room, walked through the entryway and opened the outside door. Standing
at the top of the steps, she paused, looking down the length of the
runway. Mutt trotted around the corner of the house and stood, looking
up, tail curled in a question mark.
Across the runway from the house stood a cleared and filled section of
land that supported a square, two-story building. A faded sign beneath
the eaves read, "Chugach Air Taxi Service, Inc." To the building's right
were tiedowns occupied by a dozen small planes, most of them still on
skis. Kate came down the steps and crossed the strip to the hangar. The
large sliding doors were closed. She went into the office by the side
door and through it to
the hangar. A man in gray-striped coveralls was bent over the open
cowling of a six-seater Cessna 206. The Cessna could have used a paint
job, the man a bath.
Something metal went crunch. "Shit!" he yelled. He wound up and threw
the screwdriver as hard as he could in what turned out to be Kate's
direction. She ducked and it whizzed over her head. Behind her Mutt
jumped and caught the screwdriver's plastic handle neatly in her teeth.
"Nice to see you, too, George," Kate said, standing straight. "What's
the matter with the Loose Goose this time?"
"Damn magneto's gone again," he said glumly, "and my frigging mechanic
picked now to go work repairing
equipment on a fish processor in Dutch Harbor." George Perry was tall
and thin with shaggy brown hair and wire rimmed glasses, both liberally
splattered with grease. He looked more like a CPA than a bush pilot, but
he cursed pretty good. He was cursing when Mutt trotted over and lay the
screwdriver carefully at his feet. "Thanks, Mutt," he said, stooping to
pick it up with one hand and pull on Mutt's ears with the other. She
stood where she was, an expression of blissful idiocy on her face. "What
brings you to town, Kate?"
"Came to pick up my mail. Ralph told me you'd just brought it in. I
thought I'd stop over, say hi "
He cocked his head at her. "You looking for work? I've got two groups up
on the Bump already and a third coming in tomorrow. I could use another
guide."
"That's right, it is that time of year."
"No shit sherlock." He gave the Cessna a damning glare. "That's why I
need this old bucket of bolts up and running. So? What say? Can I put
you on the payroll?"
She shook her head. "Nah. I'm almost three hundred bucks to the good
this year. I can wait for the kings to hit fresh water."
He sighed. "Everybody's flush this spring. Whatever happened to the good
old days, when you could count on half the Park rats drinking up their
summer savings and being broke by February 1st?"
"I don't know, I guess they really are the good old days."
He eyed her with a gloomy expression. "It's your fault. You busted that
bootlegger last winter and now everybody has to go to the Roadhouse. And
Bernie won't let anyone mush home drunk."
"Guilty as charged," she said with a faint smile. She paused. "I hear
you tried to land in the middle of the fireworks last week." He looked
blank and she gestured vaguely behind her. "When McAniff went ape and
shot all those people."
His face darkened. "Yes."
"Can you tell me about it?" He looked at her, surprised and a little
disgusted, and she shook her head at once. "No, it's not that." She
hesitated. Jack had advised discretion, but the word was going to get
around sooner or later. For all she knew, the police were holding a
press conference in Anchorage as she spoke. "Lisa Getty was shot by a
different rifle than the rest of the victims."
It took George a moment. "A different rifle?" he asked. "You mean
McAniff didn't shoot her?"
"No. He looked a little at a loss. "Well then, who did?" She shrugged.
"They.don't know. I'm looking into it.
That's why I need to know what you saw that day." "Jesus, Mary and
Joseph," he said slowly. "You mean we got another killer still on the
loose?" She nodded. "Christ." He tossed the screwdriver into the
toolbox. "You want some coffee?"
"Sure." He led the way into his office, and she sat down on the old
couch, patched so many times it was hard to tell where the Naugahyde
left off and the duct tape began. He handed
her a cup and sat behind his desk. "If you're working with the cops,
you've probably seen my statement. I don't know what I can add to it."
Kate settled back and sipped at her coffee. It tasted like
three-in-one-oil. Just tell me what happened."
He was right; he couldn't add much more than what he'd said in his
statement. The Cessna, so full of mail he'd had to take out the two back
rows of seats, had been maybe a hundred yards off the south end of the
airstrip when a bullet smashed into the windshield. Another hit
the fuselage, by which time he'd figured out what was happening. "I
thought for a minute I was back on a short final at Khe Sanh," he said,
shuddering. "I pushed in the throttle and pulled the stick as far back
into my lower intestine as it would go and I was outa there."
