A Taint in the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  In the cold dark before dawn, she knew Erland Bannister was never going to bite. All he had to do was wait for her to leave. She was beaten, and she hated it. She couldn’t remember the last time it had happened. “Some days you get the bear,” she said out loud, “and some days the bear gets you.”

  It was the thought of Charlotte Muravieff that bothered her most. Charlotte, that middle-aged Alaskan icon with the alternative, pampered, extremely well-funded lifestyle. Charlotte, not Victoria, very possibly the victim of a thirty-year miscarriage of justice, Charlotte, not Eugene Muravieff, whom Kate had very probably gotten killed just by looking for him, Charlotte, not William, a seventeen-year-old boy barely on the cusp of manhood, who never had a chance at life. Kate thought of the first time she had seen Charlotte, so desperate, so determined. She thought of her at Erland’s party, when Kate had scored off the phoniest person in a room full of phonies, and Charlotte had looked so pleased and grateful.

  It seemed about all Kate was going to be able to do for Charlotte.

  She heard a noise in the backyard and went to look out the window. The boys’ tent was silent and dark. She opened the door just to be sure, and had just enough time to see two dark figures coalesce out of the gloom before something dropped over her head and everything went black.

  “Hey!” she yelled stupidly, and a sledgehammer hit her face and everything went blacker.

  Three different cannonballs hit Jim at once and he came awake thrashing and yelling. He slid off the bed in an ignominious heap just about the time someone switched on the overhead light. He blinked up at it. “Kate? What the hell is going on?”

  He was engulfed by a seething swarm of what looked like ten kids and sounded like twenty dogs, all yelling and barking.

  “What the hell?” he said in frustration. He was rewarded by another burst of sound, and he put back his head and bellowed, “Quiet!”

  Silence fell. The melee resolved itself into two frightened boys and one angry dog, who snarled at him in a way that reminded him of the time Kate had been—

  “Kate?” he said. “Kate!” He got to his feet, scooping up his jeans as he ran. She wasn’t in the bathroom, in the kitchen, watching a movie. “Kate!” he bellowed, even though he knew it was useless. He turned to head back upstairs and had to stop before he ran over the boys and the dog, who had followed on his heels and were now staring up at him with equal anxiety over their faces, furred and furless.

  Jim felt his heart stop. Yes, he did, and it did, it simply stopped in his chest for one interminable moment. His mouth opened and closed again. With a thump that deafened him, his heart resumed beating, fast and high up in his throat. His voice, when it managed to get out around his heart, was a low croak. “Where is she?”

  Mouths opened and closed, including Mutt’s. He couldn’t hear anything. “What?” he said. “What?”

  Sound returned without warning and he winced away from it. “They took her!”

  One of the boys—Kevin? Jordan? Jim couldn’t remember. God help him, he couldn’t remember. What kind of cop was he? This boy took Jim’s arm and led him to the living room and more or less shoved him down on the couch. He put his hand on the back of Jim’s head, preparatory to pushing Jim’s head between his knees, when Jim raised a hand to stop him. “It’s okay, kid,” he told him. “I’m okay. Thanks. You did good.”

  “What?” the kid mouthed. Jim still couldn’t hear him, but that was because the other boy was back up to one thousand decibels. He flapped his hand and it ceased. Mutt nosed beneath his arm, emitting a continual anxious whine, and that scared Jim more than any other single thing in the last five minutes. If Mutt had even a smidgeon of a clue as to where Kate was, she’d have been on her trail and long gone. Instead, Mutt crowded next to him, restless, even whimpering. He couldn’t remember ever hearing Mutt whimper.

  “Who took her?” he said, enunciating even these few words with extreme care, because his tongue felt inexplicably too large for his mouth.

  The older kid spoke. “Two men. They had something thrown over her, a blanket or a coat or something, and they hit her and then they threw her in the back of a van.”

  “A van?”

  The kid nodded.

  “What color?”

  The kid hesitated, and Jim’s heart sank. “It was dark,” the kid said.

  “Of course it was dark; it’s four in the fucking morning,” Jim said, and caught himself when he saw the kids’ expressions.

