Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 02 - A Fatal Thaw

by A Fatal Thaw(lit)

  her shoulder slightly to Bernie. He drifted down to the other end of the

  bar. She drank. "What kind of business?"

  "Import-export," he said. "And you?"

  "Oh, I homestead about twenty-five miles from here., I'm Kate Shugak, by

  the way. And you?"

  He took her hand. "Johnny Wu. Live here year round,; do you? How long?"

  "I was born here."

  "Really. That's interesting."

  "How about you? How long have you lived in Hawaii?" "Maybe you can help

  me," he replied, either not hearing or ignoring her question. "I'm

  looking for someone."

  "Well, I know pretty much everyone in the Park. Who do you want?"

  "It's a woman, name of Lisa Getty."

  Kate felt a frisson of awareness run up her spine. "Lisa Getty?"

  "Yes. A ... mutual friend gave me her name, said she was the best guide

  in the Park."

  "Lisa Getty is dead," Kate said bluntly. The smile was wiped from his

  face, and she congratulated herself inwardly that her cop's eye was

  still in. "Didn't you hear about the massacre?"

  "Massacre? What massacre?"

  "A week, week and a half ago. Some Park rat went nuts with a 30.06. Lisa

  Getty was one of the victims."

  "Jesus," Wu said.

  "Sorry to have to be the one to tell you," she said. "You know Lisa

  yourself?"

  "No," he muttered, his face pale, grabbing his beer. "I never met her

  personally." He tilted the bottle up and gulped thirstily.

  "I do some guiding myself, in season," Kate offered. "Maybe we could

  work something out. You didn't say what you were after-bear? Did Lisa

  organize you a permit?"

  He smiled, a sick smile, and set the empty bottle down. "Thanks anyway.

  This whole thing is pretty pretty shocking. I think I'll-" He got off

  his bar stool without finishing his sentence and picked up his bag.

  "You need a place to stay?"

  He shook his head and went to the door. Kate watched him go, a

  thoughtful expression on her face, and turned back to the bar to find

  Bernie watching her. "What?" she said.

  "Nothing." "You hear all that?" "Most of it."

  "Seen him around before?"

  Bernie was silent for a moment. Finally he said, "Not him, no."

  She paused in the act of raising her glass and stared at him over the

  rim. His expression was bland. "Right," she said finally and drank. "See

  you."

  "I wonder where you're going."

  Her eyes narrowed. "No, you don't."

  She stood up just as the door to the back room opened and, to Kate's

  dumb amazement, a group of belly dancers came out. One of them was in

  full regalia, all diaphanous

  gauze and jingling gold coins, laughing eyes above a sheer veil. A

  second dancer in bikini bra and jeans struck a tambourine, a third in

  shorts and a tank top blew on a flute, and a collective whoop went up

  around the house.

  Kate looked at Bernie, open-mouthed. He grinned at her expression and

  gave a deprecating shrug. The dancers began to shimmy, and the

  congregation deserted their pastor and the mushers their map to join the

  climbers and the other miscellaneous drinkers in a shouting circle that

  beat time with their hands. Only the quiltters stayed where they were,

  plying needles and tongues with equal intensity. Kate shook her head in

  disbelief and made for the door, passing near the quiltters on her way out.

  "So did she divorce him?"

  "Heavens no, dear. She wanted one. He drowned before he could give it to

  her."

  "They do say ..." "What?"

  "What do they say?" "What, Darlene?"

  "Well," Darlene said, leaning forward and dropping her voice, "you know

  they found him floating at the bottom of the ramp ...

  "Yes, yes?"

  "Someone said they saw her down there, too, that morning."

  "No!" The door closed behind Kate. Blinking as her eyes

  adjusted from the gloom of the bar to the bright light of the afternoon,

  she saw Leonard and Amos sitting together at the top of the stairs,

  playing scissors-paper-stone. As she watched, Leonard lost and took a

  wallop on his upper arm

  from Amos's clenched fist. Kate took careful aim with one booted foot

  and kicked them both down the stairs.

  She climbed on the Super Jag as they were picking themselves up out of

  the snow, motioned Mutt up behind her, and left.

  Lisa Getty's bowpicker was racked up above the high tide mark, side by

  side with thirty others, all waiting for the ice to go out of the river

  before their hulls could hit water.

