Less Than a Treason (Kate Shugak Book 21)

by Dana Stabenow

  The handful of slips diminished as Bobby read through them one at a time, some with editorial commentary, some not. It was mostly ads for used skiffs and kickers and trucks and fishing gear, PSAs for the annual Christmas craft sale at the school and a bake sale at the Riverfront Café benefitting the school choir’s trip to the state championship, a cri de coeur for a lost cat—“Probably an eagle snack by now”—and the occasional bit of advice to the lovelorn—“Harry, for crissake, wouldja please just put Cathy out of her misery and ask her out for a drink at the Roadhouse? Or take her out to the dump to watch the bears, it doesn’t have to be fancy. Jesus. Okay, that’s it for Rat Out today. Next up, the soundtrack to the Broadway musical Hamilton. Music on the air, lyrics on our website and Facebook page, don’t come crying to me if you so white you can’t hiphop, children.” He flipped a switch, and pulled off his headset. “What?” he said to Dinah, who was still beaming.

  She pointed over his shoulder and Bobby swiveled around.

  Kate enjoyed the second and a half that he was speechless.

  “Where the FUCK have you been! And what the FUCK have you been up to!”

  She might have had to blink away a tear at the welcome sound of that outraged bellow. “Well, first I tore down a cabin. And then I built a new one. That pretty much filled in the days.”

  He was up out of his chair and on his—feet?—and had her caught up in a hug that had her fearful of a return visit to Luke Grosdidier. He dumped her back down, grabbed her shoulders and gave her a shake that would have taken the head off any lesser being, and grabbed her up again. “Jesus Christ, Shugak,” he said into her hair. “We were starting to think you were dead.”

  “I got that,” she said, swallowing hard.

  He pulled back for a comprehensive examination, head to toe and back. “Damn, Shugak. You look like a fucking Valkyrie. Only brunette. And, you know, short.”

  “Thanks,” she said, wheezing a little. “Where’s your chair?”

  “New prostheses,” he said, pulling up his pants legs to show off his bionic ankles. “I never could work up a callous on the old ones. I read about these new ones online and went to Anchorage and they fitted me up. Check this out.” He snatched Kate into his arms for a third time and cut an impromptu waltz to “Alexander Hamilton.” He wasn’t quite on the beat but then it wasn’t a song written for waltzing.

  He let her go, grinning. “How about that?”

  “Impressive,” Kate said.

  “He heard about the father-daughter dance they have every year at the school,” Dinah said.

  “Isn’t that only for high schoolers?”

  “He says he needs the practice.” Since Katya was only in first grade, Bobby was definitely getting a head start. Dinah stepped forward to take her turn at rib-cracking, and then stood back to give Kate her own once-over. “He’s right, you do look about as healthy as I’ve ever seen you. Vitamins?”

  Kate shrugged. “Tote that barge, lift that bale.”

  “Your hair looks like hell, though.”

  Kate ran a self-conscious hand over her head. “I just hacked at it whenever it got in my way.”

  “Looks like it.” Dinah had Kate on a stool with a dishtowel around her shoulders and the scissors out almost before she finished speaking. While she worked she and Bobby filled her in on the latest Park gossip. All Kate could say in response to the info dump was, “Howie and Willard are television stars? Really?”

  “Really,” Bobby said, deadpan. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I can fire up the promo for the first episode online if you want to see.”

  She held up a hand. “God, no. I’m begging you, don’t do that to me.”

  “Yeah, well, wait till you hear about The Great Squirrel Harvest.”

  “I’m not asking.”

  “Did I tell you about Ace and Deuce? Couple of Outside bruisers looking for Martin?”

  “My cousin Martin?” she said, surprised but not shocked. “What’s he done now?”

  “These two look fresh out of Spring Creek, so my guess is nothing good.”

  Kate sighed. “Great.”

  “Don’t worry, they haven’t found him yet,” Bobby said, “or they wouldn’t still be here.”

