Whisper to the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  Kate charged back into the kitchen and yanked the moose roast out of the oven. She’d been cooking a lot lately, taking both his and Jim’s turn in the rotation. The food had been really good, too, and there had been a lot of it.

  He liked “Two Tramps in Mud Time” best but it was too long. Maybe “In a Glass of Cider.” He read through it again. It was short enough. Maybe too short. Was there enough there to discuss? It had that whole “seize the day” thing going on. Seize the bubble thing, anyway.

  “I can think offhand of a hundred people who’d like to take a punch at Howie. But shoot him? Have you investigated the possibility that whoever was shooting at Mac actually meant to? Shoot at Mac?”

  “I’m looking. I’m not finding. He was a pretty solitary guy, no wife, no kids, no girlfriend. His social life seemed to center around the Roadhouse and nobody there says any different.”

  He hadn’t seen Dick Gallagher around lately. He wondered if he was out at the Suulutaq trailer. Creepy, hanging out where a guy had got shot. He’d only seen Dick a couple of times since he’d gone out to the Roadhouse. He was secretly relieved that he hadn’t been required to bring the guy home, and at the same time he was puzzled at Dick’s refusals to his invitations. Polite but definite, he’d excused himself on the grounds of work. “Gotta make a good impression,” he’d said, winking.

  He winked a lot, Doyle did. Dick did.

  “Howie can’t think for one moment that the aunties would shoot at him, can he?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “I mean, why would they? If they did—”

  There was sudden silence in the kitchen. It lasted long enough for both men to look up.

  Kate was standing with a cast-iron lid in one hand and a large spoon in the other and an arrested expression on her face.

  “What?” Jim and Johnny said together. Jim even looked over his shoulder to make sure no one had driven into the clearing. “What’s wrong, Kate?”

  Kate put the spoon down and the lid back on the pot. “I know why he’s scared.”

  “Howie? Why?”

  “Of course,” she said, unheeding. “Of course, that explains everything. Not who did it, no, but all the rest of it.” She smacked her forehead. “How could I have been so stupid not to see it before? It’s Howie all over!”

  She went for the door, stamped on her boots, donned parka and hat, and grabbed her gloves. “Go ahead and eat, guys, it’s all ready. I’ve got to go somewhere.”

  She opened the door and Old Sam Dementieff was standing there in his ragged Carhartt bibs, Sorels picked and pocked and nipped from so many years of use that they were perilously close to being ventilated, and a sheepskin flap cap with the chin strap hanging loose. He didn’t look happy.

  “Sam,” Kate said, startled. “I didn’t hear you drive up.”

  He looked past her at Jim. “Talia Macleod has been murdered.”

  Talia Macleod and Dick Gallagher had spent the last three days on the river, traveling from village to village by snow machine. They’d gone south first, Double Eagle, Chulyin, Potlatch, and Red Run, retracing Kate’s recent journey, after which the plan was to overnight in Niniltna and head back north. The tour would end in Ahtna, where a town meeting had been scheduled and the chief operating officer of Global Harvest was scheduled to appear personally to answer questions and address the concerns of the Park rats about the mine.

  It had been a good plan. Apart from the fact that in the middle of a cold, dark winter Bush Alaskans were glad to see anybody, Park rats also liked it when people who wanted something came to them. Bush Alaskans spent half their lives four-wheeling, snowmachining, boating, driving, and flying to Fairbanks and Anchorage and Juneau when the legislature was in session, to buy food and supplies, to go to school, to go to the hospital, to attend Native corporation shareholder meetings and the Alaska Federation of Natives’ annual convention, and to bang a shoe on their legislative representative’s desk. Park rats traveled from home so often not because they wanted to but because they had to.

  Now someone wanted to dig a big-ass hole in their backyard, and that someone came to them, one village at a time. They could have rented the Egan Convention Center in Anchorage and left it up to the villagers to get there, and to pay to get there, stay there, and eat there. This willingness to show up in person in even the tiniest village predisposed even the most cautious, conservative and conservation-minded Park rat in their favor. Global Harvest, Kate thought, did indeed know what they were doing.