  It was a thirty-two foot bowpicker with a bare, stainless-steel reel in

  the bow and a square, squatty cabin that filled up the stern. Between

  them was the hold, covered over in wooden deck planking. In appearance

  it had much in common with the Getty's homestead, as it was messy but in

  good repair, and clean if not neat. There were old tracks of a very

  small boot in the thin layer of crusting snow on deck. Kate climbed

  aboard and began to pull up the deck planks-long, onebytwelvebytwelves

  laid side by side across the inner lip of the holding tank. Mutt wagged

  her tail encouragingly from her comfortable seat on the mat in front of

  the cabin door.

  It was noon, and the sun was shining, and Kate was sweating before she

  had enough planks up to climb down into the hold.

  She surfaced some twenty minutes later, puzzled. The hold was empty,

  without a net, corkline, leadline or buoy to be found. She'd even pried

  up the floorboards and checked the bilge. Bone dry from a winter in dry

  dock, it, too, was empty, from stem to stern.

  She replaced the floorboards and straightened, groaning a little when

  her back creaked in protest. "It has to be here if it's anywhere," she

  told Mutt.

  "Woof," Mutt agreed without moving.

  "You're a big help." Putting both hands flat on the lip of the hatch,

  Kate lifted herself up and over into a sitting position at the hatch's

  edge. Her legs dangling in the hold, she turned her face up into the

  sun, closed

  her eyes and thought out loud. "When we were kids, Lisa never left all

  her stuff in one place. She had toys stashed in hidey-holes all over-in

  the tent we pitched up the hill in back of her parents' house, in the

  tree house we built in the cottonwood in Big Monkey-Land down on Humpy

  Creek, on her dad's boat, in her uncle's cache, in her locker at school,

  hell, in her desk at school. She spread things around; she always did.

  If she was growing dope at home, ten to one she was selling what she

  poached out of somewhere else. Besides, at home there was Lottie, who I

  know for a fact disapproves of flying and shooting the same day, never

  mind shooting at something on the endangered species list. She'd

  probably have turned Lisa in herself, if she'd caught her at it." Kate

  paused. "If she'd caught her at it." She looked down at Mutt, who stared

  solemnly back. "Anyway, the boat was in town and closer to hand. Closer

  to the airstrip, for that matter, and to planes headed out of the Park."

  Mutt rested her chin on her forepaws and prepared to be patient.

  Somewhere down the
beach a couple of sea gulls raised their voices in

  raucous dispute, a crow cawed mockingly from overhead, a slight breeze

  rustled through the alders crowded against the high water mark. That

  same breeze lifted the wisps of hair escaping from Kate's single braid.

  A hammer beat rhythmically against a metal surface, paused, resumed. The

  ice in the river shifted and cracked over the gray, thickly silted water

  beneath. As the brims of ice-cap glaciers dissolved in the warmer

  temperatures of the ever-increasing daylight, as the winter's snowpack

  melted, the runoff filled the streams and creeks and poured into

  tributaries and from them into the Kanuyaq. Daily, the volume and speed

  of the river increased, and would soon peel the caked, cracked rind of

  winter from the river's surface, sweeping it downstream, into Prince

  William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska and out to

  sea, leaving behind a new, swelling, rushing skin of pearlescent gray, a

  living, gleaming, 250-mile ribbon adorning the awakening landscape of

  the Park, fecund with the promise of spring and the first run of salmon.

  There is nothing tentative or uncertain about the coming of spring in

  the Arctic; it does not creep in unannounced. It marches in at the head

  of an invading army, all flags flying, brass brand playing, soldiers at

  present arms and knee-deep in ticker tape and cheers. Suddenly and with

  all her heart Kate longed to be home, back at the homestead, to

  participate in the rambunctious toss and jostle as breakup elbowed its

  way into the Park. The trunks of the birches were dark with the

  subdermal flow of sap; the scab of ice on Silver Creek at the foot of

  the ravine in back of her cabin was breaking off in larger and larger

  chunks; the Quilak Mountains were shrugging out of their winter coats

  and striding bare-breasted into spring. Away from it for twenty-four

  hours, she missed home with an aching intensity that brought a rueful smile

  of self-acknowledgment.

  "Maybe Jack's right and I am just a hermit at heart," she told Mutt. She

  should have gotten on with her search.

  Instead she stretched out on the deck, burrowed her head into Mutt's

  furry side and let the sun pour down over her.

  A half hour later a sudden chill woke her from a light doze. She

  shivered and sat up, blinking. A tumble of cumulus clouds elbowed its

  way up out of the southeast horizon, jostling for position between Kate

  and the sun. "See that," she said, slapping Mutt affectionately on the

  flank, "a cloud comes over the sunlit arch, a wind comes off a frozen

  peak and you're all at once back in the middle of March. The poet was

  right."

