Whisper to the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  “For the third time, yes,” Johnny said.

  Kate tucked in some more fire starters and a second large box of waterproof matches. “Have you got your PLB?”

  “For the fifth time, yes,” Johnny said.

  “You checked the batteries?”

  “And I have spares,” Johnny said.

  “You’ve got them in an inside pocket.”

  “Where they’ll stay toasty warm and ready to use if I need them.”

  “Rifle?”

  “Cleaned and loaded and strapped to the snow machine.”

  His patience was monumental and meant to be noticed, but she couldn’t help herself. “Extra shells?”

  “Two boxes, Kate.”

  “Good.” She prowled around the snow machine. “Have you got that tool kit I put together?”

  “In the sled.”

  “Extra gas?”

  “In the sled.”

  “And Van’s riding with you?”

  “Yes, Kate.”

  “And Ruthe’s got her own machine.”

  “Yes, Kate.”

  “Maybe I’ll just ride to Ruthe’s with you.”

  “Maybe you won’t,” Johnny said. “Maybe I’ve been driving the snow machine back and forth to Ruthe’s cabin for going on three winters now. Maybe I know the way.”

  He was right. Still, Kate fretted. “You’re not going to deviate from your route, are you?”

  “No, Kate. We’ll be following the Kanuyaq a lot of the way. It’s kind of hard to miss.” Sheesh. By contrast, Jim this morning had tossed him a casual wave and said only, “Have fun, kid. Yell for help if you need it,” before clattering down the steps and heading off to work.

  “You can take Mutt,” Kate said.

  “I really can’t,” Johnny said. “Van’s riding with me. I’d have to unload the sled to make room for Mutt. Then we’d have Mutt and nothing to eat. Oh, wait, we could eat Mutt.”

  “Very funny. Ruthe could take her.”

  “Then Ruthe’d have to unload her own sled. We’ll be fine, Kate.”

  “I know you will be,” Kate said, not believing a word of it. “Just, you know, just be careful, okay?”

  “I always am.”

  “Ruthe’s no spring chicken. Look out for her.”

  It was Johnny’s considered opinion that Ruthe Bauman could outthink, outshoot, and outsurvive better than any other sentient being in the Park, with the possible exception of the woman standing in front of him, but he wasn’t suicidal enough to say so. “I will,” he said instead, and climbed on the snow machine.

  “You’re back Sunday evening before eight, or I call out the National Guard!” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the engine.

  “You got it!” He put the machine in gear and slid smoothly out of the clearing, keeping the speed down to just short of flight. He received a Mutt escort for a quarter of a mile, all the way to where the track to the homestead met the road to Niniltna.

  “See you in a couple a days, girl!” he yelled, and opened up the throttle.

  She barked until he was out of sight, and then trotted back down the trail to find Kate shivering in the clearing. She butted Kate’s thigh with her head, more purposeful than affectionate, and with the full force of a hundred and forty pounds of half wolf, half husky behind it, it did not fail of effect. Kate stumbled in the direction of the house, Mutt shepherding her with repeated bumps and nudges and the occasional nip at the hem of her jeans, all the way up the deck and inside.

  “I hate being a mom,” Kate told her.

  Mutt went to curl up on her quilt in front of the fireplace. Kate went to the kitchen to clean up after yesterday’s turkey dinner. After that, she made bread, measuring out flour and yeast and salt and water with a ferocious attention to detail. Yesterday she’d made rolls, but there had to be bread for turkey sandwiches.

  Bobby, Dinah, Katya, Ethan Int-Hout (Margaret had walked out on him, again), Dan O’Brien, and Ruthe had all been invited to Thanksgiving dinner at Kate’s house. Ethan had pled a prior invitation to Christie Calhoun’s, whose spouse had just walked out on her, and who was home alone with three daughters who would do as well as any to stand in for Ethan’s own. Jim, who didn’t like Ethan living even as close as the next homestead over, heaved a private sigh of relief. Kate didn’t notice, or pretended she didn’t.

