Though Not Dead

by Dana Stabenow

  “The what?”

  “The Cross of Gold Nugget, found in 1917 by a miner who wouldn’t say where. He sold it to the mine superintendent at Kanuyaq and left town, never to be seen again.”

  “Was this a large nugget?” Jim said.

  “Smaller than a cantaloupe,” Kate said, and grinned. “But bigger than a grapefruit. Two hundred ninety-seven point seventy-four troy ounces.”

  “In English?”

  “Twenty pounds six ounces,” she said.

  “That’d be pretty big,” he said.

  “The biggest one ever found in Alaska,” she said. “Bigger even than the Centennial.”

  “You think Old Sam’s dad took it? Same time as he took the icon?”

  “He did take it.”

  He nodded, and then said, “Wait a minute. ‘Bigger than a grapefruit, smaller than a cantaloupe’? You’ve seen a picture?”

  She shook her head once, side to side.

  “You’ve seen the nugget?”

  She nodded once, up and down.

  “That’s what the map was to,” he said, “the nugget. Not the icon, and not the manuscript.”

  “Yep.”

  “Where is it? The nugget?” He looked around the room. “I’d like to see a lump of gold bigger than a grapefruit.”

  “I left it there in the cave.”

  “You what!”

  “Well,” she said. “It was heavy, and I wanted to catch Bruce before he got away. And it’s painted to blend in with the rocks. And everyone who knows anything about it besides me is in jail.”

  When he got his breath back, he said, “So we’ll be headed back up to Canyon Hot Springs sooner rather than later. Jesus Christ, Kate, gold’s over eleven hundred an ounce.”

  She looked at him, disappointed. “I didn’t think you were a gold bug, too, Jim.”

  “Gold bug, hell, I’m a practicing policeman. Word gets out and people’ll be killing each other to get their hands on it.”

  “Oh.” She reflected. “I guess you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right. We can give it to that museum in Anchorage you were talking about.”

  Kate thought of Ms. Sherwood’s reaction, and smiled. “Okay.”

  “How did Old Sam wind up with the nugget?”

  “I don’t know that he did,” Kate said.

  Jim digested this. “You think Mac left it up there?”

  “It’s the only reason I can think of why Elizaveta insisted that Old Sam homestead up there. Mac wrote to her, remember. Old Sam might not have known about the nugget. I still can’t believe I found it. I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been looking so hard for the icon.”

  He shook his head. “I’m getting dizzy. So Auntie Joy has the manuscript.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Nothing. It isn’t mine, Jim. Old Sam gave it to Auntie Joy.”

  “Well.” He almost squirmed. “Do you think she’d let me read it?”

  She laughed at him. After a moment, he joined in.

  “So, where the hell is the icon?” he said.

  Kate’s laughter died. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think Old Sam killed Emil Bannister to get it?”

  Kate got up and went to the table. She brought back a sheet of paper.

  “What’s this?” He looked at it.

  “It’s the list of the items stolen from Emil Bannister’s house the night he died. Victoria Muravieff sent it to me.”

  “So I see a Russian icon on it, along with some ivory carvings and, oh, look at that, another gold nugget, although this one’s a lot smaller than yours.”

  “Erland probably padded the list to up the insurance payout,” Kate said.

  “You really think Old Sam stole the icon, Kate?” It just didn’t square with Jim’s memory of the old man.

  It didn’t square with Kate’s, either. “I haven’t found it,” Kate said. “Until I do…” Her voice trailed off.

  “If it he did,” Jim said, “it would explain why he couldn’t give it back to the tribe. It would have been known to have been stolen, and given who Emil Bannister was, it would have been familiar to a lot of people. Someone would have recognized it.” He thought it over. “Which is why he left it for you to do when you found it.”

  “But I haven’t found it,” she said again.

  “Ah hell, honey,” he said, tucking her under his arm again. “Don’t sound so mournful. You haven’t found it yet.”

