Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 06 - Blood Will Tell

by Blood Will Tell(lit)

  It wasn't, but by then the smile and the handshake were on automatic.

  "Kate, it's great to see you again, what's it been, three, four years, ha HAH?"

  "More like thirty-six hours," she said, struggling unsuccessfully to free her hand. "We met at dinner Monday night."

  "Of course, of course, ha HAH!" He leaned closer, the overpowering wave of Old Spice nearly pulling Kate under, and his voice dropped. "Just heard about Enakenty. Say, that's an awful thing. How is Martha? She taking the news about the girlfriend all right, I hope? I'm sure it was just one of those flings, didn't mean a damn thing. Us guys, you know how we are, ha HAH!"

  Kate was afraid she did. She pulled her hand free and barely restrained the impulse to wipe it down the side of her jeans. She reached around Axenia and gripped her grand mother's elbow. "Emaa, I've got to go, I'm meeting Jack for lunch." "Lunch?" Lew said, all teeth and enthusiasm.

  "Sure, hey, my treat. Where do you want to eat? Ha HAH!"

  FIVE.

  BY ONE O'CLOCK THE LUNCHTIME CROWD WAS THINNING out at the Downtown Deli and Kate found Jack in a front booth. "We've got a continuance until Monday," he greeted her, "isn't that great?"

  "What happened?"

  "The judge is settling two other cases." He looked like one who has received a last-minute reprieve from the guillotine, which changed when he became aware of Kate's expression. "You look whipped. Better feed you up a little, get that blood sugar up." He waved down a waiter and they ordered, Kate a Reuben with potato salad, Jack the deli special with a green salad.

  "I feel whipped," she said, rolling her head, stretching her shoulders.

  "I can't do this anymore. Not that I ever could. It's too much like work." "Work?" Jack said, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "What is, standing around talking all day? That's pretty much all the convention is, isn't it?"

  "Work I said and work I meant. It's a performance, Jack. It's all a performance. Half the time I don't know what's real and what isn't. I don't know how emaa can tell, either."

  "It's all real to her, she's a born politician, she sees everything in shades of gray." He captured her hand and smiled across the butcher block table at her. "Whereas you, Katie, you're just a cop at heart, you see things in black and white."

  She acknowledged the truth of his words by not instantly attacking them.

  "It would help considerably," she said, "if I knew who the hell I was supposed to be."

  He threaded their fingers together. "What do you mean?"

  "I'm not sure, that's the problem." She struggled to explain, the exercise as much for her own benefit as his. "Emaa sees me as the heir apparent, no matter what she says to the contrary. Axenia sees me as competition, I'm not sure for what, see above. Because I'm emaa's granddaughter Harvey Meganack sees me as the enemy, a tree hugger and a posy-sniffer and a charter member of Greenpeace. Lew Mathisen sees me as a vote, a commodity, something to be bought and consumed. And," she added tightly, "everyone else sees me as Ekaterina Moonin Shugak's granddaughter, when all I am, all I want to be is just plain old Kate Shugak." Her head dropped against the high back of the booth and her eyes closed.

  Jack looked at the still brown face across from his, at the closed, narrow Asian eyes, at the shadows lying beneath the fans of dark lashes, at the still, stern line of the wide mouth, at the shining black hair bound severely back in a French braid, and his heart, generally a more dependable organ, turned over in his chest. "You're just a cop at heart, Kate," he repeated. "You exist to serve and protect. Your problem is you want to serve and protect everybody, and you can't, and you know it.

  It's one of the reasons you lasted only five years in the department."

  It was the second time in a week her psyche had been put under a magnifying glass by someone who knew her too well. She would have been offended if she'd had the strength. She would have pulled her hand free if his hadn't felt so warm and comforting in her own.

  "You know what your problem is, Kate?" She smiled without opening her eyes. "No, but I'm sure you'll tell me."

