"Just that," Kate snapped, defensive and angry because of it, "I lose the car. The parking lots are too big and there are too many cars and they all look alike. I always park in the same spot in the same parking lot. At Carr's, I park in the last row before the exit lane. In the Fifth Avenue parking garage, I always park on the fourth floor on the south side. At the library I always park in the first row in front of the stairs. That way I can always find the car when I come out."
Her jaw set, she dared him to laugh at her, but the truth was he'd never felt less like laughing in his life. His hand caught hers and he yanked her across the bench seat and into his arms. He lowered his head to hers, his cheek against her hair, "Thank God it wasn't worse. Thank God you're all right. Jesus, Kate, I--thank God you're all right."
"Thank God Johnny wasn't with me this afternoon," she said into his shirt, her voice somber, and was sorry when his heart skipped a beat.
She sat up. "Let's go get him and head for the barn. It's been one hell of a day."
And it wasn't over yet. When they got home that evening, the townhouse had been broken into and completely trashed. They stood in the living room and looked at the VCR tossed across the room, at the broken television screen, at the CDs scattered all over the floor, many of the plastic cases splintered beneath a heavy boot. A cry of anguish from upstairs confirmed that Johnny's Game Boy had not been spared. Outside there was the sudden revving of an engine, a squeal of four tires burning rubber and the sound of a backfire, only backfires didn't hit picture windows and leave little round holes in the Thermopane. Mutt barked sharply. Jack hit the floor, bringing Kate down with him, yelling, "Johnny, get down!" There was an answering crash from upstairs.
There was just the one shot, followed by the sound of the engine roaring off down the street. There was another squeal of tires, and then nothing.
Kate's cheek was creased by a broken CD case when Jack plucked her up off the floor and held her out at arm's length. "Kate?" He looked her up and down, ran his hands down her arms and legs and torso. "Are you all right?" Mutt stood at his side, ears flattened, teeth bared, ready to spring at any available target.
"I'm fine," she said, calling Mutt to her side and trying to calm her down with a soothing hand. "Johnny--"
"Dad?" a voice quavered from the stairs. "What was that?"
Jack was at the door in two strides. "Are you all right?" Mutt barked once, a sharp, inquiring bark. Jack picked his son up bodily off the floor and performed the same once over he had with Kate.
"Yes." Johnny squirmed in his father's hasty, worried hands. "I said I was okay, Dad, let me down." Mutt pulled free of Kate at the same time Jack turned Johnny loose and trotted across the room to make her own examination of the boy, evidently not trusting Jack to be thorough enough in his. Johnny wiggled and squirmed some more to put himself out of the reach of her cold, inquiring nose. "Cut it out, Mutt, jeez! I'm okay!" Mutt looked doubtful but at a signal from Kate desisted. "What was that, Dad? It sounded like somebody shooting."
"Stay where you are." Jack kicked a ripped sofa cushion out of the way and stormed into the street. A few of the neighbors were looking out of their windows. One came to the door. The street itself was deserted, not so much as a set of taillights gleaming redly in the distance.
He knocked on doors, asked questions. Three of the neighbors had caught a glimpse of the car. One was sure it had been a two-door blue Toyota Corolla, another was positive it had been a brown Ford pickup with a super cab a third said it looked like a red Chevy Suburban to him. Jack thanked him for his help, refrained from pointing out that the guy living next door to him had a red Chevy Suburban parked in his driveway, and went back to his own house, where Kate was putting the living room back together and Johnny was mopping up milk from the kitchen floor.
"You gonna call the cops?" his son said.
There was something in his voice, an almost imperceptible quaver, that gave Jack pause. "Why?"
Johnny kept his head down and scrubbed at the floor as if his life depended on it. "Hey," Jack said. He reached out a hand to ruffle Johnny's hair, usually a sure way to provoke a reaction, but Johnny only gave a half-hearted shake and scrubbed harder.
"Johnny." Jack's voice brooked no evasion. "What's wrong, kid. Talk to me."
The sponge slowed, stopped. Johnny got to his feet and went to the sink to run water over it, wringing it dry between his hands, wringing it out to the last drop, and wringing it out again. He kept his back to his father when he spoke. "Who do you think did this?"
Jack stared at the stiff set of the thin, childish shoulders. It took him a minute to work it out, and when he did awareness was quickly succeeded by anger, anger that his son would have cause to suspect attack by someone he knew. He kept his voice even. "Someone who's mad at me and Kate about a case we're working on."
The shoulders relaxed slightly. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, Johnny," Jack said, the words steady and certain. "I am sure. Your mother had nothing whatsoever to do with this."
There was a short, tense silence. Jack looked up to see Kate in the doorway, face shuttered. Johnny turned. "So you gonna call the cops?" he demanded hopefully. Jack nodded. "Can I dial 911?" Jack nodded. "Cool!"
