A Taint in the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  The doctor flapped his hand. “Yeah, yeah, I know the drill.” He shambled off down the hall, white coat stained with blood.

  “So I’ll talk to you instead, Shugak.”

  Kate turned. “O’Leary.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Kurt asked me to meet him there.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  Kate did a rapid mental review. “He’s working for me.”

  “So you said. Doing what?”

  “Finding a witness to a case I’m working.”

  “What was the name of the witness?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. It was her first lie. It wouldn’t be her last. “I was coming to town, and Billy Mike asked me to look for Luba Hardt while I was here.”

  “I remember.” She paused, and to her relief and somewhat to her shame, O’Leary jumped right in. “So Kurt was looking for witnesses to the assault?”

  “Yes. He called me to ask me to meet him there because he’d found something or someone. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, he just asked me to meet him. Who does that cabin belong to, anyway?”

  She saw his look and hoped she hadn’t overdone the innocence. There was a long pause. “Guy by the name of Gene Salamantoff. You know him?”

  “Never heard of him.” That was the strict truth, so far as it went.

  “Mmm.” O’Leary, big, beefy, red-faced, examined her with careful eyes, and decided for reasons best known to himself to provide further information. “Turns out he’s dead, too.”

  “Salamantoff?”

  O’Leary nodded. “We found his body in his bedroom.”

  “You’re kidding,” Kate said, and earned herself another long look. She couldn’t help it—lying just wasn’t her very best thing. “Was he shot, too?”

  O’Leary nodded.

  “Same gun?”

  “By the entry and exit wounds, yeah. Take ballistics a few days to be sure.”

  “There were two men,” Kate said.

  “I read your statement,” O’Leary said.

  “Did you raise any prints?”

  O’Leary shrugged.

  “Got this, though,” and handed her a mug shot of the dead man.

  “Thanks,” she said, a little surprised.

  O’Leary’s middle name was not “helpful.”

  “Anybody spot the Pontiac anywhere?”

  O’Leary shrugged again.

  “When you find them, look for bite marks,” Kate said.

  O’Leary looked down at Mutt, who was standing one pace behind Kate, and almost smiled.

  Kate left the number of the town house and the one for her cell phone at the nurses’ station with strict instructions to call her if Kurt showed any sign whatsoever of regaining consciousness. To be sure, she slipped into his room when the nurse’s back was turned and left a note under the bedside phone to that effect, too. She stood for a moment looking down at him. Tubed and wired and bandaged. No respirator, though. Kurt was breathing on his own, always a good sign, and the heart monitor registered a reassuringly steady blip.

  He seemed to be frowning, his brow puckered. Truth to tell, he looked more than a little pissed off, and for some reason this caused Kate’s heart to lift a little. Pissed off was nowhere near to dying. She touched his shoulder. “I left both my phone numbers, Kurt,” she said in a low voice. “Call me when you wake up. In the meantime, I’ll get on the trail of those sons a bitches in the Pontiac.”

  Kate pulled some pork ribs out of the refrigerator and put them on to boil with salt and garlic powder, started rice in the rice cooker, and took a diet Sprite over ice with a lime twist into the upstairs bathroom. She stripped out of the clothes stained with Kurt’s blood and got into the shower. She let the water, hot as she could stand it, beat down on her back and took a long, cold swallow of her drink.

  She turned her face into the water, soaking her hair, breathing the steam in deep.

  Kurt was going to be all right, that was the main thing. “He’s going to be all right,” she said out loud, and then she said, “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch,” and slapped the tile with her open hand hard enough to make it sting.