  The older kid swallowed and said, “No, I meant the van was dark, dark blue, maybe, maybe even black.”

  Jim’s heart lifted again. “Did you—is there a chance—can you remember one or two or any of the numbers on the license plate?”

  The kid reeled off the number like an off-duty cop. Jim stared at him, mouth slightly open. “What?” he said.

  The kid did it again. “They’d daubed mud on the plate, but the streetlight hit it just right when they turned, and I—”

  Jim lunged out of his chair and grabbed the kid up by his shoulders, the boy’s feet dangling two feet from the floor, and almost kissed him. The kid was afraid he was going to, but Jim set him down on the floor and thumped him on the shoulder hard enough to knock him forward a step. “Good job, kid,” he said fervently, “I mean really good job.”

  He was halfway out the door before he thought about the boys, and he paused just long enough to bellow over his shoulder, “Don’t move from this spot, do you hear? And don’t open the door to anyone except me! And call your damn parents, damn it!”

  Later, he wouldn’t remember very much about the drive uptown, but the expression on the face of the willowy blonde who was sharing Brendan’s bed that night would stay with him for a while. Mutt didn’t help, prowling next to him, ears lying back, fangs slightly bared, and an expression in her great yellow eyes that was not at all human.

  Brendan took one look at Jim’s face and said, “What?”

  His response was not adequate to the occasion, evidently, because Mutt leapt up on his table and barked once right in his face.

  “Holy Mary Mother of God,” Brendan said. The blonde screamed and slammed the bedroom door.

  “They took Kate,” Jim said tightly.

  “Who took her?” Brendan said, but he knew as well as Jim did.

  “I’ve a got tag number,” Jim said, and reeled it off.

  A laptop sat on a crowded desk, and Brendan booted it up. “It’ll be stolen,” Brendan said over his shoulder.

  Jim paced up and down in an agony of suspense. Mutt stood stiff-legged in the doorway, glowering and occasionally growling, although apparently just on general principles. Brendan cast an unfriendly eye in Jim’s direction. “And where the hell were you when she got took?”

  “Asleep,” Jim said.

  Brendan looked at him.

  “Just find the fucking van!”

  The computer beeped and a screen popped up. Brendan scrolled down. “Your van is registered to a Paul Cassanovas. And lookie here—it has in fact been reported stolen. Let me pull up the police report.” Brendan tapped some keys, another agonizing wait, and a second screen popped up. “Mr. Cassanovas reported it stolen yesterday when he parked it at the Dimond Fred Meyer and forgot the keys in the ignition when he went inside to buy groceries.”

  “He left the car running in August?” Jim said.

  “It happens, only usually it’s the driveway, when they run back inside in the morning. But you’re right: Usually you run across this kind of thing in the winter, when it’s cold and they want to come back to a warm car. Hmmm. Let’s do a search on Mr. Cassanovas in the corrections database, shall we?”

  A minute later, Brendan said, “Bingo. Mr. Cassanovas has served time for B and E, burglary, theft.”

  “Has he got an address?”

  “Yes, but wait.” Brendan tapped a few more keys. “Last known address was a boarding house on Ingra. Here.” Brendan scribbled the number down. “Call them, see if he’s there.”

  Jim
snatched up Brendan’s phone and punched in the number.

  “Not only does Mr. Cassanovas have an address—” Brendan said.

  A sleepy, surly voice swore at Jim but answered his questions before the receiver slammed down. “He checked out last week,” Jim said.

  “—he has known associates.”

  “Who? Names, addresses.”

  Brendan’s lips thinned. “The only one who matters is Ralph Patton.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Jim said, “they’ve got her, goddamn it, they’ve got her.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Brendan echoed, still looking at the computer screen.

  “What?”

  “Guess who Mr. Cassanova’s counsel was?”

  “Son of a bitch,” Jim said again.

  “Well, yeah,” Brendan said, “but he’s also known as Oliver Muravieff. Wait a minute. Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to talk to Oliver Muravieff about a little matter concerning his billable hours.”

