Breakup

by Dana Stabenow

  “Breakup,” she said, with loathing.

  Three

  THE SUN CAME UP AT 4:57 A.M. the next morning, or it would have if the sky hadn’t been overcast.

  By 4:58 a.m., the homestead was crawling with people.

  Kate had progressed from speechless shock to speechless rage.

  Mutt was still up in the loft, under the bed.

  “Jesus, what a mess.” A man of medium height, clad in jeans and a jacket with National Transportation Safety Board insignia on it stared around the clearing, at the turbine blades embedded in garage, greenhouse, cabin, outhouse and trees, at the hole in the cabin roof, at the flattened truck still obscured by the engine, at the severed and shattered tools in the garage, at the pierced gas tank on the snow machine, at the collapsed cache.

  “I’ve seen worse, though.” He saw Kate’s expression. “No, really. Happens more often than you might think, a lot more often than the airlines like to admit. Big chunks of frozen sewage, access panels, doors and hatches, cowling, cones, turbine blades, they’ve all fallen off a plane at one time or another. It’s kind of like a car losing a hubcap or a muffler.”

  Kate said nothing.

  “Although,” he said with a rueful smile, “generally speaking mufflers don’t have time to accelerate at thirty-two feet per second per second.” He paused expectantly, but something in her eyes must have told him not to explain that this was the acceleration of gravity, so he contented himself with adding, “Must have been one hell of a bang.”

  Kate said nothing. The line of her jaw was very tight.

  He pursed his lips in a judicious expression. “You’re lucky.”

  She looked at him.

  “Yeah, believe it or not, you are. Outside, there are so many planes in the air at any given moment that it’s next to impossible to track down the offending aircraft. In Alaska it’s easier. Last night, there was only one 747 in the right place at the right time.” He shrugged. “Easy to identify, and easier for you to demand restitution. By the way, the plane made it back to Fairbanks safely. Nobody hurt.”

  “You,” Kate said, very carefully, “have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a shit.”

  The speechlessness was beginning to wear off.

  The NTSB man raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I’m sure you’ll be reimbursed for damages.”

  “You bet your ass I will.”

  He offered his hand. She didn’t take it. “I’m John Stewman, National Transportation Safety Board. I’m the head of the go team.” When she didn’t ask, he explained. “That’s what we call our response-to-crash teams, Ms… . er,” and he smiled, revealing deep dimples and a slight gap between his two front teeth. His eyes were brown and crinkled at the corners. Dark hair fell untidily over his forehead, increasing the resemblance to Tom Sawyer.

  Alarmed and annoyed at this sudden awareness, she snapped, “Shugak.” It was nothing more than a biological response to a nearly fatal experience, she told herself sternly. Ask any soldier left standing after a battle. Ask any pilot who walked away from a crash. Between the bear encounters and the jet engine, she was feeling a little rough around the edges, that was all. It would fade.

  “Shuyak?” Stewman repeated in a louder voice, and she started and swore to herself. “Like the island?”

  “S-H-U-G-A-K, Shugak, Kate.” Besides, Stewman wasn’t all that attractive, he just thought he was. “Make sure you spell the name right on the check.”

  The NTSB would not be writing her a check, Earlybird Air Freight would, maybe, but “S-H-U-G-A-K,” he repeated, imperturbable, writing it down on the top of a form, “Kate. You live here alone?”

  “No.” She didn’t elaborate.

  His gaze lingered for a moment on the scar on her throat. “You married?”

  “No.”

  “Children?”

  “What are you, the census taker? No.”

  He sighed. “Ms. Shugak, we need to know who else lives here, so we can—”

  She looked behind him and the taut lines of her face eased. “I’ve got a roommate.”

  He pivoted.

  Mutt stood in the open door of the cabin, a distrustful expression on her face. The man extracting the turbine blade from the snow machine caught sight of her and stood straight up. “John,” he said.

  The man next to Kate said, “Yes, Brandon.”

  “Um, there’s a wolf? Over there?” He pointed at Mutt, who regarded his pointing finger for a moment and then slowly, deliberately and thoroughly licked her chops.

  Stewman looked at Kate for confirmation. “Is it? A wolf?”

