A Cold Day for Murder (Kate Shugak #1)

by Stabenow, Dana

  Unfinished wooden steps climbed up to the front door. Inside, the building was one cavernous square fifty feet on a side, with exposed beams that patrons occasionally swung from, depending on how late the hour and when Bernie cut them off. A bar with stools and a brass foot rail ran down the left side of the room, with a mirror and racks of dusty bottles of exotic liqueurs in back of it. There was a large television hanging from one corner of the ceiling, with tall men chasing a basketball across the screen. Tables and chairs, video games and a jukebox with selections guaranteed to be not more than five years old filled up the rest of the room. There were two restrooms, with functional toilets, and homesteaders for miles around came just to remember how it felt not to have to hang it out in the cold with the mosquitoes snapping at your ass in the summer and the dogs doing the same thing in the winter. On New Year’s Eve and on the Fourth of July the bar stayed open until five, three hours past its usual closing time, and on such occasions Bernie had been known to bring in live entertainment from as far away as Tok.

  The room hadn’t been swamped out in memory of man, and it smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke and vomit. Behind the bar was Bernie, tall, dark and skinny, with a calm face and a hairline that was marching inexorably up the crown of his head. The remainder was clipped back into a ponytail, a defiant reminder of those halcyon days when he had been more hippy and less yuppy and much, much younger.

  It was noisy that night, like every other night. Mutt saw Bernie and bounded across the room to jump up with her two front paws on the bar.

  “Hey, no dogs allowed in—Oh, it’s you, Mutt,” Bernie said. “Hold on a minute.” He turned and plucked a package of beef jerky off a stand and ripped it open. He tossed a chunk to Mutt, who caught it neatly in her teeth. Bernie looked between her ears and said, “Hey, Kate.” Stretching out a thin, wiry hand, he added, “It’s been a while.”

  “Not long enough,” she said, taking his hand and shaking it warmly.

  He gave an exaggerated wince and examined his hand tenderly. “You been splitting too many logs, Kate.”

  “You haven’t been practicing your slam dunks, Bernie.”

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Coke,” she said.

  “Damn,” he said, reaching for a tall glass, “you’re bad for business, Kate. I never make any money off you.”

  “You do when you charge a buck and a half for a Coke,” she said, digging in her pocket.

  He waved her money away and leaned on the bar, his arms folded in front of him. She sipped her Coke and looked around. The smoke obscured her vision, and the bass from the jukebox was powerful enough to bounce her right off her stool. The talk was necessarily loud, the dancing energetic and the drinking nonstop. “You’re not doing too bad,” she said, half-smiling.

  “Mmm. I should do all right if I can keep Billy Mike and that bunch off my back.”

  “You having problems with the tribal council again?”

  “Nah.” Bernie grinned. “I’ve been allowed a few months’ grace, seeing’s how the boys’ team brought the state championship home last March.”

  “For the second time in four years.”

  Bernie grinned and said nothing.

  “How’s the team shaping up this year?”

  He shrugged. “Too soon to tell.” Bernie never handicapped the teams he coached.

  Suzy Moonin came up to the bar, said hello to Kate and ordered a rum and Coke. Bernie looked at her and shook his head gently but with finality. “No, Suzy.”

  Suzy, a plump young woman with sparkling brown eyes and punked hair tucked behind her ears, said blankly, “What?”

  He met her eyes squarely. “You’re pregnant. I don’t serve expectant mothers.”

  She flushed. “Who told?”

  “Your mother was in last night.”

  “That bitch!” she spat.

  “True,” he admitted. “Doesn’t make any difference. You’re cut off until after the baby’s born. Would you like a Coke? Or maybe a Shirley Temple? I’ll put in an extra cherry.”

  She stared at him impotently, her body rigid with anger. Then she reached over and slapped the glass he was polishing out of his hand. It crashed to the floor in a hundred pieces, and she swung around and stamped across the room.

  “Someone’ll share,” Kate said.

  Bernie sighed and started picking up glass. “Probably. If I catch them at it I’ll throw the both of them out.”

