Less Than a Treason (Kate Shugak Book 21)

by Dana Stabenow

  “Oh. Okay.” Juna subsided back in the chair. “But maybe you’d better call the troopers first.”

  “The troopers? Why?”

  “Well, I—they’ll want to see it. Won’t they?”

  “See what?”

  Juna blinked up at her. “The body.”

  There was a long silence. “What body?”

  “When I fell.” Juna flinched a little from the expression on Kate’s face. “I fell on it. The bones, anyway.”

  “Probably an old moose or bear carcass.”

  “I wish.” Juna let her head drop to the chair back. “There’s a skull. Part of one.” She looked up and saw Kate glaring at her. “What? I didn’t put it there.”

  Kate closed her eyes. “Fuck my life,” she said, and went to get the sat phone.

  Five

  Thursday, November 3rd

  Canyon Hot Springs, Niniltna

  Kate closed up the cabin. It didn’t take long since she didn’t lock the door and all she really had to do was bag the bedding against any voles that wriggled their way inside and shutter the windows against storms. She filled up the toilet paper holder and the lime can in the outhouse and they were pretty much good to go.

  The morning had been spent first finding and then recovering the body, or rather, the bones. Unfortunately, Juna had been quite correct, it was a human skull, although only a partial one. She had appropriated Juna’s phone—her own phone had died shortly after her arrival in the canyon—and taken pictures before, during and after collection, not that she thought any of them were going to help. She had even hiked to the top of the ridge from which Juna and presumably the deceased had fallen and took photos from there as well.

  The bones consisted of a partial skull, what might have been an ulna, possibly a femur, what could have been a bit of pelvis although it could just as easily have been the vertebrae of a humpback whale after the bears got done chewing on it, and a pile of small bones that could have come from either the hands or feet, or could just as easily have been the bones of a parka squirrel. Everything bore bite marks and there wasn’t a scrap of cartilage left to tie any of the bones together. The putative arm and leg bones had been cracked for their marrow and sucked dry. The pelvic bone looked like someone had used it to sharpen a knife, or in this case possibly a set of canines. Kate was no expert but she didn’t have to be to realize that identifying the deceased was going to require a DNA analysis, and she wasn’t any too sure there was enough left of the deceased to do even that much.

  She packed the bones away in a stuff bag and returned to the springs a little after noon, to be greeted with relief by Juna. “I thought you’d gotten lost.”

  “I’m not an orienteer,” Kate said.

  The implied insult flew right over the other woman’s head. “Are we going back now?”

  Kate squinted at the narrow band of sky that was all the canyon allowed. It was clear so far as she could see, and the air was still. “No reason I can see why not.”

  She hitched the trailer to the four-wheeler and put the bag of bones, half a dozen bottles of water, a box of energy bars and a ten-gallon can holding the last of her gas inside, along with an emergency kit, a sleeping bag and a one-man tent.

  She took a last walk around the cabin, making sure everything was snugged up and the door on the latch but not locked. She stood on the deck for a full minute, listening.

  “What are we waiting for?” Juna said impatiently. “Be better to get me back to town before everyone shows up here looking.”

  That was true enough. Kate stepped off the porch and climbed on the four-wheeler in front of Juna. “Fasten your seatbelt,” she said. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

  She wasn’t lying, Juna was pleased to tell her with some asperity at the end of the long trip down out of the Quilaks. Winters when it actually snowed, you waited until the pack settled some and then skimmed over the top of it on your ATV or your snowmobile. Years like these, when fall lingered on into spring, it was a matter of bushwhacking your way through the undergrowth, which if it had lost its leaves was still thick and in many places impenetrable. It took the rest of the daylight to get halfway to Niniltna. They camped overnight, sharing the close quarters of Kate’s tent, all the closer because Juna snored.

  They rose with the sun—mercifully, the high was holding—and packed up. By noon they had disgorged themselves from the claustrophobic brush to emerge on the road to the Step a couple of miles down from Park Headquarters. Kate debated for a moment whether they should check in with Ranger Dan first, but there was that body. In the end she headed for Niniltna, where she dropped Juna off at the Grosdidiers’ clinic before making for the trooper post.

