Bad Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  To be Kushtakan in the Park was always to be other, too.

  And then she met Ryan. At Kuskulana she played guard on the girls’ basketball team; he played guard on the boys’. Both teams went to a regional tournament at one of the high schools in Ahtna, where both teams slept on the gym floor in sleeping bags, guarded on every side by chaperones.

  Not that well guarded, however. It had been Jennifer’s first trip outside the Park, and she was not going to lose an opportunity to see the sights. Keeping her clothes on beneath her pajamas, she waited until everyone else was asleep before faking an old bathroom trick and ducking out a conveniently located back door.

  Where, directly outside it, she literally ran into Ryan Christianson, who it turned out had his own escape plan.

  That this was the very last person her family would want her associating with was only the icing on the cake. He was a boy. He was a Christianson. He was a Kuskulaner. Rebellion this sweet had never come her way before.

  He’d been to Ahtna many times and he knew the quickest way downtown. On the way, they talked, and she discovered he knew how to read and he discovered that she knew who Robert Heinlein was. By the time they found the movie theater where, hallelujah, The Avengers was still playing, they were comfortable enough to share a bag of extortionately expensive popcorn. Afterwards, they found a video arcade where she clobbered him at Asteroids, and he had to defend himself when she accused him of letting her win. They found an open-all-night diner at a truck stop on the way back to the gym and spent the rest of the hours before dawn talking under the tired but benevolent eyes of a waitress who had been young once, too.

  By the time they sneaked back into the gym, their chaperones none the wiser, they were both determined to further the relationship. It wasn’t easy, which was part of the allure. She couldn’t sit with him at lunch at school, because word would have beaten her back across the river, and her parents would have sent her to Chemawa the next day. He couldn’t walk her from school to the landing, because word of that would have beaten him back up the hill, and while his parents wouldn’t have sent him to a boarding school Outside, they might well have sent him to the boarding school in Galena.

  So they met in secret, prearranged by notes passed discreetly from locker to locker, usually on the river, all that winter. He loved to hunt and fish and trap every bit as much as she did, which only strengthened the attraction between them. Those very few precious times when Jennifer managed to talk her father into letting her walk the trapline alone, she got word to Ryan and he met her and they walked it together.

  They were young and madly in love and of course sex came into the mix early on. She would have, but he wouldn’t. “I want to marry you, Jennifer,” he had said. “I want us to build a cabin in the woods and spend the rest of our lives making our living there. Do you want kids?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “I don’t know either,” he said, “but between the two of us, however many of us there are, no one’s going hungry.”

  She smiled.

  And then Tyler was killed on the fish wheel in Kushtaka, and word had just come across the river that they found Mitch Halvorsen in Kuskulana, nailed into the crawl space of his own house. Her whole being was made for sunlight and fresh air and open spaces. The thought of spending her last moments imprisoned underground with no way out made her flesh creep, and in a way made her need to escape the ever-constricting limits of Kushtaka even more urgent.

  They’d met at Kuskulana landing the morning of Tyler Mack’s death.

  “They’ll never let us be together,” she said.

  “Then we run,” he said. He looked older when he said that, and his voice sounded deeper. “I looked it up. We’re both eighteen, so we’re of age. I’ll go up to Ahtna today and get a license.”

  The original plan had been to take a skiff and go downriver, get to Cordova and be married there, and then go to Kasilof, where Ryan had a friend with a set net site. “We’ll have to work for our keep, but they’ll never find us there,” he had said. “When they get over it, we can come back, and build a cabin on the land my grandmother left to me.”

  She’d heard his message on Park Air that morning, and then the flying pastor had come for Tyler’s service. Jennifer had sent Auntie Nan to Ryan. He had met her in the woods and Auntie Nan had brought the pastor to them, and she had married them there.