  Moving faster than anyone had a right to expect of a man of his size, Brendan was up and had his hand around Jim’s arm. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Let’s think about this. And after we’ve thought, let’s call the cops.”

  The next thing Brendan knew he was slammed up against the wall. “Take it easy, Jesus, Jim,” he said. A door cracked open and the frightened face of a neighbor peeped out. “It’s okay, Mrs. Hartzberg,” he told her. “Everything’s fine. Just go on back to bed.”

  It wasn’t easy to be serene with two hundred pounds of pissed-off trooper in his face, not to mention the snarling, snapping half wolf next to the trooper, but, to his credit, Brendan managed it. “Just calm down a minute,” he said. Brendan let go of Jim’s wrists, where his hands weren’t doing much good anyway, and raised both hands, palms out. “Just take a beat here and think this through.”

  “There’s nothing to think about, Brendan. We can’t call the cops.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re his family’s cops,” Jim said. “They let Patton go on command. They’re not going to help us.”

  “Come on, Jim, you don’t really believe that. Jim. Jim!”

  Jim let Brendan go and walked out, Mutt moving like the hunter she was at his side.

  He was conscious enough of what he was going to do to stop at the town house to pick up shirt, jacket, and his sidearm, although the latter was too big not to attract too much of the wrong kind of notice. It would have to go in the glove compartment. His backup piece, a .38, he strapped to his ankle.

  He looked in the mirror and saw a grim-eyed civilian staring back at him. Whatever happened next, the troopers were going to come in for as little blame as possible. He looked up Oliver Muravieff in the phone book and copied down the number.

  He went back downstairs and told the boys, “Pack up your stuff. I’m taking you home.”

  They were frightened and silent during the ride. As he pulled into their driveway, he said, “Can you get in?”

  “We hide a key outside,” the older one said as the younger one slid from the Subaru. “Mister?”

  “What?”

  “Could you…could you maybe call us when you find her?”

  The forlorn little voice pierced Jim’s self-absorption the way nothing else could have, and he looked at the kid, really looked at him for the first time since he’d gotten back from Brendan’s. “Yes,” he said. “I will. Better, I’ll bring her here so you can talk to her yourselves.”

  “Thanks,” the kid said, and trudged after his brother.

  Jim watched them for a second, and then he got out of the car. “Hey,” he said.

  The boys stopped and looked back at him.

  “You did good, getting that license plate number,” he said. “You’re the reason I’m going to find her.”

  The kids’ faces lightened a little, and he climbed back in the car and drove downtown, where he found a parking space within walking distance of Oliver’s building. He got out to case it. It had an underground parking garage, so he would have to do it the hard way. He went back to the Subaru and waited with hard-won patience for the clock to read 8:00 A.M.

  At 8:01 A.M., Oliver Muravieff arrived, his silver Miata disappearing into the underground parking lot.

  At 8:05 A.M., Jim dialed Oliver’s office number from Kate’s cell phone. “Yes,” he said in a voice from which any trace of impatience or worry had been completely erased. “I’m an old friend of Mr. Muravieff’s from law school, and I’ve got an eight-hour layover before I head for Barrow. I just wanted to know if he was in his office. I’d like to drop in and say hello…. He’ll be there for the next couple of hours? Splendid, I’ll see you soon.” He dropped his voice to what he’d been told was a sexy baritone. “Listen, do me a favor. Don’t tell him I’m coming. I want to surprise him. Thanks.”

  He disconnected. “Stay,” he said to Mutt.

  She wasn’t having any.

  “I mean it, goddamn it,” he said. “Get back in that fucking truck!”

  A couple of young attorneys who hadn’t been practicing long enough to take such scenes in their stride scurried by, not making eye contact.

  Jim squatted down on his haunches and took Mutt’s head in his hands. She was alternately whining and growling. “She’s not here,” Jim said, trying to shake some sense into her. “She’s not here, damn it, but the guy I’m going to see will know where they’ve got her, and that’s when I’ll need you. Mutt, please, get in the truck.” He stood up and held the door open. “Get in, and stay,” he said.

