No Fixed Line (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 22)

by Dana Stabenow

  “Probably made out of the same stuff they make McDonald’s milkshakes from,” Luke said.

  “I remember that,” Peter said, lightening. He took a handful of Tagalongs and crammed most of them into his mouth. Around them he said indistinctly, “We brought all that Mickey D. takeout home from Ahtna and the milkshakes were still, like, thick a hundred miles later. Hadn’t melted at all. Scary.”

  “Better living through chemicals,” Matt said.

  Even Laurel smiled.

  Caffeine and sugar, a one-two combo that never failed. “Tell me,” Kate said.

  Matt sighed. “We were up at your cabin at the Springs. We heard the sound of this aircraft coming scary close, especially with it blowing and snowing the way it was. Whiteout conditions, Kate. I wouldn’t have gotten on my sled last night, never mind got on a plane. And then the sound stopped, and a second later we heard this just hellacious crash, even over the storm. Sounded like it came from just up the canyon, so we suited up and took the sled up for a looksee.” He shrugged. “I know what it looks like around there on a clear day. I sure didn’t expect to find any survivors—hell, I didn’t really expect to find any wreckage, and at that we almost missed it.”

  “What did you find?”

  “The aft section, maybe six, eight feet forward of the tailplane. What was left of the horizontal stabilizer had somehow wedged itself into this crack in the rock. There was still a seat left in the back, unbelievably, and the two kids were belted into it. I got them out and Laurel got us back to the cabin and thawed out. This morning we figured we’d better take advantage of the break in the weather and get them down here.” He turned his mug in a circle between his hands and spoke without looking up. “We checked them out once we got them here. They’ve got belt contusions across their waists, and other bruising consistent with being in a high impact crash. They haven’t woken up yet so we haven’t been able to do a complete assessment. But…”

  Laurel shoved back from the table and left the room. Matt’s eyes followed her until she was out the door. They listened to her footsteps going up the stairs and a door open and close.

  “They’ve been sexually abused, Kate. Both of them, the boy anally, the girl both anally and vaginally. I can only guess, but I’d say it only began recently, say, within the month. The injuries look…” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Fresh.”

  Peter clenched his fist and hit the table hard. All the mugs and the plate of cookies jumped. “MotherFUCKER.”

  Mutt walked around the table and settled next to him, her head on Peter’s thigh. He stroked her gray head and her yellow eyes narrowed to slits.

  “No identification?”

  Matt shook his head. “I didn’t see anything in the wreckage. Well, I didn’t really look. It was blowing like a bitch and snowing like a bastard and all I was focused on was getting them in out of the cold. But—”

  “What?”

  “He, the boy, he woke up for a few seconds after we got back to the cabin. He spoke a few words.” Matt raised his head and looked at Kate. “They were in Spanish, Kate.”

  “Man,” Johnny’s voice said over the headset, “I see the attraction of helo as opposed to fixed wing. Pretty cool, Mr. Perry.”

  “You can call me George now, kid.”

  “Then you can call me Johnny now, George.”

  George chuckled. Jim closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

  George was a good pilot, possibly the best pilot Jim had ever flown with, helo or fixed-wing, prop or turbine (he had almost as many aircraft certifications as he’d had divorces, and the former might have had something to do with the latter). Nevertheless, Jim’s sphincter tightened up as George put the Ranger into a hover that Jim considered to be far too close to the peaks surrounding Hot Springs Canyon.

  “I don’t see anything,” George said, sounding pretty calm as the right-hand skid came awfully close to touching down on a tooth of rock that looked purpose-made to rip men and helo into teeny-tiny pieces. Jim swallowed again and adjusted his headphones, pulling the mike in closer to his lips. “Can you push it a little farther up the canyon? You said that Matt said the wreckage was above the Springs.”

  Smoothly, steadily, they inched up the canyon, their wash kicking up a swirl of snow. The pools showed briefly, and the roof of Kate’s cabin crept beneath them and vanished.