  Jennifer had had to go back to Kushtaka until the fuss over Tyler’s services died down and people went back to their own homes, or she would have been missed. Much better to get away by night. It was two o’clock before she was certain everyone was asleep and she felt able to leave the house. She grabbed a stuffed backpack from the hollow beneath a spruce tree where she had stashed it on a trip to the outhouse earlier that evening. She slung it over her shoulders as she walked, following the trail that ran down the river’s edge.

  It was a clear, cool night, the northern horizon rimmed with gold, the sky bleached of stars. She heard the hush of wings overhead and looked up to see a boreal owl backwing itself to a landing on a tree branch not far above her. She had heard their call before but had never seen one, and she considered it a good omen.

  The river rippled and swirled and eddied on her right, a silver trail leading her to her lover and the life she had always wanted. Her heart grieved a little at what she left behind, at the same time that her footsteps quickened on the path.

  By then she was almost running, her heart beating high up in her throat.

  She burst out of the trees onto the tiny stretch of gravel at the river’s edge. He was waiting for her. She dropped her daypack and hurled herself into his arms, her lips urgent on his.

  She wanted him so badly, had for what now felt like forever, would have taken him down on the gravel in that moment, if a second person hadn’t come crashing out of the trees right behind her. She didn’t even hear him, her heart beat so loudly in her ears.

  But Ryan jerked free of her arms and shoved her behind him.

  “Jennifer?” The voice was disbelieving.

  It was Rick Estes. Half dressed, out of breath, a red scratch on his cheek from a tree branch, Rick looked at her, glaring back at him over Ryan Christianson’s shoulder, his expression one of revulsion crossed with horror, and despair. “Jennifer! What are you doing?”

  She couldn’t answer him, wouldn’t. What right had he to interfere in her life? She knew he cared for her; she’d known that since she was thirteen and grew breasts. But Ryan had been there long before him, since the time as children their eyes first met across the river, her at the fish wheel, him at his skiff. She stared at Rick, inimical, unwelcoming, her lips a firm line that was in itself a rebuke.

  “This is none of your business, Rick,” Ryan said, steady, even stern.

  “Jennifer,” Rick said for the third time. This time it was a plea.

  She would not answer.

  “Go home, Rick,” Ryan said.

  Sixteen

  FRIDAY, JULY 13

  Anchorage

  They rose late the next morning and did justice to Snow City Cafe’s Heart Attack on a Plate, and presented themselves at the crime lab at noon-oh-one.

  Brillo looked like he’d been there all night, but then he always looked like that and frequently was. He accepted the twenty-ounce Americano and the bag of cream doughnuts as only his due.

  They had to wait while he got on the outside of two of the doughnuts before he burped and said, “Where’s Mutt? I got a steak bone with her name on it.”

  “In the car,” Jim said. “Got anything for me?”

  “I might have, if you’d’a let Mutt come in and say hi.”

  Jim looked at Kate. Kate looked at Brillo. Brillo paled a little and cleared his throat, spraying crumbs down the front of a shirt that looked like it hadn’t been washed since Palin quit. “Your Kuskulana toe tag died of dehydration.”

  “Time of death?”

  Brillo snorted. “O
ffhand? Late May, early June. A lot depends on the weather. How hot’s it been in the Park lately? How dry?”

  “Could he have been dead before he was put in the crawl space?” Jim said, and Kate could tell he was hoping.

  “Was he right-handed?” Brillo said.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Cause his right clavicle was fractured, like he’d been using his right shoulder to run into something on purpose. Which he had. We found fibers from his Gaga T-shirt on the underside of the hatch, along with traces of his blood.”

  “Did you have a chance to look at his hands?”

  “A look only, Sergeant, you didn’t leave me time for anything more. So you know, everything I’m saying to you here today is subject to change without notice.”

  “Understood.”

  Brillo relaxed, or as much as he ever did. “Then, yes, from an extremely cursory examination of the vic’s hands, it is my unsubstantiated opinion that he messed up his fingers trying to claw through that hatch. Which would indicate that he was alive when whoever nailed it down.”

