Less Than a Treason (Kate Shugak Book 21)

by Dana Stabenow

  He grinned and put his mouth close to her ear. She shivered at the feel of his breath on her skin and he took just a second to enjoy the knowledge that it wasn’t from the cold. “I’ll go around to the side of their house and get ready to charge whoever comes out first.”

  “And I’ll take the next one from the other corner.”

  “And if they have guns?”

  She smiled and it was a cold smile for a cold day. “Let them.”

  He shook his head. He didn’t know quite what she was up to and it was very probably the most foolish thing he’d ever done but he was going to trust her if it killed him, maybe literally. But what the hell, nobody lived forever. He took the scenic route to his spot, keeping it low and slow, until he got to the corner of the house to the left of the door. As Kate had said, the pickup was snuggled up against the house, as close to the rear wall as the large rear view mirrors would allow, and very nicely hidden from anyone who had no reason to look for it.

  “I’m so fucking bored, Milt,” one of the voices said from what felt like exactly the other side of the house wall. “Aren’t you fucking bored? I’m so fucking bored.”

  “Shut up and deal, Carmine.”

  Jim looked around the corner to see Kate peering back at him, grinning. When she saw him in place she nodded and ducked back down out of sight. A few minutes later he heard a crackle, another and then he watched Kate scuttle around to the opposite corner. He didn’t like it that he couldn’t see her. Too much like the last four months.

  They waited. The voices in the house had stopped and for a few moments Jim was afraid they’d been heard. Then someone said, “Come on, Milt. We’re outta booze for crissake. Let’s drive out to the Roadhouse. We’ll can leave him here, he’s not going anywhere?”

  Who wasn’t going anywhere?

  The second voice sounded weary in reply, as if he’d had to say the same thing many times before. “We’ll leave when we get the go ahead, Carmine. They still haven’t told us what to do with this guy.”

  Jim looked over at the fire and saw a flame shoot up and in the next moment the entire pile was engulfed in flame. The scrap wood had been sitting there for a long time, deemed too rotten for salvage by foraging Park rats, and so far the season had been a dry one so it had caught fast.

  Then he was startled by a loud long zingy sort of extended whine, like a tea kettle on the steam. There was a loud Crack! and something smacked into the bough of the spruce Jim was standing under. It shook itself and deposited a load of frost crystals down his neck. He jumped and tried not to swear.

  “What the hell’s that?” the second voice said from inside the house.

  “Jesus, is someone shooting at us? Milt, someone’s shooting at us!”

  That was Jim’s question exactly as another whine and zing and Crack! something hit the side of the house. He stood there, stunned, unable to process what was happening. Zing! Crack! Thud!

  He knew that sound. He’d heard it up close and personal not four months before. It was gunfire. What the hell? Was someone shooting at them? Zing! Crack! and another tree rustled behind him. He ducked back.

  And then he realized. Whoever last had lived in that derelict house must have left some live ammunition behind, and it must have been buried beneath the wall when it rotted enough to collapse. And now the fire was setting it off.

  Pop! Crack! and something thudded into the house.

  “Milt! Somebody’s shooting at us! Do something!” There was a stumbling rumble from inside the house.

  “Carmine, stay where you are!”

  Jim peeked around the corner and found Kate peeking back and dropped instantly out of stealth mode. “Get back! Kate, Jesus, what’s wrong with you!”

  She laughed. She actually fucking laughed. He stared at her, dumbfounded. “‘Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it!’”

  Zing! Pop! Zing! Pop! Crack! They both ducked back around their respective corners. At least Jim did and he hoped like hell Kate had, too.

  “Holy shit! Holy fuck, Milt! Did you hear that! There’s a bunch of them! Get your gun, get your gun, get your gun!”

  So, maybe only one of them armed. Better to be lucky than good. He had a fleeting memory of what Agent Mason had said about the two men. Maybe Spilotro wouldn’t let DiFronzo have a gun.