  It was noticeable during the the entirety of this visit how Kate was very careful never to look in the direction of the woodbox, where the thighbone of a brontosaurus could have been reliably found every other time she had walked into this house. Bobby and Dinah exchanged glances and followed her lead. There were some wounds that never healed.

  “So you’re back, right?”

  “It seems so, yes.”

  She didn’t sound overjoyed but he forbore to comment. “What made that happen?”

  She told them about the orienteers, and the body. “Huh,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “I seem to recall they lost one the last time they were out this way. Five years or so ago?”

  “Four. Evidently they run a route through Canyon Hot Springs every four years. Or that’s what one of them told me, and yeah, I figure this skeleton is probably what’s left of him. Nobody else up that neck of the woods who has gone missing.” Their eyes met. “That we know of.” She changed the subject. “What have I missed?”

  He said, gently for Bobby, “You know about Auntie Edna.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Now and then George would include a note with supplies. Was there a potlatch?”

  He shook his head. “They’re holding off on that.”

  She didn’t ask why. “What else?”

  “Well,” he said, considering. “Suulutaq failed its EIS and there’s a Crab Mafia in the Bering now.”

  “There’s a Crab Mafia?”

  When Dinah was done and the dish towel whisked away Kate raked her hands through the cap of hair that now felt less like steel wool and more like thick silk. “What else?”

  She saw Bobby look at Dinah. “What?”

  “Have you seen Jim yet?”

  “No.”

  “You know he—”

  “Yeah,” Kate said.

  “And?”

  She was spared the necessity of answering by a knock on the door.

  “It’s open!” Bobby bellowed without taking his eyes from Kate’s face.

  The door opened and a hesitant voice said, “Is this Park Air?”

  It was the Barbie doll from Auntie Vi’s. She saw Kate and said, “Oh.”

  “Hi,” Kate said, trying to remember her name.

  “Sylvia McDonald,” the Barbie doll said. “The guy I hitched a ride with told me this was where I could find the radio station. I know it’s late, but—”

  Bobby waved an expansive hand. “Come on in, Sylvia, it’s a night for late visits.”

  McDonald stared at him, her brow creased. “I—do I know you?”

  Bobby smirked. “Points for being so color blind you don’t recognize the only black guy in the Park.”

  Her blush was immediate and vivid. “I’m sorry. At the Roadhouse, right? You and—”

  “Bernie,” Bobby said, his delight at having to remind her of Bernie’s name manifest. Kate could tell he would be informing entire Park of it on the next Rat Out.

  “You both helped me ask everyone if they had seen my husband.”

  “Yes. And you’re here because—?”

  “This is the radio station, right?” She looked at Kate. “She’s the one who told me you had a radio station here in the Park.”

  “This is Park Air, yes.”

  Sylvia McDonald swallowed. “Could you maybe put out an announcement? A description of him, and ask anyone who has seen him to call in? I’ve been asking around town all day but I know a lot of people live outside it, and everybody says everyone in the Park listens to Park Air.”

  “I could do that,” Bobby said. “Or you could hire someone to look for him.”

  McDonald’s expression brightened a little. “Do you do that?”

  “No,” he said, and nodded at Kate. “But she does.”

 
· · ·

  Kate pulled into Auntie Vi’s driveway and killed the engine of the four-wheeler. She and McDonald got off and went inside.

  Auntie Vi was waiting. “You,” she said to McDonald, “go to your room.”

  “Auntie Vi—”

  “You shut up.”

  Kate shut up, and McDonald scuttled down the hallway. When they heard the door to her room close behind her, Kate said, “Auntie—”

  Auntie Vi shook her finger in Kate’s face. “Finally you come back! Four months you are gone! Four! Things are happening while you are gone!”

  Auntie Vi marched—there was no other word—into the kitchen and began banging pots and pans around with a vengeance, accompanied by a harangue on the new trooper—“A child! An infant! Half here, half in Ahtna! Half in Tok!”—the loss of the school superintendent—“A lead teacher! What is that!”—and the capping of the Permanent Fund annual dividend—“Veto! I veto him next election time!”

  A door opened, followed by halting footsteps, and Juna appeared looking sleep-rumpled. “What the hell?”