  Kate had a momentary vision of that dark crawl space as she had seen it, devoid even of the small square of light provided by the open hatch. Roger Christianson was a good builder. She repressed a shudder.

  “He wouldn’t have just let them do that,” Jim said, thinking out loud. “He would have been pushing up from below.”

  “If he was conscious,” Brillo said.

  “You saying he might not have been?”

  Brillo shrugged. “He’d been in a dustup prior to his death.”

  “How prior?”

  “Again with the guessing, but anywhere from a day to a week before he went into the crawl space. Something else.”

  Forensics techs were all about the call-and-response technique. “What?” Jim said patiently.

  “If he hadn’t died of dehydration, he might have died of alcohol poisoning. Were there any empty bottles where you found him?”

  “No,” Jim said.

  “So,” Brillo said, “if what we found left after this much time is any indication, he’d had a bunch to drink on his way out.”

  Jim looked at Kate and saw that her face was set and still. That much lack of expression was never a good thing.

  “About that hatch,” Brillo said, popping in the last bite of the last cream doughnut.

  “What about it?”

  “It had been nailed down twice.”

  “What?”

  “What what, you got wax in your ears? It had been nailed down over the opening once, and then later the nails had been pulled out, I presume the hatch raised, and then nailed back down a second time.”

  “How much time elapsed between the two?”

  “I can see under the lens where the nails went a little askew into the original holes,” the ME said. “That’s all I got time or equipment for.”

  “Any way of telling if the same person hammered the nails in both times?”

  Brillo frowned some more. “Not by DNA. The nailed side of the hatch was exposed to wind and weather.”

  “How about if the first guy who nailed it down was right-handed and the second guy was left-handed?” Kate said.

  Brillo’s brows disappeared into the thicket of his hair. “I suppose, depending on which hand holds the hammer, it could affect how the nail went in.” He meditated. “I’ll have to see if there is any literature.” He looked up. “You have a suspect?”

  “I got two villages full,” Jim said grimly.

  “Oh. Ah. Well, then,” Brillo said. “When you do—”

  “Yeah,” Jim said. “When I do. What about Tyler Mack?”

  “The Kushtaka toe tag? He had water in his lungs matching the sample you gave me.”

  “So he was alive when he went into the water,” Jim said.

  “Alive, but not conscious,” Brillo said. “That whack he took upside the head was, um, enthusiastically delivered. It might have killed him all by itself if he’d been left where he fell.”

  “What was the weapon?”

  “Found flakes of rust in the wound,” Brillo said.

  “What kind of flakes?” Jim said.

  There might have been a gleam of sympathy in Brillo’s beady black eyes. “Unfinished tempered steel.”

  “Well, shit,” Jim said with heartfelt sincerity.

  “Rebar,” Kate said with almost as much enthusiasm.

  Brillo beamed at her. “Not just another pretty face.”

  Rebar was the abbreviation for reinforcing bar, ridged steel rods used to reinforce concrete and brick structures of every shape, size, and function. It came in various diameters, depending on the size of the structure, with the largest diameters commonly used as anchor rods for towers and signs. Jim remembered the pile of leftover construction materials stacked beneath the gangplank of the Kuskulana landing.

  There were odd lengths of rebar on every construction site in the Park. Kate had seen rebar sticking up from derelict structures at the old Kanuyaq Copper Mine, and there was probably more rebar out at the Suulutaq Mine than in the rest of the Park put together.

  One place you never found it was the dump. Park rats used found rebar for tree cages, garden fences, snow markers, signposts, clotheslines, doorstops, and animal pens, and anything else they could think of.

  Like offensive weapons, far too often for the liking of any law enforcement professional whose patrol was in the Bush.

  The only thing more ubiquitous than rebar in the Park was the fifty-five-gallon drum. “Any chance you can match the weapon with the rust flakes you found in the wound?” Jim said.

  Brillo shrugged. “I can at least prove it was the same kind of rebar that inflicted the wound. You got it?”

  “No,” Jim said.

