Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 06 - Blood Will Tell

by Blood Will Tell(lit)

  "Did you know the people who lived in A304?"

  The blonde shook her head and hunted through her purse for a square of Kleenex with which to dab at her eyes. "I just moved in. I'll have to get a new apartment now, I couldn't possibly stay here with dead bodies all over the place, and this one is so convenient to the airport, I'll never find anything--"

  "Did you ever hear a cat upstairs?"

  The blonde blinked. "A cat?"

  "Yes. As in meow?"

  Ms. Coffey blinked back tears. "Why, yes, now that I think of it."

  "Lately? As in last night?"

  "I don't know." The smooth brow creased with effort. "I got home late last night--we were celebrating our new jobs, you know--I don't--"

  "Think about it for a minute," Kate urged.

  The blue eyes widened. "Is it important?"

  "It could be."

  The smooth brow creased with thought. "I came in about one o'clock. I remember because I dropped my keys--" she held up a large bunch of keys

  "--and on this floor they make a lot of noise." The floor was of ceramic tile. "When I bent over for the keys I dropped my bag."

  Kate waited.

  The blonde brightened. "You know, there was a cat meowing from somewhere upstairs. I remember, I apologized for waking it up."

  Kate was beginning to get the picture. It must have been a good party.

  "Of course," Ms. Coffey added, "there are five other apartments that open onto this entrance, including mine. The cat could have been in any one of them."

  Kate nodded. "Thank you very much, Ms. Coffey."

  "You're welcome, I'm sure. I'm just glad I was able to help." The blonde paused on the sidewalk outside the door, looking up at the kitchen window of A304. "It must be nice living on the top floor."

  "I suppose," Kate said.

  "Nobody walking on your roof all the time. And that one's on the end, too, so you'd only be sharing one wall with somebody else." "Yes," Kate said, edging away.

  "Would you happen to know--" "No," Kate said, and ran for it. She went back up the stairs, pausing on all three landings to knock at the doors of the other four condos. There was no answer at three, and no sounds of animal movement behind them.

  The fourth door was opened by a disheveled A and P mechanic who had just come off the night shift with Alaska Airlines, and he was neither a cat owner nor happy at being woken up. Kate went back out to the yard.

  Sayles had just risen to his feet next to the spray-painted outline and was dusting the knees of his uniform pants. "Hey," she said.

  He looked up. "Hey yourself."

  She nodded up at the condo. "You know who owned it?"

  "Some property management outfit." He pulled out his notebook and flipped through the pages. "Arctic Investors."

  "You talked to them?"

  Sayles nodded. "They have an office downtown. According to them, Enakenty Barnes rented it nearly a year ago. Hasn't missed any rent or been late paying it. Other than that, they haven't heard a peep out of him."

  "Nobody was in the apartment when you got here?" He shook his head and tucked his notebook back into his hip pocket. "What are you calling it?"

  He shrugged. "It'd make my life a lot easier if I called it an accident."

  Kate thought of the chest-high railing. "Is that how you're calling it?"

  He shrugged again, and Kate knew from the flat expression in his eyes that he'd reached the limits of his generosity Indeed, he'd been positively helpful, for Sayles, and she was grateful. "You about done here?" He nodded. "Want a burger?"

  They went to Gwennie's on Spenard Road, where Kate drank coffee and watched the burly police officer down two cheeseburgers, a double order of fries, and a large wedge of apple pie, a la mode. It was a small price to pay for a little professional courtesy.

  "It looks like he just got there. There are groceries in the refrigerator but nothing's been eaten."

  "He just got back."

  "He's been gone? Where was he?"

  "Hawaii."

  "Hawaii," Kate said. That explained the tan and the streaked hair. And the pineapples and the coffee, and, she remembered, the shorts and the T-shirts in the closet. "In October? In October it's not been cold enough long enough to go to Hawaii." And then she said, "Since when does Enakenty Barnes have enough money to go to Hawaii? The Prince William Sound fishing seasons have been in the toilet ever since the RPetco Anchorage spill." Ekaterina said nothing, and Kate said, "Okay, emaa, what's going on? What does Martha say?" "Martha," Ekaterina said, her face empty of expression, "wasn't with him. She's still in Niniltna. She is flying in this evening on George." "Oh." Kate thought. "Enakenty went to Hawaii without his wife?"

  Ekaterina nodded. "The kids stay home, too?" "Martha said Enakenty said it was a business trip. For the North Pacific Fisherman's League's annual convention. He said they were paying his way, and he told her he couldn't afford to take the family along, and that they'd probably all be bored stiff anyway."