  The villages south of Niniltna were bigger than the villages north, each of them on or near the mouth of a creek with a substantial salmon run, each built on what had been a traditional fish camp, summer home for the tribe before it packed up in the fall and headed into the mountains after the caribou. The villages were permanent fixtures now, each with a school, an airstrip, and a post office, even if that post office was in someone’s living room. For the most part they practiced a subsistence lifestyle, but that lifestyle wouldn’t have been possible without the quarterly Association dividend, the annual state permanent fund dividend, and heavy federal subsidies for health, education, and fuel. Some residents, like Ike Jefferson, had to make ends meet by moving to Anchorage for the winter. Some eked out a living trapping and tanning hides and selling them at the fur auction during Fur Rendezvous. Most of them fished salmon during the summer, and halibut and crab in the fall, either on their own boats or pulling down a crew share on someone else’s, and if they didn’t get their moose that fall, they didn’t eat meat that winter.

  None of the villages were over 200 in population, Red Run the largest at 197, Tikani the smallest, the last official count showing 29, although Kate thought the next census might show one, if Vidar lived that long. Macleod and Gallagher had gone to the southernmost village first, Red Run, and spent the night. They’d spent the next day at Potlatch and Chulyin, overnighting in Chulyin. The third day they’d spent in Double Eagle, and since the weather, while overcast, was still relatively mild and since it was only a little over thirty miles, they had decided to come on into Niniltna and spend the night there.

  The scheduled town meeting in Double Eagle had taken place in the school gymnasium, as all such events in the smaller villages did, the gym being the only place big enough to hold all the villagers at once. People had stayed so long and asked so many questions that some had started to bring in food, and the event had turned into a potluck dinner. Someone had brought in a boom box, and somebody else had gotten out the basketballs, and there was dancing at one end of the court and a nonstop game of horse at the other.

  “It was about nine, maybe nine thirty when things broke up,” Dick Gallagher told them. He looked strained, his face washed-out and clammy. “Talia told me she was going to go on ahead, and for me to stay behind and make sure any stragglers got the handout and the raffle ticket for the two nights in Anchorage, and then follow her into Niniltna.”

  “There’s a raffle?” Old Sam said, perking up.

  They were at the post. Dick Gallagher was the one who had brought the news to Bernie’s. Old Sam had been there, had brought Dick Gallagher to the post and called Maggie in to babysit him, and had come for Jim. Kate and Mutt had accompanied the two of them back to town.

  Gallagher nodded wearily. “Yeah. For two nights in Anchorage. Well. There was supposed to be. I don’t know now.”

  “You were comfortable with traveling from Double Eagle to Niniltna on your own?” Jim said. “I thought this was your first time on the river. Not to mention on a snow machine.”

  “I was a little nervous about that,” Gallagher said, “but Talia said that I’d be okay so long as I remembered to turn right and stuck to the river.” He gave a ghost of a smile. “It’s kinda hard to miss.”

  “The raffle’s for two nights in Anchorage?” Old Sam said.

  “Yeah, plus airfare, plus a rental car, plus a thousand dollars in cash. I don’t know, we sold the tickets up and down the river. I guess it’s still on. I’ll h
ave to get hold of Mr. O’Malley to find out. I imagine he’ll want me to step in, at least for now.”

  Kate, standing in a corner with her arms crossed, trying to keep out of Jim’s line of sight, thought that in spite of the horror of the situation Gallagher sounded just a little bit complacent about his step up in the world. She also thought he was seriously jumping the gun. Global Harvest had thus far displayed a savvy that Kate had never seen equaled by any Outside organization bent on development in the Bush, and she didn’t think their management was going to endow a cheechako like Gallagher with higher powers. For one thing, he didn’t have the face time or the street cred that Talia Macleod had had in Alaska. For another, he didn’t have the time served in the Park.

  “What time did you leave the gym?” Jim said. He was typing Gallagher’s words into a statement form on his computer as they spoke.