  He didn’t look more than wary at the prospect, and Kate, damn his eyes, liked him for it. She gave a casual shrug and Jack Morgan’s standard answer to that comment. “Nah. Only half.”

  This time the smile did more than crinkle his eyes. “Only half, Brandon,” he said.

  Brandon, a gaunt, pinch-faced albino blond, was not noticeably reassured.

  “Mutt,” Kate said. Mutt looked over at her but made no move. “Come on, girl. It’s all right.”

  Mutt had her doubts about that. She took a long, careful look around the clearing. The half dozen men and women in it slowed their work to a halt, equally wary expressions on their faces. Brandon’s nervousness was catching. “Come on, girl,” Kate repeated. “It’s okay now. Come on, come here.” She patted her leg.

  Mutt could face down a bull moose in rut, a brown bear waking up cranky from his winter nap, a mass murderer armed with a shotgun. The engine off a 747 falling from the sky was beyond her ken, and it was taking her a while to adapt. Her speculative gaze fell on a woman in an FAA jacket standing next to what had been Kate’s truck. The woman took an involuntary step backward. Satisfied that, jet engine or not, she hadn’t lost her touch, Mutt strolled over to stand next to Kate. She looked up and cocked an ear, as if to say, What’s all the fuss?

  Kate caught Stewman’s eye. He was grinning, and she almost laughed but caught it in time. There was no point in giving an inch until the check cleared the bank.

  “John!” somebody yelled. “Come here, will you?”

  “In a minute, Tim,” he yelled back, and looked from Kate to Mutt and back again. “This your roomie?” She nodded. “And will she be filing a claim as well?”

  Kate showed her teeth. “I’ll be filing one for her.”

  He grinned again. Kate thought of the fence and the whitewash and resisted the charm in that smile.

  “Introduce us,” Stewman said.

  “Huh?”

  “Introduce us, so she doesn’t take a bite out of me the next time I make a move in your direction.”

  Kate wasn’t altogether sure that that was such a good idea, but she said, “Make a fist, hold your hand out, palm down.”

  He did so without hesitation. Mutt sniffed at it, sneezed once and looked up at Kate for approval, her plume of a tail waving back and forth in a gentle arc. Kate scratched behind her ears.

  “That it?” the NTSB investigator asked.

  “That’s it.”

  He retrieved his hand and closed the notebook. “Look, Kate, I know this is tough, but we’ll be out of your hair before you know it. We’re really very good at putting the pieces back together.”

  “How long before you clear all this crap out of here?”

  “One day, maybe two.”

  “How long before I’m reimbursed?”

  “You’ll have to take that up with the Earlybird representative.”

  “Which one is he?”

  He pointed at a skinny man with a thin, harried face standing on the other side of the wreckage. “The name’s Kevin Bickford. He’s Earlybird’s director of operations for the state.”

  “Thanks,” Kate said, and walked around the wreckage to tap Bickford on the shoulder. He turned and stared at her uncomprehendingly.

  “Kate Shugak, Mr. Bickford.” He looked blank, and she added pointedly, “This is my homestead your jet engine just trashed.”

  He cri
nged inside his oversize parka, reminding her of nothing so much as a parky squirrel diving down the nearest hole. He even looked a little like a parky squirrel, with small, bright eyes set close on either side of an insignificant little nose that didn’t look as if it could suck in enough oxygen to keep a gnat alive. His teeth, bared in a failed attempt at an ingratiating smile, were little and white, with the exception of the front two, which were big and buck. “Mr. Bickford, as far as I’m concerned, this could not have happened at a worse time. I need my truck. When will I be reimbursed for the damage done by your engine?”

  He couldn’t hide his look of surprise, and Kate wondered sourly if he thought broken gutturals would have been more appropriate to her brown skin, black braids and Bush lifestyle.

  Bickford cleared his throat nervously. Kate raised her brows and waited. His gaze fell on the scar at her throat and widened. “Holy—”

  “About restitution, Mr. Bickford,” Kate said.

  He flushed and his eyes slid past her guiltily. “Well, Ms. Shageluk—”

  “Shugak,” she said, patiently for her. “SHOO-gack.”