  Ruthe had also declined, on the excuse of having to get ready for the expedition. Johnny was carrying a tinfoil package of turkey and dressing with him to Ruthe’s.

  Jim had been called out to a domestic disturbance, endemic over the holidays, and in the Park frequently fatal if some calming, uniformed presence was not applied. This had turned out to make for a more enjoyable dinner, because Dan had been wound up tighter than a bedspring when he walked in. The moment Jim walked out the door he relaxed, leaning back suddenly against his chair as if the wires holding him up had been cut.

  Later, after everyone had gone and Jim had returned, Kate said, “What’s with you and Dan?”

  Something stirred at the back of his eyes, but he said, “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head and got up from the couch. “Don’t tell me if you can’t or if you just don’t want to, but don’t tell me nothing’s going on.” She went upstairs, brushed her teeth, stripped, and got into bed.

  He followed, climbing in next to her without speaking. They went to sleep on their sides facing away from each other, but she woke up in the middle of the night to find him parting her legs with his knee and sliding inside her in one bold stroke. Something got off the chain then, and she rolled, forcing him to his back. She nipped at his ear, his belly, the sensitive curve of his thigh, and when she rose again he was red-faced and straining, his body one long pleading arch. She mounted him this time, pinning his hands to the mattress, and rode him furiously to an explosive culmination that left them both sweat-soaked and gasping for breath.

  There was more rutting than making love about it but it made for a solid and dreamless sleep, and she woke the next morning if not with a song in her heart, then at least with a sense of well-being and renewal, which had lasted until Johnny began packing to leave on his camping trip.

  “If you find out that the herd has decreased,” Kate had asked Ruthe when informed of the trip, “and if you find out that wolf predation is the cause, you’re going to tell Dan about it, right?”

  Ruthe didn’t answer, but then Kate hadn’t expected her to. Ruthe was perfectly capable of effecting some predator control all by herself, thank you. With twenty-ten vision and an upper body strength honed by decades of backwoods life, she was one of the best shots in the Park. Certainly she was better than Kate.

  Kate kneaded the dough until it was smooth and elastic, covered the bowl with Saran Wrap, and set it to one side to rise. She washed her hands and got out her USGS map of the Park. Three of the four corners were missing and it was coming apart at every crease. She really must order a new one.

  She unfolded it on the dining table and located Niniltna and the approximate location of Ruthe’s cabin, about halfway between Niniltna and the Roadhouse. Ruthe had told her that they were planning on following the Kanuyaq for ten or twelve miles and then cutting overland on a heading east-southeast.

  After some searching, Kate found the Gruening River, its source in the Quilaks south of the Big Bump, running by tortuous twists and turns south by southwest to drain into the Kanuyaq River just above the delta where the Kanuyaq itself drained into Prince William Sound. She traced an imaginary line from Ruthe’s cabin to the Gruening River basin, and sat back with an air of having all her worst suspicions confirmed.

  What no one had said but what was perfectly obvious to anyone with even rudimentary map reading skills was that Ruthe’s suggested route was going to take them right over Global Harvest’s Suulutaq Mine leases.

  Jim had to fly to Cordova that morning to put Margaret Kvasnikof and Hallelujah Smith on a plane to Anchorage. They would be taking up residency in the Hiland Mount
ain Correctional Facility, there to begin serving a four-year sentence for defrauding the Alaska Permanent Fund of almost a quarter of a million dollars, by way of false dividend applications in the names of forty-three imaginary children over a period of five years. It was the biggest single PFD bust in state history and Kate’s biggest paying case to date, and every Alaskan loved to hate people who ripped off the PFD. There had been significant airtime devoted to the conviction, which hadn’t done Kate’s business any harm.

  He handed the two felons over to their escort at Mudhole Smith Airport and waited till the Alaska Airlines 737 was wheels up before hitching a ride into town with a local fisherman just back from a visit to the dentist in Anchorage. He could drive his truck but he couldn’t talk, so it was a quiet ride, which suited Jim. He had a lot on his mind.