  "Your problem is--" He stopped again. Some quality in his silence made her open her eyes and look at him. He met her gaze, took a deep breath and said simply, "Your problem is you don't need me." "No," she said at once.

  He let the breath out slowly. "It bugs me," he admitted.

  "Yes," she agreed.

  He surprised them both with a short, sharp bark of laughter. The sandwiches arrived and for a while there was silence at their table.

  "You know that party emaa invited us to tonight?" Kate said, licking her fingers. Jack nodded. "I think I need to go."

  "You what!" A piece of provolone went down the wrong pipe and Jack gagged and coughed and wheezed and gasped for breath. His face turned red and tears came to his eyes. He made so much noise that the guy at the next table looked as if he were about to offer to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

  "Jack?" Kate eyed him cautiously. "You okay?"

  He caught his breath. "You want to what?" he choked out.

  "Well, I don't want to go, exactly, but I think I need to. There are some people I want to see that I haven't run into yet at the convention." What she really wanted, she thought, was to see who they brought to the party.

  "You want to go to a party," Jack said, apparently having become hard of hearing in the last five minutes.

  "Yeah," she said, brows coming together.

  "A party," Jack repeated. He liked things clear. "With dress-up clothes, and music, and dancing."

  She was starting to feel defensive and she didn't know why. Belligerence was always a good fall-back position. "So?"

  He actually put his sandwich down unfinished, a sure sign she had his complete and undivided attention. "This party is at the Captain Cook."

  "Yes."

  "Am I to understand you want me to be your date?"

  "You've got your own invitation from emaa," she snapped. "We can go separately if you want but we'll save on gas if we go together, yes.

  Well?" she said, when He didn't say anything. "You coming or not?" He looked at her, and only then did she see the expression of unholy glee in his eyes. "What?" she said, suddenly wary without knowing why.

  "What's the matter?"

  He held up one finger. "Wait right there." There was a pay phone in the back of the restaurant and contrary to orders Kate deserted the remains of her Reuben and tailed him to it, a good thing since he didn't have change and had to borrow it from her. "Don't move," he told her, deposited the coins and dialed a number. "Bill? It's Jack. How's that homicide coming, the kid they found up on Bluebell?" He listened, his eyes going unfocused for a moment as he concentrated hard enough to forget Kate was in the room, no mean feat for Jack Morgan and one of the things she liked best about him. Kate found competence to be the single most compelling trait in a man, whether it involved lighting a fire with one match, gutting a moose without nicking the gall bladder, setting a drift net without getting it caught in the prop or conducting a murder investigation over the phone. Competence, and a deep voice, the deeper the better. A deep voice, in Kate's opinion, was good for a twenty point rise in blood pressure any time.

  "Look, Bill," Jack said, in a voice deeper than did ever plummet sound,

  "that one dog brought home the mandible. So? So, does maybe another neighbor have a dog that might have brought home a bone? You know those people up on Hillside keep voting down police protection, they've probably all got packs of Doberman Pinschers and German Shepherds loose in their yards just in case some poor schmuck decides to go over the fence. Probably keep ' hungry, too. The dogs, not the schmuck. We're missing the elbow down on the left arm, right? Okay, check the neighbors again, see if they've got dogs and if one of the dogs brought a bone home they maybe thought was from a bear or a moose or maybe another dog.

  Okay? Okay. Has the lab put the mandible together with the rest of the skeleton yet? How long before we get an I. D.?" He listened some more.

  "You sound like you've got it un
der control. Anything else come up? No?

  Good. I'm taking the rest of the day. Personal leave." He laughed and glanced at Kate, his eyes coming back into focus. "You wish. See you tomorrow."

  He hung up the phone and very nearly rubbed his hands together in anticipation. The man looked ready to cackle. Maybe even crow. "Okay."

  Kate put her fists on her hips. "Okay, what? What the hell is going on?"

