to the man, some to give the woman a familiar chuck under the chin. They
stood as the mother and child had left them, watching the throng of men
panning elbow to elbow for gold in the icy waters of the Tiering Sea on
the beach that formed the other side of the main street. The Arctic
summer sun didn't so much set at this time of year as it circled the
horizon, weakening in intensity toward the late evening hours but never
entirely waning. "Angel-"
"Don't," she said.
His lips tightened. "I don't know how much more I can stand it, watching
him treat you like he does."
"It's none of your business," she said without anger. Anxiety always
brought out her accent, and this was no exception. He had to work to
follow her words. "And he'd kill you, if you tried anything. He'd kill
you, Matt."
"Would he, now?" he said thoughtfully, his hand raising
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to settle on the butt of the pistol strapped to his side. "Would he,
indeed?"
She put a restraining hand on his arm. "Don't, Matt." She tried to smile
and almost succeeded. "Just don't."
His hand came up to grasp hers. "What hold does he have on you, Angel?
You don't have to do this, you could go back to just dancing. God knows
my customers love your Flame Dance." He grinned and added, "I don't mind
saying it keeps my heart ticking over nicely, too."
Her smile was more the real article this time.
"I don't know for how much longer, though," he said. "Nome's about
played out. I hear tell how Alaska Steam is cutting the price of a
ticket Outside to fifteen dollars. That's down from seventy. I figure a
lot of people are going to take advantage of that to get the hell out
once and for all. I might myself." He looked at her. "How about you?"
She looked away, back at the beach front and the path of gold the sun
was making over the ocean behind them. "I don't know. He hasn't said."
"Is it that kid of yours?" he said suddenly. "Has he threatened your baby?"
Her smile vanished and she turned to go back inside. He restrained her.
"Is that it, Angel?"
"I told you never to call me that," she whispered. "I'm sorry I ever
told you."
"Told me what? Your real name? Why not? It suits you." He raised a hand
to smooth back a lock of hair, still red, still lustrous, that had
fallen forward on her brow. "It's beautiful. Like you. I want to call
you by it."
"You can't," she whispered. "I don't want you to."
"Is it the baby?" he said again. "Because if it is-"
"Because if it is you'll do what?" The Greek's suit was tailored of fine
tweed, and his boots were well-made and shined to a mirror finish, but
nothing would ever hide the rapacious expression in his cold dark eyes.
His teeth flashed when he smiled at the two of them. "You're losing me
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money, Darling, standing around on the porch talking."
Matt made a sudden movement, and a long-barreled Colt appeared in the
Greek's hand.
Once again silence descended. Men froze in the doorway, watching, ready
to dive out of the line of fire.
Matt's face darkened. "You want to be careful with that pop gun of
yours, Alex," he said evenly. "Somebody could get hurt."
Alex Papadopolous smiled. "Somebody sure could," he agreed, and caused
the Colt to disappear again. He stood back, looking at the Dawson
Darling, still smiling.
The redhead raised her chin and swept past him into the saloon.
Matt was right, Nome was on its last legs as a stampeder town. The Poor
Man's Gold Rush was almost over. The only thing that made for more
business in a whorehouse than a boom was a bust. Men stood in line for
their turn, and she was exhausted when morning came. Alex would have
kept her working right around the clock-"Hell, the sun's still up, ain't
it?"-and it was after five before she dispatched the last customer.
Tired as she was, she made the time for a quick bath before tumbling
into bed and falling instantly asleep.
It seemed only moments later when a faint scratching at the door woke
her. She repressed a groan. "Whoever it is, go away," she called. "Come
back tonight."
"It's Matt," came the reply. "Open up."
There was another sound, a faint mewling, that had her on her feet and
at the door in an instant. She wrenched it open and Matt held out the
child in his arms. "Percy! "
Percy was thin and pale and almost asleep. "Mama?" he said, and nuzzled
his face into her shoulder.
"How did you get him? How did you know where he was?"
"Alex had to pay the woman he had looking after him.
