A Cold Day for Murder (Kate Shugak #1)

by Stabenow, Dana

  “I’ll shoot, Kate, I swear I will.”

  Kate stumbled, recovered, and walked on, her pulse drumming high up in her throat. If Abel actually was capable of killing her, she’d rather be dead anyway.

  “A man’s got a right, a duty to protect his home he’s worked for for eighty years, Kate!”

  Kate didn’t look around. If, when it came, she didn’t want to see it.

  She was almost to the head of the trail when the shot echoed down off the indifferent shoulders of the Quilaks. Stumbling for the second time, almost falling, she caught herself against a tree trunk and waited for the pain to begin, for the warm, salty run of blood up into her mouth, the shock, followed by agonizing, debilitating pain. She knew what to expect. Leaning her forehead against the bark of the spruce, she braced herself and waited.

  There was nothing, only the silent stillness of the forest, only the endless horizon of the sky. She understood, and the pain of her next inhalation hurt so much she wished she had been shot. Mutt looked up at her and whined anxiously.

  “Kate!” Jack came crashing down the path, his face white. “Kate!” He grabbed her and for the second time that day ran anxious hands over her body. “I heard a shot! Are you all right? Are you hurt? Show me!”

  Finding the words took a little time. “I’m all right,” she said in a rusty voice.

  His hands stilled. “I heard a shot,” he repeated.

  “Yes.”

  He looked behind her. “Where’s Abel?”

  “Dead,” she said, and slipped by him to walk up the trail.

  Ten

  KATE’S GRANDMOTHER SAT where she’d always sat, in a chair backed up against the wall between the oil stove and the kitchen table, knees wide apart, her right arm on the table, her left hand planted on her left knee.

  Kate entered the room with slow, reluctant steps, pausing on the threshold. She stood where she was, head down. Her shoulders were slumped; her hands hung limply at her sides. Her gloves dangled from one, her face mask from the other. She didn’t unzip her snowsuit. “I have come to tell you that Abel is dead.”

  Her grandmother rose ponderously to her feet and padded to the stove to put the water on to boil with slow, sure movements that argued the observance of a lifetime’s rite.

  “You knew, didn’t you, emaa.” It wasn’t a question, it was a simple declaration of truth. “I think you might even be an accessory after the fact.”

  The old woman smiled into the teakettle. “Are you going to arrest me, Katya?” She reached above her head and took down two mugs and the Nestle’s Quik. She went to the refrigerator and brought out a can of evaporated milk. She lifted the stove lid out of the way and set the teakettle directly over the flame.

  “Why, emaa? Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “I had no proof,” the old woman said simply, without turning from her task. “I knew how the old man felt about the boy’s plans. I heard both of them testify before the subcommittee that afternoon. I saw the boy drive through the village toward Abel’s house early the next morning. You know I don’t sleep much anymore.” She paused, looking down at the spoon she held. “And then the boy was missing. That was all.”

  “And when Ken Dahl came to you for help?”

  Her grandmother turned and fixed her with the light brown eyes so like her own. “I told him nothing. It is not the business of Outsiders to meddle in our affairs.”

  Kate knuckled her eyes, which were dry and burning. She was unable to make them focus on any one thing. Her gaze skipped around the room, table to window, window to door, anything to keep her from looking at Ekaterina. She put her hands up to her face and spoke into them. “Couldn’t you have warned him, emaa?”

  “It is not the business of Outsiders to meddle in our affairs,” her grandmother repeated in the same stern voice.

  Kate gave a short laugh, high-pitched and too close to hysteria. “Even if one of our own is guilty of murder?”

  “A park ranger, born and educated Outside,” her grandmother said, her voice so indifferent it held not even the slightest trace of scorn. “A cheechako. And an investigator from Anchorage, much the same.” Ekaterina shrugged. She might as well have snapped her fingers. “And now the man who killed them is dead.”

  “Abel,” Kate said steadily. “Abel is dead, emaa. He had a name.”

  “They are all dead, Katya. What does it matter now?”