  “Why don’t you just throw her out now?”

  “If she wants it bad enough, she’ll find it.”

  “Why don’t you just close up shop, then?”

  Bernie sighed again. “Don’t go getting sanctimonious on me, Kate. I may be the only game in town but when they lay down three bucks I give them three bucks’ worth of booze. That bootlegger you busted last winter was getting forty bucks for a bottle of Windsor Canadian that would cost seven in Anchorage. Thanks for that, by the way. Didn’t get a chance to say so, afterwards.”

  Kate couldn’t argue with him because she knew he was right. “Get any more CARE packages from your folks?”

  He brightened. “Funny you should ask. Got one on today’s mail plane.” He stooped to lift a large, cardboard U-Haul box from beneath the counter. Kate knelt on the stool so she could peer in. “Water filter? Waterproof compass? Hey, a Swiss army knife! Does it have a screwdriver?”

  He recovered the knife deftly. “Straight-edge and Phillips.”

  “Wow.”

  “Forget it. Buy your own.”

  “What’s this? Mutt, get out of the light!” This as Mutt’s large head appeared over the side of the box to peer in, too. She gave Kate a wounded look and jumped back down on the floor. “Vitamins? Doesn’t your mom think you eat right?”

  “She doesn’t think blubber can be all that nutritious as a dietary staple.”

  Kate looked at Bernie’s poker face, and he added, “And she wants to know if all my Eskimo friends live in igloos.” He pulled a down sleeping bag out of the CARE package and displayed it.

  Fascinated, Kate said, “What’d she say when you told her you’d never met an Eskimo or seen an igloo, and that muktuk was in short supply since whales got put on the endangered species list, and that Aleuts eat seal muktuk anyway?”

  “I didn’t tell her.” Bernie grinned.

  Kate looked at the box, her brow puckered. “Your mom and your sisters keep sending you all this stuff. What’s your dad say?”

  Bernie’s grin vanished. “Nothing. At least not to me.”

  She decided to chance it. “Why not?”

  Bernie was still for a moment. He relaxed and sighed, and even laughed a little. “Oh hell. I was a regular flower child, Kate, and he was regular Army. I got beat up at Chicago in ’68, I danced in the mud at Woodstock in ’69, and I burned my draft card on the steps of the Capitol in ’70, just before I left for Canada. He, on the other hand, put his public service time in at Anzio, Arnhem and Bastogne.” Bernie made a wry face. “Neither of us ever let the other one forget it.”

  “I thought you said he doesn’t talk to you.”

  “Or me to him. That’s how we never forget it.” He looked past her. “Damn.”

  She swiveled, to see Suzy sipping from a glass. She put it down hastily when she saw them watching her. She tossed her head and pulled Mickey Kompkoff out onto the dance floor. “Who’s the father, do you know? Of Suzy’s baby?”

  “You have been out of touch. She married Mickey last month.”

  “Oh Christ no,” Kate said, casting an involuntary look over her shoulder. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “We all tried to stop her. She wouldn’t listen. I think she decided anything was better than living at home with her mother and that parade of uncles.”

  Kate wanted to cry. She’d gone to school with Suzy’s older sister, and she remembered the days when Suzy had tagged along behind the two older girls, begging to be included in their games. She changed the subject.
“Listen, Bernie, I’m looking for someone, a park ranger, name of Mark Miller. He ever been in here?”

  Bernie grinned. “Everyone comes to Bernie’s.”

  Kate gave an elaborate shudder. “Please. You ever meet him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “To remember?”

  “Yeah, sure I remember him. Who could forget?”

  “Why? What made him so special?”

  “Oh, hell, Kate, you know the type.” She looked a question and he elaborated. “Sierra Club commando. Fresh out of college, knew the Latin names for every animal, vegetable and mineral in the Park, could quote verbatim from both Johns.”

  “Both Johns?”

  Bernie grinned. “Muir and McPhee. And sometimes Izaak Walton, but I think he’d quote Walton only when he wanted to really piss off old Sam Dementieff, or any other commercial fisherman he could find.”

