Dead in the Water

by Dana Stabenow

  An old, old man in a long, elaborately embroidered robe appeared on the steps of the church. He had a grizzled beard that reached almost to his knees, enormous, bushy eyebrows that cast deep shadows over his eyes, and a dignified, authoritative presence that immediately stilled the whispers and rustling of the congregation.

  “I had no idea so many Aleuts were Russian Orthodox,” Jack whispered.

  “It was the only sensible thing to do,” Kate whispered back. “When the first priests came to Alaska, every Aleut who agreed to be baptized in the Russian Orthodox faith was exempted from three years’ worth of taxes.”

  Jack turned his laugh into a cough as the patriarch began to speak. They celebrated mass there, out in the open, partly because there wasn’t room for them all in the church, but Kate thought mostly so that they could be closer to the sea, so He would make no mistake about what they were asking His blessing for.

  The Russian Orthodox patriarch was very specific. He asked God to make the fishermen wise and strong. He asked that their boats be sound and seaworthy. He asked that the sea be fruitful. He reminded Him that the opilio and king crab seasons were about to open, and asked His blessing on the catch. He mentioned the weather only in passing, as if aware that even the power of God went only so far.

  The bell in the steeple began to ring. One for each fisherman dead in the past season. Kate counted forty-one. Forty-one fishermen lost to the Cradle of the Winds since last year’s Blessing of the Sea. It would have been forty, but for Harry Gault. She searched herself for guilt, and found none. He would have killed her without compunction, and Andy, too. The memory of the inside of that steel cage, of the rapid descent into a cold, green grave, was all too vivid. Deliberately she shook it off. Harry was dead but she was alive. Andy was alive. She raised her head to draw cool fog and salt air deep into her lungs, and expelled it on a long, slow, almost voluptuous sigh. Jack squeezed her hand and she smiled without looking at him.

  The last peal died away and they stood in silence. The fog drifted offshore, muting the coming and going of boats, the noise of the processing plants across Iliuliuk Bay, the inevitable stutter of the taxi vans passing back and forth. Andy, rapt and reverent throughout the service, gave a long, deep sigh. “Did you ever hear of Deva Lokka?” he asked her in a low, dreamy voice.

  She shook her head.

  “She’s the Hindu goddess of death. She waits at the bottom of the sea for sailors who drown.”

  Kate looked blank. “Deva Lokka,” he prompted. “Get it? Deva Lokka. Davy Jones’s locker.”

  The patriarch raised his hand in the sign of the cross, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. As the mass ended Kate felt a touch on her arm and turned to see Olga, a scarf tied over her head and Sasha at her side. “Hello, Auntie.”

  “Hello, Kate,” Olga replied. They moved out of the crowd, and stood side by side looking out at the water. “Didn’t I tell you? When the killer whales come.”

  “When the killer whales come,” Kate agreed, and surprised both of them by reaching out and enveloping the other woman in a fierce hug.

  She would have hugged Sasha, too, but the girl pulled out the storyknife and walked down to the beach to squat in the sand. Kate followed and squatted next to her. “Another story, Sasha? What is it this time?”

  Sasha drew a symbol and touched it delicately with the point of the knife. “Woman,” she said sternly, looking at Kate.

  “Woman,” Kate said, nodding.

  Sasha drew the figure with eight arms. “Bad.”

  “Monster,” Kate said, nodding again.

  “Bad,” Sasha said firmly.

  Kate gave an involuntary laugh. “Okay, you’re telling this story. Bad.”

  Sasha enclosed both figures in two concentric circles. “Home.” In the quick, deft, graceful gestures that were such a painful contrast to the rest of her clumsy, shambling movements, Sasha sketched in a river and drew lines first from the woman to the river, and then the bad to the river.

  “The bad is chasing the woman? To the river?”

  Sasha nodded, still drawing.

  Kate watched the little figures appear and disappear and reappear in the sand. “The bad chasing the woman. The woman crossing the river. The bad crossing the river, too.”

  Sasha nodded her head fiercely. She pointed to the woman and to the river, with the bad still in the river.

  “The woman looks at the river? She looks at the bad?” Sasha looked annoyed and Kate was ashamed of her obtuseness.

  Sasha tilted her head back and held her cupped hand up to her mouth, pantomiming drinking. “Glug, glug, glug.”

  Light broke. “She drinks the river.”

