A Taint in the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  “You Shugak?” the first one said, and walked inside without waiting for an answer. “I’m Becky. This is Lael.”

  “Hi,” Kate said.

  “Where is she?”

  “In the living room. She’s pretty shook.”

  “I don’t blame her,” Becky said gruffly. “I’d hate to think how I’d react if Lael—” And here the two women exchanged such an unexpected and naked look of emotion that Kate felt like she was intruding on something very private, and she averted her eyes.

  “I tried calling her aunt and uncle,” Kate said, “but they aren’t picking up.”

  “Hah!” Becky said.

  “I left a message,” Kate said.

  “Hah!” Becky said again.

  “Oh, Becky!” Emily said from behind Kate, and rushed forward to be enfolded in an all-encompassing embrace. “Charlotte’s gone! Charlotte, oh my God, Charlotte!”

  “It’s okay,” Becky said, patting Emily’s back soothingly. “It’s okay, Emily, Lael and I are here now. We’ll take care of you.”

  Lael was already producing a bottle of pills from the day pack she was carrying. “A sedative,” she explained to Kate in a soft voice.

  “You a doctor?” Kate said.

  Lael nodded.

  “Did you hear how Charlotte died?”

  Lael’s lips tightened. “Charlotte Bannister was a good friend of mine, Ms. Shugak.”

  “And she was my client, and she’s just been killed in what could be considered suspicious circumstances.”

  Lael’s eyes widened. “I thought it was a hit-and-run.”

  “It was.” Kate glanced over her shoulder at Becky and Emily and lowered her voice. “Look, I can’t say anymore right now, but just keep the doors and windows locked, okay? And here’s my number, if you need me for anything.”

  “What are you doing here anyway?”

  “Charlotte hired me to get her mother out of jail,” Kate said baldly.

  Jim, still sequestered in his neutral corner, noticed that discretion had just suffered a hit. Kate’s favorite weapon had always been the bludgeon, and she would regard Charlotte’s death as a personal affront that had to be avenged. He felt a spark of sympathy, albeit a very tiny spark, for the perp. Like Kate, like any cop worthy of the name, he didn’t think much of coincidences. He was still pretty sure Victoria had committed the crime of which she had been found guilty, but he was equally certain that Kate, in ferreting around after the circumstances of that crime, had stirred up something nasty associated with that crime that had lain dormant for thirty-one years. There was nothing worse than that kind of nasty. Old nasty had a tendency to ripen. Left alone, it would eventually rot away. Exposed to the bright light of day before that happened, the stench rolled out and over everyone in sight. Considering the wealth and power connected with this case, the smell could reach all the way to Juneau and maybe even Washington, D.C.

  Lael was quick. “And you think that might have something to do with Charlotte being killed?” she asked Kate.

  “I don’t know. But I think it’s interesting that she was killed right after she hired me to start investigating a thirty-one-year-old murder case.”

  In the car on the way down O’Malley, Jim said, “You’re taking the gloves off.”

  She spared him a brief glance. “One. I hire Kurt Pletnikoff to do some legwork for me. Two, he finds a dead man—I’m guessing someone connected to this case. Three, he is shot and left for dead himself. Four, somebody tries to take me out. Five, my employer is killed.” She pulled to the side of the road, provoking an indignant honk from the Chevy Suburban that had been riding their bumper all the way down the mountain. “And notice I’m not even mentioning the attempt to buy me off with the Niniltna VPSO job.”

  He looked around. “What are we doing? Kate, you parked right on the bike trail.”

  She pointed at a shred of crime-scene tape tied to a tree branch. “This is where Charlotte got hit.”

  A narrow dirt road intersected O’Malley at right angles. The trees grew in close and closed in overhead to form a canopy. Kate walked down it, Jim pacing behind. At intervals, houses were visible through the trees, but there was a good hundred feet before the first driveway. Kate turned around and paced back, looking down. She stopped and squatted. “Look,” she said, pointing.

  Jim squatted next to her, scrutinizing the dirt track. There were tire tracks from a big vehicle, and a dark patch where the engine had leaked oil. “Somebody was parked here.”