  He tossed a bill at their waiter and pulled her out of the room and onto the street with such determination that Mutt had to scramble from her seat next to the Anchorage Daily News dispenser on the curb and run to catch up. "If we're going to a party at the Cook, you have to dress up."

  "Dress up!" Kate promptly dug in her heels. "What? Why? I don't have to dress up, this is Alaska, for God's sake. You can wear jeans and a T-shirt anywhere you want anytime you want. I'm not dressing up for this party or any other party, dammit, Jack, quit dragging me down this goddam street!" "Kate." He sighed and stopped. She yanked her hand free and nursed her fingers, giving him an aggrieved stare. The expression on his face was as sorrowful as hers was heated. "How could you even think of embarrassing your grandmother that way? I'm ashamed of you. You know everybody puts on the dog when they come to town. Gives ' a chance to strut their stuff. God knows they don't get much opportunity for it in Emmonak." She hadn't thought of it that way, and with a growing sense of apprehension realized that it was just within the realm of possibility that he might be right. The party at the Cook would be a proving ground, when town met bush and bush showed itself aware of fashions other than those constructed of caribou hide and trimmed in beaver and rickrack. He saw awareness dawn and tugged on her hand again. "Wait!" she said.

  "Where are we going?"

  "To buy you some dress-up clothes." He saw a flash of something in her eyes that in a lesser woman might have been identified as panic. "Maybe I don't have to dress up," she said, getting desperate "Maybe I could go as a waiter or something." She warmed to the idea. "Undercover. You could get me a uniform from Prop, you remember, like we did it when we went into the University cafeteria that time."

  "Kate." The amused indulgence in his voice made her teeth grit together.

  "How many people will be there who know you? Who know what you do? Who know you came to town with Ekaterina?"

  He was right. How she hated to admit it, but he was right. Her face showed it and Jack moved in for the kill. "It's work, Kate, and you need work clothes, same as any other job. You wouldn't go on a winter hunt without your parka, would you?" He hauled her to a stop at a red light.

  "Well?"

  "I guess not."

  "All right then. Let's go."

  "Where?" "The only place in town," he said. The red hand changed to a walking man and he started across Fourth with her in tow. "Nordstrom's."

  "Nordstrom's!" Kate flashed back on Jane's closet, at the line of immaculate wool suits and pristine silk shirts hanging there with almost military precision. "Jack! I can't go to Nordstrom's! I've never been inside Nordstrom's, not once, not ever! Besides, I can't afford to spend money like that on clothes I'll only wear one time in my life!"

  "It's work," he repeated sternly, "and don't whine about money, you've got plenty left from that job on the Slope last spring." She had more than he knew, she thought, remembering Jane's cash card in her pocket.

  All too soon, Nordstrom's loomed up, brownstone-faced and imposing, on the corner of Sixth and D. To Kate, Sixth Avenue looked like the River Styx, and the glass doors of the store like Charon's boat. "Sit," Jack told Mutt, and Mutt, with an expression of saintly resignation, sat down to wait next to the doors.

  Nettled at this usurpation of authority over what was her dog, after all, Kate snapped, "She can come in with us." "No," Jack said, holding one of the doors open. "She can't." "Don't you want to come in?" Kate asked Mutt. "You can if you want."

  Mutt lifted her muzzle in the direction of the open door; sniffed once and erupted in an enormous sneeze. Eyes wide, she looked from the building to Kate and back again. She shook herself once, all over, and sat down as far from the entrance as she could get without actually being in the street.

  A woman in a fur-lined coat that swept behind her like a royal train sailed out of the store, bestowing a gracious smile upon Jack. She saw Mutt at the same time the light at the corner turned green, and crossed the street to avoid walking past her. Jack, still holding the door open, raised one eyebrow. Kate, abandoning all hope, entered therein.

  On the other side of the doors it was even worse than she had imagined, a sea of gold-topped glass bottles and glittering rhinestones and patterned silk scarves and patent leather shoes, presided over by a herd of yuppies with perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth, all dressed to those teeth in glittering rhinestones and patterned silk and patent leather and scented with a cacophony of various odors from the gold-topped glass bottles.