  “About ten thirty, I think. I don’t have a watch. Everyone was gone, and I packed up the leftover handouts. Talia was always very anal about not leaving trash behind. I went outside and packed everything in the sled and took off.”

  “Which way did you go?”

  “Well, the school’s kind of back from the river.”

  “We know,” Old Sam said.

  “Of course. Sorry. I didn’t go through the village, I took the creek and went around.”

  “Why not go through the village?”

  Gallagher hesitated. “Well, to tell you the truth, Sergeant Chopin, I’m not real good with driving the snow machine yet. I’d just as soon not turn myself loose where there’s people everywhere. You know?”

  Either because Gallagher was afraid he’d hurt someone, or because he was afraid he’d make himself look bad in front of the villagers, Kate thought.

  “So you took the creek to the river,” Jim said. “Then what?”

  “Well, it’s only a couple hundred feet to the river, and it was real dark, the trees and the bushes hanging over everything and all. I didn’t see her on the way down.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Her snow machine. Of course at first I didn’t know it was hers, so far all of them look alike to me. It’s like women and cars, you know? Show me a female who can tell the difference between a Chevy Silverado and a Ford Ranger and I’ll marry her.” He smiled. “I’m like that with snow machines.”

  No one smiled back, and his own vanished. “But you recognized Talia’s,” Jim said. “How’d that happen?”

  “Well, it was just sitting there, stuck in a snowbank, idling, with nobody on it and nobody around. I pulled up next to it and I saw her stuff in the trailer. I shouted for her a couple of times and there was no answer. So then I got to thinking that maybe she hit a bump and fell off and the snow machine kept going. So I went back up the creek, slow like, you know, looking for her.” He paused, and swallowed.

  “And?”

  “And I found her,” Gallagher said. “Both parts.”

  There was a momentary silence. “Both parts?” Jim said.

  “Yeah.” His face was pale and damp with perspiration, and his clasped hands were grinding against each other. “Her body was lying over to my left, kind of close to the bank, in the shadows, you know? So it was no wonder I didn’t see her on the way down.” He swallowed again.

  “Want some water or something?”

  “No, no, I’m okay, it’s just, it’s so godawful, Sergeant Chopin.”

  “What was, Mr. Gallagher?”

  Gallagher looked up and said, “Her head was missing.”

  “What?” Jim said.

  Gallagher nodded. “I found it about twenty feet up the creek.”

  Kate felt Old Sam look at her and turned her head to meet his eyes. It was the first time she’d ever seen that expression on his face.

  “I went and got someone from the village to stay with her, and then I came back. I know you hang out a lot at that bar out the end of the road, Sergeant Chopin, so I figured I had a good chance of finding you there. You weren’t, but Sam was, and he brought me here.”

  He spread his hands. “The rest you know.”

  CHAPTER 20

  They left at first light, Jim on one snow machine, Kate on another, Matt Grosdidier on a third hauling an empty sled. Dick Gallagher was still asleep at Auntie Vi’s, and Jim said there was no reason to get him up. They were in Double Eagle well before noon. Ken Kaltak came out to greet them, looking as if he hadn’t had a lot of sleep. “Thank christ you’re here so I can be done with this freak show.”

  “Did anybody touch anything?”

  “Not after I got there,” Ken said flatly. “I can’t answer for before. It doesn’t look like it, but I’m not a cop. Kate, Matt.”

  “Hey, Ken. How was she . . .” Kate’s voice failed her. “How was it done?”

  Ken shook his head. “This you gotta see for yourself.”

  He led the way to the creek, a narrow, winding affair between low banks, those banks thick with willow, alder, and spruce, all of them drooping beneath the weight of a heavy layer of snow. They turned the path of the creek into a low, cold tunnel into which even the noontime sun could not reach. Jim’s head brushed a branch and snow fell silently down his neck. He stooped a little and walked on.

  “Stay,” Kate told Mutt, and followed him.

  Talia’s head was where Gallagher had said it was, about twenty feet away from her body. The face was turned away, but the open portion of the neck revealed frozen blood and tissue and the bony beginnings of a brain stem. It was not a pretty sight. Kate heard Matt, just behind her, take a sharp breath.