  Kate nodded. “Waiting.”

  “And then started fast, spinning the tires, kicking dirt.”

  “A big black pickup.” Kate rose to her feet and walked out to the intersection. It was 10:30, the sun well up in the sky, beating down on the backs of their heads as they looked west. “See the way the road rises just before it gets here?”

  Jim nodded. “Yeah. Charlotte wouldn’t have seen them coming until the last minute.”

  “The question is, how did they know when to hit the gas?”

  A brief silence. “There were two of them,” Jim said finally. “Jesus Christ. There were two of them, with walkie-talkies or cell phones. The one down the road called the one parked in the lane, waiting until Charlotte was about to come over the rise, and told the guy in the truck when to go.”

  Kate nodded. “Yeah.” She walked back to the Subaru and pulled her own cell phone from her day pack. Jim’s jaw dropped about six inches. She ignored him and called Brendan McCord.

  She dropped Jim at the state courthouse. He sat in the car for a moment. “Two people, connected to the case you’re working on, both dead within a day of each other,” he said.

  “I know,” she said a little grimly. “I’m glad I didn’t bring Johnny in with me.”

  “Kate,” he said, and caught her chin in one hand and pulled her face around so she had to look at him. “It occurs to me that you could be in some danger.”

  She let a slow smile spread across her face, and instead of pulling away like any normal Kate Shugak would have done, she leaned into his grip and purred, her lips touching his as they moved. “Were you thinking I’d need my very own personal bodyguard?”

  “Ah shit,” he said, and kissed her hard. “Take care of yourself, damn it.” He opened the door and something—he didn’t know what—stopped him half in and half out of the car. Over his shoulder he said gruffly, “I should be out of here before five. You want to meet somewhere for dinner?”

  She spent two hours going back over the case file, reexamining the record of the chain of events, the eyewitness testimony, the physical evidence. She reread the trial transcript, resetting her internal bullshit monitor up a notch to filter out all the extraneous information that was a part of every criminal trial (e.g., Q: “Where were you at 8:00 P.M. the evening of the twelfth, Miss Doe?” A: “Well, I was having dinner with my friends right after work—you know Sally is going through a really rough time with her boyfriend and Margie said we should show our support by giving her a good time—and boy I can tell you the margaritas at La Mex are the way to go, and anyway I didn’t get home until 7:00 P.M. and my mother called the minute I walked in the door, and she and Dad are thinking about retiring to Flagstaff next year and they wanted to know what I thought of the area and how often I could get down there, and when she finally hung up, Carrie—that’s my dog, named for the girl on Sex and the City, you know?—anyway Carrie really had to go, so I took her for a walk, and then I ran into Paul, the hunk who lives two doors down, and we were talking, and gosh, ‘Kate could just imagine the adorable giggle’—I guess I was talking to Paul about then. We kind of, you know, hit it off?”).

  Unfortunately, none of the facts had changed since the last time Kate had visited them. Victoria was the one who had called in the fire, and, according to the statements of the firefighters, she was found sitting outside the burning house, crying and clutching fifteen-year-old Charlotte. Cowell had dabbled with the notion that the older, deceased brother, William, had set th
e fire to try to kill Oliver, the younger brother, motive determined to be an unnamed schoolgirl they were both in love with, which sounded like such a ludicrous stretch that even the judge had made fun of him. Of course, Cowell had also, in the best tradition of defense attorneys, speculated on the motives of everyone involved, up to and including the firefighters.

  Only Victoria had any motive that could be supported by evidence however circumstantial. And only Victoria had not spoken in her own defense.

  Why not?

  “What?” Victoria said. “You’re afraid you won’t be paid?”