Johnny said, and hit the phone. "No descriptions," Jack said, answering the question in Kate's eye. "Nobody saw nothing, and nobody heard it, either. What's it look like upstairs?" "Not as bad," she said. "It's torn up, but nobody ripped the sinks out of the walls or took a knife to the beds like they did to the couch.
Probably ran out of time, kids coming home from school, neighbors coming home from work, like that."
He nodded. "Probably. Let's clean up as best we can." Johnny handed him the phone and he spoke into it for a few minutes before hanging up. He produced a grin for Johnny, not his best effort. "I'll spring for hamburgers and fries at Lucky Wishbone after."
Johnny brightened. Like his father, an appeal to his stomach never failed.
Kate followed Jack upstairs. The linen closet, tucked into a corner of the second bathroom, had been spared. Jack got out fresh linens and they began making Johnny's bed.
"Whoever that was in Dischner's office this morning made us," Jack said.
"This, and the wreck, they were messages, telling us he knows."
"He shot at a house with a kid in it," she said. She shook out the top sheet with a sharp snap. It floated down and she began to smooth it over the surface of the bed, hands brisk and sure.
She might have been talking about the weather for all the feeling in her voice, but Jack had known Kate a long time. He paused in the act of tucking in a corner. "Kate."
She met his eyes from across the bed. If his were hot, hers were cold, as cold and as opaque as glacier ice. "He shot at a house with you in it."
He had never heard her voice so flat, so completely devoid of emotion.
He'd seen her annoyed and been amused, he'd seen her angry and been wary, he'd seen her enraged and gotten out of the way. This was new.
This frightened him in a way he hadn't known he could be frightened, probably because for the first time in a long time Jack Morgan had absolutely no idea of what Kate Shugak would do next. "Kate." She tucked in her side of the sheet with military precision and reached for the blanket with no reply.
He tried again that night. "Kate."
She was lying very still beneath the covers, limbs confined strictly to her side of the bed, staring at the ceiling. "What?"
"You're not going to do anything--" He hesitated.
"Anything what?" she said, and again, her voice was without inflection.
She could have been discussing the weather.
"You're not going to do anything foolish," he said, his voice firm. He felt like he was talking to Johnny.
"Foolish?" she said. "Foolish? Somebody loosens the lug nuts on the Blazer's tire so I'll have an accident, somebody breaks into your house and trashes it, somebody drives by and shoots at your house with Johnny inside. Maybe somebody
even kills Sarah Kompkoff and Enakenty Barnes."
Her voice remained flat and calm. "Why on earth would you think I'd do something foolish? Uh-uh. Not me. Not Mrs. Shugak's little girl. I'm smarter than that."
There was a long silence, broken by a muffled curse. Jack rolled over, his back to her, taking most of the covers with him.
Kate watched the ceiling and waited for dawn.
TEN.
THE NEXT MORNING SHE PRETENDED TO BE ASLEEP WHILE Jack got up and showered and went downstairs. When the smell of coffee reached her and she knew he was engrossed in the morning paper she reached for the phone and called Brendan Mccord. His voice sounded sleepy. "Kate?" He yawned.
"What time is it?" "Six," she said, keeping her voice low.
"Six a. m.! You're an hour ahead of my alarm clock! What's the matter with you!"
"I'm sorry, Bren, but it's urgent."
There was the sound of an enormous yawn and stretch. "Well, all right," he grumbled, "but we go Dutch at Simon's."
In spite of everything she had to smile. "I should have known you'd figure out a way to save money on this."
"It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it," he agreed. "What's up?"
"Do you know Dischner's home address?"
A pause. "Dischner as in Edgar P. Dischner, capo, fat cat and kingmaker?"
"Yes."
Another pause. "I might."
"Would you give it to me?"
A third pause, the longest. "I could," he said finally. "You know, Kate, Jack has everything you ever wanted to know about Eddie P. but were afraid to ask." She let a moment go by, before saying distinctly, "I'm afraid to ask."
"Oh." Kate could hear the gears grinding between Bren's ears. "Oh-kay.
Thirty-six-oh-eight Commerce Lane." "How do I get there?" He told her.
It was in south Anchorage, off Rabbit Loop. She repeated the directions, memorizing them. "Bren, is Dischner married?"
"Not lately. Not that I know of."
"Doe he have any kids? Any living with him, that is?"
"Neither."
"How about servants?"
"Only as in civil. His house isn't that big. He might have a weekly. I don't see him doing windows." "Any pets?" Kate said. Bren gave a bray of laughter. "Close neighbors?"
She heard the rustle of sheets and pillows as Bren settled himself in for a nice, cozy dishing. "Did I ever tell you about the time the City of Anchorage bulldozed and surfaced a road up off Rabbit Loop that dead-ended on a seventy-five-acre tract? A tract of land acquired from the original homesteader by one of our more illustrious public figures, and which land just happens to back up against the Chugach State Park?