  She walked in the door and a complete stranger looked up at her from behind the front desk. “May I help you?”

  “Where’s Maggie?”

  “Maggie retired.”

  From the weary way this was said, Kate got the feeling it wasn’t the first time the question had been asked. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Estelle Kefauver, the new dispatcher,” the other woman said. She was in her late thirties, early forties, with a solidity that came from muscle, not fat, dark hair cut in a bob and dark eyes steady and assessing. Kate got a general impression of Eyak, with maybe a little Tlingit and some Scandahoovian thrown in. Not a Park rat per se, but close. “You from Cordova?”

  Kefauver looked surprised. “Yes. Have we met?”

  “No. I’m Kate Shugak.”

  The straight, thick eyebrows went up a little. “I heard you were dead.”

  Kate almost laughed. “I am a sort of walking miracle, I guess.”

  Kefauver shifted in her chair, looking a little uneasy. Evidently not a Plath fan but who was, really. “You’d be looking for Jim Chopin, then.”

  “No. I am looking for the trooper, though.”

  “He got called out.”

  “Where?”

  Kefauver gave her a cool look, and then relented, evidently because the story was too good not to share. “Chick Noyukpuk liberated one of the Suulutaq’s front end loaders and busted into the liquor store, made off with what Cindy says was most of the Budweiser, and is currently leading the trooper on a low speed chase up the road to Ahtna.”

  “Aw hell,” Kate said. “Chick’s drinking again?”

  “Looks like.”

  “Okay,” Kate said. “I’ll just leave this with you then.” She dumped the stuff bag down in front of the dispatcher.

  “What the hell! Hey! Hey, Shugak!”

  She stuck her head back inside. “Yes?”

  “What the fuck is this?” Kefauver was holding the skull remnant in accusing if appalled fashion.

  “Well, I’m no expert but that looks like what’s left of a human skull after the bears were finished with it.”

  “Where did you find it?

  “I didn’t find it. An orienteer did.”

  “What’s an orienteer?”

  “Good question. This one’s named Juna and right now she’s at the clinic, having Luke Grosdidier look at her arm, which she hurt when she fell off a ridge when she was, um, orienteering around the Quilaks. She landed on the bits and pieces of John Doe there. Luckily she wasn’t hurt so badly that she couldn’t manage to stagger back to my cabin at Canyon Hot Springs.”

  “You should have left it where it was so we could view them in situ.”

  “In this case in situ is the ass end of nowhere and John there has been dead for a while. The matter didn’t seem urgent. Besides, it’s November, even if it doesn’t feel like it. I wouldn’t go back up there myself this time of year, not unless I meant to stay until spring.” Kate held up Juna’s phone. “I took a bunch of photographs of the scene before, during and after I collected the bones. Give me an address, I’ll email them to you.”

  Kefauver rattled one off. Kate opened a mail app, attached the photos and hit send. A minute later they appeared on Kefauver’s desktop. She scrolled through them. “Was there anything bes
ides bones? Any clothes fragments, personal belongings?”

  “I’m guessing the clothing is in bits and pieces in various nests and dens over a hundred-mile radius. I saw no personal belongings, no wallet, no watch, no jewelry.”

  Kefauver blew out a breath. “Well, hell.”

  “Yeah, if it was easy everybody’d be doing it.” Kate turned.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  “To give Juna a ride to Auntie Vi’s B&B, and then find a bed there myself and fall into it.”

  “How can we contact you?”

  “Ask around.”

  · · ·

  Outside, she stood on the steps for a moment. A beautiful night, clear and cold, the Milky Way a smear of confectioner’s sugar, the moon an ethereal, almost translucent crescent. A door opened, a truck started and drove off, a dog barked and was answered by another and then a third. She waited, not quite holding her breath, but she didn’t hear anything else.

