Whisper to the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  “I’m taking your DVDs of The Wire away,” he said, and sat up. “That’s not all, though, is it? What haven’t you told me that I don’t want to hear?”

  Kate sighed. “I’m a little worried about the Johansens.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “That’s a first. For pretty much anyone within a five-hundred-mile radius.”

  “You know I went down the river the day after you found out about the attacks. I talked to Ken and Janice, Ike, and the Rileys. On my way down, Ken and Ike were foaming at the mouth and threatening to shoot on sight.”

  “Who?”

  “Anybody,” Kate said. “I’m probably lucky they didn’t take a shot at me.”

  “Were the Johansens mentioned?”

  “Of course they were,” Kate said. “They’re nowhere near the caliber of natural disaster that Louis Deem was, but you don’t live on the river for a year without learning who you don’t want to be your new best friends. So I kept on keeping on, down to Red Run to talk to the Rileys. And here’s the thing, Jim. They aren’t foaming at the mouth. They aren’t even mildly disturbed. They’re not worried about catching the guys who attacked them, they have perfect confidence that Trooper Jim will get the job done, and they’re willing to put their faith in him.”

  “I appreciate the confidence.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t pin that medal on yourself just yet. I go back up the river and drop in again on Ike and Ken, and guess what? They’re all calm now, butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, and what do you know, they know the law will catch up to the bad people who did this to them and that justice will be served.”

  She looked at Jim expectantly, and he did not disappoint. “You think the Park rats have taken care of this problem themselves.”

  “I’m terrified they did,” she said. “I even went up and down the river looking in all the likely places to stuff three bodies.”

  He laughed out loud.

  “Yeah, yuck it up,” she said with asperity, “but then I went up to Tikani to see if maybe they were dumb enough to go home. They weren’t there, and they hadn’t been in a while. Vidar hasn’t even heard their engines coming and going. And Jim, I just spent all day on the river, north of Niniltna, true, but nobody jumped out at me and said boo. I didn’t see much traffic at all, come to think of it.”

  “That’s not a surprise, given that two people have been murdered in the Park in the past two weeks. Not to mention it’s freeze-your-ass cold outside. I’d stay home, too, if I could.”

  There was a peremptory bark outside and Kate got up to admit the lupine member of the constabulary. Mutt bounded over to Jim and offered an exuberant greeting. She returned to Kate’s side and plunked down to begin a thorough grooming of her already magnificent self.

  “I like to close a case as much as any cop,” Kate said, “but murder? The Johansens?” She shook her head. “That’s a hell of a step up for them.”

  “I’ve got people looking into Talia’s background, see if there is anything there,” Jim said. “But the Johansens attacked Johnny, Ruthe, and Van with a two-by-four, let’s not forget. Not to mention Ken and Janice, Ike and Laverne, and Chris and Art and Grandma Riley.”

  “We think they did,” she said. “Let’s find them first.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You got any thoughts on that score?”

  “Where to find them, you mean?” Her turn to frown. “According to Vidar, they haven’t been back home in maybe as long as two weeks. Out that long, they’ll need shelter, and food.” She got up and walked to the map of the Park on the wall, and ran her finger down the line that represented the Kanuyaq River. “I’m guessing, if they’re still alive, that they’ve squirreled themselves away in the hills somewhere.”

  “That narrows it down.”

  “Yeah, actually it does.” Her finger left the river and traced the line of foothills between it and the Quilak Mountains. “There are a lot of old mines back there, a lot of old gold dredges, too.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “probably fifty, a hundred? You able to narrow it down any more?”

  “Dan could help us do that.” She looked around in time to see the expression on his face. “He’s got the most up-to-date records and maps about mines and equipment in the Park. He’s always on the lookout for squatters. He’ll know if there is anything out there in good enough shape to be used for more than an overnight shelter.”

  He didn’t say anything, and she said persuasively, “Come on, Jim. I don’t know what’s going on with the two of you, but you have to talk to him sometime.”

  He scowled. She waited. Mutt groomed.

  “When he found Deem’s body?” Jim said.

  “Yeah?” Kate said.

  “He tampered with the crime scene.”

