said at last.

  Kane looked steadily at the other man, then shook his head.

  “You know,” he said, “for a politician, you’re a crappy liar.”

  He got to his feet and pushed the buzzer. The door behind Hope opened and the sandy-haired guard came in. Hope got to his feet and the two of them left. Without the distraction of talking to Hope, Kane could feel the room start to close in on him. The door to Kane’s room opened and the guard with the mullet came in.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  Kane nodded. He went through the door and down the hall, the guard behind him. The urge to start running was nearly irresistible, but he fought it down and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other at a steady pace. He forced himself not to fidget while they waited for the guard in the booth to open one locked door, then another. When he reached the lobby, Kane continued straight across the reception area and out into the cold. He stood there for a long while, breathing in and out. Then he took out his cell phone and called Cocoa.

  “You can come and get me now,” he said. “I made my escape.”

  He stood outside, ignoring the cold, until Cocoa’s cab pulled up. He got in.

  “How was your visit?” the cabbie asked.

  “Piece of cake,” Kane said. “I could get out anytime I wanted.”

  12

  There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

  ALAN CLARK

  Alaska’s Capitol is a U-shaped concrete building faced with bricks and slabs of limestone, a block long and half a block wide. The main entrance is on the front of the U, framed by four marble pillars, two stories tall, which support a small balcony of the sort that a queen might wave from.

  When it was built, before Alaska became a state, the building housed the federal bureaucrats who ran the territory, making it the only state capitol building in the United States that wasn’t built as a Capitol. Because it was built on the slope of a hill, the building has six stories at the front but only five at the back. The first floor is called the ground floor, the second floor is called the first floor, and so on.

  Perfect, Kane thought, folding the brochure titled “Facts About Alaska’s Capitol” and sliding it into a coat pocket. A building that follows its own rules full of people who make their own rules.

  Senator Toby Grantham’s office was on the ground floor, down the hall from the print shop and the mailroom. The outer office was the size of a box of saltines. A gorgeous, dark-haired young woman sat at a des
k flanked by a pair of closed doors. Her desk, a couple of chairs, and a coatrack barely left room for a visitor.

  The young woman welcomed Kane with a big smile and asked if she could help him.

  “I’m here to talk to Senator Grantham at the suggestion of Senator Matthew Hope,” Kane said, handing her a card.

  The woman switched off her smile.

  “Oh, it’s a terrible thing, terrible,” she said. “I’m sure Senator Hope had nothing to do with that woman’s death.” She got to her feet. “I’ll get Senator Grantham’s senior staff.” Still holding the card, she disappeared through one of the closed doors.

  Kane took off his coat and hung it on a rack. He looked around the reception area. The walls were crowded with what he took to be class photos, but on closer examination they turned out to be photographs of the legislature through the years. He was looking at the oldest of them—the caption said “12th Alaska Legislature”—when the door behind him opened.

  “That’s Senator Grantham there,” a woman said. She walked over and stood next to Kane, pointing at what appeared to be a college kid. “That photo was taken in 1982. Doesn’t he look young?”

  “He certainly does,” Kane said.

  The woman was a head shorter than Kane, with shoulder-length blond hair and blue eyes. She wore a dark suit and a white blouse open far enough to show the beginning of spectacular cleavage. She smelled of soap and tobacco smoke. Kane guessed her age at thirty.

  “I’m Alma Atwood,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m Senator Grantham’s chief of staff. Jennifer said you’d like to speak with the senator?”

  Kane took her hand, which was soft and warm and dry.

  “I would,” he said. “I’m Nik Kane, part of Senator Matthew Hope’s defense team. Senator Hope suggested I talk to your boss.”

  He was startled to realize that he was still holding the woman’s hand, so he dropped it, dug Doyle’s letter of authorization out of his coat pocket, and, since Grantham was on her list, Mrs. Foster’s letter as well. He handed them to the woman. The woman opened each in turn, read them, and nodded.

  “I’m sure the senator will want to speak with you,” she said. “If you wouldn’t mind waiting?”