  She soaped down, rinsed off, and toweled herself dry, then stalked into the bedroom and yanked on clean clothes. Mutt, who had followed her into the bathroom, trailed her into the bedroom. Kate took her bloodstained clothes into the laundry room and started the washer. Mutt followed her there, too, and followed her into the kitchen, where Kate boiled water for tea, got out a cup, and added a huge dollop of honey. She took the cup of tea into the living room and curled up in the easy chair, the afghan from the back of the couch tucked in around her. Mutt whined at her, so she scooched over, and Mutt climbed into the nest with her. It was a tight fit, but Kate was more than grateful for the reassurance that emanated from Mutt’s warm, solid body.

  Suddenly, Kate was freezing. She was shaking so hard the tea spilled over the side of the cup and her teeth chattered on the rim. She had an immediate desire to call George and tell him to come get her and Mutt out of this friggin’ town at once. She had an equally immediate desire to find the two shooters in the Pontiac, cut out their livers, and feed them to Mutt as a special treat.

  Kate had never had anyone working for her hurt before.

  Come to that, Kate had never had anyone working for her before.

  It was one thing to get hurt herself. The risk of injury, even death, was always there in her line of work. The last time she’d been in the hospital the doctor had offered her frequent flyer miles.

  But Kurt was new to the job, a mercy job Kate had thrown him because she’d felt guilty about separating him from his previous profession of poaching. It wasn’t like he was a professional private investigator. He’d never had any training, and other than the rare brawl at the Roadhouse, he probably had no experience in defending himself. He’d just been stumbling around in the dark, making it up as he went along.

  Kate didn’t have a lot of personal investment in Kurt Pletnikoff. They lived on opposite sides of the Park, they hadn’t been in the same grade at school, they hadn’t been friends or lovers. He was some kind of second cousin twice removed—Kate thought through Auntie Vi, or maybe Auntie Balasha—but then, that could be said of half the residents of the Park.

  But she’d accepted responsibility for him when she had hired him. From that moment forward, he was one of hers. She’d thought to share a little of the Bannister wealth, maybe give Kurt a head start in the next stage of his life, since she’d been instrumental in ending the last one.

  She didn’t feel guilty about that. Somebody had to stand up for the Park bears, poor little defenseless creatures that they were.

  She could have sent Kurt out into the PI fray with a little less insouciance and a little more preparation, though.

  For the first time, Kate understood what it must be like to send a soldier out into battle, and to have to explain to his loved ones why he hadn’t returned.

  Mutt whined, an anxious sound, and touched her cold nose gently to Kate’s cheek. Kate closed her eyes and leaned her head against Mutt’s and tried to think. Charlotte had hired her to free Victoria. She had hired Kurt to help her do so. Someone had shot Kurt and had been waiting at the cabin to shoot her, too. It was just plain blind luck, and Mutt, that she hadn’t charged right in the door and picked up her very own personal bullet in the chest.

  She managed to down most of the tea, and the heat of the brew and the sweetness of the honey finally managed to calm her trembling. She was able to feel her feet again. She could think.

  She wondered whether Victoria Pilz Bannister Muravieff might perhaps be innocent of the charge of murder that had had her incarcerated for thirty years. Perhaps whoever had really done the crime might be alarmed that someone was checking into the case again.

  But if that was true, if Victoria was innocent, why had she refused to talk to Kate? What, was she nuts? Who the hell turns down a Get Out of Jail Free card? Who wants to
stay in prison?

  Victoria could be one of those people who had become completely institutionalized, so used to the structured life of the prison that she could not envision any other. It happened, Kate had seen prisoners released on probation re-offend and be back inside within the week. For some of them, a bed and three meals a day were worth it. Kate didn’t think Victoria Pilz Bannister Muravieff, scion of Alaska’s landed and moneyed gentry, was one of them. Someone who had the ability, even after being tried, convicted, and imprisoned for the with-malice-aforethought murder of her son, to finish a BA and a master’s degree and who had single-handedly gone on to organize and run what amounted to a small high school and community college on the inside was not institutionalized. At this point, Victoria pretty much was the institution, only she didn’t go home at night along with the rest of the staff.

