A Cold Day for Murder (Kate Shugak #1)

by Stabenow, Dana

  A small whisper, perhaps of wind, rustled through the grove. A sound, perhaps the whimper of a frightened squirrel, came from deeper in the stand of trees. It was enough to make him withdraw his hand.

  He rose to his feet and threaded his way through the trees to the airstrip. Righting the overturned snow machine, he mounted it and thumbed the electric starter. It caught on the first try.

  · · ·

  The pile of split wood was waist high when Kate heard the rapid whap-whap-whap of a helicopter’s rotor. The sun was high in a still-cloudless sky, and her shirt was damp down her spine and beneath her arms. She sunk the axe into the tree stump that served as her chopping block and went inside to pump up a drink of water. She drained the glass, refilled it and brought it back outside, narrowly missing Mutt’s nose in the door. She sat down on the front step, groaning a little from sore muscles. A rustle of underbrush called her attention to the edge of the clearing, where Mutt’s would-be lover sat beneath a mountain hemlock. For a change he was not looking yearningly at the cabin but in an inquiring fashion at the sky. She squinted up as the noise of the helicopter became louder, and jumped to her feet when it roared the last few feet to hover over her clearing.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she yelled, her voice a furious croak. “You can’t land here!”

  Mutt’s lover decided it was a better day for discretion than valor and broke for the high country. As the Bell Jet Ranger with the distinctive blue-and-gold markings of the Alaska State Troopers lowered to the exact center of the clearing, Kate was forced back up against the door of the cabin. She held her breath, watching the ends of the rotors sweep dangerously close to the eaves of every building in the semicircle of her homestead.

  The blades slowed their rotation but didn’t stop. The engine powered down, and the door of the helicopter opened and a man in a state trooper’s uniform emerged. Holding on to his hat, he crouched over the few running steps that brought him face to crotch with Kate.

  She glared down at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Jim? You’re lucky you didn’t take the roof off everything I own!”

  “Get inside!” he yelled, and suited word to deed by reaching around her to open the door and shove her inside, thudding up the steps and in behind her and pulling the door shut after him.

  He was a tall man and a large one, and he filled up the cabin more than she liked. “What the hell do you think you’re doing,” she snapped, “pushing your way in here? What’s going on?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  He strode over to her scanner and snapped it on, to be greeted by dead air. He shook his head and swore. “Dammit, I told them to broadcast a warning and keep broadcasting it until we catch the fucker.”

  “What fucker? What warning?” she said angrily. And then she saw his expression. In that instant her anger changed to apprehension. The words devoid of heat, she repeated. “Jim, what’s going on?”

  He turned and surveyed the room, Kate mystified, Mutt alert, both of them wary. “At least you’re all right.”

  “Of course I’m all right.” Kate’s gaze sharpened. “Who isn’t?”

  His lips thinned. “Two people we know of, so far.”

  “Niniltna?” He nodded curtly, and she tensed. Next to her Mutt whined once, a keen, anxious sound. “What happened?” Kate said flatly.

  He blew out a breath. “Near as we can figure, some guy’s running around shooting at people with a 30.06.”

  Her mouth went dry. “Who?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t know yet.”

  “Who’s been shot?”

  A gleam of understanding crossed his face, but he shook his head again. “We don’t that yet, either. He shot at the mail plane as it was coming in to land. George Perry saw some bodies lying at the end of the strip. Then a guy on a snow machine started shooting and he hit the throttle. He climbed to five thousand feet and circled long enough to put out an SOS. He saw the guy on the snow machine take off. That’s about all we know, except…”

  “Except?”

  “Except that he’s headed this way.” The trooper saw Kate’s reaction and nodded once for emphasis. “The mail plane called the tower in Tok, the tower called me, and I got in the air right away. I’ve been hitting every homestead on the way in.”

  Kate walked around him and got the shotgun down from the rack over the door. She broke it open to check that it was loaded. It was. She turned. “Okay. Now I know. You’d better get on with passing the word.”

  His expression relaxed, and he gave half a laugh and amazed her by swooping down for a swift, hard kiss. He laughed again at her expression and chucked her beneath the chin. “Probably the only chance I’ll ever get, how could I resist?”