  She waited.

  He sighed. “Deem had the deed to the Smiths’ forty acres in his pocket. He and Smith were co-owners. It retains subsurface rights.”

  “Oh,” Kate said. “Like if they found gold on the creek.”

  “Dan’s pretty sure it was all about the gold. He thinks Louis bankrolled Smith, and it was why he was going to marry Abigail and why Smith was going to let him. I think it’s why Louis was headed up to the Step that day, to establish their mining rights.”

  “Why did Dan take the deed?”

  “Ah, jesus, who knows. He was half in the bag for one thing. Moron. Nobody knows better than him, unless maybe it’s you, that you don’t remove evidence from a crime scene.”

  “You didn’t charge him.”

  “No,” he said glumly, “I didn’t charge him. I should have, but I didn’t.”

  Considering what he himself had done or not done in the matter of the murder of Louis Deem and the Koslowski murders, he was as at fault as Dan was of withholding evidence. Maybe, he thought now, that might be why he’d stayed mad at Dan for so long. It was hard to forgive someone for behavior of which you yourself were guilty. You knew only too well how much in the wrong you were.

  She was silent for a moment, and then she repeated herself. “You have to talk to him sometime, Jim. If nothing else, you have to work with him.”

  “Fine,” he said without enthusiasm. “You go on home. I’ll detour up to the Step.”

  “No need,” she said. “I passed him on the way here. Looked like he was headed for Bernie’s.”

  He brightened a little.

  They got up. Kate paused in the doorway. “Howie still in the back?”

  “Yup.”

  “Good.”

  “Well, he won’t leave until I catch whoever shot Mac, and when he heard about Talia I thought he was going to wet his pants. As long as I don’t need the room and he buys his own food, I’m okay with it.” He hesitated. “I did talk to Judge Singh, and she says that lacking anything more than a tire print we don’t have a case against him for Louis.”

  “Did you tell her about the aunties?”

  “Yes,” he said, a little apprehensively. When she didn’t go off on him he relaxed again. “She says she’s disinclined to issue a warrant for a dog on the say-so of Howie Katelnikof.”

  “The aunties still not talking?”

  “Haven’t seen them today, I’ve been otherwise engaged. And Howie of course is now reneging his—quote—nonconfession confession—end quote—right, left, and center. He says he must have been drunk, and I hadn’t Mirandized him, and I was threatening him anyway and he got scared and confused and he would have said anything to get me to leave him alone, and—”

  “I get the picture. Still, good that he’s here where we can keep an eye on him.”

  She preceded him out the door and she didn’t see the curious look he gave her.

  CHAPTER 21

  No belly dancers or church socials this evening, just the regular crowd, a group of old farts playing pinochle at the round table beneath the blare of the basketball game on the television hanging over their heads, and a mosh of couples on the handkerchief-sized dance floor barely moving to the competing blare of Linda Ronstadt
’s “Blue Bayou.” About half the tables were filled, the amount of empties per tabletop indicating the seriousness of the drinkers seated there, although nobody seemed especially drunk. No one seemed especially happy, either, except of course for the four Grosdidier brothers, although when Kate took a closer look she could see that Matt seemed a little strained.

  “Damn,” Jim said, looking at the Grosdidiers, “I hadn’t realized the extent of the damage. I wonder what the other guys look like.”

  Nick and Eve Waterbury sat at one table. Eve had one timidly restraining hand on Nick’s arm and radiated anxiety. She was saying something in a low voice. Nick had his face turned away. At first glance he looked sullen, at second angry, at third despairing. Kate made a mental note of distance and elevation. Nick wasn’t much of a drinker, but he had a temper, and it looked like Eve was testing it.

  Jim gave her a gentle nudge with his elbow. The four aunties were sitting in the corner at their regular table. There was no greeting called to Kate and Jim, just four heads studiously bent over the current quilt, a bright, geometric splash of primary colors.

  Bernie was behind the bar, a tall, thin presence with a calm face and what hair he had left bound back into a ponytail that reached to his belt.