  “Carmine, don’t go out there, you might get hit! Goddamn it, Carmine! Oh you stupid goddamn bastard—”

  Footsteps shook the building, which was over a hundred years old and really not up to the test of large, frightened men in a hurry. The door was yanked open and came all the way off its hinges and Zing! Crack! Thud! went another bullet into the siding.

  “Fuck!” A big man fell through the doorway, one knee landing on the cinder block with a crunch loud enough to make Jim wince in sympathy.

  “Fuck, ow, fuck, ow, fuck, Milt, I’m hurt, somebody shot me in the knee, I’m hurt, I’m hurt, I’m hurt!”

  He was clutching his knee with his back to Jim so Jim tossed the plan of attack and barreled out around the corner and tackled the guy low. The door, evidently taking its time deciding to fall inside or outside, fell outside and on top of them, knocking them apart. Jim shrugged it off his shoulders and went after Carmine as he tried to scramble away.

  They went right past Kate, who peeped around the corner of the building. Still no Milt. She didn’t think he’d be rousted by a woman’s voice. What to do, what to do. She whirled and ran to the fire—Pop! went another exploding round, a .22 she thought, something small anyway—grabbed a piece of burning wood and ran back to the house and threw it through the now permanently open doorway.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” A very large bald man with full sleeve tattoos and more up his neck to his hairline leaped from the doorway, landed solidly past the cinder block, both legs bent. He pointed a handgun at Kate in the television-approved shooter’s stance. A Glock, maybe, she wasn’t ept with handguns but an automatic for sure.

  His mouth dropped open. “A woman! A fucking woman! Are you fucking kidding me!”

  And then a streak of gray fur shot out of the undergrowth and teeth closed over his wrist and powerful jaws clamped down and didn’t let go. All that was left for him to do was drop his weapon and scream and scream and scream. He tried to pull his hand free and the teeth wouldn’t let go, would only crunch down harder and the head it belonged to shook, tossing him around as if he weighed no more than a pillow. He screamed again.

  Kate took a quick step forward to kick the handgun out of reach, and became aware of someone else screaming or trying to, someone whose voice was muffled, someone from inside the house.

  She ran to the door and looked through the flame that was beginning to catch the floor on fire and saw her cousin, Martin Shugak, wrists and ankles duct-taped together, snot and tears streaming down his face, muffled grunts coming from behind the duct tape over his mouth. Wide terrified eyes met hers and she forgot everything else and went in after him.

  · · ·

  “You can’t go back there.”

  “You got anyone locked up?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then yes we can.” Kate muscled Mullet Guy, aka Carmine DiFronzo, past an indignant Estelle Kefauver and down the hallway that led to the cells. All four stood open. She pushed him into the first one and locked him inside.

  “Where’s Milt?” DiFronzo took a shuddering breath and mustered up enough bravado to repeat his question. “What did you do to Milt? I wanna see Milt!”

  Back in the front office she said, “Where’s Cochran?”

  Kefauver made a vain attempt at a bristle but it failed in the heat of Kate’s glare. “There was an incident at Ahtna High and the police chief asked for help. Trooper Cochran decided he was needed there more than he was here.”

  Of course. Not to mention which Ahtna had a Starbucks and Niniltna didn’t. “And Sergeant Luther?”

  “Still in Anchorage.”

  When she saw Kefauver trying not to cower Kate att
empted a smile. “Call him. Tell him I’ve made a citizen’s arrest of two men I believe may be suspects in the death of Sylvia McDonald. One is in your cells and the other is injured and being detained at the clinic where he is being treated.”

  “Detained? At the clinic?”

  “Yes. Matt Grosdidier happened to have a pair of handcuffs. I don’t think anyone wants to know why.” Kate heard an ATV pull up outside and nodded at the phone. “You should probably call Sergeant Luther now.”

  · · ·

  “Here. Blow your nose.” Kate handed DiFronzo a wad of Kleenex. She hated it when suspects sniveled.

  There were many different methods of interrogation that could lead to a successful outcome. Kate had a knack for hitting on exactly the right one to extract maximum information with minimum effort. She motioned to Jim to stay out of sight but within earshot and he obeyed because he’d seen her work before. He did get out his phone and activate the recording app.