  She sighed. “I’ve been running back and forth between Niniltna and Ahtna and Canyon Hot Springs and Anchorage and Niniltna and Canyon Hot Springs for damn near three weeks. He left clues for me, Jim. He told Jane about the map. He told Tony about meeting Hammett in the Aleutians. He told Ruthe Mac’s name. I’ve pieced together most of the puzzle. I was sure the map was going to lead me to the icon.”

  “Why did he do it?” Jim said, rubbing the small of her back absently. “Why send you on a treasure hunt? Why not just tell you the whole story and hand everything over?”

  Kate remembered that bright day in the clearing last spring, right before the bear charged them. You’re crankier than usual, girl. What’s going on?

  It was one of the last real conversations they’d had, standing in a Park clearing taking a beat between collecting some human remains and creating some ursine ones. She had, in fact, been cranky, and Old Sam, as usual, had zeroed in on the cause. The Suulutaq Mine was changing the Park, changing it fast and not all for the better. She’d been feeling crowded, a fine thing in a place where there wasn’t but one person for every sixteen hundred acres, and that included the towns.

  She thought of the crazy adventure he’d sent her on. He must have known, given what was at stake, that it could be dangerous, that it might even be deadly. And that it might be both those things but it sure as hell wouldn’t be boring. He was right, it hadn’t been. She’d been sandbagged, run off the road, ambushed, and shot at.

  If the old fart sent you on a wild goose chase, he must have thought you needed one, Bobby had said.

  “Up until I went to see Erland Bannister at Spring Creek,” she said slowly, “it was like a scavenger hunt. Up until then…”

  “Up until then,” he said, “you’d been having fun.”

  “I guess,” she said. “If you ignore the sequential shiners.”

  “Fortunes of war,” he said. “You’re still alive and kicking.”

  She raised her head again. “Aren’t you supposed to come over all manly man and forbid the little lady from taking such risks with her fragile self?”

  “I like my balls right where they are,” he said, and she laughed and put her head back down on his chest.

  It had been fun, if alarming, to see the expression on Ranger Dan’s face when he realized who had title to Canyon Hot Springs, and to watch the gears ticking over as he thought how to rectify the situation.

  It had been fun, and instructive, to talk to Jane Silver, probably one of the last Alaska good-time girls around, a grand old dame. There weren’t many of those left.

  It had not been fun, admittedly, to witness Jane’s last breath and to realize that she might have had something to do with hastening it.

  It had been fun, delicious fun, to talk to the lawyer. She’d felt like Thorby Rudbek when he was returned to Earth. It had been fun to toy with the idea of suing the Parks Service, although it wasn’t fun to contemplate Dan O’Brian’s reaction, or the possible destruction of their friendship.

  It hadn’t been fun to be run off the road, but it had been fun to test her survival skills against the encroaching storm. She had survived, in spades and in style. Hell, she was near as dammit invulnerable at this point. Look at how she’d survived both attacks at Canyon Hot Springs, and hadn’t she made it all the way home safely? More or less? Jim was right, fortunes of war. You pays your money and you takes your chances. You don’t play, you can’t win.

  But that morning in Spring Creek, she had looked again
into the eyes of a killer, a man who had covered up one murder for his own benefit, ordered a second, and been fully prepared to commit his own.

  She thought about waking up in that hunting shack in the back range of the Chugach Mountains, how alone she had felt, how angry.

  How frightened.

  She still didn’t think Erland Bannister would kill for a Russian icon, however historic, however storied, however culturally important, however connected to an unacknowledged side of his family, not even if the frame were studded with uncut diamonds the value of Cameroon’s national debt. He had all the money in the world, enough, apparently, even to buy his way out of a well-earned prison sentence with hardly any time served.

  So he was after something else.

  What?

  It had to be the truth of his parentage. He could buy his way out of everything but that. And it might be the only thing left to him that he was willing to risk everything for.

