Jack looked up. "What time is it, anyway?"
Kate looked at her watch. "Almost six," she said, surprised.
"About time we packed it in," Jack said, replacing the file he was holding and closing the drawer on it. "Dischner's a workaholic, he could be here any time."
Kate looked down to close her own drawer, and the name of a file caught her eye.
"Kate? Did you hear me?"
It was a thick file. She pulled it.
"Gamble, we've pushed this about as far as we should, don't you think?"
Jack said. "If we don't get caught in here, it's late enough or early enough or whatever you call it to get caught outside. Come on, let's pack it in."
She flipped through the file. They looked like leases. Subsurface leases for mineral rights. She saw Dischner's name, Mathisen's name, the names of the two ex-governors, the owner of one of the local newspapers, the president of UCo, half a dozen legislators, past and present, a couple of judges. Lew Mathisen. John King.
"Kate, come on, dammit."
Something nudged her elbow. She shrugged it off and flipped a page. The territory the lease form referred to was in map coordinates, latitude and longitude. They looked familiar. Something nudged her again and she looked down to see Mutt standing next to her. "What, you need to go outside?" __, Then the other three heard what Mutt had heard, the sound of the door shutting downstairs.
Kate stuffed the file back in the drawer and took three silent steps to the light switch. The room was plunged into darkness. Footsteps rang off the parquet floor. A stair creaked. Jack's whisper breathed into her ear made her jump. "There's a back stairway." One hand closed over her arm, another opened the door, and they slid into the hallway, Gamble shrugging into his suit coat and bringing up the rear. In the dim light reflected from the street lamps outside Kate thought she saw the white flutter of a dropped piece of paper, but the footsteps were halfway up the main stairs and Jack was pulling her in the opposite direction. This seemed like a very good idea and she went.
There was the hiss of a hydraulic hinge as Jack cracked the door. It was a fire stairway, rough concrete and gray painted steel lit with dim yellow emergency lights that stayed on twenty-four hours a day. Gamble was the last one through and trusted to the hinge to pull the door closed behind him. It did, slowly, too slowly. The light from the stairwell must have showed around the edges of the door, and whoever was climbing the main staircase saw it. "What the hell? Hey! Hey, who's there! Hey! Hey, you!"
All attempt at secrecy abandoned, Jack jumped every other riser, Kate right behind him. They hit the first floor and made for the door.
"Morgan!" Gamble whispered. It was a panicked sound that carried clearly. "God dammit wait for me!" The toe of the Fibbie's wingtip caught on the last step and he went sprawling. "Shugak! Help me!"
Kate and Jack ran back to grab him by one arm each and hoist him to his feet. The exit was under the last flight of stairs and Mutt was already at the door, nose pressed to the crack. Jack shoved it open as the metal stairwell crashed with the sound of feet in a hurry. "Hey!"
And then they were outside and running for it. Gamble went up Fourth, Kate and Jack down Third, Mutt loping well ahead of them. They could hear the man's voice clearly. "I see you, you sons-of-bitches! I see you! I'm calling the cops! Run, you assholes! Run!"
They ran, flat out, for three and a half blocks. The Blazer was parked in front of the Carr-Gottstein building across from the state court house. Jack gave rapid but devout thanks for an absence of police cars around the state court building, unlocked the doors and they tumbled inside. The motor caught on the first try and they were gliding away from the curb, all in the same movement. Jack left the headlights off until they were safety on L and out of sight, succeeding so well that a Ford Pinto nearly ran into them at Fifth. Jack hit the brakes. The Pinto's driver flipped them the bird and roared off, trying to catch the light at Ninth.
"Never a cop around when you need one," Jack said, un clamping his hands from the steering wheel.
Kate let out a long sigh. "Thank God." Mutt nuzzled her with a soft whine and she reached around to rub her head. Her heart was still trying to climb out of her throat. "Good girl. Good girl."
"We should have scattered some of those files around," Jack said. "Made it look like vandals."
"I put all the files I looked at back and closed the drawers."
"So did I, but how much you want to bet Gamble left a trail a two-year-old could follow?"
"No bet."
"And he called me by name, and you, too."
"It wasn't Dischner. I didn't recognize the voice."
"Doesn't matter. He'll tell Dischner, and Dischner'll know. My prints are on file. Yours are, too."
"Still?"
"Probably."
There was a pause. "Doesn't matter," Kate said. "Dischner won't call the cops."
Jack looked at her. "Why not?"
"He won't call the cops," she repeated.