  “Do you see anything?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody here but us Koberians, evidently.”

  “Look!” Jim pointed.

  “What?” George stood the Ranger on its nose. Through the Perspex they could see the tailplane of what might have been a small jet crammed backwards into a narrow crevice. It was almost completely covered in snow, only the tip of the vertical stabilizer visible, and that only just.

  “Can you set her down?” Jim said, already knowing the answer.

  “It was one thing slinging in supplies last summer when Kate was up here building the new cabin,” George said. “Setting down, forget it. You’ll have to come back up on sleds.”

  Jim looked at the unpromising southern horizon and grimaced. “Goody.”

  George made quick work of the trip back to Niniltna and put the helo next to the hangar. Jim and Johnny helped him roll it inside. “I’ll give you a ride to the clinic,” George said.

  “Let me pick up the mail first?”

  “I’ll do it,” Johnny said, and jogged across the strip to the house slash post office. He emerged a few moments later with an armful of envelopes large and small and a stack of magazines. George got a small garbage sack out of the office and Johnny stuffed it all in and tied off the top.

  The 4,800-foot airstrip sat on a long, roughly rectangular flat-topped bluff that sat above Niniltna village proper. They set off down the hill, passing the Niniltna Native Association’s building, the trooper post, and Auntie Vi’s. When they came to the intersection with Riverside (there was an actual street sign now, Jim saw, and marveled), George paused. Jim looked at him. “What?”

  “I checked with Anchorage ATC, Jim, and here’s the thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “No aircraft has been reported missing. From anywhere.”

  Jim stared at him. “What?”

  George nodded. “I know. Weird, right? Not from anywhere in the system.”

  “Well…” Jim was at a loss. “Where’d it come from, then?”

  “Good question.”

  “What’s the range on a small jet?”

  “Well, hell, Jim. You know as well as I do it depends on the jet and the load.”

  “Ballpark it.”

  George shrugged. “Say a thousand to fifteen hundred miles.”

  “So Whitehorse is as easy as Anchorage or Fairbanks from here.”

  “Depending on the aircraft, Vancouver or Seattle is just as easy from here.” George nodded across the intersection at the shop and the house across and just down the road. “Did you hear about the Topkoks?”

  “Herbie and Sarah? What about them?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “What?”

  Johnny leaned forward from the back seat. “What? Herbie Topkok is dead? What happened?”

  “They went to Hawaii for Christmas vacation, took a tour of the volcano on a boat, the volcano erupted, and a giant gob of magma landed on the boat and killed them.”

  Jim looked at him.

  “What?”

  “I’m waiting for the punchline.”

  “No punchline, because it’s not a joke.” The pilot’s eyes were, for a change, serious.

  “Christ,” Jim said. “If I didn’t know them I guess it’d be funny.”

  “Yeah, everybody in town is worried about who’d going to fix their sleds and boats now.”

  “Heartless bastards.”

  George shrugged. “Practical. Herbie’d get it. Hear tell none of the kids want to move back to Alaska, so they’ll put the shop up for sale and hope for the best.”

  “Good luck with that
.” No property in Niniltna and environs had changed hands since the feds put the Suulutaq Mine on hold.

  “Man, that sucks,” Johnny said. “Herbie was a good guy. Whenever you needed a bolt or screw, he always had it right there. He was like the Alaska Industrial Hardware of the Park.” He sat back. “Man.”

  George took his foot off the brake and stepped on the gas and pulled into the intersection, turning left. “Unless I miss my guess, that tailplane is off a small jet. Might be an old Cessna Citation I’ve seen on the strip here a couple of times this past year.”

  “Do you know who it belongs to?”

  George shook his head. “No tail numbers, and they always parked down the other end, and never overnight. Most of the time they were on the ground for a couple of hours, if that. I always assumed they were people coming to take a look at the mine.”

  They drove to the clinic and pulled in behind Kate’s sled. “That’s not even the best part, though.”

  Jim stared at him. “There’s more?”