  Kate looked at the proud chin, which was trembling a little now, and forbore to answer in kind. “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

  Victoria was sitting in her usual fashion, straight-backed, head up, fixing Kate with a fierce, fearless eye. Kate felt that same reluctant admiration that she had before, but she needed answers and she needed them now. “I’ve been doing some research, Ms. Muravieff. Thirty-two years ago, your father laid off over a thousand Bannister employees and replaced them with contract hires. A company isn’t required to pay the same benefits to a contract employee as a union employee—health benefits, a retirement plan, workman’s comp, things like that. What’s more, he did it in the middle of the construction of the TransAlaska Pipeline, the biggest cost-plus contract in the history of this planet, when union members had the pipeline consortium by the short hairs and twisted them to their heart’s content. Teamsters rioted at Isabel Pass when they were refused steak for lunch, seven-ninety-eighters refused to share living space with other unions, and electricians walked thirty at a time when the plumbers got Sundays off with pay and they didn’t. Average union wage with overtime was something like twelve hundred dollars a week, back when twelve hundred dollars a week was real money. They were pretty much sitting up and begging to be slapped down, and your father was the first one to do so. He was hailed as a hero by every corporate owner in the state, and his action was a snowball that started a landslide, leading to the beginning of privatization of state services.”

  Kate paused. Victoria’s breath was coming a little faster, but her expression was graven in stone. “You were quoted in the press as being adamantly opposed to that action. You marched with the employees. There are pictures of you holding a sign that read ‘People Before Profits.’ You excoriated your father in the newspapers, on radio and television, all over the state. You even made it to the Washington state papers, and I found at least one op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. They hammered you, but consider the source.”

  Jolted out of her grief, Victoria said involuntarily, “You’ve done your homework.”

  “It’s what I do,” Kate said, who was still nauseated from yet another dose of microfiche. “Did your action against your father have something to do with the fire at your home and the death of your son?”

  “No,” Victoria said. She sounded very calm, a little too calm.

  “He was probably at that fund-raiser you and Charlotte went to that evening. He probably knew you would be there. Maybe he didn’t mean to kill anyone. Maybe it was just supposed to be a warning to you, to shut you up, to stop you organizing the peons, so he could continue to rip off the average Alaskan Joe in the best tradition of robber barons since J. P. Morgan. It’s not like it’s a new story in American history, after all. At least your father spent what he ripped off right here in the state, instead of retiring Outside to spend it all in Palm Springs.”

  “No,” Victoria said, refusing the carrot. She wouldn’t implicate her father even if it meant exonerating herself.

  Kate tried very hard not to lose her temper. For one thing, it wasn’t fair. Kate could walk away, Victoria couldn’t. For another, it was usually unproductive of anything except fear in her target. Although Victoria did not look noticeably fearful. “Look, Ms. Muravieff,” Kate said tightly, “it’s obvious that the death of your daughter Tuesday night is connected in some way to the death of your son William thirty-one years ago.”

  “I don’t see why,” Victoria said with flinty composure.

  “Come now,” Kate said a little impatiently. “I show up and start asking questions about a thirty-one-year-old homicide, moreover a closed case, a case for which someone has been convicted and imprisoned, and suddenly people related to the case start dying, including the one who hired me to ask the questions. Seems like, gosh, cause and effect.”

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” Victoria said, and waved a hand at her surroundings. “It’s not like I could have seen anything. I don’t get out much, you know.”

  “There has been another death,” Kate said, and placed on the table in front of Victoria the head shot O’Leary had given her. “Someone killed him hours before my associate had a chance to ask him any questions, and then tried to kill my associate, as well.”

  She watched Victoria, but the woman had herself well in hand. She raised her eyes to look at Kate. “I don’t know who that is,” she said in a voice like flint, but Kate heard the quaver beneath.

  “Ms. Muravieff—”

  “I don’t know him,” Victoria repeated in a stronger voice. “If that’s all, Ms. Shugak, I have work to do.”

  15

  Kate left Hiland Mountain ready to wash her hands of the whole damn Bannister clan.

  Instead, she went to the Pioneer Home to talk to Max.

  He was getting beaten at checkers by a wizened old man who cackled like a hen every time he made a double jump, and he was cackling pretty much nonstop when Kate marched up. Max greeted her with evident relief. “Shugak!” he said. “My girlfriend,” he explained to his opponent.

  “I need to talk to you,” Kate said.