  And what about me, emaa? Kate wanted to shout. What about me? I practically saw Abel die, and you as good as sent me there to do so! But she had no energy for anger this day.

  The old woman was silent. “You should never have gone away to school, Katya,” she said at last. She turned and fixed her granddaughter with a cool, considering stare that Kate had never seen before. “Or you should never have come back.”

  Kate’s breath caught in her ruined throat. “The unkindest cut of all,” she said finally, with a painful smile. “Why did you want me to think Martin killed Miller?”

  “Because I knew that it was not true.”

  “And if I had not discovered that?”

  “Then you would have removed Martin from the Park.”

  Kate expelled her breath on a long, soundless sigh. “Ridding Niniltna of a known troublemaker, and without you raising a finger in the process.” She shook her head. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out the truth?”

  “I did not know if you would. I hoped not, for my cousin’s husband’s sake.”

  “What did you think would happen if I did?”

  Her grandmother was silent for a moment. “I knew the old man would never go to jail.” The teakettle whistled and she turned to remove it from the flame. “It is finished,” she said, her back to her granddaughter. “Leave it. You can’t change anything that has happened. We will drink some cocoa and eat some bread, and talk of other things.”

  Kate looked at the old woman, so strong, so proud, so righteous. Watching her, feeling off-balance and disoriented and one step removed from reality, she wondered idly if that was how she would feel drunk. “Jack is going to give Xenia a receptionist’s job in Anchorage, emaa,” she said. “He knows of another young woman in his office who needs someone to share rent. I’ve made conditions; for starters, she has to sign up for and pass with a C or better at least three credits every semester at UAA.”

  The old woman’s back stiffened, and her voice was stern and disapproving. “You are taking her out of the only home she has ever known, away from family and friends.”

  “I’m getting her away from you,” Kate said flatly.

  Ekaterina turned and met her eyes. They were two women so alike, and at the same time so completely different. The chasm of more than a generation yawned between them and they stared at each other from opposite sides of the abyss. Kate, though the other woman had not spoken, shook her head. “No,” she said, and then in a stronger voice repeated, “No. I’m not packing any more guilt out of here than I came in with. Good-bye, emaa.”

  Jack and Mutt were waiting outside the house. They drove back to Bobby’s house and dropped off his Polaris. Kate took Jack up behind her and drove him to the airstrip, Mutt loping along next to them, her tongue hanging out, her head never very far from Kate’s elbow.

  Jack dismounted next to his Cessna, and stood with his eyes fixed on her set, white face. “Did she know?”

  “Yes.” Kate let the engine drop down to an idle.

  Jack drew in a long, slow breath. “Makes her some kind of accessory.”

  “That’s what I told her.”

  “What did she say?”

  Kate laughed shortly. “She suggested I arrest her.”

  Jack scratched his head. “Uh-huh.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” They stood without speaking for a moment, and then Kate said, “Did you ever notice? To everyone else in the world, I’m Kate. Emaa calls me Katya.”

  “She’s getting to you, Kate. Or trying to.”

  Kate kept talking, compulsively, the words spil
ling out of her as if he had not spoken. “Every time she says it, ‘Katya,’ she says it in that voice of doom. I see fifty generations of Aleuts lined up behind her, glaring at me. Every time she says it, she’s telling me I betrayed her and my family and the village and my culture and my entire race by running away.” She gave a thin smile. “And now, she’s believes I’ve betrayed myself by running back. I’ve been preaching, and I quote, ‘assimilation into the prevailing culture for the survival of my people.’ Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Sounds like I’ve had seven or eight sociology classes. Sounds like I know what I’m talking about.” Kate smiled, and Jack winced away from the sight of it. “And I live in a log cabin five miles from my closest neighbor and twenty-five miles from the nearest village. I’m shipping Xenia off to town, but I can’t bear to go in myself.”

  “Kate,” he said.

  “Don’t you understand, we’re not all like this,” she said fiercely. “We’re not even mostly like this. We’re not all drunks and adulterers and murderers. We’re just people, like anybody else trying to get along in this goddam world. We’re starting from behind and we’re just trying to catch up.”