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One day I followed him." He smiled. "He's a cheap bastard, Alex is; she
wasn't happy with what he was paying her. From the looks of that kid she
didn't spend much of it feeding him, either." He shrugged and cast a
look behind him before he stepped inside and closed the door. In a low
voice he said, "Get dressed. I've got you a ticket on the boat to
Fairbanks."
She stared at him, open-mouthed.
"He'll think you went to Seattle," he said. "Anybody could scrape
fifteen bucks together. He won't figure you went to Fairbanks, so that's
where you should go." When she didn't move, he put firm hands on her
shoulders and turned her toward the wardrobe. "Hurry up now, before he
gets back."
She took a step, stopped. "Matt," she said. "Why?"
He didn't pretend to misunderstand her. "Because you're not like the
rest of them. You got yourself forced into something you don't want to
do." He paused. "I could have outbid Halvorsen, you know. "
She stared at him. "Is that what this is about? You feel guilty because
you didn't win the bidding that night?"
"I know you want out," he said, ignoring her words, "and I aim to get
you out." He handed her a small leather bag, and she knew what it was
from the weight.
"Matt, I-" She swallowed, and tried again.
He shook his head, his smile a little twisted. "I'm not coming with you
now. I've got a saloon to run. Maybe later, when the stampede's over,
I'll catch up to you. But now, you "we got to go. Speaking of which,
pack your bag, woman, you've got a boat to catch."
"The hell you say," Alex Papadopolous said from the doorway, and fired
from the hip. The gunshot echoed around the room and startled Percy, who
began to cry.
Matt spun around, pulling his pistol and trying to aim. Papadopolous
fired again, and Matt fell backward, his head at her feet. She stared
down at him, and he raised his hand
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to her, the one holding the pistol. She took it, as if in a dream, and
raised it with a trembling hand.
Alex laughed at her, the same laugh he had laughed at her when he stood
in the door of the cabin Sam had built for her, the same laugh he had
laughed when he took her to the bed she had warmed for Arthur.
She fired.
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The Ahtna police chief was a big, beefy, red-faced man with a
five-o'clock shadow, a beer-belly gut, and a handlebar mustache. He
&nb
sp; could have come straight out of central casting to answer a call for
"Cop, Small Town, Generic." His eyes were cop's eyes, watchful, shrewd,
wholly untrusting. He was every speeding driver's sinking heart coming
up in the rearview mirror, every perp's terror when he came into the
interrogation room, every watch commander's pet, every conservative's
wet dream come true, every liberal's worst nightmare. A cop's cop.
"Hey, Kenny," Kate said.
"Hey, Kate," Kenny said. His grip was warm and solid, and he didn't say
anything about Jack, for which that alone she could have kissed him. He
was dressed in full uniform, black shirt tucked into black pants cuffed
over shined black half-boots that Kate would bet all of her campaign
paycheck had steel toes. His badge was gold and shone brightly from the
pocket over his left breast: his tie matched the color of his pants and
was neatly knotted with the tail tucked between the buttons of his
shirt, marine-fashion. Everything had been recently cleaned and fit very
well. Kenny knew the value of appearance, and he looked every inch the part.
"So, I'm not liking the hell out of this," Kenny said, indicating the
report on his desk. He settled in his chair. It was large and
comfortable, with arms and a headrest, and sat in front of a large and
comfortable desk in a large,
95
comfortable, and well-appointed room. Diplomas, neatly framed, were hung
with military precision on the wall, the filing cabinets were dust-free,
the carpet freshly cleaned, and the walls newly painted. Kenny had
somebody out front to answer phones and mind the prisoners, if any, in
the four-cell jail down the hall. The sour smell of vomit, common to so
many cop shops, in the Ahtna Police Department made itself conspicuous
by its absence.
Kenny Hazen was the chief of police for Ahtna, which had remained
defiantly unincorporated from its founding in 1892, through all of the
following century, and entered the next the same way. Local taxes were
confined to an eight percent sales tax on everything except food and
drugs, which was one reason it attracted businesses from all over the
state and why big-box chains like Wal-Mart had been heard to have been
investigating into the possibility of locating there.
