A Cold Day for Murder (Kate Shugak #1)

by Stabenow, Dana

  Mac tossed off the rest of his coffee and got to his feet. “October 26 I was in Juneau.” He surveyed their resulting reactions with satisfaction, and added gently, “At dinner with the governor, his wife, the lieutenant governor and his wife, and my date, a Melissa Fensterwald. She works for the Department of Natural Resources.”

  He stopped at the door and looked back at them. “You’re right about one thing, Kate. That little prick Miller was going to spend the rest of his life trying to talk Park residents into his way of thinking. Development, yes, but limited development and run by the government for the specific purpose of increasing public access.” He paused, and said, “What makes you think I’ve got a problem with that? If he offered me a big enough percentage I’d dig gold here for Moammar Kaddafi.” His eyes met Kate’s steadily. “Who wouldn’t?”

  Their gaze held for a long moment. Mac broke it off, and turned to leave. Kate stared after him with knitted brows. “Mac,” she said suddenly.

  He halted in the doorway. “What?”

  “Did you talk to Ken Dahl two weeks ago? About Miller?”

  “I did.” Mac’s merry brown gaze mocked her.

  “What’d you tell him?”

  Mac shrugged. “He’d heard I’d no cause to love the little prick. He wanted to know who else felt that way.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Mac rubbed his hand over his brush cut. “He wanted to know if I thought Miller’s testimony before that House subcommittee could have had anything to do with his disappearance. I said it could have, but that I thought your cousin Martin’s fight with Miller that night had more.”

  “And that’s all?” Jack said.

  Mac grinned, a hard, jolly grin. “I thought it was enough.” From Kate’s expression, he could see she thought it was enough, too, and he left with a jaunty step.

  Jack flopped down in Mac’s vacated chair. “We didn’t ask him where he was when Ken disappeared.”

  “Nope.”

  “No need, I guess.”

  “Nope.”

  “Think we’d better verify his alibi?”

  “Yup.”

  “Think it’ll stand up?”

  “Yup.”

  “Me, too,” Jack said, slumping. “Gamble’s hanging around Anchorage with nothing to do. I’ll put him on it, get him to call Juneau in the morning.”

  “So. Where does that leave us?”

  “With Martin,” Jack said. “I’m sorry, Kate, but he’s all we have left.”

  She rubbed one hand over her face. “I know he’s my cousin, Jack, and I’m supposed to be biased. But I still don’t think he did it.”

  After seven years of working with her and five years of loving her, Jack Morgan had learned to respect Kate Shugak’s hunches. Still, he was going to make her flesh it out, or try to. “Why not?”

  She was silent, and then she said in a voice so low he could barely hear it, “Because my grandmother wants me to think he did.”

  “What?”

  “She pointed me toward Xenia the moment I got here. She knows everything that goes on all over the Park, so she must have known Xenia was seeing Miller, and that Martin and Miller fought over it at the Roadhouse.”

  “Maybe she’s trying to help us find Miller.”

  Kate looked at Jack with wise and suddenly very old eyes, and for a fleeting moment he felt reduced to the size and age of a first-grader. “Jack, you’ve known Ekaterina for—what?—five, six years, now? Don’t kid yourself that you know her. You’ve only seen what she wants you to see. The neat old lady holding friends and family together against the pressures of modern life. The upright tribal leader guiding her people out of the wilderness and into parity with the twentieth century. The profile in the Anchorage Daily News. You’ve never been face to face with the real Ekaterina Moonin Shugak.”

  “And who is the real Ekaterina Moonin Shugak?” he asked in an indulgent voice.

  She shook her head, unsmiling. “The real Ekaterina Moonin Shugak could give Niccolò Machiavelli lessons. She’s arrogant, manipulative and very, very powerful. Make no mistake, Jack, she runs this town, in spirit if not in name. She practically runs the Park. She could run the Alaska Federation of Natives if she wanted to, and as it is the president of AFN flies in once a month to consult with her.”

  Startled, Jack said, “I didn’t know that.”