  He knew why he’d been pissy lately. He was keeping secrets from Kate. Only one secret, actually, but it was a whopper. He couldn’t prove it in court, and Willard didn’t even remember it, but Jim was certain that Louis Deem had loaded Willard like a gun and shot him off in the direction of the Koslowskis’ house that night with the intention of burgling the gold in the display case in the living room.

  He knew that the longer he went without telling Kate, the worse it would be when he did tell her. Worse still would be if she found out on her own, but since he was equally certain that he was the only one who knew, he wasn’t afraid of that. Much.

  The thing was, she’d been a little pissy lately, too. No reason had surfaced as to why. He wondered if he’d even have noticed it if they hadn’t been all but living together. He still rented his room at Auntie Vi’s, but it was more an overnight flop for when he had to work late than separate living quarters, and the step increase he got for working in the Bush more than covered the expense.

  No, he thought grimly, he was living with Kate, all right. All he kept at Auntie Vi’s was a change of clothes and a spare toothbrush.

  It didn’t frighten him as much as it once had. There was still passion, and laughter, a shared sense of the ridiculous. They had a lot in common in work and in play. He was a trooper, she was a PI. They both read recreationally, anything and everything, and that was a bond right there. Kate, he knew, thought better of people who read. He sometimes thought it was what had pushed her over the top as far as he was concerned. Okay by him. They both liked to talk about any and every topic under the sun, nothing sacred, everything fair game from abortion to gay marriage to states’ rights to Alaska seceding from the union and forming its own country with Siberia and the western provinces of Canada.

  They both loathed recreational exercise. Jim had been a little surprised by that. Kate would think nothing of strapping on cross-country skis to go over to Mandy’s if the snow machine wouldn’t start, but ask her to go skiing just for the fun of it and she’d look at you like you’d grown a second head. He supposed it was natural for someone born to a Bush lifestyle, though. Anyone who could fix a hole in a roof that had been punctured by parts falling off a Boeing 747 was bound to be in good enough shape for anything else that came along.

  She was beautiful. Or maybe not beautiful, exactly. He didn’t know anymore. He knew he liked looking at her, waking, sleeping, laughing, loving, happy, even pissed off, even if it was at him. He liked watching her work, that innate curiosity that demanded satisfaction, that would brook no distraction until all the questions had been answered.

  It surprised him that she still believed in justice. She’d been lied to, beat up, shot at, her house had been burned down, her truck had been run off the road, her dog had almost been killed, she herself had been in the hospital more times than Evel Knievel, and left not in the best of shape even when she managed to stay out of it. Only too well did he remember finding her bruised and covered with blood, driving a stolen truck with the exaggerated care of a drunk down what was little more than a goat track out of the back range of the mountains north of Anchorage. She put herself at risk too often, and all for a lousy paycheck.

  He smiled to himself.

  It wasn’t the paycheck, and no one knew that better than he did.

  His smile faded. Still, she had been getting a little pissy lately. Thinking, he dated it back to the Louis Deem murder the year before. Amazing first, that he’d noticed. Amazing second, that he wanted to know why.

  The fisherman let him off in front of the Cordova cop shop, and he went in to meet and greet and compare notes on several of the Park’s most stupid, most drunk, most likely to, and most wanted. Afterward he walked down to the Club Bar for a burger and a Coke.

  The first person he saw when he walked in was the ubiquitous Talia Macleod, holding forth to a table of Cordovan movers and shakers, all with drinks at their elbows for which Jim was willing to bet large Macleod had paid. They were all sprouting GHRI ball caps, too, the ones with the golden sunburst peeping over a line of mountains, recognizable as the Quilaks if you looked close.

  She saw him at once and raised a hand in greeting without missing a word of what she was saying. He sat at the bar and ordered, and as he was finishing his meal her meeting broke up and she joined him there. “Cheese it, the fuzz,” she said.

  He grinned. “How you doing?”