  Reopening a thirty-year-old case had its risks. There were always secrets that people thought they had buried deep, but in Alaska, never deep enough. The community was too small, and the memories of the old farts too good.

  When she thought her hands were steady enough, she got up and went to her day pack, where she got out the notebook she’d taken from Kurt’s pocket before the police and the ambulance got there.

  13

  It was a small spiral-bound notebook with lined paper. Kurt’s sprawling handwriting was barely legible. He’d written down Eugene Muravieff’s name on the first page and Henry Cowell’s name about halfway through. Notes followed each name.

  He’d exploited those sources Kate had given him first, and Kate had to give him points for thoroughness. An attorney in private practice who subscribed to the Motznik public records database and who was willing to allow Kate to access it for a small fee had been his first stop, as indicated by the directions to the office that Kurt had scribbled down. Neither Muravieff nor Cowell had a current driver’s license, although the old ones had furnished their birth dates and Social Security numbers. The last litigation—the only—Muravieff had been involved in was his divorce from Victoria, when Victoria had been given all the property they held in common and sole custody of the children, and Eugene an admonishment from the judge to complete rehab, or detox, as it was called in those days. The last litigation Cowell had been involved in was as attorney of record for Victoria in Victoria Bannister Muravieff vs. the State of Alaska, one count of murder in the first degree, one count of attempted murder in the first degree, judgment found for the state.

  Neither had a telephone number, listed or unlisted. Neither had a mortgage or a car payment. Neither had a vehicle with tires, wings, skis, tracks, or a hull listed in his name in the state of Alaska. Muravieff had had a commercial fishing license for a set-net site in Seldovia, which had evidently been sold at some point, because Kurt’s notes indicated it had been transferred to an Ernie Gajewski. In parentheses Kurt had written “Wanda’s brother.”

  Kate paused to look up Ernie Gajewski in the phone book. No joy. No Wanda Gajewski, either.

  Neither Muravieff nor Cowell had applied for a hunting or sportfishing license recently, and neither had ever applied for a permanent fund dividend since the payment had begun being made to Alaskan citizens in 1981. Cowell’s membership in the Alaska Bar Association had lapsed. Both men had registered for the draft their senior year in high school. Muravieff had served in Korea, risen to the rank of sergeant, and been awarded a Purple Heart and a Medal of Valor. Cowell had served his time as a legal aide with the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Office in Washington, D.C.

  All of which was no information at all. Kate wondered what happened when the Internal Revenue Service stopped getting taxes from a citizen. Did they notice? Did they follow up? Did they require proof of death? She’d had to file a final income tax statement for her grandmother when she died, so that Kate could legally give away most of Ekaterina’s belongings and take possession of the rest. That had required a death certificate. It might be worth checking into in the matter of Muravieff and Cowell, if only because of the spectacular lack of other evidence of what had happened to either man.

  It was information of sorts, if only in a negative way, that both men had dropped out of sight entirely.

  She wondered if anyone had shot at them.

  She looked at the first photo she’d taken from the old cabin earlier that day. It was black-and-white in a blue wooden frame, a group of three preadolescents, a girl between two boys, arms around one another, smiling broadly at the camera. She recognized a much younger Charlotte. The two boys with her would be her brothers, the dead William, and Oliver, whose much younger face was easily recognizable.

  She looked at the second photo, the formal portrait of the girl. No clue as to her identity. She removed the back of the frame. The photographer’s name was stamped on the back of the photo, Gebhart Studio. She looked in the phone book again. There were half a dozen Gebharts, but no Gebhart Studio.

  Mutt had moved to the floor next to the chair the first time Kate had gotten up for the phone book, and she watched Kate’s every move with alert yellow eyes.

  “If Victoria didn’t kill William, who did?” Kate asked her.

  Mutt didn’t know.

  “They’re still around.”

  Mutt barked, a single, sharp, thoroughly pissed-off agreement. Mutt didn’t care for people shooting at her human.

