The white-framed sash-weight windows opened into a yard planted with pale pink Sitka roses and midnight blue delphiniums onto a street that appeared to be bustling with traffic—pickup, four-wheeler, and foot. Through a doorway, he could see a living room with a rock fireplace and an enormous flat-screen TV where an ordinary mantel would have been, and a brown leather couch that looked long enough for even Jim to stretch out on, flanked by a love seat and two recliners.
It was a comfortable home by anyone’s standards, whether you were in Kuskulana, Anchorage, or Des Moines. The difference between Kuskulana and Kushtaka could not have been made more manifest. The fact that Roger had stayed for coffee and cake instead of rushing immediately down to pull his skiff out of the river told its own tale.
Roger polished off the last piece of cake and got up to refill everyone’s mugs. He brought them back to the table and sat down. “Other than trying to drown you, how are the Kushtakers holding up?”
Jim thought of Dale Mack’s glowering presence. “Angry, mostly.”
Roger nodded. “Understandable. I don’t think they’ve got thirty people left in Kushtaka. Losing even one has got to be hard.”
Remembering the general attitude in response to his questions, Jim didn’t think “hard” was exactly the right word. Or “loss,” for that matter. “Did you know him?” he said. “Tyler?”
Roger looked at Carol “There aren’t many people in Kuskulana who can say they know many in Kushtaka,” he said.
His answer felt deliberately evasive to Jim. “You seemed to know Pat.”
“To wave to, sure.” Roger shrugged. “We don’t socialize.”
“I thought when the state closed the Kushtaka school after their enrollment dropped below nine students that their kids came to yours.”
The couple looked uncomfortable. “Some of them did,” Roger said. “The ones whose parents didn’t decide to homeschool them so they could keep ’em on their side of the river, well away from our pernicious influence.”
Carol put a hand over his, and Roger looked a little embarrassed. “Sorry. I think one or two got sent to the boarding school in Ahtna, too.”
“Was Tyler one of the ones who attended Kuskulana?”
Roger nodded. “I think so. Ryan would know.”
Interesting, Jim thought, considering Ryan’s misdirected answers to Jim’s questions that morning. “Is he here?”
“No, he’s not. Him and a bunch of his buddies are camping their way downriver to Alaganik, on the off chance there will ever be another opener.” He looked momentarily envious.
Jim remembered those anonymous cardboard cartons and felt a little envious himself. Being a teenager didn’t totally bite, not in the Park. “Anyone else here you can think of who might have known Tyler?”
He was aware that something had changed in the way both of the Christiansons were looking at him. “You’re asking an awful lot of questions about a boy who tripped and fell into a fish wheel,” Carol said.
“Yeah,” Roger said, “what’s going on here, Jim?”
Jim gave a mental sigh. He had already aired his suspicions to Dale Mack, which meant everyone in Kushtaka knew by now. “Until the medical examiner says different, Tyler might have been murdered.”
The ticking of the kitchen clock was very loud in the silence that fell. Outside, an ATV roared down the road, followed in more stately fashion by a pickup truck. A bird twittered. A fly buzzed.
A glance exchanged between host and hostess acknowledged that the silence had gone on too long. Roger raised his mug, took a long, deliberate pull, and set it down, centering it precisely on the table in front of him. “What makes you say that?”
“Somebody took a comprehensive whack at the back of his head. Also, as you saw yourself, he was seriously stuck into that basket. I have a hard time believing anyone could just fall into a fish wheel basket, first, and second, get so stuck, he couldn’t get out again. Seems more likely he was put there, unconscious, and left to drown.”
“That’s awful, Jim,” Carol said. “That’s—that’s just awful.”
She rose abruptly and left the room, returning shortly with his shirt and socks. “Do you have any idea who might have done it?”
He understood and even appreciated the strategic change of subject. “So far?” he said, shrugging into his shirt. “Not a clue.” He sat down to pull on his socks. They were wonderfully warm from the dryer. “Who’s the chief here?”
“Good question,” Roger said, looking at Carol.
“I suppose I am,” Carol said, pulling a wry mouth. “I’m not elected, but if we’re counting old blood, I’ve probably got more of it than anyone else in town. We never applied for status individually. As a federally recognized tribe,” she added when she saw Jim’s blank look. “We’re all Niniltna Native Association shareholders in Kuskulana.”
Jim hadn’t known that, but then he tried to keep his distance from Native politics in the Park. He was white and he was a cop, which made two strikes against him already, and some people would say sleeping with Kate Shugak made three. “How’d that happen?” he said, his voice carefully incurious.
“After ANCSA, everyone in town with Native blood took a vote and signed up with the NNA,” Carol said. “Why?”
Jim stood up and reached for the damp jacket hanging over a chair. “Because,” he said, “if the autopsy shows that Tyler was murdered, I’ll be back here, and in Kushtaka, as many times as I have to be to find out who did it.” He pulled his ball cap on tight. “I’d like to think that I had the support of the local authorities.”
Carol stood up and extended her hand. “I’ll do my best to see that you do.”
She had to say that, of course. Nevertheless, he shook her hand, then Roger’s. “I appreciate it. Thanks for the coffee and cake. You saved my life.”