  “Kate,” he said again, reaching for her.

  She held up her hands, holding him off. “Get out of the Park, Jack,” she said in a tired voice. “You don’t belong here.”

  “Do you?”

  She shook her head again without answering, called to Mutt, and left.

  · · ·

  It was a month before he came, out of the south, a big man in a parka with a wolf ruff, alone on a snow machine that threatened to destroy once and for all the peace of the little homestead in the clearing. Mutt shoved her way past her mistress and galloped out to him, her huge pads kicking up miniature clouds of the new snow that lay thick upon the ground.

  “Hey, Mutt,” he said, scratching the dog’s head.

  Kate stood motionless next to the open door, arms wrapped around herself. She was shivering and, realizing it, was angry with herself and with him. “What are you doing here?”

  He walked to the cabin and gave her a gentle shove inside. He hung his parka next to hers, and sat down on the couch to unlace his mukluks. He set them carefully, one at a time, below his parka, not looking at her because it hurt him to see her so thin and tired. She looked as if she hadn’t slept since he saw her last.

  “I said, what are you doing here?” she repeated.

  “Every couple of weeks, I think you said.” He reached for her.

  “No,” she said and made a halfhearted attempt to push him away. Ignoring her, he pulled her into his arms, pushed her chin up with one firm hand and kissed her. In spite of his outward assurance she felt his body tense in awareness at the touch of hers. It might have been just a reflection of his own need, it might only have been pity, but with a sensation of coming home after a long, cold journey into foreign and unfriendly lands, she relaxed and leaned into the kiss. He pulled her head into his shoulder and for the first time she allowed herself the luxury of grief, great, racking sobs that tore at her wounded throat and at his heart.

  “The funeral was last Wednesday,” she said, when she could.

  “I know. There was a big write-up about it in both Anchorage papers.”

  “I counted over a hundred planes parked on the airstrip the day of the funeral. More than I’ve ever seen at his Fourth of July fly-ins.”

  “Well. It’s one kind of testimonial.”

  “The one he would have liked best.” Her voice was muffled in his shirt. “He left instructions that he wasn’t to be buried in the family plot. He’d picked out a space on top of the hill in back of the house, underneath a big spruce. When Abel Junior and Zach started to dig the hole they found this enormous rock. They couldn’t go through it or around it. They finally had to blow it out of the way with dynamite.” Jack’s chest shifted and she realized he was laughing, and she smiled in spite of herself. “Everyone said it was Abel’s last laugh.”

  They sat quietly, listening to the fire crackle in the wood stove. Mutt curled up in front of it, her head on her paws, relaxed now that Kate was back in Jack’s lap and all was right with the world.

  “We sent Ken home to Boston,” Jack said, “and Miller back to his daddy. The honorable representative from Ohio was inclined to make a fuss at first, but the press doesn’t look kindly on congressmen drafting the FBI into investigating their personal affairs. All Gamble had to do was work the Washington Post into the conversation and Miller deflated like a stuck balloon.”

  “And Ken’s people?”

  Jack shook his head. “They don’t make anything as vulgar as a fuss in Boston. I went out for the funeral. The sky wore gray; everyone else wore black. And pearls. Even the guys.”

  “Even the guys?”

  “Cuff links. Tie tacks.”

  “Oh.”

  “Afterward, there was a reception at his parents’ home, where no one drank too much or cried out loud. When it was over, his mother thanked me for coming all that way. His father shook my hand. His brother drove me to the airport and carried my bag to the counter.” Jack’s voice hardened. “I’d have felt a whole lot better if someone had taken a punch at me.”

  They sat for a while, not moving. When she spoke again her ruined voice was so low he couldn’t hear her. “What?” he said.

  “Thanks,” she said, louder but still gruff.

  “For what?” he said, with more than a trace of bitterness in his voice. “Ekaterina was right. They’re all dead. There was no point in the whole story making the ten o’clock news.”

  “Well. Thanks, anyway.”