"I don't blame you," she observed. "In your statement, you say you
circled for a while."
"Yeah, I got up out of range and put her into a slow turn.
saw two bodies laying out on the edge of the strip. I think
caught a glimpse of Lisa's body through the trees. You
know she always wears-wore those flashy fluorescent
bibs and parkas from North Face that practically glow in
the dark." He took a deep breath. "And I saw a guy take off through the
woods on a Polaris. All the time I'm on the radio, trying to raise the
troopers. I got Chopper Jim, and he told me to go to Tok. I was happy to
oblige."
"When'd you get back?" "That evening." He shook his head. "Place was a zoo.
There was about a hundred cops crawling around with all that sumbitchin'
yellow tape they like to string everywhere, couldn't taxi in a straight
line without fouling in it to save your life. Body bags all over
everywhere. Place looked like Tan Son Nhut in 68." He tried to shrug,
but it turned into a shiver. "That guy McAniff was out of his fucking mind."
"Guess so," she said in a neutral voice, trying not to think of the
killer lying in the slush and snow at her feet, crying because his mouth
was bleeding.
George set his mug down and reached for a rag, wiping ineffectually at
the grease on his hands. "It was creepy as hell, there at first. People
standing around, too shocked to be angry. Cops all business, taking
statements, putting everything they found in Ziploc bags. I saw one
trooper bagging some snow." He paused, his eyes remote. "Everybody else
was just standing around, watching. Steve Syms's girlfriend from Ahtna,
what's her name-" "Cindy. Beerbohm."
"Yeah, apparently Steve was due to fly out to see her that night. She
flew in instead and had hysterics from one end of the strip to the
other. Can't blame her, but it didn't help things much. Your grandma
finally took her home and put her t
o bed."
"Yes," Kate said. "Emaa does what needs to be done." "She is a good old
gal," George agreed.
I wouldn't go that far, Kate thought.
"Everybody came from every homestead between here and Ahtna, and half
Ahtna did, too. All standing around in a big circle like a herd of cows
looking at some thing strange come into their pasture. Weird looking,
you know?"
Kate nodded. It sounded depressingly like any crime scene she'd ever
been at.
"They were here for days, the whole bunch of them, and then they all
left, in something like ten minutes, in a couple of Twin Otters." He
shook his head. "It was quiet out there for maybe a day, and then by God
if they didn't all come back."
"Who all?"
"Everybody all. Cops to go over the ground again, who knows why.
Everybody else came to watch the cops. I'm not sure Lottie ever did leave."
Kate stirred. "Maybe she had more cause to stay than most."
"Yeah, I know she and Lisa were pretty close. It was creepy though. She
didn't move, she didn't talk. She just stood there, watching. When it
got dark and the cops borrowed a generator and started stringing lights,
some of the folks tried to get her to go home. I don't think she even
heard them. She just stood there, like this huge statue. She looked like
... I don't know, Lot's wife, maybe?" He gave an involuntary shudder and
looked over at Kate with a sheepish expression. "Sorry. Between Cindy
screaming and yelling on one side and Lottie acting like the specter at
the feast on the other ... it was, well, creepy," he repeated.-,"I'll bet."
"Hell with that. You and I are alive, right?" "Right."
"In spite of the fact that now we got us another crazy person on the
loose with a gun." Kate got the impression he still didn't quite believe
it, an impression confirmed by his next words. "You sure I can't talk
you into a job? I got a bunch of Koreans-up at the base camp. Their
second time," he added. "They didn't make the summit last year."
She snorted and shook her head. "No, thanks. I never do second-timers."
He sighed. "Can't say's I blame you. They're always so friggin'
determined they're gonna make it this time, they don't care if it's
blowing a blizzard up top and you can't see a foot in front of your
face." He thought. "Maybe I can get Lottie to take'em up."
Kate hesitated in the doorway. "You think that's a good idea?"
"She's gotta eat, like the rest of us, and she's one of the best there
is up on the Bump." He shrugged. "Probably be better for her to be
working than sitting around the house moping."
"She might not be in the right mood to entertain," Kate
suggested. "Especially now."
"She never is. But she will get my climbers up and back in one piece."
"True. I'm going up to see her when I leave here," Kate said. "Want me
to tell her to check in?"