  Her body lay on its back, arms and legs splayed wide. Her snow machine was nosefirst in the snowbank on the right-hand side of the creek. The trailer had jackknifed, probably when the snow machine had run into the bank, but it hadn’t overturned.

  Jim bent over the windshield and ran his flashlight over every inch of the clear plastic. He stepped back and walked back up the creek. “Kate, you take the right side. I’ll take the left.”

  “Got it.”

  Ken and Matt watched, Ken with his attention firmly fixed on the overhanging trees, Matt looking a little green around the gills, a color that matched one of the colors in his CinemaScope black eye. About halfway between the snow machine and the body, Kate said, “Here.”

  She tried not to mess up the snow next to it, but it was a futile effort. It probably didn’t matter, as with the warming weather there had been intermittent snow showers over the past two days and there wasn’t much to see.

  She heard Jim’s breath at her shoulder and pointed with a gloved finger, slightly trembling. “See it?”

  His breath exhaled on a long sigh. “Yeah. Line for mending gear, right?”

  “Yes.”

  They regarded it in silence. “You can get this stuff anywhere,” he said.

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said again, a little mournfully. “Everybody has a spool lying around. I’ve got some in the garage. I think I even saw some spools at the Bingleys’ store, in that corner in the back where she’s got all the nonedible stuff.”

  “So no possible chance of tracking down which spool this came from.”

  “Probably not, but that’s for the crime lab to say. You never know, Jim, they can do some pretty amazing stuff.”

  “Let me get the camera.”

  He was back a moment later, and took a series of photos. It took longer than it usually did because of the cold—he had to keep tucking the camera inside his parka to warm it up so the shutter would work.

  They found a corresponding length wrapped around the base of a tree opposite the first one. Jim took more photos.

  “About the right height,” he said, measuring the top of the creek bank against his height. “Three feet, maybe?”

  “The windshield,” she said.

  “Yeah, but it’s swept, it doesn’t go straight up, it slants. It hits the mono hard enough, the mono slides right up the windshield and snaps back. She must have been kneeling on the seat for it to catch her
right on the neck like that.”

  “If she’d been sitting,” Kate said, “the mono could have caught her forehead. Same result, but then maybe it would have just broken her neck.”

  “Would have left a mark.”

  Neither one of them moved to check if such a mark was on Macleod’s forehead. If that was what had happened, Macleod’s head would still have been attached to her body.

  Kate couldn’t believe she was putting those words together in a sentence. She had another thought. “That may have been more in line with what the murderer was planning, Jim. When the filament broke, the two ends snapped back around the base of both trees. If she hadn’t been decapitated, if we’d just found her with her neck broke, would we even have thought murder?”

  He considered. “Maybe not.”

  “He might not have been expecting this. Who would?”

  “And an accidental death doesn’t come under the same magnifying glass a murder does,” Jim said, nodding. “He wouldn’t think he had to be that careful. Gotcha.”

  “Maybe not hard evidence,” Kate said, “but there’ll be something.”

  They both hoped she was right.

  Nothing else was found at the scene, however. They brought the snow machine back up the creek and Jim took more photos with it positioned between the two trees. He strung crime scene tape between them, pulling it taut, and pushed the snow machine forward. The tape caught the windshield about midway. Kate climbed on, straddling the seat, and at Jim’s request Ken and Matt pushed it slowly forward while Jim took photos. As the windshield pressed against the tape, it rode up, until it snapped off the windshield and whipped over the top of Kate’s head, ruffling her hair.

  “She was practically twelve inches taller than me,” Kate said, a little pale.

  “Let’s do it again,” Jim said, tight-lipped. “This time kneel on the seat.”

  Ken and Matt pushed the snow machine back, Kate braced her left foot on the running board and her right knee on the seat, leaning forward on the handlebars, and they did it all over again. This time the yellow tape slid up the windshield and caught Kate across the forehead. It stung. She didn’t complain.