  More noise altogether than she’d heard in four months. The sounds of human habitation grated on newly formed nerves. Not much, but a little, enough that she was forced to acknowledge it. She climbed on the four-wheeler and drove down the hill and turned left through the village, turning into the driveway of the last house on the right. It sat on the river, a dock protruding over the water, a thirty-foot drifter tied up to the dock. The house was two stories, four bedrooms and bathrooms up and the common rooms down. One of those rooms had been converted to a health care clinic when the Grosdidier brothers had taken an EMT course offered by the Niniltna Native Association and never recovered. It diverted energy that had been heretofore expended at the Roadhouse, and the feeling among Park rats was that at least the Grosdidiers were now treating injuries instead of causing them.

  She walked in and halted just inside the door. Matt, Mark and Pete had returned while she was gone, and brought Laurel Meganack, Matt’s girlfriend and the owner of Niniltna’s only restaurant with them. “Hey,” Kate said.

  They all stared at her, bug-eyed except for Luke. “See,” he said, “I told you.” He was sitting on a stool next to a treatment table, fitting a fuzzy white sock over the ace bandage he’d wound around Juna’s ankle, which didn’t look all that swollen to Kate and had gotten Juna from her fall to the hot springs just fine. “There. Keep off that as much as you can—we’ve got a pair of crutches that should be a good fit—and you’ll be fine in a couple of weeks.” He gave her his best smile, which always looked good on a Grosdidier, and Juna wouldn’t have been female if she didn’t color just a little bit. “I’d recommend at least a little recovery time in the Park. Where are you staying?”

  “I see you’re still hitting on the patients, Luke,” Kate said.

  Luke turned that smile her way, unrepentant. “I takes my chances where I finds them, Shugak.”

  “Uh-huh. Come on, Juna, I’ll give you a ride to Auntie Vi’s.”

  Luke snatched the crutches from a closet and helped slash stalked Juna out the door and assisted her tenderly to a seat on the ATV. “Auntie Vi’s, huh? I’ll stop by tomorrow to check on you.”

  “I’ll be flying out on the first plane tomorrow,” Juna said, and made play with her lashes. “Are you ever in Anchorage?”

  Kate turned the key, and stopped when Luke put his hand out. “Don’t mind them,” he said, jerking his head toward the house. “The thing is, Kate, we were all starting to think you were dead.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “Thanks, Luke.”

  She dropped Juna at Auntie Vi’s, who wasn’t there, for which Kate sent up a silent but fervent thank you to whomever might be listening. Another woman was curled up in a wing chair in the living room, staring into the fire in the fireplace with a lost look on her face. She was a living, breathing Barbie doll, blond hair, blue eyes and a body by Mattel. “The last time I saw Mrs. Shugak she was quilting at the Roadhouse with her sisters,” she told them. “That was last night.”

  “Thanks,” Kate said, and went to the board, where keys to all the rooms but one hung. She selected one and handed it to Juna. “I’ll get the word out on Park Air that you’re all right and where you are. You said you figured on flying out of here tomorrow?”

  Juna nodded. “As soon as I can get on a flight. Have to get back to work.”

  “The airstrip is up the hill from here, just turn right out the door and keep walking. George should have a least one flight into town.”

  “Thanks.” Juna made a face. “Sucks that I don’t even know who won the race.”

  Sucks that we don’t even know whose body you fell on, too, Kate thought.

  “What’s Park Air?” the Barbie doll said.

  “Local pirate radio station.”

  “Can they hear it in Anchorage?” Juna said.

  “They can hear it on the International Space Station.”

  · · ·

  As luck would have it, Park Air was up and running and Bobby was broadcasting over it in full voice when Kate walked in the door.

  The A-frame had undergone some changes over the summer and fall. The door in back that had once led into the yard now opened into an extension. The king-sized bed that used to take up a full corner had vanished, so it was a good bet that Katya had reached the age of needing her own space. Or, more probably, her parents had reached the point of needing privacy from their inquisitive five-year-old. So the extension was mostly likely two new bedrooms. But the kitchen had new counters made of dramatically black composite with a wide, deep farmer sink that Kate envied on sight, and the cupboards finally had doors on them, and nice ones, too, some kind of distressed wood that invited the touch. Dinah, a slender blond some twenty years Bobby’s junior—chronologically, anyway—was drying dishes and putting them away. She turned when she heard the door open. When she saw Kate her face lit up in a beaming smile.