  Quick footsteps came up the walk, a fist beat a rapid tattoo against the door, and the doorbell chimed several times. “Kate? Kate, I saw the car through the garage windows. I know you’re in there. Open up, goddamn it!”

  Kate sighed. She looked at Mutt, who was on her feet, tail wagging furiously. “Shall we let him in?”

  The bark was still short and sharp, but this time it was joyous. Kate got up and opened the door.

  “Are you all right?” Jim demanded. He walked in without invitation. “I ran into somebody at the courthouse who said you’d been involved in a shooting.”

  Of course. The Bush telegraph might be a shade faster than a courthouse when it came to spreading the news, but not much.

  He stood her against the wall and more or less frisked her. “You’re okay? You’re not hurt? Nobody shot you?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, and fended him off when he showed signs of stripping her down right there to check for wounds. At least that was what she thought he was doing. “Really. I didn’t get hit.”

  “Who did? They said somebody got shot.”

  “Kurt.”

  He stared at her. “Kurt Pletnikoff?”

  “Yes. He’s working for me, helping track down some of the people connected to Victoria Muravieff’s case.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Jim said. “Kurt Pletnikoff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Yes. The guy he found isn’t.”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy lying dead in the bedroom with a bullet hole in his head.”

  Jim stared at her for another minute and then shook his head. “Okay. I want you to start over, at the beginning.”

  “I told you most of it last night.”

  “Tell me again.”

  It couldn’t hurt to talk it through again, especially since she was now hovering on the side of believing Victoria to be innocent. She knew how Jim, who was after all a practicing law-enforcement professional, would react to that notion, but maybe she needed a devil’s advocate right about now. Getting shot at always had a tendency to screw with her head. “Okay, but—what time is it?”

  He looked at his watch. “A little after five.”

  “God, is that all? It feels like a year since this morning.” Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t been able to finish her lunch. “Want some dinner?”

  He followed her into the kitchen, where the pork ribs were stewing. She checked the rice, and pulled a package of frozen snow peas from the freezer and set it on the drain board to thaw.

  Jim sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and listened to her
story. When she finished, he stirred and said, “What took Kurt to that cabin?”

  “I don’t know. He’s unconscious and his notes don’t say.”

  “What did he say when he called you?”

  “He said, ‘I’ve got some news for you.’ And when I asked him what, he said, ‘I want to show you.’”

  “Did he call you from the cabin?”

  She thought. “No. He said it would take him thirty minutes to get there because he was going to pick up some lunch on the way.”

  “There’re damn few places in Anchorage that are thirty minutes away from anywhere, even when you’re stopping for lunch on the way,” Jim said.

  “I know. Which leads me to believe he was in Muldoon, or South Anchorage, or…”

  “What?”

  “Or maybe up on Hillside,” she said.

  “Who lives on Hillside?”

  “Charlotte Muravieff.” Kate went into the living room and picked up the phone. It rang four times before the machine picked up. “Charlotte, this is Kate Shugak. I need to speak to you or Emily immediately. Call me at this number.”

  She hung up and went back into the kitchen.

  “You think your client sent Kurt to that cabin?” Jim said.

  “If she did, I’ll rip her a new bodily orifice,” Kate said.

  There followed a brief silence. No one who knew Kate Shugak would take such a threat lightly. Jim waited long enough for the sizzle to die out of the air before he said, “Do you suppose he found the body and wanted to show it to you before he called the cops?”

  She took a deep breath and blew it out. “No. He sounded happy, like he knew he’d found something I needed. Kurt’s a lot of things, but morbid isn’t one of them. And I found him in the living room, so I’m not even sure he made it to the bedroom before they shot him.” She drained the ribs of all the broth but for half a cup and put the pot back on the stove. She opened a can of cream of mushroom soup and added it to the meat. Seeing Jim watching her, she said, “Secret Filipino ingredient.”

  “I beg your pardon?”