  Strike that, Kate thought, looking at Bernie, not thin, gaunt. Bernie looked as if he hadn’t had a good meal since his wife died. His cheeks were hollowed out, his eyes sunken, the tendons of his hands stood out like whipcord. The past year had aged him ten. “Hey, Kate,” he said. “Mutt.”

  Instead of rearing up to place both front feet on the bar as was her invariable habit, Mutt trotted around it to butt Bernie’s hand with her head. She looked up at him with what could only be described as a kind, loving gaze, if anything coming out of predatory yellow eyes could be called kind. For a moment Bernie seemed to stop breathing. Then he cuffed Mutt gently, pulled down a package of beef jerky, and said, albeit a little shakily, “Get out from behind the bar before I make you buy a round for the house.”

  Her tail swept a graceful arc. She nudged him again and then trotted back around the bar to Kate.

  “Jim,” Bernie said, looking over Kate’s shoulder.

  “Bernie,” Jim said, looking at the bottles lined up in back of the bar.

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Coffee,” Kate said, taking a stool, “and heavy on the cream.”

  “Same,” Jim said, sitting next to her.

  On Jim’s other side was Dan O’Brien, his back to them as he continued his ongoing attempts to romance Bernie’s newest barmaid, one Laura Delgado, a Latina import from California who had followed a Bristol Bay fisherman north a year before. He had not proved to be as attractive in his natural habitat as he had been on a free-spending spree through the clubs of her native Los Angeles, and she had left him to start hitchhiking home the previous fall. In Ahtna she’d stopped to replenish the treasury by waiting tables at the Lodge, where she’d met and fallen madly in love with Martin Shugak.

  That she’d fallen in love with Martin Shugak was a nine-day wonder in the Park, but, Kate thought, perhaps not so difficult, because no matter what Auntie Edna said, the only person who could fall in love with Martin would be someone who didn’t live in the Park and therefore did not know him well. At any rate little Laura Delgado had followed Martin home to Niniltna, and at the end of the road Bernie gave her a job. She was short and plump with polished golden brown cheeks, a perpetually wide smile, a perfect set of large white teeth, and a flirtatious look in her bright brown eyes that was going to get her into trouble before breakup. It didn’t hurt that she sounded like Jennifer Lopez, and had considerably more cleavage.

  “Bernie,” Kate said in a quiet voice, “how often has Nick Waterbury been in here lately?”

  Bernie followed her gaze and said with a noticeable lack of interest, “He’s in here four nights out of five anymore.”

  “Eve always with him?”

  “Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”

  “He drinking a lot?”

  Bernie shook his head. “Not a lot. Steady, though.”

  “Yet another charge to put on Louis Deem’s tab,” Kate said.

  Little Mary Waterbury, daughter and only child of Nick and Eve, had been Louis’s third wife and last victim. She half rose to her feet. “Maybe I should—”

  “No.” Bernie held up a cautionary hand. “Leave them alone.” His mouth twisted. “It’s all we can do for them now, but we can do that much.”

  She looked at Jim. “Bernie’s right,” he said. “You can’t fix this. If it’s gonna get fixed, Nick and Eve have to do it.”

  What he didn’t say but what they both knew was that most marriages did not survive the death of a child.

  “Hey, Laura,” Bernie said. “Thirsty people waiting.”

  She giggled, a dimple flashing in her left cheek, and with a toss of long black hair she grabbed up her tray, winked at Dan, and sashayed off, giving him a roguish look over her shoulder as she went. The impact was kind of lessened when she collided with a chair, but Dan sighed anyway, a lovelorn, wistful sound. Usually it was breakup before Park rats started falling in love with anything that didn’t move out of the way first.

  “Hey, Dan,” Jim said.

  Dan’s back stiffened. He turned, very slowly, his eyes wary, a thickset redhead with fair skin that flushed easily. He wore bibs over a plaid shirt and high, thick-soled leather boots. “Hey, Jim. Kate. Didn’t see you come in.”

  “Yeah, we noticed,” Jim said. “Looking for you, actually.”

  “Really.” Dan took a long deliberate pull at his beer and sat contemplating the bottle for a moment. “What can I do for you?”

  “You heard about the snow machine attacks on the river?”

