Less Than a Treason (Kate Shugak Book 21)

by Dana Stabenow

  He heard the door shut behind him and stepped back a little, the better to let Kate have the stage. The better to watch the show.

  Kate looked at Jane.

  “Ah no, Kate, I think Jane should stay. Just in case I head out to that big stock exchange in the sky while you’re in the room. You’ll need a witness other than the ex-trooper there to say you didn’t do it.” He smiled, and his teeth were even more yellow than his skin, but no sharper than the bones in his face.

  “Fine, so long as Jane continues to remain mute.”

  Jane did.

  “Fine,” Kate said. “We got your guys.” She jerked her chin at his chest. “I’m guessing you heard, since you suffered your, ah, episode right after Milton Spilotro was allowed to make his phone call.”

  He coughed up a wad of phlegm Jane caught in a Kleenex that was woefully inadequate to the task. “Thank you, Ms. Morgan. I’m sorry, what two guys were you taking about, Ms. Shugak?”

  There were many different methods of interrogation that could lead to a successful outcome. With Erland Bannister, it was always best to encourage him to believe that you knew more than you did. Kate found a chair and brought it to Erland’s bedside. She unzipped her jacket and draped it over the back of the chair, taking care to see that it hung evenly. She sat down and crossed her legs, linking her hands together over her knee. She smiled at Erland, a little pityingly. “I didn’t say there were two of them, Erland, but okay. Carmine DiFronzo and Milton Spilotro, late of the Outfit in Chicago. Along with their compatriot, Dante Accardo, the gentleman recently holding up your wall over there. All three of whom I assume are on loan to you by your partners.”

  “The Outfit? What a quaint name.”

  “It’s the Mob for Chicago, as you know very well. But let that go for the moment. When did Fergus McDonald get in contact with you?”

  “I’m sorry. Fergus…McDonald, did you say?”

  “On one of his little spelunking adventures he went into the Kanuyaq Mine.” She waved him off when he would have said something. “Don’t bother, they found him, too, early this morning at the bottom of a mine shaft. The troopers just called with the news.”

  “What an unhappy accident. I grieve for his family. Still, there are all those signs forbidding entry.” He tutted. “They’re put up for everyone’s safety. He should have taken them more seriously.”

  “I’m sure he would have, if he hadn’t been shot before he fell.”

  “He’d been shot?” Erland sounded properly shocked.

  His death’s head grin reminded Kate of something or someone, she couldn’t put her finger on it. “He found something, didn’t he?” she said. “Gold, wasn’t it?”

  “But how interesting.”

  “Maybe enough gold there to make up for all the money you lost investing in the Suulutaq Mine when its EIS went south. Fergus McDonald contacted you sometime in the past year, we don’t know quite when but don’t worry, when we get the subpoenas for your phone records I’m sure we can narrow that down to specific dates. He convinced you the gold was there and that it was commercial and god knows he had a good record with that sort of thing. So you investigated, and discovered that McDonald had found gold in a defunct copper mine that by some miracle had managed to be grandfathered in as private property as the Park was formed around it. You’d have a much better chance of starting—or restarting—a mining concern on private land than you would on state or federal land, so you started buying up all of the Kanuyaq Mine shares, using shell companies to hide your interest. However did you convince the owners to sell, I wonder? Did you try and convince them you wanted to build a backwoods resort of some kind? Demetri Totemoff might have had something to say about that.”

  “Demetri Totemoff,” he said meditatively. “Oh, of course, the proprietor of that nice little lodge east of Kuskulana.”

  “The very same. Still, none of the owners lived in Alaska and they wouldn’t care who you put out of business.” She saw a spark of triumph in Erland’s eyes and said gently, “Well. None of the owners, except perhaps one.”

  His death’s head grin faded a little. Dammit, who was it he reminded her of?

  “But a year and change later, Fergus McDonald hadn’t heard back from you and started getting impatient, so he went back into the mine and pulled some more samples. He took those samples to an independent assayer, who confirmed his finding. I’m guessing he called you with the results, and you realized that he was going to go public with his discovery. That was not something you wanted at all, not until you’d nailed down all the shares.

