No Fixed Line (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 22)

by Dana Stabenow

  “Marlena, this is Kate Shugak.”

  One eye surveyed Kate through the crack. “Do you need shelter?”

  “No,” Kate said, stepping forward so the other woman could see her better. “I’d like to ask you some questions about your funding, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  The eye travelled past Kate and landed on Mutt, standing at Kate’s side with her ears way up. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Kate Shugak.”

  “From the Park?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that would be Mutt.”

  Mutt ducked her head and tried to look modest.

  “Jim and I’ll wait in the car,” Kenny said, and vacated the porch.

  The door closed, there was the sound of the chain running back. The door opened again, revealing a short, dark, round woman in her fifties with a strong jaw and a resolute expression. She was dressed in sneakers, jeans and a UAF sweatshirt and her hair was cut in a Dutch boy with bangs. Tiny silver frog earrings dangled from her ears. “Frog Clan?” Kate said.

  The woman nodded, looking surprised.

  “I had a Frog Clan classmate at UAF. Again, I’m Kate Shugak.” She held out her hand.

  The other woman took it. “Marlena Peratrovich.”

  Kate smiled. “Any relation to Elizabeth?”

  “A distant cousin.” Marlena smiled back. “I expect you get that kind of thing a lot, too, being Ekaterina Shugak’s granddaughter.”

  “You knew her?”

  “Who didn’t? I made an adverse remark about ANCSA on a panel at AFN one year and she eviscerated me in five words or less. She absolutely terrified me.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  A young woman with a bruised face carrying a baby wearing a tiny splint on one arm crossed the hall, avoiding their gaze. A murmur of voices and a waft of frying hamburger came from the back of the house. Mutt looked up at Kate and twitched an inquiring ear. “Better not,” Kate said. Marlena led them to an office just big enough for a desk, a filing cabinet, and two client chairs. Mutt lay down in the doorway and put her head on her paws. Through the single sash window on Marlena’s office wall Kate could see Kenny and Jim sitting in Kenny’s vehicle, puffing out exhaust as it idled. “You don’t let men in here,” Kate said.

  “No,” Marlena said. “We try to keep our location a secret, too, although of course Kenny and his guys know.”

  “Problems with exes?”

  “Always. It takes an average seven times for a woman to leave an abusive partner. A lot of those partners never give up trying to make their women come back.”

  “Have they showed up here?”

  “A few have. No matter how much we advise against it, our residents will get on Facebook to update their families on where they are and how they’re doing.”

  “I saw the motion detector lights and the security cameras.”

  “We upgraded the windows and the doors, too,” Marlena said. “We can probably keep anyone out long enough for the cops to get here. It’s almost always a violation of a restraining order so they can arrest them and haul them off to jail for that, if for nothing else.” She shrugged, her expression grave. “What was it you wanted to ask me, Kate?”

  “You’re a non-profit, correct?”

  “Yes, IRS-certified. All of our funding comes from donors. We’re a refuge, a way station for victims of domestic violence. We haven’t figured out how to make that a money-making proposition yet.”

  Kate didn’t take the sarcasm personally. “And one of your donors was the Bannister Foundation?”

  Marlena’s face brightened. “Yes. In fact all the security upgrades I just told you about were made possible by their grant.”

  “Good for them.” Kate tried to say it with the requisite amount of enthusiasm but saw by Marlena’s expression that she had fallen short.

  “They were terrific, Kate,” Marlena said, leaning forward. “They sent their representative out here personally to help us fill out the forms. After she went back to Anchorage she kept in touch with us every step of the way, and then she called me the day they met and told me they had decided to award our grant.” Marlena leaned back again. “I have to say, I’ve worked a lot harder for a lot less than $25,000.”

  “Who was that? Their representative?”

  “Jane Wardwell.”

  Kate’s phone dinged with an incoming text. It was from Jim.

  He need to get home NOW.

  They spent the time in the air poring over a copy of the Alaska Almanac and entering various airport codes on the AOPA website’s page on Alaska. Every hour they’d log onto the NOAA website to check the forecast.

  “Doesn’t look wonderful.”

  “But flyable.”

  “Barely.”