  Sasha shook her head. “She doesn’t drink the river.” Sasha pantomimed drinking again and pointed from herself pantomiming to the woman. “Oh, she pretends to drink the river, like you’re pretending. Why?”

  Sasha pointed to the bad. “She tells the bad she drinks the river?” Sasha pointed from one side of the river to the other. “She tells the bad she drank the river and that was how she got across!”

  A wide smile broke across Sasha’s face, lighting the heavy, unformed features with humor and intelligence. She pointed to the bad and pantomimed drinking.

  “So the bad tries to drink the water so he can get across.”

  With one stroke of the knife Sasha made the sign for death below the bad. Above it, she made the sign for thunderbird.

  “So the bad dies from drinking too much river, and the thunderbird comes and takes his body away to feed to its children.”

  Sasha showed the thunderbird flying off to its volcanic nest, the bad clutched in its claws, and the woman figure on her merry way. Smoothing the sand clear with a flourish, she sat back on her heels and looked expectantly at Kate.

  Kate smiled at her. “It’s a wonderful story, Sasha. Thank you for telling it to me.”

  Sasha’s eyebrows met in a straight line. “No. No no no.”

  “What?” Kate said. “What’s the matter? Didn’t I get it right?”

  Sasha pointed from the woman figure to Kate. “Woman. You. Woman. Woman dead bad. You. Woman. Dead. Bad.” Her hand came out and gripped Kate’s shoulder. “You. Woman. Good.”

  Kate could find nothing to say.

  Sasha gave a satisfied nod. Sheathing her storyknife, she struggled to her feet, and vanished down the beach and into the mist.

  “Kate?” Jack’s voice said from somewhere behind her. “You coming?”

  She found her eyes had filled with tears. Impatiently she blinked them back and stood up. “Yes. I’m coming.”

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  About Dana Stabenow

  DANA STABENOW was born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised on a 75-foot salmon fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska. Her mother was a deckhand and she and Dana spent nearly five years living on board. For the next three decades, Dana refused to eat salmon.

  Dana received a BA in Journalism from the University of Alaska, toured the world with a backpack discovering English pubs, German beer and Irish men, before returning to Alaska to work for BP at Prudhoe Bay, inside the Arctic Circle. Knowing that there must be a warmer job out there, she gave it all up to become a writer. In 1991, the first Kate Shugak Mystery, A Cold Day for Murder, won the Edgar Award for the Best Paperback Novel and her first thriller, Blindfold Game, hit the New York Times bestseller list

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  About the Kate Shugak Series

  Kate Shugak is a native Aleut with a touch of Russian heritage working as a private investigator in Alaska. She’s 5 foot 1 inch tall, carries a scar that runs from ear to ear a
cross her throat and owns a half-wolf, half-husky named Mutt. Orphaned at eight years old, Kate grew up to be resourceful, strong willed and defiant. She is tougher than your average heroine – and she needs to be to survive the worst the Alaskan wilds can throw at her.

  Kate used to work as an investigator for the Anchorage DA’s office but after her throat was slashed while saving a child, she resigned from her job, and returned to the log cabin her father built on her tribe’s native lands, deep in Alaska’s largest national park in the shadow of the Quilak Mountains.

  For fourteen months Kate remained in the wilderness – her voice cut down to a raspy growl by the jagged scar stretched across her neck. Then, during the worst winter on record, a congressman’s son disappeared... Two weeks later, the DA’s investigator sent to find him was also reported missing. The FBI turned to the one person they knew had the skills to track down the missing men in the depths of an Alaskan winter. This is where you’ll meet Kate in book one, A Cold Day for Murder.

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  Books 1–9 and 10–20 are also available in single omnibus editions:

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  Liam Campbell Mysteries

  Fire and Ice

  So Sure of Death

  Nothing Gold Can Stay

  Better to Rest

  Star Svensdotter

  Second Star

  A Handful of Stars

  Red Planet Run

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  First published in the United States in 1993 by Berkley.

  The first digital edition (v1.4) was published in 2011 by Gere Donovan Press.

  This eBook edition first published in the UK in 2018 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Dana Stabenow, 1993

  The moral right of Dana Stabenow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (E) 9781788549004

  Jacket design and illustration by Ghost

  Maps by Dr. Cherie Northon, www.mapmakers.com

  Author photo: Chris Arend, www.chrisarendphoto.com

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