  “If you value your life,” Kate said in her best Delenn imitation, “be somewhere else.”

  Give her credit, Juna stood the torrent of Auntie Vi invective for at least fifteen full seconds before reeling back down the hallway.

  Kate remained at a stool at the counter with head bent, saying “Yes” and “No” and “Certainly” when such comments might be safely inserted into the maelstrom. Eventually the smell of baking chocolate chip cookies perfumed the air, and when the first sheet was yanked from the oven and slammed down on the counter in front of her she ate three without pause, partly in response to the minatory look in Auntie Vi’s eye but also because she’d missed dinner and lunch had been an energy bar. Also, they were very good, with double chips and four ounces of grated milk chocolate added to the recipe. Toll House was hiding its head in shame.

  Eating didn’t stop her from listening, though. Auntie Vi’s language seemed to have deteriorated. The aunties, like many of their generation, had been educated in BIA schools out of state and by BIA teachers in state, and when they wanted to they could deploy subject and predicate with the best of them. Now articles and adjectives and proper word order had devolved into fragments which if they couldn’t be parsed still did not fail of effect. Kate wondered how much of this was due to Auntie Edna’s death. She wondered, too, if Auntie Joy and Auntie Balasha were similarly affected.

  The second sheet of cookies went into the oven with a little less verve than the first had. “Now what?” Auntie Vi said, shaking off her Wonder Woman oven mitts and fisting her hands on her hips. She fixed Kate with a beady eye and waited.

  A bit of cookie went down the wrong pipe and Kate choked and her eyes watered. “What do you mean, auntie?”

  “What next with you?” A contemptuous sniff. “You hide out—”

  “Somebody shot me, auntie. I was recovering.”

  “—all summer into winter—”

  “It was only four months.”

  “—and now you prance back into the Park—”

  “I never left the Park, auntie,” Kate said, her voice rising in spite of herself. “And I never prance.”

  They glared at each other. Someone cleared their throat and they both whipped around to see Sylvia McDonald shrinking beneath the combined fury of their gaze. Words withered on her tongue. Auntie Vi backhanded the plate of cookies in her direction. “You eat.”

  “Well, really, I just wanted to talk to—”

  “You eat!”

  McDonald swiped up a handful of cookies, said to Kate, “I really need to talk to you,” and scurried off in practically the same breath. The kitchen timer dinged and Auntie Vi pulled the second sheet out of the oven. She paused, holding it with her back to Kate, staring at the row of hooks on the wall above the stove that held measuring spoons, cups and pot holders in a bright, colorful disarray. “Edna dead.”

  “I know, auntie. I’m sorry.”

  Auntie Vi blinked her eyes rapidly. “You go talk to that woman. Help her find husband.”

  “Auntie—”

  “You go!”

  Kate went.

  A soft knock and McDonald opened her door. She had the overhead light on because Auntie Vi saw no need to put reading lamps next to the beds. The glaring light of the energy-saver bulb leached all the color out of Sylvia’s face. She waved Kate into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. “Was it true, what that man said? That I could hire you to find my husband?”

  Kate hesitated. Whatever Bobby or Auntie Vi said, she wasn’t sure she was ready to jump back into work. She wasn’t entirely sure she would ever be ready. Contrary to what some people thought, it turned out that bullets didn’t bounce off her chest after all.

  “Please,” Sylvia said, shoulders slumping. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. “I have to find him.”

  Against her will Kate said, “I’ll agree to listen to what you have to say. No guarantees, though.” Not wanting to see the look of hope in Sylvia’s eyes Kate looked around for a chair and found an ancient wooden kitchen chair being used for a luggage rack. She moved the open overnight case to the floor. An express mail envelope, opened but not empty, slipped from the case and fell to the floor. “Oh, sorry,” she said, and bent to pick it up.

  “No problem,” McDonald said, there before her to snatch up the envelope and tuck it into the gray canvas messenger bag on the bed, zipping it closed with a firm gesture. She sat down, shoving the bag behind her. “My husband is a geologist. He worked at the Suulutaq Mine. He calls home or texts every day and I haven’t heard from him since last Saturday morning.”