  “Who’s the pilot here?”

  “I’ve ridden right seat with you before. I know what you consider flyable.”

  An edged smile. “Think of the money.”

  Al grumbled. “When do we get the guns?”

  “There’s a guy who works at Cabela’s. He says there are too many cameras inside and outside the store. He’ll meet us at the tiedown.”

  “Glocks?”

  “And the extra magazines, and boots, bibs, parkas, and gloves. Don’t worry.” Kev tapped the map. “We’ll land here. We’ll time our departure to arrive at sunset.”

  Al peered at the map. “We’re not landing at the village?”

  “Too many people.”

  “But we have to go there anyway.”

  “There’ll be sleds at the other strip. I’m told it’s basic transportation in the winter there. We won’t stand out on a sled. That’s where you take over the operation, by the way. I’ve never been on one.”

  A sigh. “We’re gonna freeze our asses off.”

  “We were gonna do that anyway.” Kev checked his phone. “Time to call in.” He entered a number and waited. “Jared. Kev.” He listened for a moment and then hung up. He leaned over the map and pointed. “Someone called out on the phone again, still from here. He’s sending a location. The GPS should take us right to it.”

  “The back of fucking beyond, that is. Lucky for us they’ve got cell towers that far out in the boonies.”

  “A recent acquisition, to service a mine development in that area. Timing is everything.”

  In Anchorage a Beaver on wheel-skis was waiting in the designated tiedown with the keys under the mat. It had not one but two GPS systems, one in the dash and one mounted on top of it. The pilot of the two of them checked the fuel and did the rest of the preflight.

  Kev’s phone dinged.

  “And we’re good to go.”

  Thirteen

  SATURDAY, JANUARY 5

  Niniltna

  THEY ARRIVED AT NINILTNA MARGINALLY before sunset and taxied to George’s hangar. They tied down and winterproofed the Cessna as much as they could before Matt showed up on his sled and loaded them onto his trailer and lurched off down the hill at his standard MPH of Indy 500. It was a brisk and brutal and mercifully abbreviated trip from strip to clinic, and they piled off and trooped gratefully into the warmth of the house. There they were greeted by a tear-stained Laurel and the other three Grosdidier brothers, who looked pissed off to a man. “What happened?” Kate said.

  “We woke up Friday morning and they were gone,” Luke said.

  “Yesterday?” Mutt’s ears went up at Kate’s tone. “They have been gone since yesterday?”

  “And you just called us today?” At Jim’s words Mutt’s ears achieved a hitherto unknown elevation. It was one thing for Kate to be mad, because she was mad a lot. Jim never raised his voice, he was always calm and in control. Mutt was a little confused as she knew she was among friends but in solidarity alone she was incapable of holding back a low, rumbly growl that made everyone in the room who wasn’t named Shugak or Chopin cringe in unison. The aforesaid Shugak and Chopin didn’t shush her, either.

  “We’ve knocked on every door and looked beh
ind every tree, Kate,” Matt said, and when the red cleared from her vision she saw that he had bags under his eyes that stretched all the way to his knees. None of the rest of them looked as if they’d had any sleep for the last thirty-six hours, either. She could feel Jim relax a little next to her as he saw it, too.

  “Did someone take them or did they leave?”

  The five exchanged glances. “Left. We’re pretty sure. The boy especially didn’t trust us.”

  “You can understand why,” Laurel said bitterly. “He probably doesn’t trust any adult at this point, and we’re all strangers to him.”

  “He wouldn’t talk to you?”

  “He only spoke Spanish, Kate,” Matt said. “Vanessa managed to chisel some of their story out of him, as you know, but I don’t expect for a moment that was all of it.”

  “And his sister never said a word,” Laurel said.

  “You’ve talked to everyone in town?”

  “We went as far downriver as Ruthe Bauman’s and all the way up to the Step. What with the government cuts to the Park Service Dan gave all his guys a month’s unpaid leave and there’s no one left up there except the poor sucker who drew the short straw and had to stay behind as caretaker. Dan’s on vacation in Hawaii with Hilde Gundersen and Ruthe Bauman is Outside spending the holidays with relatives, but we looked in every room at Park HQ and we looked inside every outbuilding at Ruthe’s and everywhere in between.”