  “Specifically, there were a hundred shares you still needed. It was only ten percent of the original thousand but I’m told even ten percent can make some noise if necessary in a shareholder fight. So you traced the heir and you got the Outfit to loan you some talent and you sent them looking for him.” She paused. “I’m kind of surprised you had to outsource for talent, Erland. Have all the locals sworn off you? Or are all of them already in prison after working for you before?”

  Erland spread his hands and looked at Jane Morgan. “I don’t know what she’s going on about, Ms. Morgan, do you?” He didn’t bother to wait for an answer. “I will admit to seeing a business opportunity. The current, or should I say previous shareholders of the Kanuyaq Mine were quite happy with the price I offered.”

  “I”m sure they were. I’ve heard you called a lot of things, Erland, but cheap was never one of them.”

  He bowed his head, accepting the compliment. The Joker, maybe?

  “Your problem was that as soon as Martin heard your goons were looking for him he thought it was about something else, so he vanished, which meant they had to hang around long enough to become memorable in the Park.”

  “None of this has anything to do with me,” Erland said. “Certainly nothing you can prove.” He made a contemptuous gesture. “The testimony of hired thugs with criminal records? Nonsense.”

  “Nonsense, indeed,” Kate said, nodding her agreement. “Or it would have been until Fergus McDonald went missing. They were splitting their time between the mine and the Roadhouse. Did he stumble across them on one of his field trips? Perhaps he went in to get more samples?”

  Erland didn’t answer. Kate looked across at Jane, who remained mute and impassive and at the ready with Kleenex.

  “And then Sylvia. Your guys were in the Roadhouse when she walked in looking for Fergus. That would have frightened them, so of course they followed her.” Kate’s voice hardened. “The troopers found hair and blood on the passenger side rear view mirror of your guys’ truck. What do you want to bet they match Sylvia’s?”

  “They may or may not, Ms. Shugak, but it really has nothing to do with me.”

  “Martin told us they wanted him to sign some paper. I’m as amazed to report as you are to hear it that he refused. Were they supposed to kill him after they got his signature?”

  “I expect none of this will be easy to prove, or even possible.” His eyes glittered. “And none of it will stop the re-opening the Kanuyaq Mine.”

  “We found Sylvia’s phone inside the cabin they were holding Martin Shugak in, Erland, along with the Kanuyaq Mine prospectus she’d picked up at the post office the day she arrived in Niniltna. There was a text from her husband asking her to meet him at the Kanuyaq the next morning. Funny thing, you’d think her phone would have her husband’s contact info, but this message didn’t. I wonder whose phone number that message came from?”

  His cadaverous grin seemed permanently fixed on his face, and she clicked her fingers. “I’ve got it. You look just like one of The Gentlemen.”

  For the first time since she’d walked into the room Erland looked a little disconcerted. “What?”

  “Never mind. You’re probably not a Buffy fan.”

  For one precious moment, Erland Bannister looked truly kerflummoxed.

  Kate got to her feet and retrieved her jacket, shrugging into it. “The Park Service might have something to say about reopenin
g the Kanuyaq Mine, by the way.”

  Erland revived at this. “Oh, I imagine they will, quite a lot, in fact, but it will do nothing to stop Bannister, Inc.” His smile widened. “You should be pleased, Kate. You were going to lose all those lovely jobs when they shut the Suulutaq down. Now with the new administration, your Park could have two mines in operation and twice as many jobs.” He laughed at her expression. That laugh, too, turned into a choking fit that, sadly, did not carry him off then and there. Jane was at the ready to wipe away the gobbet of phlegm.

  Kate took her time zipping up her jacket. She looked up and gave the death’s head in the bed a faint smile. “Have I mentioned how glad I am that you’re dying, Erland?” She turned.

  “Wait! Wait, Kate, I haven’t told you the best part!”

  He’d switched back to her first name. This was going to sting.

  “Your uncle! Old Sam!”

  She froze, one hand on the door.