  “The governor himself asked her to mediate that land swap between the state and Kachemak, Inc.” Kate smiled at Jack’s expression. “Oh yes, Jack. Billy Mike might be tribal chief in name, but she is in fact and he knows it. He won’t make a move without her backing him every step of the way.” Kate shivered and rubbed her hands over her arms. She could not remember another winter this cold. “And I’ve got a feeling she doesn’t want that ranger or whatever’s left of him found.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Maybe because she doesn’t want Xenia hurt,” he suggested.

  It was her turn to look indulgent. “She’s doing her -damndest to see that none of Xenia’s generation ever leaves the Park, and she’s driving Xenia crazy in the process.” She was silent for a moment. She looked up at him with a twisted smile. “She approves of you, did you know?”

  “Xenia?”

  “Emaa. She thinks you are a good man. She even manages to call you by name.” She saw his look and said, “Don’t knock it. It’s more than she was ever able to do for Ken.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, and swiveled around to look away from her. “Great,” he said under his breath. “That’s just great.”

  “What?” Kate said.

  “Nothing,” he said lightly, lying through his teeth. “I’m honored.”

  She laughed shortly. “You should be.” She picked up her parka. “I’m going out to the Roadhouse.” Jack’s face lost some of its normally healthy ruddiness. Kate paused with her hand on the doorknob and said maliciously, “Well? Are you coming?”

  “Why do we have to go to the Roadhouse?”

  “Because, at this time of year it’s the one place we’re sure to find Martin. It’s more than time we stopped talking about him and started talking to him.”

  He hesitated.

  “We’d better get going, Jack. If I know Abel, we’re not going to be able to dodge him for much longer.”

  “Why do we have to dodge him at all?”

  “Because if he knew what we know, Abel’s just the guy to prune the Park of one Martin Ivanovich Shugak.”

  She held the door open, waiting. Giving her a damning glare, he grabbed his parka and stamped past her.

  · · ·

  To get from Niniltna to the river road that led to the Roadhouse, for the first mile or so they had to follow the old roadbed of the Kanuyaq River & Northern Railroad to Lost Chance Creek. A few hundred yards beyond the Lost Chance, the road to Bernie’s branched off to the right while the railroad bed turned left to climb into the Quilaks. But first, always, and forever, you had to cross the creek.

  Lost Chance Creek was at the bottom of a gorge that ran for three miles upstream and two down. It could not be got around, or tunneled beneath; it had to be crossed over, and to do that the Kanuyaq River & Northern Railroad had built a trestle and run tracks across it. The tracks were long gone, but the trestle remained, impervious to all the abuse heaped upon it by sixty Alaskan winters. It now supported the comings and goings of the Park residents on trucks and snow machines with the same reliability it had supported railcars carrying over half a million tons of copper and a billion ounces of silver. The trestle was seven hundred feet long and narrow enough that you didn’t want to open the doors of your pickup when you were crossing it. It had no railings, on either side.

  What concerned Jack Morgan most was that it was three hundred feet high.

  They roared up to Lost Chance Creek on Kate’s snow machine. Kate stopped well before the bridge, and waited, letting the engine idle. The snow machine shifted as Jack climbed off, and withou
t looking around Kate gunned the throttle and sped across the bridge. On the other side, she stopped again. This time she shut off the machine and got off. She fussed with the gas cap and the throttle, biding her time, before she looked back.

  Jack was on his hands and knees, his nose practically touching the hard-packed snow beneath him, his eyes never looking to the right or to the left but only straight down at the tracks left by the treads of countless snow machines. He was crawling directly down the center of the bridge.

  It should have been a sight to delight Kate’s soul. She strolled to the edge of the gorge and peered over the side. Three weeks until Christmas and Lost Chance Creek still ran free, the white water moving at breakneck speed over a jumble of fallen rocks, splintered trunks of deadfall, remnants of eroded banks. Ice crusted thickly on whatever the spray touched.

  It took Jack eleven minutes to cross the bridge. Kate was counting. He didn’t get up from all fours until he was at least twenty feet onto the access. He rose, dusted off his mittens and the knees of his down overalls and for the first time saw her standing on the edge of the precipice. Returning color was immediately washed out of his face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted. His bass voice echoed faintly off the walls of the gorge.