He left without further comment, and was aware as he walked down the street that they both watched him from the doorway until he turned the corner to the airstrip.
* * *
He preflighted the Cessna with obsessive intensity, going so far as to get the laminated preflight checklist out of the cabin and going down the items one by one. Fuel tanks, filler caps, windshield, ignition and master switches, leading and trailing edges of both wings, flaps, ailerons, rudder, vent openings, tires, brakes, fuel sumps, cabin air intakes, he went right down the list like he was still wearing his checkride shirt. Whoever had pulled the drain plug on the skiff had had plenty of time to get to the Kuskulana airstrip while Jim was bushwhacking his way upriver.
A little yellow and white Piper Tri-Pacer was on approach and he watched it touch down at the end of the gravel strip and taxi to the side. A couple of ATVs with plastic bins bungeed to the back took off on the trail that led from the airstrip on a direct heading for the Suulutaq Mine. He only hoped that he would not be called upon to find out what was in those bins in any official capacity.
“Sergeant Chopin?”
He turned to see a plump woman of medium height and graying blond hair. Her blue eyes were narrowed against the sun. “Reverend Flanagan?”
She smiled. “Please, it’s Anne.”
They shook hands. “Been a while.”
“When we built Kate’s house.” She cocked her head. “Which I understand you’re a lot more familiar with nowadays.”
He felt an unaccustomed flush creep up the back of his neck. “Yeah, well.”
She smiled. “Relax. I didn’t come over to harangue you about living in sin.”
“What are you doing here?” he said, relieved.
“I’m the Park’s new flying pastor.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Congratulations. Or commiserations. When did you get your license?”
“Last year.”
He smiled.
She smiled.
He said, “Good job to build your hours.”
She said, “Lots of weather and different terrain.”
“Some interesting airstrips.” He grinned. “And you�
�re doing good work as well.”
Her turn to flush, and then she laughed. “True enough.” She seemed to become aware of his damp state and gave him a quizzical once-over. “What did you fall into?”
“The river,” he said. “Don’t ask.”
“Okay,” she said. “I ran into Kate in Niniltna yesterday.”
“You’ve seen her more recently than I have,” Jim said, and for the life of him wasn’t able to keep himself from sounding disgruntled.
The Right Reverend Anne Flanagan looked as if she might be struggling to hold back another laugh, but mercifully decided to refrain. “What brings you here?” she said instead.
Jim pulled off his ball cap and examined the seal of the Alaska State Troopers on the crown. “Tyler Mack. He tripped and fell into the village’s fish wheel and drowned.”
The lines of her face settled into what Jim could only think of as ministerial lines. “Yes. I was in Double Eagle. Dale Mack came upriver and asked me to officiate at Tyler’s memorial service.”
“His body’s still in Anchorage.”
“I know. When will it be returned?”
“I don’t know. The backlog at the medical examiner’s is pretty long, but I have a feeling they’ll bump this to the top of their list.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Why?”
He looked up to meet her eyes. “Because it may be that Tyler didn’t trip.”
A pause. “Do you mean he was murdered?”
“I don’t know yet. I won’t know for sure until the ME’s report comes in, and maybe not even then. He had suffered a blow to the back of his head very recently. He was in the water long enough so that the wound was washed clean, but the blow was hard enough to break the skin of his scalp. If he were leaning over the holding pen, pulling fish out, it would have been easy enough for someone to come up behind him with a rock, a chunk of wood, a rifle butt.”
“I truly hope that is not the case,” she said gravely. “Not only for Tyler Mack, but his family and his community as well.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m afraid I have to go.”
“Anne,” he said as she turned to leave. “The Kushtakers have closed ranks. They’re telling me nothing. I’d be grateful if you passed on anything you heard.”
Her mouth tightened. “I’m their spiritual adviser, Sergeant, not your spy.”
He felt the color run up his neck again, but this time he was angry. “A man is dead. A kid, really, the ink barely dry on his high school diploma. Forgive me if my first concern is not the spiritual well-being of a group of people who may include the person who murdered him.”
She frowned at him, frowned at the ground, frowned at his Cessna, frowned at her Piper, and frowned at some random Kuskulaner when he rode his ATV out onto the apron. He quailed beneath that forbidding look and turned his ATV around and went back the way he came a little faster than he had arrived.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll keep my ears open.” She looked up. “I’m not saying I’m going to report back to you on every single thing I hear. But if I hear anything about Tyler’s death, I’ll find a way to pass it on.”
He figured he’d pushed her as far as he could. “I’d appreciate it.”
“Now,” she said, “if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to Kushtaka.”
“Nothing spiritual going on in Kuskulana?”
She damned him with a glare. “Kuskulana has given me to understand that my services are required at Easter and Christmas Eve. Period.”
“Pagans,” he said.
She struggled for a moment between rage and laughter. Laughter won. Excommunication averted, he helped her tie down her plane and then let her help him untie his. “Anne?” he said as she turned to go.
She looked back at him.