"Do that." He eyed her sharply. "She know yet?" Kate shook her head.
"And you get to tell her. That's not a job I'd wish on my worst enemy.
Well, tell her I'll be gone this afternoon but I'll be back here
tomorrow morning, and to look me up if she wants the job."
Kate walked down the airstrip and a little way into the stand of trees,
and halted. She stood very still, looking around. There were birch and
diamond willow and alder and cottonwood and scrub spruce. The branches
of the deciduous trees were as yet leafless, but their bark was
beginning to darken over the subcutaneous flow of running sap. The
evergreens were thickly needled and a deep, dark green, except at the
tip of each branch, where spring was beginning to emerge in a new growth
of lighter green. It looked the very picture of serene renewal, not at
all a scene for massacre, or for cold-blooded, opportunistic murder.
She looked up and could barely see the sky through the branches tangled
overhead. It was silly, she knew, but Kate suddenly felt as if she were
intruding where she was not wanted. There was an almost conscious
feeling of resistance, a feeling of ... what? Possessiveness? A hoarding
of secrets hardly won?
She shook herself. At this rate, her imagination would be putting in for
overtime. Hearing a plane in the distance, she collected her mail and
headed up the river at a decorous pace. She was not looking forward to
her next interview.
Next to Lottie, Kate felt dainty. Next to Lottie Getty, Sasquatch would
have felt dainty. Lottie was big, six feet
tall in her stocking feet, and weighed in at a hundred and
ninety pounds, most of it muscle from years of hauling
nets and packing game out through the bush. Her features
were an odd contrast to the rest of her; she had large,
widely spaced eyes of an innocent blue, fair skin showing not half her
forty years, and a way of walking and talking slow that led the
uninitiated into thinking she thought slow as well.
"Hi, Lottie." At first Kate thought Lottie wasn't going to let her in.
After a long, tense pause, Lottie stepped back and motioned her inside.
Another wave of the hand directed her toward a worn easy chair sitting
to one side of an old iron wood stove that Lottie's father must have
brought with him when he came to the Park in 52. Kate sat down, got back
up again and removed a box of rifle shells, a Prince William Sound
tide-book, a half-eaten, molding Hostess fruit pie, a photograph album,
a tattered Harlequin romance and a gray cat, and sat back down.
Lottie sat opposite her, large, silent, impassive. Kate let her eyes
wander around the interior of the cabin. It was larger than her own. The
loft was enclosed, with a proper staircase leading up to it, doors led
off a hallway in the back of the house, and the kitchen was separated
from the living room by a counter lined with stools. Every available
horizontal surface was covered with the detritus of bush life; Kate saw
a dismantled beaver trap on the kitchen counter, with fur still stuck to
the jaws. A dozen or more rifles, from a petite and, if the shine of its
stock were any indication, brand new twenty-two to a silver-mounted
over-and-under 12gauge-30.06 combination were stacked in racks nailed to
every available vertical surface. Knives in leather scabbards dangled
next to the rifles, salmon filleting knives with white plastic grips,
skinning knives with handles of some kind of antler, what looked like a
Bowie knife with a handle intricately carved from fossil ivory. A
mounted moose head hung over the
wood stove, and caribou, goat and sheep heads festooned
the other walls, most with coats, mittens and more knives hung from
their racks. Any wall that dared show a bare face to the world had been
promptly veiled with a dusty
hide; black bear, brown bear, wolf, wolverine, coyote, an unexpected
rattlesnake.
A wooden rocking chair with a splintered seat sat next to a couch,
patched like George's where the springs had
come through, this one with black electrician's tape. From what she
could see of the kitchen, Kate didn't think the table had been cleared
or the dishes was
hed in months. Every corner of the room was filled;
with spider webs on the ceiling and dust balls on the floor.
The house looked like Fairbanks after the flood and before the cleanup.
A movement caught the corner of her
eye; the gray cat was sitting at her feet with her tail curled
around her paws, watching Kate with large, unblinking green eyes. "I'm
not moving," Kate told her, although she did sympathize. The chair she
was sitting in was, so far as she could see, the only place in the house
where one could sit down in relative comfort.
The cat yawned and began to wash. She could wait. "I heard you caught
him," a voice like a dull knife said. It took Kate a moment to realize
it was Lottie's voice.
She looked up and met the wide blue stare. "Yes," she said. "I did."
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 02 - A Fatal Thaw Page 7