  Kate counted back. “The twenty-eighth.”

  “Yes. He called and said—”

  Kate listened to the story and asked the usual questions, and at the end got to her feet. “Look, Ms. McDonald—”

  “Sylvia, please.”

  “Sylvia, people disappear in Alaska all the time. Most of them are runaways who left voluntarily and who come home again on their own.” She waited for Sylvia to meet her eyes. “Unless you have some reason to believe that his disappearance is something else…”

  Sylvia said nothing but continued with the cow eyes.

  Kate tried again. “I can ask around, but I can promise you the word from the Roadhouse is already spreading, and when Bobby put the word out on Park Air it made it all the way to Tok, Ahtna, and Cordova. You’ve already got a couple of thousand people looking for him.”

  “Yes, but you’re a professional.”

  Well, she had been. As recently as four months ago. And see how well that had turned out. “Are you sure the two of you didn’t have an argument? A little spat?” She smiled. “I’ve never been married myself but I know it happens.”

  Sylvia’s eyes fell, and she picked at a piece of lint on her pants leg. “No. Nothing like that. He just stopped texting and calling.” She raised her head and gave Kate a pleading look. “Please. He’s all I have.”

  The worst thing about a missing persons case was interacting with the family of the person missing. They wanted answers. All too often there were none. Kate had told Sylvia the truth, most missing persons in Alaska were like missing persons everywhere, teenage runaways who returned home on their own sooner rather than later. But for those who weren’t, for those who had gone missing on a hike or a hunt or whose boat had never returned to port or whose plane had vanished minutes after takeoff, their families were left hanging, hoping their loved one was alive but, if they had lived any amount of time in Alaska, knowing they probably weren’t. Kate thought about the scattered bones Juna had found, bones that would probably have lain there undisturbed for a lot longer if she hadn’t stumbled across them. Bones too old to be Ferguson’s. She wondered who they belonged to, and if the family of their owner was still living in hope of seeing him or her alive again.

  She hid a sigh. “I’ll give it two days, no more.”

  “Oh, thank you, I—�
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  “And I’ll need a retainer, full pay for both days as an advance against expenses.”

  Back in the hallway, she paused with her hand on the doorknob. Was that a ding she heard from inside the room? The sound of an incoming text, perhaps? She put her ear close to the door, listening.

  “What you do about that man?”

  Kate turned to see Auntie Vi glowering at her. She reswallowed her heart and said mildly, “What man, auntie?”

  “Your man!” Auntie Vi poked Kate in the chest hard enough to hurt.

  “Oh. That man.” Kate avoided another poke. “What am I supposed to do about him, auntie?”

  “He quit!”

  “I heard.”

  “Make him take it back!”

  Kate contemplated the existence of an imaginary world in which she could make Jim Chopin do anything at all, ever, and kept her mouth shut.

  With another poke for emphasis, Auntie Vi stormed back down the hallway. Shortly there was the clash of a pot on the stove. Probably she going to cook up some jam from berries picked and frozen this fall. This one with the correct amount of spices.

  Kate trudged off to bed. In the past thirty-six hours she’d had more interaction with humankind than she had had in the past four months combined, and it had been a long and wearisome journey down from the mountains.

  And in the morning she had to get up and do some detecting. Joy.

  Six

  Thursday, November 3rd

  Kate’s homestead

  Earlier that same day Jim Chopin was running the broad blade of a rented Caterpillar grader down his brand new airstrip one last time.

  He’d googled the topic of airstrip construction before he began. Guys with usernames like cubslut and avionista and bigstick had plenty of advice on picking a site with a two percent grade so you could land short going uphill and take off shorter going down. He didn’t have a slope to work with, two percent grade or otherwise, just a flat piece of land that was mostly granite with a scraping of topsoil and a lot of scrub spruce falling on top of each other, corpses left in the wake of the tricentennial spruce bark beetle infestation. He did find a how-to on the state of Texas’ website that had helped some, but in the end Wikipedia had more and better information.