  “Even a dying serpent can wound with a last bite, Kate,” Jim said. “Let’s just go.”

  “He killed my father! Did you know that! Yes, he broke into our house and stole from us and my father caught him and Old Sam killed him and ran! Your uncle, that old man you loved so much, a murderer!”

  “Kate—”

  She turned and walked back to the bed and stared down at the viperous old man. He was coughing again and the monitor was beeping rapidly, the only sound in the heavy silence that had fallen in the room. Jim saw Kate’s hand drop down to her side. Her hand held flat for a moment and then curled into a fist, as if into a thick mane of gray fur.

  Erland stared up at her, triumphant.

  Jim went around her and stood over the bed. “You lie,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You killed him,” Jim said. “You were there, and it’s what you do.” His eyes narrowed. “Your father caught Old Sam breaking into the glass case holding the icon. Am I right? Of course I am. And Old Sam panicked and knocked him down getting away. And then you, in a hurry to take over your father’s business like you’re always in a hurry to take over everything, you seized the opportunity and went in and shoved that big heavy desk over on your father.” When Erland’s expression changed Jim said, “Yeah, I’ve seen the crime scene photos. And I’d bet you waited until he died before you called for help, didn’t you, you murderous old fuck?”

  The old man stared back at Jim, mouth open but no words coming out. Maybe he heard death knocking at his door, maybe he was just unaccustomed to being interrupted in mid-rant.

  “Old Sam wasn’t a killer,” Jim said softly. “But you are. Aren’t you, Erland?”

  The withered lips twisted from a triumphant grin into a snarl, but he didn’t deny it. Because part of Erland was proud of it, proud of killing and getting away with it for all these years.

  Jim stepped back. “You’re just a common or garden variety killer, Erland. I’ve seen dozens like you over the years. You’re all the same. You see something you want, you take it. Someone gets in your way, you move them out of it by whatever means necessary. Because no one exists on this earth but you.”

  Kate looked up at Jim with an expression like she’d seen god. “Once a cop,” she said. She turned back to Erland. “I’d like to believe hell exists, Erland, so I could be confident that’s where you’re headed. I don’t, so that’s out.” She smiled again, and this time the old man shrank into his pillow. “But I’ll take you being gone from my plane of existence. Any day now, isn’t that right? What a shame.”

  He spat at her. Literally, a gob of phlegm landing on his blanket too near her hand. She didn’t jerk away, just kept looking at him with that expression of amused contempt. “Why didn’t you just kill me?” he said, panting. “Why don’t you now?”

  “Because I’m better than you are, Erland.” Her smile was crooked and self-mocking. “Haven’t you heard? I’m a fucking hero.”

  “I’m not a hero,” Jim said with a smile that could have been called friendly if it had contained less teeth. “Old Sam was a friend of mine. He died after hunting a moose and cooking it up at a big party that lasted all of one beautiful day on the river he called home, surrounded by family and friends who loved him, all of whom knew better than to believe any of the crap you’re trying to peddle here.” Jim shook his head. “I’m no hero, Erland, but I’m not killing you, either, because I’d rather your death be long and painful.” He looked at Jane. “Surrounded by people you have to pay to endure your company.”

  This time Kate did leave, Jim hard on her heels.

  · · ·

  Kate’s phone rang as they were about to climb into the Cessna. It was Brillo. “Hey. That body you found. It’s not that McDonald guy.”

  “I know. You should have his body somewhere in the morgue by now.”

  “Oh. Him. Yeah, he’s on his way. Well. The body you found, we finally got the dental records from that missing orienteer and it’s not him, either.”

  “Okay. Now that we know all the people it isn’t, do we know who it is?”

  “It’s not even a man.”

  “It’s a woman?”

  “Yeah. We did a DNA. Given the size of the fragments and the wear and tear on ’em it was our last option. It was a woman. We think maybe somewhere her forties but it’s pretty inconclusive, and I promise you, no one here is going to okay any further expenses on identifying them. Especially since no one seems to be looking for whoever it was.”

  Kate paused with one foot on the strut. “Can you tell how long they’ve been out there?”