  “This is the Park. Of course there is more.” He grinned.

  Goaded, Jim said, “You should have been an actor, George. What more? What?”

  George’s grin faded. “I’m pretty sure that jet landed in Niniltna a little before midnight on New Year’s Eve. I’m pretty sure I heard that turbine whining up outside.” Most experienced pilots—hell, most experienced passengers—could identify different aircraft by the sound of the engine and Jim didn’t question it here. “It was snowing so hard it was dark outside all day. I wouldn’t have dreamed of going anywhere near an aircraft. When I heard the engine I got up and took a look out the window, but it was total whiteout conditions. I couldn’t see past the window frame on the other side of the glass.”

  Jim frowned. George had an apartment over his hangar, with windows looking south-southwest, right over the strip.

  “And.” George said, who looked, just a mite, as if he were secretly enjoying himself.

  “Oh for crissake. And what?”

  “And while I can’t swear to it, because whiteout, I’m pretty sure I heard two of them.”

  Jim felt his jaw drop. “Two jets? In that storm?”

  George nodded. “I think we know where one of them ended up. But what about the other?”

  Kate was standing in the clinic’s one patient room, looking at the two sleeping children. The boy was a little older but they otherwise might have been twins, and they were heartbreakingly beautiful, with thick black glossy hair and features that looked cut from smoky topaz.

  She felt someone beside her and looked up to see Jim. She looked back at the kids. “Did Matt tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  There was something infinitely comforting in his deep, steady voice, and when he put his arm around her shoulders she let herself lean against him, just a little. She swallowed. “We don’t even know who they are.”

  “We’ll handle it,” he said.

  “We don’t even speak their language.”

  “We’ll find someone who does.”

  “Where are their parents, Jim?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  Anger would come later, but all she felt now for these children was pain. “Who did this to them?”

  “We’ll take care of them, Kate.”

  There were two ways to take his statement, and she found that comforting, too. “Let’s go home.”

  But the weather had decided to sock in again and they decided they had tempted fate enough for one day. They went to Auntie Vi’s B&B, where this time of year there was always a free bed and dinner waiting.

  There wasn’t much Viola Moonin Shugak hadn’t seen in a long and storied life. Occasionally homegrown birthers took bets over the bar at the Roadhouse as to just how long that life had been, but it was never conclusively settled because birth certificates weren’t always issued to Alaskans born in what was then only a territory, and almost never to Alaska Natives born in the Bush at that time. Auntie Vi certainly wasn’t saying.

  Auntie Vi was shorter than Kate, with snapping black eyes set in a face like a Shar-Pei’s and had thinning, defiantly black hair that she had lately been encouraging to grow into a skimpy braid that snapped around like a bullwhip when she was in motion. It lent a great deal of emphasis to whatever she was saying at any given time.

  They told her about the plane crash and the two survivors and she broke a Pyrex measuring cup and a mixing bowl while cooking dinner. Kate thought the breakage had more to do with rage than with age. Auntie Vi had a lot to say, too, fortunately most of it in Aleut as Vanessa and Johnny were sitting right there, bright-eyed and inquisitive and Vanessa looking as if she were prepared to take notes for future reference. Mutt, no fool, had taken refuge on the couch in the living room. Fortunately, there were no other guests. Everyone intelligently maintained a prudent silence until the pot of adobo slammed down in the middle of the kitchen table next to a platter of fry bread still sizzling from the pan. Bowls and spoons were dealt out like cards in an especially pissy snerts game. A blessed silence descended over the room as the wind howled outside and snow stung the glass in the windows.

  Jim had seconds and with great restraint resisted thirds. It had been a long time since breakfast. He pushed back from the table and stretched. “Man, that was good, Auntie. Thank you.”

  Auntie Vi glared at Kate. “Every bite a gustatory delight,” Kate said.

  Auntie Vi’s eyes narrowed, and Vanessa said, “Auntie Vi, has there ever been a newspaper in the Park?”

  The glare switched targets. “What’s that you say? Of course we had newspaper. Back when mine was going.”