  The console remained the same, a circular construction surrounding a central pillar up which snaked many cables that vanished into the roof and were connected to the 212-foot tower out back. Bobby was the NOAA reporter for the Park, or that was his day job. At the moment he sat hunched over a microphone, the very best in Bose headsets clamped over his ears. “Okay, everyone, time to take a brief commercial break. Larkin Poe, Brad Paisley and the cast of Hamilton coming up, so stay tuned. Oh yeah, and I got a copy of the Hamilton libretto and I put it up on the website, ParkAir.rad, and linked it to our Facebook page, so pull it up if you want to sing along with Lin-Manuel. Probably the closest you’ll ever come to seeing it.

  “The Game of Thrones discussion group meets at the Roadhouse this Saturday beginning at eight p.m., although Bernie sez that he’s rationing the mead after what happened last month. You dudes take your Cersei seriously, that’s for sure. And, Peter, by now everyone knows you read all the books and that you think the books are way better than the TV series, so put a plug in that shit, man. Saturday, eight p.m., Roadhouse, be there. At least winter is coming somewhere.” Bobby sat up straight and squared his shoulders. Mighty fine shoulders, Kate couldn’t help but notice. Again. “And for those of you morons still thinking Ramsay’s death was appropriate, all I can say is you got your heads so far up your—”

  A bamboo trivet sailed through the air and ricocheted off the hanging mike.

  Bobby cleared his throat. “Sorry, folks, slight technical difficulty there. All I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted is, Ramsay was scum. Sansa shoulda took a little longer over him, payback for all that bad shit he pulled. Like maybe letting only one dog into his cell at a time, and when that dog was full, let the next one in for his share. Stretch that justice out, what I’m talking about.” Bobby paused. “And maybe spread-eagle the fucker on the floor. ’Cause as we all know animals go for the soft parts first.

  “Okay, enough of that, on to the Rat Out.” He consulted a handful of slips of paper. “First up, Herbie Topkok needs someone to fill in at the shop while he and Alicia do their snowbird thing in Sun City. No big jobs, just flats, tire rotation, oil changes, like that, plus
you make appointments for the big stuff or refer them to a garage in Ahtna, Herbie’ll tell you which one. Plus you can use the shop to work on any of your own vehicles. As in inside, where its warm. The light bill comes out of your earnings, the rest is yours to pocket. Job runs December to April. Drop by the shop anytime between now and December first to show Herbie you can tell one end of a socket wrench from the other and you’re hired.”

  Bobby had the kind of deep, resonant voice born for on air work. In another life he would have been a CNN host, his very timbre lending verisimilitude to whatever he was saying. It gave every woman listening the shivers, while every man listening wanted to be his new best friend. He shifted and his chair creaked. Kate took a second look and realized it was a real chair, not a wheelchair. She raised her eyebrows at Dinah, who mouthed “Later.” She was still beaming all over her face, and Kate felt an answering smile spread across her own. There were some people she had missed during her sojourn in the mountains. Not many, but some.

  “Next up, from Gabby Shugak to Eugene the Suulutaq pipefitter who followed me home for a month and left behind eight hundred dollars in roaming charges on my phone, I’ll expect check or cash in the next twenty-four hours or I’ll post every one of those pictures we took to my Facebook page and tag your mom. And she’ll do it, too, Eugene, so I’d scare that money up pronto. Besides, dick move, man, really. Although, Gabby, if you’re in those pictures, you can put them right up on Park Air’s Facebook page. Really, anyone can post there who—ouch!”

  This as a purple plastic ladle connected with the side of his head.

  “Moving on,” Bobby said, obviously suppressing a laugh, “for the fifth year in a row Harvey Meganack is putting his drifter up for sale. Price hasn’t changed from last year so no hurry, it’ll probably go up for sale again this time next year, too, same price.”