Dischner's nearest neighbor is Gentle Ben."
"Thanks, Brendan. I owe you one."
"For what? I don't remember talking about this. I don't even remember talking to you this morning. I just remember you offering to buy me dinner at Simon's." With an evil chuckle he hung up.
Conversation over the Eggos that morning was monosyllabic. When Kate asked to borrow the loaner, Jack refused. "I have to take the kid to school." "What?" Johnny said. "What's wrong with the bus?"
Kate called a cab and took Mutt out to the airport, where she found a cash machine and got another $300 on Jane's card and rented a Ford Escort with four on the floor and a bad clutch. Mutt sat in the passenger seat, cramped by the small space and curling her lip at the smells of it. Every now and then she put a paw on the dashboard to keep upright. Every now and then she would glance at Kate, panting slightly.
She usually knew what Kate was feeling before Kate did, and this morning was no exception. Mutt's rangy, muscular body was taut and tense, ready to explode in any direction, taking no prisoners.
Mutt didn't like getting shot at, either.
They took International to Minnesota, followed Minnesota around to O'Malley and the New Seward and the New Seward out to Rabbit Creek.
Commerce Lane took a long time to get to but was easy to find; it was at the very end of the road at what seemed to be the very top of Mchugh Peak. Through the trees the rising sun turned Turnagain Arm into a sheet of pale silver. Kate thought she saw wisps of clouds congregating up arm as if they were getting together to assess the possibility of the season's first snow. Kate was a creature of her environment and on any other morning the prospect would have eased the knot of tension coiled in her gut. This morning, the sound of metal against pavement still screaming in her ears, the sight of the knifed couch, even the memory of that map in the library, maybe especially the memory of that map in the library, these were what she saw and heard and remembered. If it snowed, it snowed. There would be time to appreciate it afterward.
The gears ground together as she shifted down to take another hairpin turn. Mutt lost her balance and fell on her shifting arm, which didn't help. At least the surface was good. It was better than good; the pavement looked brand new. Kate remembered Brendan's story, and wondered how much Dischner had contributed to the mayor's reelection campaign this year. Or was this a state road? Didn't matter much; the governor was in Dischner's other pocket. The anger that had begun to burn at the sight of Enakenty on that stretcher licked up again, hot and hard and mean, refined to a white heat by the incidents of the last twenty-four hours. It was odd, but she'd almost forgotten Enakenty in last night's rush of fear and rage. This morning she welcomed the memory, deliberately calling up Enakenty's life less face in front of her, deliberately reliving the lunch with Martha. The car surged forward.
The road ended suddenly in a clearing and she had to slam on the brakes.
The house in the clearing was new and, as Bren had said, nowhere near as large or ornate as she would have expected a man like Dischner to build.
It annoyed her a little; life was so much easier when the bad guys were thoroughly bad, including their taste. This was a house she could live in, at least from the outside. A two story frame house painted white, it had two enormous picture windows on the first floor and a row of smaller ones on the second, so many that almost all of the entire western wall was made of glass that looked out over Turnagain Arm. Dischner had built for the view. Kate didn't blame him.
There had been no attempt to put in a lawn, and trees clustered next to the eaves of the steeply pitched roof. Kate pulled around the circular driveway and parked with the nose of the Escort pointing toward the road. Kate's First Law was Always Provide for a Clean Getaway, a rule she had learned the hard way. She got out, signaled to Mutt and walked to the front door, which opened as she stepped onto the front porch.
"Why, Ms. Shugak, what a nice surprise--"
Kate looked at him without expression and said two words. "Mutt. Take."
Target acquired, Mutt gathered her haunches beneath her and launched herself forward, a hurtling gray projectile weighing one hundred and forty pounds that hit Dischner squarely in the chest and knocked him flat on his back on the hardwood floor of his foyer. She landed lightly with her front paws on either side of his head, back paws solidly against his belly. Her mouth was open and her teeth were bared and a low, steady growl issued from deep in her throat with what sounded to Kate like a lot more enthusiasm than she had shown the night she nailed Gamble, but then she'd always been a quick study.
Mutt was half Husky and half Arctic gray wolf. Viewed from beneath, the Husky half was not predominant. Unlike Gamble, Dischner neither moved nor spoke. It was entirely possible he didn't blink or breathe, either, thereby showing more sense in his dealings with Kate Shugak than he had done thus far.
Kate stepped through the door over Dischner's sprawled legs. The living room was comfortably furnished with overstuffed furniture and built-in bookshelves. An intricately patterned area rug, Persian at a guess, lay before a snapping log fire in a stone fireplace. She strolled toward it and held out her hands. "There's just nothing more comforting than a warm fire on a cold morning, is there, Ed?"
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 06 - Blood Will Tell Page 23