  “Did you go out to Bernie’s? They could have stowed away in the back of somebody’s truck.”

  “We called. Bernie checked every room in the bar, all the cabins, and every room in his house. They aren’t there.”

  “It’s like they vanished,” Peter said. His voice sounded hollow and his face was pale and strained. He was the youngest of the brothers and the one who felt things most.

  “Well, they didn’t,” Kate said bracingly, determined to beat back the despair that emanated from the five of them in a miasma that threatened to subsume them all. Time to be blunt. “You may not have found them but you didn’t find their bodies, either. They’re alive, they’re hiding out somewhere not very far away, and we’ll find them. Did you check all the empty houses in Niniltna?”

  Laurel and the Grosdidiers looked at each other. “We tried all the doors. They were locked.”

  “The windows, too?”

  Mark nodded. “Locked and none broken.”

  “All those doors lock from the inside, too.” Kate folded her arms and frowned at the floor. “Did you bring in a dog?”

  Everyone looked at Mutt, who thumped the floor with her tail.

  “A couple,” Matt said. “But neither of them picked up a scent.”

  “Did they leave anything behind?”

  “They put on every item of clothing they had before they left,” Mark said.

  “Show me,” Kate said. They went into the clinic. “Have you changed the sheets on the bed?”

  A general shaking of heads. Kate took hold of the blanket and yanked it and the top sheet back. She looked at Mutt and patted the bed. Mutt made a single graceful leap that resulted in a four-point landing. Kate held the top sheet to her nose. “Get a good whiff, girl.”

  Mutt sniffed the sheets from one end to the other, going so far as to nose the pillows over so she could smell both sides. When she was done, she looked at Kate. “Woof.”

  “Find,” Kate said.

  Mutt grand jetéd to the floor and snuffled corner to corner around the room. She spent some time at the single chair off to the side—“The kids’ clothes were there,” Matt said—and headed for the door. The humans followed in a body and Mutt led the way into the kitchen refrigerator—“So that’s where the rest of the pie went,” Luke said, and Mark said, “I told you I didn’t eat it”—and back down the hallway to the front door. She looked up at Kate.

  “Bundle up, guys,” Kate said, zipping up her jacket and pulling her knit hat down around her eyebrows. The wind was still only a breeze but at that temperature it might as well have been a gale. Its sharp teeth sliced right through any outer clothing, laughed at layers, and got to work cooling the body temperature down to just above where they could be declared legally dead. Lips, fingertips, and toes went instantly numb.

  “Goddamn,” Matt said. There was a communal mutter of agreement but no one turned back.

  Mutt, blissfully unaware, trotted up the street a little way, came back down again, passing the house they were standing in front of, and then crossed the street to Phil McKracken’s cabin. The thick cloud cover that seemed to have assumed permanent station over central and southcentral Alaska had leeched the last of the light from the sky even before the sun set and since Niniltna didn’t have street lights, only the lights of the houses themselves showed the way. Phil’s two sash windows were set deep inside the logs that formed the walls and were lit from within, casting rectangular outlines of light on the snow. Smoke was puffing out of the chimney and they could hear Benny Goodman’s “Stompin’ at the Savoy” coming from inside. As with many who lived in the Park Phil hadn’t bothered with curtains and as one they forgot the flash freezing of their extremities when Phil boogied by the window with Elsa Kvasnikof. Phil leaned Elsa into a spectacular dip and laid a kiss on her that would have done Rhett Butler proud. It certainly seemed to have the same effect on Elsa it had had on Scarlett O’Hara. Before they could avert their eyes Phil was maneuvering Elsa toward the back of the cabin where in their collective nightmare they could plainly see the bed, as the music segued into Glenn Miller’s “A String of Pearls.”

  “They have to be in their seventies!” Laurel said, revolted.

  “Not bad for an old man,” Peter said, impressed.

  “My eyes, my eyes!” Luke said.

  “So that’s why he wanted the Viagra scrip,” Mark said.

  “Mark!”

  “Sorry, Matt.”