  Kate found it difficult to credit as a motive for murder, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

  Someone knocked at the door. Kate, dressed only in Jim’s shirt, scurried upstairs while Jim, dressed only in sweatpants, went to the door. He yanked it open and said, “What?”

  Bernie was standing there with a big square wooden box in his hands. “Uh, Kate left this on the bar last night. Thought she’d want it.”

  “Thanks.” Jim shut the door in Bernie’s face. He was a guy. He’d understand. “It was just Bernie,” he said, raising his voice. “He dropped off something for you.”

  “What?”

  “A box. He said you left it on the bar.” He heard a snowgo start and drive off. Good old Bernie.

  It took her a moment. “It’s the compass off the Freya. Old Sam left it to me.”

  “Oh yeah?” He sat down on the couch and unlatched the lid. “Wow. Nice.” He touched a finger to the brass. It felt like gold to the touch, and it shone like it, too. “He took pretty good care of it.”

  She came pattering down the stairs, dressed to his sorrow in jeans and a sweatshirt, although, more promisingly, her feet were still bare. “He told me once he got it from some old antiques dealer he knew in Seattle.”

  “It looks pretty old, all right.”

  “He said it dated back to the American Civil War.” She collected their mugs and plates and took them into the kitchen, returning with more coffee to see him fiddling with the bottom of the box. “What are you doing?”

  “Doesn’t the workmanship remind you of my dad’s writing box?” He slipped his fingers down between the compass and the box. “I showed you, remember? There’s a secret drawer,” he said, “it looks just like—”

  A drawer popped out of the bottom of the compass box.

  Kate’s mouth dropped open.

  “There’s something inside,” Jim said, and drew forth a package wrapped in a length of dusty black velvet tied with ordinary string.

  Kate accepted it with hands that trembled. The string slipped free easily. She folded back the velvet.

  Three wooden framed portraits of pressed metal, the same woman in all three portraits, the three frames hinged together.

  The frames were studded with cabochon stones in inexpertly made bezels. Some of them were missing. Tarnish hid most of the gilt.

  Kate slid from the couch and leaned forward to place the triptych gently on the floor, the sides bent in slightly so it would stand upright.

  “The Lady of Kodiak,” Jim said, awed in spite of himself.

  “The Sainted Mary,” Kate said. “Oh, Jim.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you see?” Her voice broke and he looked up to see tears sliding down her cheeks. “He must have stolen it. Old Sam must have stolen her from Erland’s house. He must have been the one who broke in the night Emil died.”

  Jaded law enforcement professional that he was, Jim still wanted to reject it. “Kate, no, I—”

  She shook her head, her eyes closing. “He must have. He must have been the one who robbed the Bannister house.”

  She took a long, shaky breath.

  “And if he stole the Sainted Mary, he must have killed Emil, too.”

  1959

  Anchorage

  Erland listened to the footsteps pound down the stairs and fade into the street without moving, watching his father’s face.

  He heard his mother cry out upstairs. “Emil! Emil? What was that noise?”

  He heard the door of his sister’s room open.

  He invested as much power and authority in his voice as he could. “The two of you stay up there and lock your doors! There’s an intruder in the house!”

  Emil’s breathing was labored and harsh in the stillness of the study. The blood flooded down the side of his head, soaking his white shirt collar, turning the shoulder of his suit jacket a darker blue.

  Erland picked up a straight chair and threw it across the room. It hit one of the display cases, shattering glass and wood. “Stop that! Get out of our house!”

  His father’s eyes fluttered open and fixed on Erland’s face. His lips parted.

  Erland hooked an arm around a tabletop full of ivory carvings and sent them crashing to the floor. “Mom! Call the police!”

  His father was trying to say something, his chest heaving.

  Erland smiled down at him, and walked around his father’s heavy wooden desk. “Mom!” he shouted. “Call the cops!”

  He put his hands beneath the edge of the desk, planted his feet, and with a mighty heave turned over the heavy mahogany desk.