Jack's gaze didn't waver. "What was in that last file? You looked like you'd seen a ghost." "He won't call the cops," Kate said for the third time.
The light turned green. Jack switched on his headlights and shifted sedately into first. Five minutes later, they were home.
EIGHT.
IT WAS ALMOST SEVEN A.M. WHEN THEY STUMBLED IN THE door, it was too late to go to bed and they were both so wired it would have been impossible to sleep anyway. Jack made coffee and they sat at the kitchen table and read the morning paper. Kate found the want ads and looked up two bedroom, two-bath apartments with heated garages.
There were half a dozen for rent, not one of them for under $750, with a second month's rent as security deposit.
"Lovely morning, isn't it?" Jack said, putting down his coffee with a sigh of contentment. "Of course, I tend to see any morning I haven't been caught in the act of breaking and entering a beautiful morning, don't you?"
She got up to refill her mug and sat down again. "What is it Jane does, Jack? I think you told me she reviewed bids or something."
He looked mildly surprised. "Yeah. She reviews bids submitted by contractors for capital projects. Roads and government buildings, stuff like that. Why?" Bingo, Kate thought. She shrugged. "Just curious."
He caught her hand and she let it stay there, which encouraged him to pick it up and kiss her palm, which was how Johnny found them when he walked into the room with a sleepy face and tousled hair. He looked at them and made a face. "Ick. Mushy stuff before breakfast. Jeez you guys." Kate laughed and escaped upstairs, pursued by Jack into the bathroom. She was naked and in the act of stepping into the shower when he reached for her with an anticipatory grin. She warded him off with upraised hands. "No shower action with the kid in the house, Morgan."
"He's got his own bathroom." He kissed her.
"That's not what I meant and you know it." He kissed her again and she weakened. "The hell with it." She wrapped her legs around his waist as he stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain closed behind them.
She looked up from brushing her damp hair, saw his smug reflection in the dresser mirror and couldn't resist a smile. "I will say this, Morgan, you are better at changing the subject than anyone else I know."
Just for that he bit her once on her shoulder, before reaching around her to pull a pair of jeans out of a drawer. "Everybody's got to be good at something." He yanked on his jeans with brisk movements and went to the closet to investigate the possibility of a clean shirt. He found one, blue naturally, the chronic choice of the Y chromosome, and pulled it on. She put down the brush and went over to button it up, he leaned down to kiss her and that was how Johnny found them when he came out of his room, dressed in neon Jams and a T-shirt big enough for Godzilla. He paused in the open door. "Jeez you guys, are you still at it?
Disgusting." Footsteps crashed down the stairs. "Why, Shugak, I believe that is a blush." "Up yours, Morgan," she said, but she didn't move.
"So, Kate," he said, nuzzling her ear,
"why did you want to know where Jane works?"
She jerked, a reflexive movement she couldn't hide, and his gaze sharpened. "I told you," she said, pulling free and edging toward the door. "I was just curious."
Jack followed her down the stairs, reflecting on how well she lied, to everyone except him. The knowledge gave him a warm feeling around his heart. "You look tired, Dad," Johnny said at the kitchen table. He glanced at Kate. "So do you, Kate." "You are not wearing that to school," Jack said, looking his son and heir over with a critical eye that had just become aware of the younger generation's idea of sartorial splendor.
"Da-ad," Johnny said, dragging the word out into two syllables. "Did you forget again?"
"Forget what?"
"It's an in-service day. Only teachers go to school. I brought the notice home a week ago."
"Oh."
"So I'm going next door to Brad's, like usual on in service days. His mom got him a new Super Nintendo for his birthday."
Jack hazarded a guess. "Mario Brothers?"
"Da-ad." Johnny rolled his eyes. "Mario Brothers is, like, ancient.
Brad's got Master Blaster, with a joystick and everything."
"Oh." Jack dished up a plateful of scrambled eggs, onions and cheese into which his son and heir disappeared head down to give his best impression of a vacuum cleaner. Jack and Kate were hungry, too, and there was silence in the kitchen for all of five minutes.
"You going back to the convention this morning?" Jack said as they cleared the table.
Kate nodded. "The panel on subsistence is today."
"Oh boy. Is Ekaterina speaking?"
"She's the moderator." "What's it like?" Johnny said, putting the plates in the dishwasher.
"What's what like?"
"The convention. Do you, like, dance and stuff?" Kate paused, looking at him. "You've never been?" He shook his head.
"You want to come?" Johnny looked at his dad. "I thought--"
"What?"
"Well." The boy hesitated. "I'm, like, you know, white."