  And they weren’t likely to, Kate thought. It would be on the bottom of the river by now. Or tossed on any junk pile in the back of any cabin on the river, washed clean by the first good rain, its surface layer dissolved into rust by the first winter storm.

  Brillo spread his hands and shrugged again. “When you do—”

  “Time of death?” Jim said.

  “He’d been in the water awhile, Jim. No way can I do exact.”

  “Damn,” Jim said.

  “What?” Kate said.

  “I think Pat Mack lied to me about what time he sent Tyler up the river to the fish wheel.”

  “Why?”

  “Habit,” Jim said, and Brillo laughed. He subsided when Jim glanced at him. “Just generally wanted to confuse the evidence.”

  “Give the Kushtakans time to find whoever killed Tyler and deal with him themselves,” Kate said.

  Jim nodded. He didn’t look happy.

  “You done here?” Brillo said. “’Cause I got a few other cases to tend to.”

  They got as far as the door when they heard his voice. “Oh, I almost forgot.”

  They turned. “What?”

  Brillo smiled. “Both of them tested positive for cocaine.”

  “Use?” Jim said.

  Brillo nodded. “Get this,” he said, pausing to enjoy the dramatic buildup. “I won’t be able to swear to it without further testing…”

  Kate put her hands on her hips and glared.

  “… but I think it’s the same cocaine,” Brillo said in a rush.

  * * *

  In the lobby, Jim said, “I’ve gotta go upstairs, check in. Give me an hour or two?”

  “I’ve got a few errands,” she said. “Text me when you want me to pick you up.”

  She drove downtown and with unusually good parking karma found a space in front of the office building on Third Avenue. There was a sculpture of Moby Dick kicking Ishmael and Queequeq out of their whaling boat out front, and the usual amount of tourists wandering by in search of something to look at other than another T-shirt shop. “Excuse me, ma’am? Would you mind taking our picture?”

  Kate looked around to see an elderly woman with short white hair, beautifully styled, holding out a camera.
<
br />   Be a good host, she told herself, and took one and a spare to be sure. Handing it back to profuse thanks, she started to turn away.

  “Are you all a—an Alaska Native?” the woman said hesitantly.

  Kate’s shoulders rose and fell in a soundless sigh. “Yes, I am.”

  The woman’s accent sounded like Bobby’s when he slipped back into Tennessese. “Could I take your photo?”

  “I’m sorry, no,” Kate said, trying to be cordial about it. There were already enough pictures of her floating around, never a good thing for someone whose job on occasion required strict anonymity. Which in this Internet age was a virtual impossibility anyway.

  “Oh please, it won’t take but a moment. It’d be so nice to have a photo of a real Alaska Native to show off at home.”

  Kate looked at her. Mutt, catching Kate’s vibe, looked, too.

  The woman stumbled back a step, bumping into her husband, who was also backing up.

  Kate and Mutt went on their way without further molestation. Inside the lobby of the office building, Kate punched the elevator button and smiled down at Mutt. “We’ve still got it, girl.”

  “Wuff!” Mutt said, and the man stepping out of the elevator recoiled, reconnoitered, and finally sidled out, holding his elegant leather briefcase in front of him like a shield.

  They emerged on the seventh floor and walked down the hall and through a door. Inside a neat, prim young woman sat behind a desk. She looked up. “Ms. Shugak,” she said with composure. She ignored Mutt. Mutt ignored her right back.

  “Agrifina,” Kate said. “Is he in?”

  “Let me check.” This said when they both knew that the suite held only two rooms and that the second one was directly behind Agrifina Fancyboy’s desk. She picked up the phone and pressed a button. “Mr. Pletnikof, Ms. Shugak is here.” She listened. “Certainly.”

  She replaced the phone and rose to her feet to take all of the three steps from her chair to her boss’s door, and opened it. “Ms. Shugak to see you, Mr. Pletnikof.”

  She held the door for Kate and Mutt with a polite smile.