“Be careful.” He thought of how cold the river had been that morning, what a shock it had been when the water engulfed the skiff and washed up his body. “Be really careful. They’re pretty upset, and they know a lot more than they’re telling, and they don’t take kindly to interference. And one of them might be a murderer.”
She made him wait, before nodding, once, solemnly, as if she was taking a vow.
As the Cessna rose from the runway, he noticed again the two new houses going up at opposite ends of the town, at the traffic in the few streets, at people gardening and hanging out washing and working on engines. Again, he couldn’t help contrasting the hustle and bustle of Kuskulana with the decay and desolation of Kushtaka. Two villages, one river, and no comparison.
As he banked left to roll out, he saw Anne heading up the little road that led into town, there probably to buttonhole the first person she saw and commandeer a ride to Kushtaka.
He could only hope the Kushtakers would be more forthcoming with her than they had been with him.
And that the Right Reverend Anne Flanagan would see fit to share.
Eleven
THURSDAY, JULY 12
Kushtaka
The stole was four inches wide and nine feet long and made from a heavy cream silk. It was heavily fringed and embroidered at both ends with a Celtic cross, or what was meant to be. Anne Flanagan thought privately that one looked more like a basket of snakes and the other a little too much like a swastika, but they had been painstakingly picked out in contrasting green and gold silk by the hands of her daughters, one to each end, and she would officiate wearing it until either she or the stole disintegrated.
The distance an airplane went on a single load of fuel was measured in proportion to how much freight it carried. Fuel was expensive; therefore, Anne traveled light. Her only badge of office was the stole, and she kissed and draped it around her neck now, and opened her Bible and looked at the group gathered in Dale Mack’s house. Sadly, it was big enough to contain all the people in Kushtaka who wished to attend.
She kept it simple, first the Twenty-third Psalm.
“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.…”
It had the comfort of familiarity, and of company on that long, last road.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me.…”
By the end, people were speaking the lines along with her in soft cadences. She let her voice fall on the last words, and allowed the silence to gather.
“Pat wants to say a few words,” she said, closing the Bible and holding it to her chest, trying to make a little space for the grieving uncle in that crowded room.
The old man rose to his feet, staying where he was. He was freshly showered, what little hair he had left slicked back, shirt and jeans scrupulously clean, if heavily wrinkled from being folded away since May. Park rats tended to wear the same two sets of clothes straight through the summer and then, when they were stiff with salmon scales and gurry, toss them, usually just before the AFN convention in October, an event always bookended by shopping and doctor’s appointments.
Everyone in the room was dressed the same way, although Jennifer Mack and her mother had donned long-sleeved black T-shirts. Auntie Nan, too, although hers was covered in a voluminous stained apron, over which her large-knuckled, floury hands were clasped. She looked up suddenly to meet Anne’s eyes, and flushed and looked away again immediately. Jennifer’s face was expressionless, containing a quality of immobility that did not go well with her youth. Her mother, as usual, looked tired, but there was a faded copy of her daughter’s beauty still there for those with the eye to see it. Anne wasn’t at all sure that Dale Mack could be included in that number.
The few elders were seated in front, close to Anne. Everyone else remained standing. The curtains were drawn back on all the windows and the door had been propped open but it still seemed dark inside. That might have been due to the occasion.
“Tyler wasn’t worth much as a human being,” Pat said.
Anne looked at Pat, startled, but the Kushtaka congregation took it without a blink.
“We all know that,” Pat said. “Always looking for the quick buck, never willi
ng to put any shoulder into a job, hell—pardon me, Reverend—he ran the other way when he saw a job coming. Not much respect for his elders, that’s for damn—pardon me, Reverend—but that’s just for damn sure. His last day on this earth, I had to boot his ass—pardon me, Reverend—out of bed to get on up the river.”
Pat paused. “But he was ours,” he said firmly, looking up and around the room, lingering on a face here, a face there. “Ours. Our blood. Our bones. Our son. He wasn’t married, and so far as I know he had no children. Me and Dale are his closest living relatives. He was prepared to leave us behind once he shook Kushtaka dust from his shoes, but he still woulda been ours. As he still is, even now that’s he’s no longer with us.”
He took another look around the room. “So what happens next is up to us, too.”
Anne gave him a sharp look.
Pat either didn’t see it or ignored it. “In the meantime, mourn the loss of someone barely more than a boy, robbed of his future. He coulda changed. We don’t know. Now we never will. So mourn his loss.”
Pat sat down again. Dale Mack, standing behind him, put a hand on his shoulder.
There passed a few moments of silence, as Anne thought hard and fast, reviewing biblical verses on vengeance. Leave it to the wrath of God, vengeance is mine, I will repay. Which could and was frequently replied to with, An eye for an eye, hand for hand, burning for burning. But didn’t Matthew say in reply to that, If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also?
Saying anything about vengeance would only draw more attention to what any fool could imagine was meant from the old man’s words.
At this uncomfortable moment she remembered what Jim Chopin had said not two hours before. They’re pretty upset, and they know a lot more than they’re telling, and they don’t take kindly to interference.
She went with what she had planned in the first place—a slow, measured recitation of the Lord’s Prayer—inviting everyone to say it with her.
Bad Blood Page 10