  She rose to her feet and stretched her arms over her head, yawning. "I

  suppose I should check the cabin, although I can't imagine Lisa'd be

  dumb enough to leave anything right where some drunked-up teenager

  vandalizing dry-docked boats on a dare could stumble across it. But if

  Wu's in the Park, the stuff's got to be somewhere."

  Still half-asleep, she grappled with the hasp, upon which Lisa had not

  bothered herself to install a pad lock. Sliding the little door to one

  side, she took a step forward, tripped over an unstowed boat hook and

  fell headlong through the cabin door.

  Which was a very good thing, since the shooter hunkered down in the

  clump of alders at the head of the beach chose that very moment to

  squeeze off a shot in her direction.

  The sharp report echoed across the expanse of sand and gravel and ice.

  Something nudged the side of Kate's head, and something warm began to

  flow down over the right side of her face and drip off her chin. She

  fell hard and loose, hitting her shoulder against the edge of the bunk

  built into the back of the cabin. Her head started to hurt. She raised a

  hand and touched it, and saw that the liquid was blood. All the strength

  seemed to go out of her limbs and a smothering wave of darkness rose up

  and overwhelmed her.

  When she woke, her eyelids seemed stuck together. It took her a moment

  to get them open. Her cheek was pressed against a hard surface and

  seemed also to be stuck there. Someone was rubbing a rough, wet

  washcloth over her face. A dog whined, and she stirred. She knew that

  whine, and memory returned in a sudden rush. "Mutt?" Her hands fumbled

  around for purchase and she pushed up. The skin of her cheek pulled off

  the floor with a sticky sound.

  At her side, Mutt whined anxiously. She licked Kate again.

  Her head was pounding. Kate raised a shaky hand and investigated. Where

  the bullet had plowed across her temple there was a shallow wound a

  half-inch wide and two inches long. Blood must have drained from it into

  her eyes and down the right side of her face and into the collar of her

  shirt. The smell of blood was everywhere, but the area around the wound

  seemed cleaner than the rest of her. Mutt whined again, her muzzle

  thrust directly in Kate's face, her yellow eyes round and anxious, and

  licked her cheek yet again.

  "okay," Kate muttered, holding her off, "head wounds always bleed like

  hell. Get fixed up in a minute. okay, girl, take it easy." With hands

  seemingly too swollen to perform even the most simple task, she fumbled

  around in her pockets for a kerchief. It took what felt like forever to

  find one, and when she did, it took another forever to fold it and bind

  it around her forehead. Reaching up over the edge of the tiny sink,

  praying that the water tank wasn't empty, she was rewarded by a thin

  stream of cool water. She splashed some on her face, a scant handful at

  a time. Blinking her eyes clear, she inched over to the door and peered

  up over the sill.

  Outside, the sky had cleared again, and the sun seemed to have dropped

  like a golden stone into a pale blue pond, cumulus ripples spreading out

  to the very edge of the horizon. Kate blinked again and realized it was

  coming up on sunset. She must have been out for hours. She could see

  nothing out of the ordinary, hear nothing out of the ordinary. No one

  had come running, so the hammerer had not heard the shot and was long

  since gone. From the town up the bank and beyond the trees smoke rose

  from chimneys in peaceful white wisps. Even the gulls were silent.

  Leaning back, Kate looked around the cabin and found a knit watch cap of

  navy blue. With the cap over the end of the boat hook that had tripped

  her up, she poked them both out the door of the bowpicker's cabin, very

  slowly. Mutt, still on her feet with her eyes fixed unwaveringly on

  Kate's face, didn't move.

  The cap crept up over the sill, the level of the deck, the railing.

  Nothing. No sound, no movement, nobody shooting.

  Kate swung the boat hook back and, swinging it with both hands, threw

  the cap across the deck into the bow. Still nothing.

  The boat hook fell clattering to the deck. Whoever the shooter had been,

  they were gone now. Kate lay where she was and shook for a while. She

  felt she'd earned it.

  After a moment she remembered there was something she was supposed to

  do. Groaning, she pulled herself up by the edge of the bun
k, raising

  herself to her feet to begin the search. Hampered by the dimming light,

  her pounding head, and having to do most of it by touch, nevertheless it

  didn't take long to find what she was looking for. In the locker mounted

  on the bulkhead above the bunk, hidden behind the canned goods, she

  found a creased paper bag with the top folded down. Inside were half a

  dozen greenish-yellow, wizened-up little bags of what seemed to be dried

  meat. She put the bag to one side to rummage further. Not for a moment

  did she believe she had found all there was to find, and proved herself

  right almost immediately.

  She pulled back the mattress and knocked against the sheet of plywood