  ‘You asked me that before.” Brillo sighed. “Between five and ten years. No more or less than that. I don’t think. Any ideas?”

  Kate let her mind sift through Park rats past and present. “Maybe,” she said slowly. “Maybe I do.”

  “Well, good, ’cause I’m out.”

  Sixteen

  Thanksgiving

  the Park, Squaw Candy Creek

  Bobby had started a new show called “Bullet Points” that began with what sounded like a real-time, you-are-there recording of the shootout at the OK Corral, only with semi-automatics, and featuring as on-air guests those Park rats willing to say out loud what everyone else was thinking. As befitted the “You’re all entitled to my opinion” ethic of Bush Alaska, many of them were. “Either the American experiment works or it doesn’t,” Ruthe Baumann said on Park Air that afternoon. “We’ve had bad presidents before and the nation has survived them.”

  “Two of the worst in our own lifetime,” Bobby said.

  “And I would point out that no law says the American empire lasts forever. Maybe our two hundred years are up, and maybe that might not be such a bad thing. Maybe it’s time for us to set the bar about as low as it can go so the rest of the world stops looking to us for every single blessed thing, and for us to stop believing we can do every single blessed thing else.”

  Bobby, whose legs had been sacrificed in Vietnam on the altar of American exceptionalism, nodded. “Stop us thinking our shit don’t stink the way everyone else’s shit does.”

  Ruthe nodded back. “And then maybe the rest of the world can start taking care of its own damn self instead of running to us for all the answers and all the troops and all the money, and maybe we can finally start spending some of it on ourselves. What I hate…”

  “What? What do you hate, Ruthe? Tell me. I wanna hate it, too.”

  She laughed, a rich, mellow sound. “What I hate is that the Boomers have built nothing. We have built nothing. Where’s our Panama Canal? Where’s our Golden Gate Bridge? Where’s our interstate highway system? Instead of building something that might last beyond our lifetime, we’ve wasted all our treasure and too much of our blood in one war after another, none of which have accomplished anything of benefit for the nation.” She shrugged. “Any nation that doesn’t first ask the question ‘What’s in it for us?’ is doomed to decline.”

  “You’re not an altruist, then?”

  “Sure, I am
. I just want to know what’s in it for me.”

  Bobby’s laugh rattled the rafters.

  Ruthe chuckled. “But before your phone lines melt down—”

  Bobby grinned back. “Park Air doesn’t have phone lines, Ruthe.”

  She winked. “One of the many reasons it’s my favorite pirate radio station, Bobby.”

  “Explain to me again how it is you’re still single, Ruthe.”

  “I’m standing right here, Bobby,” Dinah said from the kitchen.

  “Harvey Meganack’s on his way over here right now with a Molotov cocktail, isn’t he?” Kate said in Jim’s ear.

  He choked over his beer but he couldn’t deny it.

  Thanksgiving dinner was a lavish affair, fourteen Park rats crowded around a table loaded with every good thing to eat. There was Auntie Vi’s lumpia, Ruthe’s fried salmon bellies, Auntie Joy’s fry bread, Auntie Balasha’s lowbush cranberry sauce, Bobby’s smashed potatoes (which Kate suspected contained more butter and cream than they did potato), Kate’s sourdough rolls, Dinah’s turkey and stuffing and Anne Flanagan’s to-die-for deep-dish pumpkin pie.

  “Please don’t make us sit here and drool while everyone says what they’re thankful for,” Johnny said. “Please, Dinah?”

  She laughed and gave in.

  Jim’s phone rang as they were all slowly succumbing to tryptophan inertia. “Jesus, John, it’s a holiday.”

  “You hear Nick Luther’s leaving the troopers to join APD?”

  “No, I hadn’t. Not surprising, though. His service area tripled over the past year and you gave him a twelve-year old to help out.”

  “Which is why we need all the experienced officers we can get. When are you going to knock off this little hissy fit of yours and come back to work?”

  “I don’t think that’s happening, John.”

  “Well what the fuck are you going to do instead?”