  The front edge landed diagonally across his father’s chest. The sharp snapping of ribs was clearly audible. Erland watched, as the life faded from his father’s eyes.

  He reached for something, anything, and flung it across the room. Whatever it was made a very satisfying crash. “Mom! He’s getting away! Call the cops!”

  He went to one of the intact display cases, and with deliberate force smashed his head through the top of the glass.

  He staggered back, sick and dizzy, something warm flooding into his eyes. “Mom! Vicky!”

  He ran across the room to the door and down the hallway with exaggeratedly heavy steps. “He’s getting away!” he shouted through the door his half brother had left open behind him. Lights were coming on up and down the street.

  There was a distant sound of sirens. He sagged against the door frame, and smiled drunkenly into the dark night.

  He’d recognized Sam, even with his hood up, even from the back. It had been like watching himself run away.

  In the few moments he had before the cops got there, he gave thought to whether he should say so. He decided he would not. Even with his own eyewitness testimony, even with his family’s standing in the state, there was always the possibility that Sam could prove his innocence, and then the cops would have to look for another suspect. No, far better that Sam Dementieff disappear into the night, that his father’s murder be the result of a simple burglary gone terribly wrong.

  He went back into the study and sank to his knees next to his father’s body, taking his father’s hand between both of his own. He heard the footsteps behind him. “Erland? Emil! Oh my God!”

  “Oh, Mom, Mom … I think he’s dead.” His shoulders heaved with sobs.

  His sister, Victoria, stopped dead in the doorway, her hands clapping over her mouth to hold back a scream at the sight of her father’s body beneath the desk. Her mother pushed past her and ran to her son, crouching next to him. “Are you hurt? Erland, tell me! Are you hurt?”

  Before she pulled his head to her breast, he caught a glimpse of the expression on his sister’s face, the tinge of suspicion in her eyes that underlay the undeniable horror there, and he had to work to repress a satisfied smile.

  Erland Bannister was a born killer long before he met Kate Shugak.

  Acknowledgments

  I read some of these books for the first time

  during my childhood odyssey through the

  shelves of Susan
Bloch English’s Seldovia Public Library.

  This novel owes a lot to them

  but even more to her.

  Hector Chevigny’s Lord of Alaska

  Pierre Berton’s Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush

  Judge James Wickersham’s Old Yukon: Tales, Trails, and Trials

  Murray Morgan’s Confederate Raider in the North Pacific

  Brian Garfield’s The Thousand-Mile War

  Ernest Gruening’s Many Battles

  Joe Rychetnik’s Bush Cop

  Victor Fischer’s Alaska’s Constitutional Convention

  Jean Potter’s The Flying North

  Naske and Slotnick’s Alaska: A History of the 49th State

  Keith and Proenneke’s One Man’s Wilderness

  Jim Rearden’s Castner’s Cutthroats

  and pretty much anything ever published by

  the Alaska Geographic Society.

  Other constant resources are

  the Anchorage Daily News online edition,

  rural Alaskan newspapers like

  the Homer News and the Dutch Harbor Fisherman

  (especially the police blotters)

  and more recently, AlaskaDispatch.com.

  The story of Saint Juvenaly comes from several sources,

  including the Outreach Alaska page

  of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska Web site.

  And once again, Don Ryan,

  aka Der Plotmeister, comes through.

  Thanks.

  ALSO BY DANA STABENOW

  THE KATE SHUGAK SERIES

  A Night Too Dark

  Whisper to the Blood

  A Deeper Sleep

  A Taint in the Blood

  A Grave Denied

  A Fine and Bitter Snow

  The Singing of the Dead

  Midnight Come Again

  Hunter’s Moon

  Killing Grounds

  Breakup

  Blood Will Tell

  Play with Fire

  A Cold-Blooded Business

  Dead in the Water

  A Fatal Thaw

  A Cold Day for Murder

  THE LIAM CAMPBELL SERIES

  Better to Rest

  Nothing Gold Can Stay

  So Sure of Death