  No wonder Mutt had sneezed. Jack, with a numb, dumbstruck Kate firmly in tow, headed for the escalator.

  Upstairs was worse. Upstairs there was nothing but clothes. Women's clothes, and not a decent pair of work jeans among them. Kate spied a cafe in the back. "Great! Let's get something to eat!"

  Jack caught her, literally by her collar, and hauled her back. "We just ate," he said. He was grinning. It was a big grin, a wide grin, oh my yes, the man was certainly enjoying himself, probably hadn't enjoyed himself this much since he'd caught the now ex-FBI agent-in-charge drunk on Fourth Avenue behind the wheel of his own car, unable to explain the presence of the professional woman doing pushups in his lap. Kate definitely bristled, and Jack was delivered from instant and total annihilation only by the approach of a sales clerk, female, lots of teeth, all on display, lots of blonde hair, ditto, lots of height, wearing a pin-striped suit over a cream silk shirt with a gold bar pin at the collar and discreet gold studs in her earlobes. "Are we finding everything all right?" She smiled kindly upon Kate.

  It wasn't the "we," it wasn't even the kindly smile. Kate disliked being towered over by anyone, and in that moment she discovered that she especially disliked being towered over by blondes who looked like they would fit nicely into anything tailor made for Marilyn Monroe.

  Unaccountably, Jack did not appear to share in this dislike, and greeted the salesclerk with an expression that was half a drool away from outright salivation. "We were looking for some clothes for the lady," he said.

  The sales clerk glanced at Kate for a nanosecond before zeroing back in on Jack. "What kind of clothes?" He told her, in detail and at length, gazing with adoration into the big, blue eyes and hanging on every word spoken in the soft, breathy voice. With a disbelief rapidly succeeded by increasing disgust, Kate decided that if Jack had had a tail, it would have been wagging hard enough to power an electric generator. What was it with men and Marilyn Monroe? Even in retreat from the world on her homestead, just from the magazines she subscribed to Kate couldn't help being aware of the cult surrounding a woman who had, let's face it, screwed everything in pants on both sides of both oceans, only to kill herself at the age of thirty-two because, everyone seemed to agree post-mortemly, she felt used and lacked self-esteem. It was Kate's opinion that if she'd kept her fly zipped Monroe would have lived to be ninety, although it was her further opinion that Monroe would rather have been a dead legend than a live, faded ex-beauty queen any day. The only thing tragic men saw in Marilyn Monroe's untimely demise was the chance they'd missed to lay her.

  By which it may be seen that Kate Shugak had no patience with the self-destructive. Neither did she have any patience with those who idolized the self-destructive, down to the beauty mark on their upper lips. Her chin, firm to begin with, became more in evidence. Jack, who hadn't survived a nine-year, on-again, off-again relationship with Kate Shugak without learning a few things, noticed the chin immediately. He broke off his conversation with his new best friend to say smoothly,

  "Alana, may I introduce Kate Shugak."

  In lieu of Mutt, Kate bar
ed her teeth. "Alana." Alana smiled in a way that lifted the beauty mark on her upper lip several millimeters and Jack's temperature several more degrees, and said, just as smoothly, as if she and Jack had been rehearsing the first entrance of Ekaterina Ivana Shugak into the hallowed halls of this northern shopping Mecca for the past year, "Jack--" So it was Jack already, was it? "--Jack tells me you're looking for some evening clothes." Her eyes ran down Kate's body, and with what must have been either monumental natural restraint or excellent and intensive training did not faint at the sight of well-worn blue jeans and white T-shirt, accessorized by a Nike windbreaker and matching Nike sneakers. The scar on Kate's throat was observed, considered for a moment in context with available collar styles, and dismissed. "How tall are you, Kate?"