  She turned, facing him fully, standing with the heels of her shoepacs an inch from the edge, and said, her hands in her pockets, “Looking for bodies.”

  “There’ll be one more if you don’t watch your ass, Shugak!”

  She shrugged and turned back to look into the gorge. There wasn’t anything to see and she knew it, but she took her time looking anyway. A movement caught the corner of her eye and she glanced up to see a bald eagle back-winging down to settle in the very top of a spruce tree. They looked at each other in silence, an odd similarity in the ferocity of their expressions.

  Jack stood where he was, his urge to snatch her from the brink of the abyss and his fear of the abyss itself warring clearly in his face. Kate waited for another minute, counting one-Mississippi to herself, before sauntering back to the snow machine and climbing on. “Coming?” she said over her shoulder.

  Jack climbed back on behind Kate without a word. His eyes met her own calmly enough, but he couldn’t hide the sheen of sweat on his forehead or the gray slowly receding from his complexion. She wondered suddenly if she’d been born a brass-plated bitch or if she’d just grown that way, and when. “Okay?” she said in a voice more gentle than he’d heard in fourteen months.

  “Okay,” he said. She smiled at him, and his eyes widened. “It walks, it talks, it smiles,” he said his voice marveling. “It might even be human.” Kate’s smile vanished and he added, his voice caressing, “On my way over I was remembering the first time we crossed that bridge together.” He grinned. “I was remembering how you cured my vertigo then.”

  She jerked the snow machine around and hit the gas, so that Jack almost pulled her off when he grabbed her waist. Even so, she felt him shaking with laughter all the way to Bernie’s.

  There was a party of Dall sheep hunters from somewhere Outside shucking their gear in front of the Roadhouse, being shepherded through the process by Demetri Totemoff. Kate pulled up to one side, killed the motor and pocketed the keys. She stood up, stripping the hood of her snowsuit back, and walked toward the door of the Roadhouse, Jack following.

  One of the hunters stepped into Kate’s way. She looked up, surprised. “How,” the man said, holding his hand up, palm out.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she heard Demetri say. She felt Jack pause behind her.

  “Me no talk white man talk,” Kate said pleasantly. “Now get the fuck out of my way.” She shoved him and his fading smile to one side and went up the steps.

  Inside the Roadhouse Kate was underwhelmed to find not only Martin but Xenia as well, sitting at opposite ends of the bar and pointedly ignoring each other. Kate muttered something under her breath that Jack didn’t catch, and went over to take Xenia by the elbow. She deposited the girl at a table, and went for the girl’s brother.

  “Well, hey, Katya,” Martin said, a six-pack shy of passing out. “What you doing here? I thought you sweared off the Park for good when you busted Sandy.”

  “I thought so too, Martin,” she said grimly, steering him to the table where an imperturbable Jack and an apprehensive Xenia waited for them.

  Before Kate had seated herself Xenia burst out, “You said you wouldn’t tell him! You promised!”

  “I lied,” Kate said. “Watch out she doesn’t bolt,” she said to Jack. “She does that a lot.” She turned to Martin. “Martin,” she said, trying to get him to focus on her. “Martin?”

  Martin Shugak was tall for an Aleut, but in everything else he was a carbon copy of his sister, with perhaps a more stubborn chin. He sported a wispy mustache and goatee that made him look like Fu Manchu and long, lank hair reaching his shoulders that might have been washed sometime within the last decade but didn’t look or smell like it. His clothes were in even worse shape, and Kate only just managed to stop herself from moving her chair farther away from his. Her nose would adjust in a moment, she knew from long experience.

  Martin had left the eighth grade when his father drowned, to take over fishing his father’s permit in Prince William Sound. While the salmon ran he was sober, hardworking and solvent. The other seven months of the year he drank up what he had earned during the previous five. There was no cannery in Cordova who would not finance a new boat for Martin Shugak the first week of May. There was no cannery in Cordova who would advance him a dime after October.

  His eyes wavered around the room and eventually came to rest on her face. “Katya,” he said, a foolish smile crossing his face, “what you doing here? I thought—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Kate said impatiently, “you thought I swore off the Park. Martin, do you remember Mark Miller?”