Kate grinned. "Hopelessly. So?" "So I thought the AFN convention was only for Alaska Natives."
"Everyone's welcome," Kate said. "True, we mostly talk about issues that affect Alaska Natives, but nobody checks your family tree at the door.
Besides, your family's been around this country a pretty long time." She thought of the time line they'd made together in the sand along the Coastal Trail. He caught the thought and they smiled at each other.
"Probably one of your missionary grandmothers misbehaved with a Lakota brave back there somewhere. Propinquity is a wonderful thing. Look at me and your father."
"Pro-what?" he said.
"Never mind," Jack said, scowling at Kate. "You're pretty chipper this morning, considering."
"Considering what?" Johnny said.
"Never mind," Jack said, scowling at his son.
"So you want to come?" Kate asked Johnny.
Johnny hesitated, the allure of Master Blaster warring with a natural curiosity. He'd seen Dances with Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans and Geronimo and a lot of cowboy movies on TNT. He thought Hawkeye was a great fighter but he thought he ought to have found something better to fight over than some dumb girl. Wind in His Hair was cool, too. Geronimo scared him a little, John Wayne not at all, not even in The Searchers.
"Okay," he said. "I guess."
Kate looked at Jack.
"Okay," Jack said. "I guess." Johnny tore upstairs for his jacket.
"Kate."
There was a note in Jack's voice she hadn't heard before. She looked up from tying her sneakers. His eyes were troubled. "What's wrong?"
"Listen." He hesitated again.
She finished tying the second shoe and dropped it to the floor with a loud thump that expressed her displeasure. "For crying out loud, Morgan, just spit it out. Do you not want him to come with me or what?"
"It's not that I don't want him to go." He raked a hand through his hair.
"Then what?" He met her eyes straight on. "I don't want him to be hurt."
"Hurt?" She straightened slowly, staring at him. "What are you talking about? He'll be in the convention center, everybody brings their kids and lets them run around, it--"
"I don't mean that." He struggled to find the right words. He could see Kate getting angry and that didn't help. "Johnny was born in Alaska, Kate. He was raised here, he's lived here all his life."
"So?"
"So he's white."
Kate folded her arms across her chest, Her chin came out. "So?" "Oh hell," Jack said, knowing he was getting himself in deeper with every word and unable to stop digging the hole. "I just--I don't want you taking him down there and have people be mean to him because he's white." His lips pressed together. "I know what that's like."
"Good," she said.
"What?" Jack said, startled.
"First and foremost, Jack, you can't keep Johnny from being hurt. Being hurt is a part of life, it's one of the ways we learn." She waved a hand to forestall him. "All right, all right, sorry, didn't mean to lecture you on parenting. I said it was good that you know what it's like to be discriminated against because of the color of your skin. Not many white people do. Don't expect any sympathy from me because my cousin Martin called you a gussuk once. If I'd gone into Nordstrom's alone, Alana would have looked right through me." She waved her hand again. "All right, all right, I didn't mean to start a lecture on the racial inequalities inherent in American society, either." She took a deep breath and fixed a determined smile on her face.
"Look, Jack. Sure, Johnny can go over to Brad's and play Nintendo all day long and not be hurt except by Brad whipping his butt at Master Blaster. But like you said, he was born and raised in this state. He's as much of an Alaskan as any of us. Don't you think it's time he started learning something about its history and culture and the people that were here before his were?" He was silent, and she added, "Ignorance is the mother of fear and the grandmother of hate. You don't want Johnny to be a hater, Jack."
Johnny clattered down the stairs, shrugging into a jean jacket, pink cheeks scrubbed clean, blond hair slicked back, big blue eyes full of innocent enthusiasm. Kate waited, looking at Jack.
He sighed, and said to Johnny, "Did you call Brad, tell him you're not coming?"
The Kodiak Island Dancers were on stage as they entered the Egan Convention Center that morning. Kate stood in the back of the room, Mutt on one side and Johnny on the other, and watched Johnny watch them.
At first he was disappointed, although he tried to hide it. The costumes, leggings and tunics, were brightly colored and decorated but nobody had on war bonnets made of eagle feathers or carried tomahawks or long rifles. Most of the women were older and some frankly tubby. The men were younger, with one boy who might be his own age. A couple of older men stood in back, beating with sticks on skin drums in thin frames and chanting. The beat was monotonous and the chanting monotone and nothing like on TNT when they were fixing to scalp Randolph Scott, and the dancing looked to his eyes like simple shuffling and stamping.
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 06 - Blood Will Tell Page 18