  The tension in Dan’s shoulders eased slightly but his eyes were still wary. “It’s all anybody’s been talking about, and my ears work fine.”

  “Yeah, figures. I was thinking I’d talk to the Johansen boys about them.”

  Dan raised his eyebrows. “Couldn’t hurt. What’s that got to do with me?”

  “They appear to have changed location. Haven’t been home in a couple of weeks, according to their dad.”

  “And?”

  “And I don’t think they’d leave the Park. So if they’re still in the Park, and they’ve changed addresses, I got to thinking about where they’d go. And while I was thinking I remembered all those abandoned mines along the foothills south of the Step. Lot of old timber they could use to build a shelter inside one of them, put in a woodstove, pack in some grub, melt snow for water, you’d make it through as long as you wanted to. I was thinking, too, that you’d have the best knowledge of those mines, and maybe even a map.”

  Dan shook his head. “No.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I do, but we’ve been closing those old mines, caving in the entrances. They’re an invitation to squatters, and they’re dangerous to hikers and backpackers. Every time I hear about a new one I close it up.”

  Jim shrugged. “Could be one of them was dug out.”

  “It’d be a major excavation, requiring at minimum one of Mac Devlin’s Cats,” Dan said dryly. “You can bring a lot of rock down with a stick of dynamite.”

  “That you can,” Jim said with respect. “Any other ideas you might have as to where the Johansens might be holing up?”

  Dan scratched his head. “Hell, Jim, place is twenty million acres.”

  “I know,” Jim said with equal gloom.

  They shook their heads, and Kate could see that all would eventually be right in the world of their friendship.

  She, on the other hand, was growing more and more worried about the whereabouts of the Johansen brothers. They weren’t home. According to Dan there was no place for them to go to ground among the old mines. Kenny Hazen would have called Jim if they’d shown up in Ahtna. Where the hell were they?

  It was no joke to be out in the Park without shelter at this time of year. Where could they
go, especially if they were hurt? There’d have to be trees for fuel, they had to stay warm, and—

  She sat up, staring straight ahead. “Hey,” she said.

  Before she could say any more, the door to the Roadhouse slammed open. Everyone looked around and two men stood in the doorway, one with blood frozen on his face, the other supporting him. “Somebody else got jumped on the river!”

  “Fuck,” Matt Grosdidier was heard to say clearly.

  There was a general movement toward the two men. Jim nodded at the Grosdidiers and made a hole through the crowd, Kate bringing up the rear. The bleeding man started to slip and Luke Grosdidier slid a chair under his butt before he fell all the way to the floor. The Grosdidiers did triage surrounded by a supervisory buzz of commentary, Peter fetching a first-aid kit the size of a hospital crash cart.

  Jim let them get on with it for fifteen minutes before he said, “How bad?”

  “Not too,” Mark said, his usually cheerful face serious as he concentrated on the task at hand. “He’s got a goose egg on the back of his head and it bled a little, but he says he woke up on his own. We’ll keep him awake, in case of concussion, and he should probably go into Ahtna for an x-ray, but I think he’ll be okay.”

  “Ask him some questions?”

  Mark shrugged. “If he’s up to it.”

  Jim shouldered forward and hunkered down in front of the victim. “What’s your name, sir?”

  The man’s eyes seemed to be wandering a little, and he made a visible effort to bring them back under control. “Oh,” he said, zeroing in on Jim. “The Niniltna trooper, right?”

  “That’s me. What’s your name, and where do you live?”

  “Gene Daly. I live in Anchorage. I’ve got a cabin on the river the other side of Double Eagle. I was headed there on my snow machine.”

  “What happened?”

  “Wish to hell I knew,” Daly said, wincing when Matt pressed a little too hard on his head wound. Matt muttered an apology, and Kate gave him a thoughtful look.

  “I was coasting down the river, smooth as you please, making for the cabin with a bunch of supplies, going to spend a week there.” He put a tentative hand to his head and winced again. “Everything inside my head just sort of exploded.” He looked up. “I woke up and the trailer was gone and I was bleeding and I couldn’t get my snow machine started. Woulda froze to death if this guy hadn’t come along. Saved my life. Thanks, man.”