  "Uh-huh." Kate would like the chance to be bored in Hawaii. She walked over to the window, which looked out on a cemetery. If she pressed her face up against the glass, she could see the Chugach Mountains off to the left. "Emaa. When did Sarah die?"

  "Sarah died on September 12." They both thought about this in silence.

  "Two board members dead," Kate said finally, "days before the AFN convention and the board meeting. Where the decision on Iqaluk will be made." Ekaterina nodded. Kate didn't like it, not at all. She framed her next words with care. "Emaa. I hope you are in good health?"

  There was a brief silence, followed by the unexpected and incongruous sound of one of Ekaterina's larger, louder belly laughs. "Yes, Katya, I am very well." "Good," Kate said, disconcerted. "Let's make sure you stay that way.

  Ekaterina said, "Katya, it is all too silly. I cannot think of someone wanting to kill me." She sobered. "I cannot think of someone pushing Enakenty off a balcony. I cannot think of how someone could make Sarah's salmon go bad." "I can," Kate said. "As many people as are--or were-in and out of Sarah's house? All somebody would have to do is drop by while she was cooking it, wait around for a free moment in the kitchen and pull one of the jars out before it was done. Or crack open one of the jars in the cupboard. I'd have to check with an expert to be sure, but I think it would only take a second, and then they could just sit back and wait for her to use that jar." She thought and added, "Of course, they'd be taking an awful chance she didn't stir up some salmon salad out of the tainted jar for a guest or two. Or give it away to someone else."

  "Katya," Ekaterina repeated firmly, "it is too silly."

  "Maybe." Kate was equally firm. "But it is also convenient as hell."

  The old woman was silent, the momentary flash of humor gone, the flesh seeming to sink back into her skull. The skin of her face seemed weighted down with lines of care and fatigue. She rubbed her left arm absently, as if there were pain there but it would have to wait its turn.

  "How about I run down to the drugstore," Kate said, "and pick up some Heet or some Absorbine, Jr.? I'll rub it in for you."

  Ekaterina blinked at her, and Kate pointed at the old woman's elbow.

  "Your rheumatism's acting up again, isn't it?"

  Ekaterina looked down, seeming to realize what she was doing for the first time. She dropped her hand. "It is nothing. A small ache. It will go soon."

  "Still," Kate said. "It won't take but a minute."

  She paused at the door to look back at her grandmother, a short, sturdy figure standing all alone at the window, hand rubbing her arm now, wrist to elbow and above and back again, a slow, steady movement of which she was unaware. Her old brown eyes were staring blindly south, and, for just a moment, for the first time in her life Kate saw her grandmother as vulnerable, susceptible to distress, something less than sovereign and supreme.

  The old woman shifted, as if she had felt the weight of her granddaughter's gaze, and looked around. Her eyes held their usual steady, self-posses
sed expression, and the moment vanished as if it had never been.

  But Kate knew what she had seen. Emaa, she thought, shaken, what do you know? What aren't you telling me?

  What, heaven help us, are you afraid of?

  When they walked in the door that afternoon, Jack's face was grim and Johnny's eyes were red. The boy went straight up to his room without speaking, and Jack headed for the bottle of Glenlivet in the kitchen cupboard. He poured two inches into a glass and drank it down. He poured out two more without pausing.

  "That bad, huh?" Kate said.

  He tossed back the whiskey. "She told the judge I hit her."

  "What?"

  He looked around at her, and Kate very nearly recoiled from the barely restrained fury she saw in his face. "She says I hit him, too."

  Kate closed her eyes for a moment. "Oh, Jack." "Yeah." He poured out a third drink. "Johnny told the judge it was a lie. He told him he wanted to live with me. Jane said I was exerting undue influence. "Undue influence," that's a good one, she must have practiced for a week to get it to come out right." He drank and stood still, one hand gripping the glass, the other the edge of the sink, eyes shut tight. His face looked gray. "The thing is, she sounds so goddam plausible." His eyes opened.

  "Remember that baby raper we caught that time out in Eagle River?

  Remember how he almost talked us out of arresting him, until his neighbor's wife came forward and said he'd raped her kid, too?" He shook his head and drained the glass. "He had nothing on Jane."

  "The judge must not have believed her." Kate gestured upstairs. "He let Johnny come home with you."

  "How long will that last? How long before Jane has him snowed, too?" He would have poured out another drink if Kate hadn't reached around and taken the bottle from him. "You're not my mother, Kate," he said through his teeth.