  She laughed. “That bad?”

  He shrugged and wiped the bar. “He was an okay kid. A little wet behind the ears, but you could tell he really loved the Park. Wanted to open it up and share it with the whole world, as long as the world didn’t have a pickax or a rifle or a fishing pole in its hand.” Bernie polished a glass in silence, and then said in an altered voice, “It was kind of nice, actually.”

  “What was?”

  “All that enthusiasm, you know?” Bernie looked up. “He really did care, Kate. I remember one time he came in here and got about half-swacked and pulled out a copy of the congressional act that made Yellowstone a national park.” He grinned. “And I hear tell he had a poster of Teddy Roosevelt on the wall of his office at Park Headquarters.”

  “You liked him,” Kate said. She was a little surprised that Bernie, committed by inclination and profession to the industrial development of the Park, would speak well of a bona-fide, dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying greenie.

  Bernie shrugged and hung the glass by its stem from the overhead rack. “Made a change from the usual rape, pillage and plunder boys.”

  “Did I hear someone call my name?” A burly man with a red face and short, stiff red hair that stood straight out all over his head pushed in next to Kate. Mutt gave a warning grumble, deep in her throat, and subsided reluctantly when Kate laid a reassuring hand on her head.

  “Hello, Mac,” Bernie said. “What’ll it be?”

  “The usual. Hello, Kate, what brings you into the Park? Haven’t seen you for months.”

  “Just visiting, Mac. What are you doing here in the middle of winter? You figured out a way to dredge a frozen creek?”

  Mac laughed heartily. He was incapable of laughing any other way. He had sharp brown eyes that he made look merry when it suited him, and a stubborn chin he hid behind a hearty, good ol’ boy hee-haw that disarmed those who didn’t know him well, but put the few who did on full alert.

  “Well, Kate,” Mac said, “I’ll tell you what I’m doing here, and maybe you’ll put in a good word for me with Ekaterina. I want to lease the old Nabesna Mine off the association and put it into year-round production.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You think you can make money year-round?”

  Bernie set a Bud and a glass down in front of Mac and retired to the other end of the bar. Mac ignored the glass and lifted the bottle to his lips to chug half the liquid down. Some of it ran out of the sides of his mouth, and he smacked the bottle down on the bar and wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt. “By damn, now that’s what a thirsty man needs after a hard day in the mines! Bernie!” he hollered.

  Bernie made his leisurely way back to where they were sitting, checking to see that the drawer to the cash register was closed, taking an occasional swipe with the bar towel at any available surface. Kate watched his slow progress with a hidden smile. Mac fidgeted impatiently. “Yeah, Mac?”

  “Whyn’t you get some draft in here, son? Some draft Bud, maybe. They support the America’s Cup now, don’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t play tennis,” Bernie said blandly. “And I’ve told you a hundred times, Mac, draft beer is too expensive to airfreight in.”

  Mac laughed heartily. “Can’t be too awful goddam more expensive than what you’re charging for this bottled crap, of which,” he said, noisily finishing off the remainder of the bottle in front of him, “I’ll have another and pronto.”

  Bernie served him and then drifted back down to the end of the bar to resume his interrupted conversation with Marvin Dementieff, just as Marvin gracefully abandoned the vertical for the horizontal and spent the rest of the evening curled up beneath the bar, a peaceful smile on his face, a gentle snore on his lips. Bernie searched Marvin’s pockets for his keys and hung them on a board in back of the bar.

  “So you want to open the mine year-round, Mac,” Kate prodded. “You figure on making a profit at it?”

  Mac drank beer. “Gold’s up to almost four-fifty an ounce,” he said, burping. “On my claims I could make money with a leaky pan and a broken pickax.”

  “You can’t run a dredge with a frozen water supply, though,” Kate said. “In fact, didn’t I hear something about you not running the mine at all after you got yourself slapped with an injunction prohibiting further mining because you were messing up Carmack Creek?”

  The burly man’s brow darkened. “Ah, that little prick ranger. Yeah, he slowed me up some.”