  “Of course.” His smile was weak. It matched his chin. “Well, Ms. Shungnak.” Close, but no cigar. Kate left it for another day. “I don’t rightly know when you can expect restitution. We have to assess the damage first, of course. Get an estimate on the replacement value of your truck, that sort of thing.”

  “Including delivery here,” she said.

  “Of course, of course,” he said hurriedly.

  “And not forgetting the collateral damage done to the tools in the garage.”

  “No,” he said obediently.

  “Or the interior of my cabin, and the contents therein, not to mention the roof.”

  “Certainly not.”

  What the hell. “And the meat cache.”

  He took it without a blink. “Of course.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll start a list. One more thing.”

  Relieved that it was only one more thing, he said almost eagerly, “Yes?”

  “I don’t want a check.”

  He blinked. “No check?”

  “No. Cash. Nothing bigger than a hundred, please. Fifties if you can manage it.” Cash because the nearest bank was Ahtna, and fifties because it was next to impossible to get change for a hundred in the Bush during breakup anywhere except maybe the Roadhouse. Everybody was broke, even Bernie, who let customers drink on tab until they made their first set of the year.

  She saw no need to explain herself to Bickford, who looked a little dazed by the request, but such was the force of her personality that he found himself mumbling agreement.

  The go team went about its business, locating, identifying and cataloging the various pieces off the engine around the clearing and marking their location on a map they had drawn of the site five minutes after they had arrived. Other than requesting, very politely, that she touch nothing, they hadn’t bothered Kate much. Except for the photographer, whose flash had to be about ready to wear out. Kate would be seeing spots for the rest of the week.

  She left Mutt to supervise the debris collection process from a post next to the woodpile and went back to her cabin. The interior looked as if the second chinook of the year had passed directly through it, books and canned goods and cassette tapes alternating with glass shards and wood splinters all over the floor. She couldn’t even put on any music to drown out the sounds of the people outside because one of the turbine blades had skewered the cassette deck, an electronic shish kebab. Not that there was anything to play after the piece off the engine squashed most of her tapes.

  A can of stewed tomatoes looked like breakfast, and she dumped it into a bowl and ate to the accompaniment of a low hum of conversation and an occasional clang of metal from the yard. She did her best to ignore both, but as she was scraping the bottom of the bowl, rain began to patter on the roof, and through the hole onto the couch and the box of crushed tapes beneath it. She heaved a sigh, went out to the garage, located the ladder among the wreckage and set it up against the eaves of the cabin.

  The hole was about a foot and a half in diameter. The good news was that it appeared to have missed all the rafters. Kate went back to the garage, started the generator, plugged in the power saw, mercifully intact, and cut a piece of plywood to fit the outside and a piece of Sheetrock to fit the inside and scrounged up enough pink insulation to stuff in between. Caulking, tar paper and shingles followed. A quantity of Spackle later and the job was done, except for painting. Kate had a dreary suspicion that she’d have to paint the entire inside of the roof to make it match, but that was for tomorrow, when the Spackle had dried.

  O joy, o rapture, it was time for lunch. A can of refried beans heated up and seasoned with garlic powder and oregano was better than cold stewed tomatoes. She cleaned up the kitchen, tossing the ventilated canned goods and restoring the rest to the shelves above and below the counter, adding as she did so to the grocery list, which was beginning to resemble the provisional logistics for D-Day.

  After that it was time to start a list of everything Earlybird was going to replace whether they wanted to or not. She started with the tape deck and the box of tapes beneath the couch. The list was over fifty titles before she was done.

  She moved on to the books, where the news was even worse. The copy of The Wind in the Willows with the wonderful Michael Hague illustrations had been pierced through the center, stabbed to the heart, a fatal wound. Next to it, Louise Erdrich’s Tracks had the cover peeled back like an onion. “Goddammit,” she said, and started another list.

  Halfway down it came the sound of raised voices from the yard. They got louder. She marched over to the door and yanked it open, ready to kick ass.

  The go team were clustered in a group in the center of the clearing, around two of their own, a man and a woman. Stewman, his back to the cabin, heard the door open and turned.