  “Who?”

  “Mark Miller, the park ranger.”

  Martin made a face. “Doan know him. How ’bout ’nother beer?”

  “Bernie!” Bernie looked up and Kate circled her forefinger in the air. Bernie nodded and a moment later brought over three Olys and a Coke. Martin grabbed for his and sucked half down thirstily.

  Kate wrestled the bottle out of his hand and held it out of his reach. “You know Miller, Martin. The park ranger who was going out with Xenia.”

  Martin’s brow furrowed in deep thought. “Xenia.”

  “Your sister,” Kate specified.

  Martin transferred his wavering gaze to his sister’s pinched face, and frowned. “I remember.”

  “Thank God,” Jack said to Kate. “I thought for a second we were going to have to introduce them.”

  “Little bastard,” Martin said, unheeding. “Told him to leave my sister alone.” He brightened. “Beat the shit out of him, too. Candy-ass.”

  “Then what did you do?” Kate said. “After you beat the shit out of him.”

  He looked at her, surprised. “Went home, I guess.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  “Nope.” He snickered. “Probly hiding.”

  “He’s been missing for six weeks, Martin, and you had a fight with him just hours before nobody ever saw him again.”

  “So what?” Martin said, seeming a little surprised that Kate would waste both their time remarking on it. “Good riddance, I’d say.”

  Kate reached over and grabbed Martin’s face with both hands, trying to penetrate the alcoholic fog with sheer force of will. “I’ll tell you what we think happened, Martin. Xenia was dating him and you didn’t like it. She said he was going to marry her and take her away from the Park, and you didn’t believe him or her. You argued with him about it. Half the crowd at Bernie’s heard you say you were going to kill him if he didn’t stay away from her.”

  “Aw shit, Kate,” Martin said, looking everywhere but at her face. “Aw shit.”

  “So you did. You left Bernie’s and you waited till he came out and you killed him, and then you rolled h
is body into Lost Chance Creek off the old railroad bridge.”

  Martin blinked. “What you say?”

  “Martin, Xenia saw you do it. She recognized your truck, she saw the license plate and the expired sticker and the dented fender. She heard the splash when the body went in.”

  “Xenia?” Martin said, sitting up straight and suddenly more sober than he had been all week. “Body? Kate, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the park ranger you dumped over the Lost Chance bridge Thursday night, October 26, an hour after you fought with Miller right here in this bar.”

  Martin stared from Kate to Xenia to Jack and back to Kate. “I didn’t kill no park ranger.”

  “Prove it,” Kate said.

  “I didn’t kill nobody,” Martin said doggedly. His eyes lit on Xenia and brightened. He pointed at his sister and said, “Xenia probably killed him because he wasn’t going to marry up with her and take her out of the Park like he said.”

  Xenia reached across the table to grab a hank of Martin’s hair in one fist and begin beating on him with the other. The table rocked, the drinks spilled in everyone’s laps, and Martin and Xenia rolled onto the floor, hissing and spitting and biting and scratching. When Jack and Kate finally got them separated Martin was missing a hank of hair above his left ear and Xenia’s right eye was swelling shut.

  “Sit down, Xenia,” Kate said tightly. “I said sit down!” She slung the girl into a seat as Jack righted a chair and jammed Martin into it. “I’m having a good time,” he told Kate. “Are you having a good time?” Activity in the Roadhouse barely checked. Bernie brought over another round, and peace if not serenity reigned supreme once more.

  “If you didn’t kill the ranger, Martin,” Kate said, “then whose body were you dumping into Lost Chance Creek that night?”

  “Aw shit, Kate,” Martin said, “it wasn’t nobody’s body, it was a goddam moose.”

  There was a stunned silence. He looked from Kate’s face to Jack’s and back again. He hung his head and admitted, “It was a yearling female. I shot it up on the Kanuyaq around Silver Creek and I was bringing it home when Dandy told me there was a fish hawk in town. I wasn’t going back to jail for no goddam moose.” Kate met his eyes, and he slammed down his beer indignantly. “Jesus, Kate, if you won’t believe me, ask Dandy, he was with me, he’ll tell you.”