  “Ranger?” Kate said. She found her glass motionless halfway to her lips, and raised it for another sip. “What ranger?” Mac’s history passed in quick mental review, and she looked over at the man sitting next to her with new eyes.

  Everyone in the Park knew where Mac Devlin came from and where he was going. Mac made sure of it. He was a mining engineer, had wanted to be a mining engineer, he said whenever he got the chance, since growing up in Butte, Montana, son of another mining engineer, who had put him through school and then kicked him out of the house. “Go find your own pay dirt and make your own money,” his father said, “because I’m planning on spending all of mine before I die.” That suited Mac, he reassured everyone. He didn’t understand why all parents didn’t kick their kids out early on. When he had his, he certainly would. On more than one occasion Kate had refrained from pointing out that with Mac as a father, in all probability when the time came, his kids would already be long gone.

  Eventually Mac had hooked up with British Petroleum, who put him to work in oil fields all over the world and finally in Alaska, where he helped define the Prudhoe Bay super-giant oil field after the discovery well came in November 1968. The next year he was plotting a right-of-way for the pipeline haul road when his boss came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. “We’re outa here, Mac.”

  “What?”

  “The federal government’s stopped the pipeline until they satisfy environmental concerns and native claims.” His boss sighted on a piece of drill pipe and spat disgustedly.

  When Nixon signed the TransAlaska Pipeline Act in 1973 and got the pipeline project back on track, there were resident environmentalists crouched protectively over every foot of prospective pipe-laying. It was almost more than Mac Devlin could bear, but the money was so good he stuck with it until pipeline construction was complete in 1977, when he told Alyeska Pipeline Service Corporation, his current employer, to go piss up a rope, took his savings and bought out some marginal gold mining claims in the Park. He fought off the depredations of d-2, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, to maintain a going concern and retired Outside to wait for the price of gold to come back up.

  It had, eventually, and now Mac Devlin was back in the Park, agitating for permission to expand his operations. He refused to hire locally, he bought his supplies in Seattle, he even flew his employees Outside for their R-and-Rs, all of which made him less than popular with the people of Niniltna. Mac’s miners were the main reason for the presence of the baseball bat behind the bar of the Roadhouse, as well over half the fights there began between a MacMiner and any local who happened to be (a) out of work and (b) p
resent.

  Passing all this under rapid review, Kate said casually, “I thought it was the EPA who stopped your operation.”

  “Yeah, it was, but that little prick Miller was who turned me in. If I ever catch up to him, I’m going to take him outside and see how high he can bounce.”

  “That may be difficult, Mac.”

  Mac laughed heartily. “Have you seen that little prick, Kate?”

  “No,” she said. “Nobody has, for the last six weeks. He’s gone missing. You wouldn’t happen to know where, would you?”

  “Missing? The hell you say.” And then the intent of the rest of her words hit him. Mac said slowly, his eyes narrowing, “Why would I know anything about some punk ranger being missing?”

  Kate shrugged. “Just a passing question.” She met his eyes, and said softly, “Have you got an answer for me?”

  Mac stared at her, his brown eyes lacking their usual veneer of merriment. “What are you doing here, Kate?” he said, his voice very soft.

  “I’m looking for the little prick ranger, of course,” she said calmly. “And for the Anchorage D.A.’s investigator that came up here looking for him two weeks ago. He’s missing, too.”

  Mac said nothing. Kate kept her face impassive.

  It was at that moment she became aware of a distant rumbling. Noise in the bar died down as others became aware of it, too. The ground began to shake and rumble in a rhythmic fashion. “Earthquake?” Kate called to Bernie.

  “I don’t think so,” he started to say, but “Earthquake!” someone else screamed, and the rest was madness. Half a dozen people jammed themselves in the doorway, all of them trying to get through it at the same time, blocking exit to the thirty or so other patrons yelling and shoving ineffectually behind them. Bernie hotfooted it down to the end of the bar and looked out the window. “I thought so,” he said, and had to shout it again to make Kate hear him over the yells of alarm filling the room. “It’s not an earthquake. Look.”