  She grimaced. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve taken a vow. And that I get paid by the convert.” She looked over her shoulder and waved someone over.

  Jim looked and saw a burly man of medium height, late thirties, dark hair and wary eyes. He patted the air and shook his head, nodding at the group he was talking to. She insisted, and he trailed over, obviously reluctant and equally obviously trying not to show it.

  “Jim Chopin, meet Dick Gallagher,” she said.

  “How do,” Jim said.

  “Hey,” Gallagher said. His handshake was brief and a little clammy. “So,” he said, his eyes taking in the blue and gold, “you a cop?”

  “Trooper,” Jim said. He’d been one too long not to recognize the reluctance, and ran a quick interior scan of the most recent wants and warrants. None of them sported Gallagher’s name or his description, and few people liked cops anyway, so mentally he stood down, for now.

  “You need me for anything else?” Gallagher said to Macleod. He half turned from Jim as he spoke, focusing his attention on Macleod. Crowded in close, too, and touched her knee.

  “No, I think our work here is done,” Macleod said, composed. “For today, anyway. You can head for the barn if you want.”

  Jim watched the tension in Gallagher’s jawline increase. “A couple of the gentlemen want to shoot some pool down to the Cordova House. Figured I’d tag along.”

  “You lose your own money, not Global Harvest’s,” Macleod said, unperturbed.

  Gallagher laughed, but it rang false. “What time do we leave tomorrow?”

  “Ten A.M., George picks us up at the airport.”

  “See you then,” he said. He gave Jim a distant nod without meeting his eyes and left with the other men.

  “I’ve been duly warned off,” Jim said lightly.

  “No need to be,” she said, as lightly, and smiled at him.

  Jim felt an unwilling sympathy for Gallagher, so easily discarded, and Macleod must have somehow intuited it because she added, “He’s like every other boomer who ever came into the state, his hand out for any and everything he can get before he hauls ass south.”

  The bartender came over and she ordered a glass of chardonnay.

  “Women always order chardonnay,” Jim said.

  She made play with her eyelashes over the rim of her glass. “Sometimes we order pinot grigio.” She sipped. “But most of the time they don’t have it. Besides, men always wear blue.”

  He looked down at himself. It was true. “In my own defense, it is the color of my uniform.”

  “What are you doing in town?” she said.

  “Prisoner escort, and I had to reach out to the local cops on a few things. Routine. I don’t have to ask you what you’ve been doing. How long have you been here?”

&n
bsp; “Two days. Got a suite at the Reluctant, or what passes for a suite, which is two rooms with a connecting door. I have had breakfast with the Chamber of Commerce, lunch with the school board, attended a meeting of the library advisory board, played pinochle at the Elks Club and Bingo with the retired folks at Sunset Arms.”

  Jim smiled. “Whatever they’re paying you, it isn’t worth it.”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I had a lesson in beading from a nice lady, name of Pat, retired from the school administration. Or I did until her granddaughter Annie showed up. She told me to go find my own beading teacher.”

  “Gotta watch out for them granddaughters,” Jim said. “Where do you go next?”

  She brightened perceptibly. “I’m spreading the word to the villages on the river, by snow machine.”

  “No kidding,” he said, impressed. “You’re heading out to the ’Burbs, are you?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been waiting until the river froze up enough for traffic.”

  “You want to be careful when you get close to the mouth. It starts to get a little slushy.”

  She laughed. “I’m told that it’s fish camps the last twenty-five miles before the Sound, summers only, so I should be all right. I’m going to take my skis, see if I can get in some snow time while I’m out there.”

  “Your rifle, too?”

  She looked mock shocked. “Of course.”

  Her enthusiasm was contagious, and he warmed to her. “Should be a great trip, so long as the weather holds.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve been snowed in in Bush Alaska before. I’ll bring a deck of cards.”

  He ate another french fry. “I have to say that snow machining down the Kanuyaq sounds like a lot more fun than eating bacon and eggs with the Cordova Chamber of Commerce.”