  “I thought I might be seeing you.”

  “You catch the news last night?”

  “Don’t sleep much anymore,” he said. Max noted the militant gleam in her eye, the stubborn set of her jaw, and the way her shoulders somehow resembled a battering ram. “About time for lunch, ain’t it?” he said.

  She took him back to Club Paris. The staff recognized him (and Kate, who had left a very nice tip behind last time) and upon request, the maître d’ seated them in the very last booth. They’d get a lot of action from the kitchen but wouldn’t be seen by the other diners.

  “Is this a three-martini luncheon?” Max said, settling in for the duration with a look of anticipation on his wrinkled face.

  “If I drank, it would be a five-martini lunch,” Kate said, “but I’m in kind of a hurry, Max.”

  “Like that, eh?” he said, and ordered a double, “and keep a watch, darlin’, ’cause when the glass is empty, I’d like another ready to go at my elbow, okay?”

  The waitress, smiling, promised to keep an eye, and when they were served, she vanished discreetly. Max took a long, continuous swallow and put the glass down with a loud smack of his lips. “That’s the stuff,” he said, and gave her a long, considering look. “You don’t drink?”

  Kate shook her head.

  “Recovering?”

  She shook her head again.

  He nodded. “Opposed to firewater on general principles, then. You’re missing out.”

  Kate, who would have made all the alcohol in the world disappear with the snap of her fingers if it were in her power, said, “I don’t think so. I need your help, Max. I’ve got two people dead and one person wounded and I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

  He settled into his seat like a race car driver waiting for the flag. “Tell me all about it, Kate my girl.”

  She took a deep breath and then laid it all out, in order—the sequence of events that had begun when she drove into the clearing in front of her house and found Charlotte Muravieff waiting for her.

  Max grunted. “Who’s the guy in the hospital again?”

  “Kurt Pletnikoff. I hired him to look for Eugene Muravieff and Henry Cowell.”

  “Did he find them?”

  “He called me and told me to meet him at this cabin at Jewel Lake. I wen
t there and two men started shooting at me. They’d already shot Kurt in the chest, and another man in the head, probably earlier that morning. I found this in the dead man’s bedroom.” She produced the photo of the three kids.

  Max got out a pair of reading glasses and perched them on the tip of his beaky nose. “That would be William, Oliver, and Charlotte Bannister when they were kids, be my guess.”

  She produced the head shot of the dead man.

  “Eugene Muravieff,” Max said immediately.

  “Victoria says she doesn’t know him.”

  Max’s eyebrows went up. “Doesn’t know the father of her three children, does she? Interesting.”

  “And now Charlotte’s dead, too.”

  “Yeah.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’re off the case?”

  Kate’s jaw became very much in evidence.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said, without his usual sparkle.

  “What?” she said.

  He sighed. “Ah hell, maybe I’m getting old. I’m thinking they’ve already killed twice, attempted to kill twice more. Pursuing this could be hazardous to your health.”

  “Not to mention the people working for me.”

  “He over twenty-one?”

  “What?”

  “This Kurt guy. He over twenty-one?”

  “He’s in his thirties, what’s that got to do with anything?”

  She snapped out the words, and Max didn’t bother hiding a grin. “It’s got to do with him being a grown man, and you not being his mom.”

  She shrugged, uncomfortable.

  “You didn’t kill Charlotte, either,” he added, “just in case you were feeling all-omnipotent over there. Any identification in the cabin with the dead guy?”

  “There was a wallet with twenty bucks and change in it, along with a driver’s license that identified him as Gene Salamantoff.”

  “Salamantoff are shirttail relatives of the Muravieffs, as I recall. Be easy to get one of them to share his social security number for a fake license.” The waitress twitched by, and since she was a kind young woman, she put a little extra into it when she saw Max watching. He gave a sigh of pure appreciation. “Nowadays, legs on a woman are just basic transportation, you know? Used to be a pleasure watching them walk. Used to be they took care of their butts and walking was an art form. Now it’s just a butt in a bag and they could care less how they sling it around. But that girl, I’m happy to say, is an exception.”