  She eyed him narrowly. It was her choice, and they both knew it. There was no way he was going to bundle 140 pounds of snarling, snapping half husky, half wolf unwilling back in the truck if she didn’t want to go there on her own. “I’ll need backup, girl,” he told her, painfully conscious of seconds ticking away. “Best they don’t know I’ve got it yet. Get in. Please. Get in.”

  She whined, she snarled some more, she even nipped at his calf on her way by, but she got in. He heaved a sigh of relief, and as a sign of trust, he rolled down the window halfway. “I know you could take this out if you wanted to—hell, you could probably take out the door if you wanted to—but I’m trusting you to stay here and wait for me. Stay,” he repeated.

  She looked at him, ears a little flattened, lips slightly drawn back, teeth gleaming in the morning sun. She did not look friendly.

  “Well, for sure no one’s going to steal that Subaru,” he said.

  “Hello, darling,” he said to Oliver’s receptionist, affecting the slow drawl he had used earlier on the phone. “Which way is that old boy’s office?”

  The receptionist fluttered her eyelashes and said, “I’m afraid Mr. Muravieff has someone with him just now—oh, no, I believe he’s just leaving,” and she turned to smile as her boss came through the door behind her desk.

  Oliver Muravieff’s client barely registered on Jim’s peripheral vision. “Ollie!” he said in his biggest, boomiest voice. “How the hell are you!” And he steamed forward, hand extended.

  Oliver’s hand came up either in greeting or in self-defense. “I’m sorry?” he said, his brow creasing, “I’m not sure I—”

  Jim pushed him back into his office before he could finish the sentence. He stumbled a little over his cane, and when he got his balance back, he looked at Jim with the beginnings of a scowl. “Who the hell are you?”

  “All right, you little motherfucker, where is Kate Shugak?” Jim said.

  “Who?” Oliver said. But he took just a little too long to say it.

  Jim kicked the cane out of Oliver’s hand. “Where is Kate Shugak?”

  Oliver fell awkwardly, and Jim heard a sound that might have been the crack of a bone. Oliver yelled.

  The door started to open, but Jim slammed it shut and raised his voice. “Ollie, old buddy, you’re just as clumsy catching that ball as you were in college. It’s okay, honey. He’s just taken himself a tumble, but we’re fine!”

  Oliver sta
red up at him in pain and disbelief. “Who the hell do you think you are,” he said, “barging into my office, assaulting me verbally, assaulting me physically? Do you know what a felony is?”

  Jim took a step forward. “If I commit one, I’ll hire you to get me off. Just like you got Paul Cassanovas off. It’s what you do.”

  “Paul Cassanovas? What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “He’s a client of yours.”

  “So? I’ve got a lot of clients.”

  “This client hangs out with a guy name of Ralph Patton.”

  Oliver was recovering a little of his sangfroid. He looked at his cane as if to pick it up. Jim took another step forward, and Oliver abandoned the idea for the moment. “Again,” he said, “what does any of this have to do with you barging in here and assaulting me?”

  “Paul Cassanovas just had his van stolen.”

  Oliver rolled his eyes. “Look, Mr.—whoever you are—I—”

  “Yesterday,” Jim said, “about eight hours before somebody coldcocked Kate Shugak and tossed her into the back of it.”

  There was a moment of silence. Oliver appeared to be thinking deeply. “There’s no way you can know that.”

  “There were two eyewitnesses. How do you think I traced the van?”

  “I knew nothing of this,” Oliver said. His face had paled and he was breathing a little faster.

  “Yeah,” Jim said, “you did, and you’re going to take me to her.”

  “Is that so?” a voice said, and Jim looked around to see Fred Gamble of the Federal Bureau of Investigation step into the room.

  She woke to a dull, throbbing ache that seemed to take up the whole left side of her head. She couldn’t see and she could barely breathe through the covering over her face. For a moment, she panicked, and then she forced herself into shallow respiration, one breath at a time. She tried to move her hands, her feet, couldn’t. She could barely feel them.

  There was a narrow concave surface beneath her. She tried to roll and hit an edge. She rolled back to the center. A cot perhaps. She could smell wood smoke, or the residue of it. She was in a cabin, maybe?