  She glared at him. “What’s with all the noise?”

  He glanced back at the group. “We’ve, ah, we’ve run into a little, uh, well, guess you could call it a snag.” He tried to smile but it didn’t take.

  The woman, a slender redhead with freckles, looked as if she was going to throw up. The man next to her, the albino blond, looked terrified. Kate took a step forward. “What’s going on?”

  Stewman glanced back around the circle, and back at Kate. “We, uh, well, we found a body.”

  Kate stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  He shoved back his cap to scratch his head, and resettled it firmly. “There’s usually a pattern to the way debris scatters in an incident like this one. I sent Selina and Brandon”—he indicated the terrified man and the nauseous woman—“out to canvass.” He paused. “They found a body instead.”

  “They found a what?”

  “A dead body,” John Stewman said for the third time. He had regained his composure and he was patient and apologetic but firm. “The body of a dead man.” He glanced back at Selina and Brandon. “I gather it’s not in the best of shape.”

  Kate stared at him. He wasn’t joking. She sat down heavily upon the doorstep. Mutt, concerned, deserted her post near the woodpile and trotted forward to nose at her cheek. Kate put an arm around her neck and rested her forehead against the thick gray fur. “You’re not kidding, are you,” she said into Mutt’s ruff.

  “No.”

  “Why me?” Kate said.

  “If not you, who?” Stewman said brightly. “If not now, when?” She raised her head to look at him. Just look. He sobered. “Sorry.”

  “Where?” she said, mostly just to be saying something. Ex-DA’s investigator on automatic.

  Stewman pulled off his cap again and smoothed back his shaggy mane of hair, a nervous habit. “About three miles that way.” He pointed roughly southwest, away from the Yukon Territory and toward Valdez.

  The Earlybird man said apprehensively, “How did he die? Did you see any parts off the engine nearby?”

  Stewman ra
ised an eyebrow and said sardonically, “Don’t worry, Bickford, this guy’s been there longer than last night.”

  Brandon shuddered his agreement. Selina made a stifled sound and clapped her hand over her mouth. She staggered off a few steps and lost her lunch on the ground right next to the snow machine.

  “Did you send for the trooper?” Kate said.

  Stewman held up a two-way radio. “We called it in on Channel 9. Talked to somebody in Niniltna, a ham operator—”

  “Bobby Clark.”

  He nodded. “That’s the guy. He said he’d call the trooper in Tok.”

  “Good,” Kate said without enthusiasm. Just what she needed, on today of all days, a smartass trooper with the mating instincts of a tomcat and the come-on repertoire of Casanova. A thought occurred. “You said three miles? That way?” She pointed.

  “More or less. Selina and Brandon said it was pretty rough going. My guess is it’s closer rather than farther away.”

  What with one thing and another, it had been a very long twenty-four hours, even for breakup. Not one but two close encounters of the ursine kind, a jet engine falling out of the sky to smash flat her primary means of summer transportation, a hole in the roof and, oh yes, let us not forget, income tax.

  And now, on top of everything else, a body. “You know what?” Kate said brightly. “If you found the body three miles that way, it isn’t on my homestead, so it’s not my problem.” She got to her feet and dusted her hands. “It’s not my problem,” she repeated firmly, willing herself to believe it. “You can leave, and you can take your pieces of engine and your bodies and your go team with you.” She looked at Bickford. “Now.”

  Stewman had the audacity to laugh out loud. “Is this what they call the bum’s rush?”

  “Off,” she said to Bickford, pointing in the general direction of Seattle.

  Bickford had donned a too-big gimme cap whose brim came down to the end of his nose. It had a patch with a red-and-white jet on a robin’s egg blue background and a border reading “Around the Clock, Around the World.” The name Earlybird Air Freight was inscribed on the bill. He snatched the cap off to wring it between his hands. “I’m sorry, Ms. Shungnak,” he said, searching desperately for understanding, forgiveness and even a trace of fellow feeling in Kate’s stony expression, “but I’m afraid it’ll be a while before we get the equipment in here to do that.” He nodded at Kate’s squashed truck and the engine on top of it. “Sucker weighs more than four tons.”