  “Was it daily?”

  Auntie Vi shook her head. “Once a week only.”

  “What was its name?”

  Auntie Vi ruminated. “I remember that thing,” she said, triumphant. “The Pick & Shovel.”

  “Obvious, much?” Van said, rolling her eyes. “When did it go out of business?”

  “Quits when last track pulled up behind the mine.” Auntie Vi snorted, which was her default expression and used to denote everything from disgust to disgust.

  “Huh. Does anyone have any old copies tucked away anywhere?”

  “Ask old-timers. Some peoples save anything.”

  Auntie Vi had been taught proper English at the Indian Residential School she’d been forced to attend Outside, so every time she used her childhood pidgin it was an in-your-face reminder of her roots. Sometimes Kate thought the old woman used it to remind everyone else of theirs, too. She said mildly, “Has anyone cleaned out Auntie Edna’s house?”

  Auntie Vi’s glare dimmed. “No.”

  “She collected everything,” Kate said to Van, “and so far as I know never threw any of it away.”

  Van brightened. “Really?”

  “She was a serious hoarder.” Kate looked at Auntie Vi. “Maybe you could take Van over there and take a look.”

  The glare was back full throttle. “Maybe.”

  Van and Johnny excused themselves and disappeared.

  “You.”

  Kate looked up to see Auntie Vi giving her the evil eye. “Me what?”

  “You fix,” Auntie Vi said again.

  Kate met Auntie Vi’s beady black eyes for a long moment, her own face expressionless. Jim wondered if he should whistle the theme to The Man With No Name. “I fix, Auntie.”

  Auntie Vi gave a sharp nod, and got up to clear the table.

  “You caved,” he said. They’d moved to the living room, rousting Mutt from the couch.

  “Yeah. Well. It’s Auntie Vi. What’re ya gonna do.”

  “What does she expect?”

  “Learn to speak Spanish overnight so I can talk to those kids, find their mother, and reunite their family. And while I’m at it broker world peace and fix climate change.”

  “Piece of cake, then.”

  “It’s what I do.” She leaned her head back against the sofa and closed her eyes.

  He studied her face.
“It’s those two kids.”

  Kate opened her eyes and looked at him. “How could it not be? Auntie Vi’s not wrong. Somebody has to do something, take care of them. They’re just kids.” Her voice broke a little on the last word. “Babies, really.”

  He was too wise to offer false comfort, but he did link his fingers with hers. Her hand closed convulsively over his. She looked at him. “I just realized we’ve never had the conversation.”

  “What?” he said, alarmed. “You mean birth control? Because I distinctly remember—”

  She almost smiled. “Not that conversation, but I admit it was nice to see you squirm there for a second or two.”

  “What, then?”

  “The kids conversation. Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Want them?”

  He stared at her until he realized his mouth was half open. He closed it with a snap that hurt his teeth. “No.”

  “Just like that?” When he would have answered she raised a hand. “Think about it a minute before you answer.”

  He meditated upon his knees for a moment, and then he turned to face her fully. “I was an only child, from a not-very-loving family. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, but when I do, it’s pretty obvious that I ended up here because I wanted one.”

  “A loving family?”

  “Well,” he said ruefully, “a family, anyway. You know already, I’ve told you, I was drawn here since I was a kid and saw Nanook of the North on some old movie channel on TV. I started reading about it, everything I could get my hands on, and watching all the movies, even the bad ones.” He shuddered. “John Wayne and Fabian. Jesus.”

  She laughed and he was ridiculously pleased. “But I wanted law enforcement and I wanted Alaska and I finally got here by way of the troopers. You know what John Barton said to me when I got off the plane in Sitka, on my first day at the academy? ‘Don’t pick any fights,’ he said. ‘You pick a fight and inevitably six months later you’ll be working for him or she’ll be working for you. In Alaska, everybody’s related to everybody else.’” He shrugged. “Keep your head down, he said, do your job as best you can, and stay away from politics.”