  "You're right," she said, replacing the cap on the bottle, "I'm your friend. If you want to get drunk, I'll be happy to pour them out for you, one at a time." She put the bottle back in the cupboard and closed the door. "After the trial."

  Both hands gripped the edge of the sink now, and Kate watched his knuckles whiten. With a muffled curse he spun around and left the room, yanking at his tie. She stood where she was, listening to the sound of his angry footsteps going up the stairs. The footsteps paused. "Johnny?"

  There was no answer, and after a moment the footsteps continued on into the master bedroom. A door slammed.

  Kate let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. With a hand that was less than steady, she rinsed out the glass and put it in the drainer to dry.

  Dinner was a quiet meal. Nobody was very hungry. Afterward, Johnny went back upstairs. Kate and Jack sat in the living room, watching the news.

  Enakenty's death was mentioned, with the police listing the cause as a possible suicide.

  Jack switched off the television. "What's it look like?"

  "Sayles wants it to be accidental."

  "Sayles? Was he there?"

  "The responding officer."

  Jack rolled his eyes, the first sign of real animation Kate had seen since he walked into the house that afternoon."

  "Bet it was fun meeting up with him again. He's never forgiven us for clearing up that armed robbery when he and his partner dropped the ball that time."

  "Actually, he was okay," Kate said. "How okay? Did he let you look at the apartment?" She nodded, and told him what she'd found. His brow creased. "Like a furnished hotel room."

  "Except for the kitty litter and the cat food," Kate said. "Emaa says Enakenty just got back from Hawaii, and that he didn't take his wife with him." She paused. "So?"

  "So, I'm thinking maybe Enakenty didn't go to Hawaii alone."

  "The cat?"

  Kate nodded. "Enakenty lives--lived in the Park. He wouldn't keep a cat in Anchorage. Hell, this is the first I heard about him renting a condo here."

  "So you think he had a friend who brought her cat with her when she visited." Kate nodded. Jack made a skeptical face. "Not what I'd bring along to an assignation with my lover, but oh well. Any witnesses?"

  Kate shook her head. "I only talked to two of the five people who live there. One just moved in and hasn't had time to get to know anyone. The other works nights. They're both airline people, and I'd bet the other tenants will be, too. It's five minutes from Anchorage International."

  "So, a lot of coming and going and probably not much getting to know your neighbors."

  "No."

  "Too bad."

  "Yes," she echoed him, "too bad." The anger was still there, a solid presence in the pit of her stomach. She probed at it, the way a tongue would a sore tooth, and welcomed the sharp flare of response.

  "How much?"

  She understood immediately what he was asking. "Two cheeseburgers, a double order of fries and a piece of apple pie. A la mode." Jack snorted. "Sayles went easy on you."

  "Cheap at twice the price," she agreed.

  That night in bed, she said, breathless, "Hey. Jack. Take it easy."

  He muttered something. His shoulders were slick with sweat against the palms of her hands, his knees hard against the insides of her thighs. "I mean it, Jack." She pushed. "That's enough. It's starting to hurt."

  He went still, his weight heavy on her. She pushed harder. He gave a sound that was half curse, half groan, and rolled to one side. She drew her legs together, muscles protesting.

  They lay on their backs without touching, staring up at the ceiling.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  "I'm not Jane," she said.

  His voice hardened. "I know who you are."

  She rolled over to face away from him. He got up and went downstairs. A moment later she heard a cupboard door open in the kitchen and a clink of glass on glass.

  When at last Kate slept the dream was back, the one with the children, bleeding children, crying children, abandoned, abused, forsaken children, their families lost to them, themselves lost in an impersonal system that all too often harmed as many as it helped. One child with dark, matted hair and a terrifyingly blank stare looked at her and through her, gone to a place where no one he loved and trusted could ever hurt him again.

  She came awake with a start, her face wet with sweat and tears. Next to her Jack was still, too still to be asleep. Together in their separate hells, they waited out the night.

  FOUR.

  WHEN KATE GOT DOWNSTAIRS THE NEXT MORNING IT WAS still dark outside.

  October was the darkest month of the year in Anchorage, worse even than November. November had less daylight but by then there was snow on the ground, a layer of white that reflected every source of light tenfold, porch lights, street lamps, the Budweiser signs in bar windows. This year the snow had kept itself to itself, high above the tree line.

  Termination dust, the Alaska name for that first light layer of snow on the mountains in late August, signified the termination of summer and the first accumulation of winter's dust, a dust that would remain there until spring roared in to clean house with a chinook wind in one hand and twenty hours of daylight in the other.