  Next to her Kate could feel Jim shaking with suppressed laughter and gave him an admonitory nudge with her elbow. He retaliated with a pinch of her ass and she was hard put to it not to squeal like a teenage girl.

  Mutt growled at them from around the corner. They were recalled to their duty and followed her as she shoved her way through a stand of alder to a small frame house with deteriorating T1-11 siding and a roof that was more moss than asphalt shingles. An ice dam hung off the back eave that threatened to pull down the rain gutter and part of the roof along with it at the first sign of a thaw.

  “Whose house is this?”

  Kate frowned. “Old Sam used to own it. He rented it out for a couple of years and then he sold it to—”

  The door opened to reveal Martin Shugak, a distant cousin of Kate’s and for a long time a fairly useless human being who walked a tightrope between good and feckless and more often than not fell off it on the wrong side. “Hey,” he said, looking around the crowd. “What’s going on?” His eyes lit on Kate. He swallowed. “Hey, Kate.”

  “Martin,” she said. Martin looked… there was no other word for it, he looked good. He looked—and smelled—clean, a first, and his clothes looked as if they’d been laundered in memory of man, not a look Martin had been wont to cultivate. His eyes were clear, he’d shaved that day, and his hair was cut. A husky with golden fur and violet eyes poked her head out between his leg and the door. She saw Mutt, whined, and vanished.

  “I—is that a dog?” Kate said.

  Martin nodded. “One of Mandy’s retirees. Her name’s Diamond.”

  “You got a dog?”

  He sighed. “Yes, I got a dog, Kate.”

  “And this house? Did you buy it?”

  “I’m renting. Now, unless you’re taking the census maybe you could get to the point, before I heat up the entire outdoors.”

  A reasonable observation, and Kate pulled herself together. “We’re looking for a couple of kids. Real young, kindergarten or younger. They speak Spanish, no English. Have you seen them?” She looked over his shoulder. It was a typical one-room cabin with a sleeping loft, a
nd empty but for Martin and Diamond.

  “Not those kids from the plane wreck up at the hot springs?” he said. “No, I haven’t seen them. They’re missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you need help looking?” He reached for the parka hanging next to the door.

  Kate suffered this third shock womanfully and said, “No, it’s fine, plenty of help. If you do happen to see them, give Matt a call, okay?”

  “Sure. Well, you know where I live if you decide I can help more.”

  He smiled at them all and Kate turned away, hearing the door close behind her as she tried to regain her equilibrium in this alternate universe she had stumbled into all unaware. “Who was that?” she said in a low voice.

  “And what have they done with the real Martin?” Matt said.

  “What is wrong with you guys?” Laurel said. “Maybe he just decided to grow up. People do.”

  “Generally before they’re forty,” Matt said, and was quelled by a look from his fiancée.

  They followed Mutt all the way around Martin’s house and on to the next house, where she went to the back door and stopped. She looked at Kate and sneezed.

  “Auntie Edna’s,” Kate said.

  Jim made the sign of the cross and she slapped his arm.

  They tried the back door but it was locked. Someone had shoveled the doorstep recently, though.

  “Come on, Mutt,” Kate said, and led the way to the front of the house and had her sniff the front door. Mutt’s tail went up again and began to wag.

  “They went in the back and came out the front?” Jim said.

  “It would seem so,” Kate said. “Mutt.” She had taken the bottom sheet from the bed the kids had slept in and brought it along. She let Mutt sniff it again, although the insides of her own nostrils felt frozen solid and she couldn’t understand how Mutt could smell anything at all, let alone a two-day-old scent. But Mutt sneezed again and, nose to the path she trotted down to the street and turned right. The rest of the village passed in review, more homes, Emaa’s old house and Auntie Joy’s on the left, Laurel’s Riverside Café and Bingley’s store on the right. When they came to the Step Road turnoff Mutt didn’t hesitate, taking it at a lope they had to hustle to match. She took the first right off the road, a snow-blower-cleared path that led right up to the front door of Auntie Vi’s B&B. Mutt stood on the porch and looked at Kate over her shoulder, eyes bright, ears up and tail wagging furiously, clearly visible in the porch light. If she’d been a dog in a Looney Tunes cartoon it could not have been more obvious.