From that eight percent sales tax, which everybody paid, local and
tourist and the weekend fisherman from Anchorage alike, came the funds
to run the city. Which was why Ahtna had a one-man police force, but
then that was the way Ahtna residents liked it. Ahtnans preferred to
handle their own domestic problems, so that by the time Kenny, retired
from the Anchorage Police Department after he got in his twenty to take
up the job of Ahtna's chief of police, arrived on the scene, all the
guns had been hidden, all the blood had been mopped up, and everybody
had the same story to tell. The chief had no Indians, but then neither
did he have much to do, and he did it at a handsome salary that kept him
middling honest. Ahtna could assure prospective businesses thinking of
opening a branch office on the Kanuyaq that the local police force was
efficient and reliable and fully supported by the local community.
"I'm not liking it much, either, Kenny," Kate said. "It happened on my
watch."
A voice said from the doorway, "No shit, Shugak."
96
She looked up to see Jim Chopin towering over her. Mutt gave a joyous
bark and bounced to her feet, nudging at his hand with her head.
"What are you doing here?" Kate said.
Jim grinned his grin at Kate, the one that should have been posted next
to a photo of a great white shark over the caption, "Separated at birth?
You be the judge."
"Anybody'd think you weren't happy to see me. I'm hurt."
She snorted. "Yeah, right, that'll happen."
"You don't always know everything there is to know about everyone,
Shugak," he said. The fine edge underlying his words was a surprise. He
saw the odd look on Kenny's face as he sat listening to them, and got
himself back under control. "I'm here because Darlene came to me first
about the letters, and now because somebody who's working on her
campaign has been murdered. Kenny called me last night. I flew in this
morning. Not that I'm answerable to you for my actions."
"Nobody said you were," she said, taken back.
He looked at Kenny. "What have you got?"
"A GSW to the chest, straight into the heart. Powder burns on his
jacket. Small caliber, probably a twenty-two."
"I don't suppose the killer was kind enough to leave the weapon at the
scene, say, oh, laying under the dash, with a perfect set of
fingerprints on the grip?"
"Nope."
"Hell." Jim thought. "Killer was close."
"Real close. Semen on the vic's underwear and on the seat of the car,
and whoever zipped him up after caught a piece of his pecker in the zipper."
"Ouch." Jim winced.
Kenny shrugged. "He didn't feel it. He was dead by then. Anyway, that's
why I figure a pistol. Wouldn't be room to maneuver a rifle, even with
Hosford otherwise engaged."
97
"Hard to carry a rifle concealed, too," Jim said.
"There is that."
"So you're figuring a woman met him at the truck, rode him on the seat,
and just when he was distracted, lights out." Kenny nodded. "Got a suspect?"
Kenny nodded again. "About three hundred. That's how many women there
were in the gym last night."
"Any witnesses?"
"About eight hundred. That's how many were in the gym total. None of
them saw anything."
"Great."
"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking." Kenny nodded toward Kate. "She got the
scene isolated, and we got the body on a plane for the crime lab in
Anchorage this morning."
"Maybe some fluids?"
"I'd say almost certainly, but we'll need a suspect to match to them
before we get anywhere."
"What about the other members of the campaign? That's who you're going
to look at first, right?"
Kenny looked at Kate. Kate said, "I was standing on a chair in the back
of the crowd for the whole debate. At any one time I saw the entire
entourage sitting in the front row right in front of the stage. I saw
Tom, the son, everywhere, usually in company with one pretty girl or
another. I saw Doug walk by at least once. I saw Darlene get up and
confer with Tracy. I saw Tracy leave the room. Later I looked for
Darlene and couldn't find her. Erin, the daughter, went to the bathroom
at least once. Hosford I never even saw leave, by himself or with
anyone. There were just too many people there." She looked at Kenny.
"Can I make a call to Anchorage? I want to check something out."
"Sure. Use the one at the empty desk in the outer office. The door
closed behind her and Kenny looked at Jim.
"Don't say it, Hazen," Jim said. "Just don't fucking say it."
98
"Brendan? It's Kate Shugak."
There followed another of those silences that she was starting to get
used to whenever she greeted someone she hadn't seen in a while.
You'd
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead Page 12