  Carmine DiFronzo looked exactly like his mug shot. No one should ever look exactly like their mug shot (or their driver’s license photo, either, but that was a topic for another time). Brown, brown, five-eight, five-nine. He’d looked as if he’d done weights at some point but he had long since gone to fat, although he’d refused to acknowledge this by buying his clothes one size too small. His shirt was patterned in white and gold stripes and his pants were…leather? Yup. Leather. One knee had swollen to the point that the leather around it looked like it might split and the pants were already tight to begin with. His eyes were red and his hair was cut in a mullet that devolved into mutton chops which themselves deteriorated into a permanent five o’clock shadow. Part of the mullet stood up in back like a rooster tail. It might have been cute on Alfalfa but not on a thirty-year old man. His sleeves were rolled back to display crude tattoos, with more showing through the open collar of his shirt and on his neck. He looked unkempt and he smelled of wood smoke, tobacco smoke, marijuana smoke, sweat, and urine.

  Altogether an unlovely picture, although Kate knew him at once for a man who believed himself to be utterly irresistible to women. She almost took that tack and pulled back from it at the last moment, some instinct calling on her to instead channel her inner Emaa. She crossed her arms and frowned down at him. “Well. What do you have to say for yourself, young man?”

  He blew his nose again with a sound like a foghorn. “Where’s Milt?”

  “He’s getting his arm sewn back on.”

  He peered up at her, still snuffling into the Kleenex. “Where’d that wolf come from, man?”

  “My name,” Kate said frostily, “is not ‘man.’ You may call me ma’am.” His spine automatically straightened at her tone, and she had to hide a grin.

  “You guys got wolves around here!”

  “I believe that has been adequately established, Carmine.”

  “You’re not sposed to have fucking wolves! Nobody’s sposed to have fucking wolves! Wolves all sposed to be dead!”

  “Nevertheless, we do have them here, alive, and, yes, one of them has bitten your…friend.”

  “Is he gonna be okay?” This came out suspiciously like a whine.

  “We can only hope,” Kate said with a straight face. “Now then. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want you to answer them as completely and as truthfully as you can.” She held up an admonitory finger, every inch the schoolmarm. “I must warn you, Carmine, that your… associate, Milton, is being questioned by my friend even as we speak.” She leaned down and stared into his eyes. “We shall be comparing notes afterward, Carmine, and if your answers differ in any way from Milton’s, I’m prepared to be very severe with you.”

  His face crumpled. “There’s not sposed to be wolves anymore except like in Disney, man.”

  Kate held up a finger.

  Carmine gulped. “Ma’am.”

  · · ·

  An hour later she returned to the front office. “Did you get hold of Nick?”

  Kefauver nodded. “He’s on his way back.”

  “Good. Tell him he’s going to need to send a search party up to the mine.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “He’ll have to take this yahoo along to show them where, but Fergus McDonald’s body is up there.” She looked at Jim. “Did you take notes?”

  “Better.” He held up his phone. “I recorded it.”

  She smiled at him and it was all he could do not to wag a non-existent tail.

  “Can you send it to her?” Kefauver gave him her email address and he did so. “Great. Let’s go home.”

  She stopped, her hand on the door. “Oh, and tell Nick that there will be a charge of kidnapping along with all the rest.”

  “Kidnapping? Who?”

  “My cousin Martin. Tell Nick he’s at Auntie Vi’s and ready to be deposed any time Nick feels so inclined.”

  Fifteen

  Wednesday, November 9th

  Anchorage

  They flew into Anchorage the next morning at first light and took a cab to the townhouse to pick up the Subaru. They parked in front of the cabin on Lois and Jim said, “Man, it’s like something out of a Robert Service poem.”

  They knocked at the door. The eye and nose appeared at the window. “It’s Kate Shugak, Mr. Lippy. I really need to talk to you again.”

  The door opened. “Kate Shugak.” His eyes traveled past her to give Jim a comprehensive once-over. “Cop.”

  “Ex,” Jim said.