  He looked down at her. “Will you come back to work for me?” he said.

  “No,” she said at once. “I’ll never live in Anchorage again.”

  He looked at her for a long, searching moment. When he was done, he sighed, a long, drawn-out sigh, and nodded once, accepting her decision without comment.

  “But I’ll work for you sometimes. When you need someone who knows the Park. Who’s related to half the bush.” She raised her head and added, “For four hundred a day, plus expenses.”

  He had to grin. “Good enough.” He slid one gentle, seeking hand over a breast. “It has nothing to do with this,” he said. There would be no mistake. He wanted her. He had only been waiting.

  “No,” she agreed on a long sigh, arching her back and rubbing herself against his hands. She pulled his head down and kissed him. It had been too long, and she had missed this so much, and they’d always fit together so well. Nothing else mattered.

  “Kate,” he said, pulling back. “I came to Alaska because I wanted to see what it was like to live in a last frontier. I stayed because I wanted you. Just so you know, I feel pretty much the same today.”

  “All right,” she said, unzipping his jeans and sliding one hand inside.

  His hands closed around her upper arms in a painful grip. “I’ll be out whenever I can get away.”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed beneath the touch of her hand. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  It wasn’t going to get any better than this. He was a beggar at the gates, and he knew it. They had just opened, and if he hadn’t been deeded the castle at least Kate had come down from her tower. He would take what he could get, and be grateful for it, and show his gratitude as well as he knew how.

  He followed her up the ladder to the loft and into her large, lonely bed, and if it wasn’t making love, it was as close to it as either one of them would ever get.

  —

  What next? Dana Stabenow’s A Fatal Thaw is the second Kate Shugak mystery. It's available from the usual sources.

  A Fatal Thaw

  IT WAS SIX A.M. on the first day of spring, and although sunrise was still half an hour away, when Kate opened her eyes the loft of the cabin was filled with the cool, silvery promise of dawn. She sat up, stretched and yawned, and flung back the covers.

&
nbsp; Pulling sweats on over her long underwear, she shimmied down the ladder from the loft into the cabin’s single, square room. “Hey, girl.” Mutt stood pressed up against the door, ears cocked, iron-gray ruff standing straight up around her face, yellow eyes wide and fixed imploringly on Kate. “In a minute. Hang on.”

  Going to the stove, Kate opened the fire door and stoked the fire from the wood bin next to it. The coals from the night before were still hot and it only took a moment for the wood to catch. She went to the sink and pumped up some water to replace what had evaporated out of the gallon-sized kettle overnight. Straining a little, she set it back on top of the stove. “Okay, girl,” she said. Mutt danced with impatience as Kate stamped her bare feet into boots, and then, as Kate got down the choke chain and leash, her tail went between her legs and she whined, a soft, piteous sound.

  “Forget it,” Kate said severely. The scar on her throat, a whitish, flattened rope of twisted tissue stretching from ear to ear, pulled at her vocal chords in protest at this early-morning use, and her voice rasped like a rusty file over her next words. “I saw that old he-wolf hanging around yesterday. I know you’re looking to get that itch of yours scratched but the last thing we need underfoot is a litter of pups.” Mutt flattened her ears and furiously wagged an ingratiating tail. “Don’t try that sweet talk on me. I remember what happened last time even if you don’t.”

  Mutt heard the inflexible note in Kate’s voice. Her tail stilled, her muzzle drooped and she gave a deep sigh. Conveying the impression that she had been beaten into it, she submitted meekly to the leash, and slunk through the door and around the woodpile.

  Kate let the leash run all the way out to give her some privacy and waited. She breathed in deeply of the cool morning air, smelling of pine resin and wood smoke. The big, round, flat-faced thermometer fixed to the wall of the cabin read twelve degrees, and it was only six-thirty. Yes, spring was finally here, at last.

  She felt a single, experimental tug on the leash. One large yellow eye peered over the woodpile. “Not a chance,” Kate told her, and took her turn in the outhouse without loosing her grip on the leash.