  “Huh.” Lippy looked back at Kate. “I told you I’d said everything I was going to the last time you were here.”

  “Yes, sir, you did, and I heard you.”

  “Well?”

  “Fergus McDonald is dead, sir.”

  Commodore Lippy stood in silence for a moment, and then stepped back and beckoned them inside. “Who killed him?”

  “They have two men in custody in Niniltna.”

  Lippy grunted. “Glad they caught ’em. Now, what is it you want from me, Kate Shugak?”

  Kate clasped her hands behind her back, feeling very much as if she were at attention before a senior officer. Old farts could do that to you. “Fergus McDonald is dead. So is his wife. They had no children and so far as I can discover no living relatives. There is no confidentiality at stake here any longer, so can you tell me everything you didn’t tell me when I was here on Saturday?”

  A smile ghosted across his face. “Wait here.” He disappeared into the back and reappeared with Fergus McDonald’s ore samples cradled in his palm. He looked at them with an almost fond expression. “Thirty percent copper and related trace minerals such as malachite and azurite. Seventy percent gold.”

  “When did he bring it in?”

  “September twenty-eighth.”

  Kate ran a swift calculation. “That would have been his first day back in town after the two-week shift prior to the one he disappeared during. Go on.”

  “I called him when I was done with the assay. He was pretty excited so he might have said more than he ought. He said he’d come across an old abandoned mine. He wasn’t specific but I knew he was working up at the Suulutaq and I know, none better, just how many holes been dug in those mountains, as I dug a few of them myself. I figured he was telling the truth.”

  “And?”

  “And he said he’d found a tunnel that started out man-made but then turned into a natural crack in the rock. He said it was a pretty tight squeeze but he followed it back and found—” He held up the samples.

  “Did he say what he was going to do next?”

  “Well, he wasn’t going to let it just sit there, that’s for sure, and I didn’t blame him. I mean, have you seen the price of gold lately? Gold always rises when people are scared. And copper, it may have taken a dive during the recession like everything else, but it’s coming back gangbusters now. He said he was going to try to trace the original owners of the mine. See if they’d cut him in on shares when came time to get it out, in exchange for showing them the paystreak he found.”

  Somet
hing in the quality of their silence made him look up from the samples. “What?”

  “It’s what got him killed,” Kate said. “It’s what got them all killed.”

  Her phone rang as they got into the car. It was Nick.

  · · ·

  Even in a hospital Erland Bannister had his own suite, which contained himself, a suit, Jane Morgan, and a fourth man they both recognized from the mug shot on Jim’s phone. “Ah,” Jim said, in the best Special Agent Mason fashion, “Dante Accardo, I believe.”

  Accardo was a big man, dressed in jeans and a Chicago Bulls windbreaker, standing against the back wall with his arms folded. Kate mentally outfitted him with a balaclava. “Hi, there,” she said with a friendly wave. “We’ve met. At the McDonalds’ house? I bet we just missed each other at Magnus Campbell’s, too.”

  Not a muscle moved in his face. A non-sniveler. Good.

  “You have no right to intrude on Mr. Bannister’s privacy this way. I must ask you to leave—”

  Kate looked past the suit to meet Erland’s eyes. “Why don’t we ask Erland who he wants to stay and who he wants to go?”

  Erland lay on a hospital bed with the head raised, an oxygen cannula beneath his nose. Wires snaked from a monitor to beneath his patterned silk robe. He had aged even in the days since Kate had seen him last, his skin leeched to a pale yellow and sunken into the spaces between his bones. His eyes burned with life still, though, and he fixed them on Kate’s face with what she could only describe as hunger. Of course, with only a suit and Jane Morgan and Mob muscle to wait on him he was probably happy to see anybody.

  His voice was anything but frail. “Let us have the room, Harrison, if you please. And Mr. Accardo, if you would.”

  And that voice still commanded immediate obedience because the suit made a little bow and effaced himself at once, followed by the muscle, who nodded at Kate on the way out the door. Almost a salute, Jim thought. He caught Accardo’s eyes as he walked past. Nothing was said out loud but much was understood.