  The shotgun was on its way up and if the helicopter hadn’t been right in back of him she might even have fired off a round. He looked from her furious face to the shotgun and back, laughed again and actually had the gall to salute her. “If he gets here before I get him, he’s wearing a black-and-red mackinaw and a brown billed cap with ear-flaps. He’s driving a Polaris. Watch your ass, Shugak.”

  He ducked and ran to the helicopter. The engine pitch and blade rotation increased immediately. In five seconds he was in the air, in seven over the trees, and in ten out of sight.

  · · ·

  “Go!” the farmer yelled at the two open-mouthed, petrified figures of his children. “Run, dammit!” He turned back to the killer and waved his arms. “Here! Over here, you lousy bastard! Come get me, I dare you!”

  The killer looked at him without expression. The farmer, lying against his barn with a shattered leg and his life’s blood oozing away, clutched frantically around him for something to throw. He found nothing but melting snow, and so he threw that, in handfuls that fell far short of their target in ineffective, disintegrating pieces. “Shit!” The killer watched him without moving. “Motherfucker!” the farmer yelled and flipped him the bird with both hands. “Joe! Mary! Run!”

  The two children finally broke and ran, straight out across the frozen pond that fronted the farm buildings. The killer took half a step forward, swiveled and brought up the rifle. He frowned at the running figures through the sights. They were so small and they ran so fast. He squeezed off two shots. One hit, one missed. “No!” the farmer screamed, “no, no, no goddam you, no!” The killer shot a third time. The second figure fell hard on the grainy ice of the little lake and slid ten feet before coming to a stop.

  The farmer, sobbing, crying, gasping for breath, was clawing his body to the edge of the lake when the killer stepped up next to him. Their eyes met. The killer’s face was calm and still, the farmer’s contorted with grief and rage.

  “Fuck you,” the farmer hissed. “Do it.”

  · · ·

  Kate leaned the shotgun against the woodpile and picked up the axe. After staring at it for a moment, she put the axe back down and picked up the shotgun. She felt like pacing, but pacing back and forth across the clearing with a crazy person going around shooting at people seemed like a bad idea. It might have been the safest thing to do, but she couldn’t bear the thought of cooping herself up in the cabin. She turned to the woods. A frustrated whine and an eager scratching at the inside of the door told her Mutt had seen her. She paused. There was a rustle across the clearing. The timber wolf was back. “Damn.” In the state she was in and with this embodiment of lupine perfection hanging around, Mutt would be no use to her. Squaring her shoulders, she walked across the clearing and up the path that led to the road.

  · · ·

  The miner vanished into the trees as the killer reloaded the Winchester. The frantic, laboring sound of someone crashing through thick woods and a winter’s worth of snow cover came clearly to him through the still air. He threw in the bolt and cast a speculative glance toward the sound. He stretched and yawned. The snow under the trees was too darn deep to hassle with. The miner would probably bleed to deat
h anyway. Besides, he was tired. His stomach growled. Hungry, too.

  · · ·

  Kate was dozing when she heard it. At first it had sounded like a single, distinct crash, like a large-scale breaking of glass, but now there was no doubt about it. It was a snow machine, and it was coming her way.

  She’d walked from where the path that led to her homestead intersected the old railroad bed until she found a long, straight stretch of the road. At the end of the straight stretch farthest from Niniltna, she searched out a squat, thickly branched spruce tree that was neither too close nor too far away from the edge of the road, stamped out a path and forced her way in between the branches. She squatted beneath it now with the shotgun resting across her knees. Peering out between the branches, she had a perfect view of half a mile of road, from where it curved to avoid Honker Pond to where she crouched.

  The noise of the snow machine grew louder. The sky was clear and pale and innocent of helicopters or planes or any other kind of cavalry. “Damn you, Jim. Isn’t that just like a cop, never around when you need him.” When she looked back down the snow machine had rounded Honker Pond and was headed straight for her. There was no one else in sight.

  She muttered a curse and clicked the safety off the shotgun. She rechecked the load, pulled the stock in against her shoulder, sighted carefully down the barrel, and waited.

  The snow machine labored up the slight slope, until she could see his face, red from the force of the wind against it, lips pulled back from his teeth in a humorless grimace. It was a Polaris snow machine, all right, and the guy was wearing a red-and-black checked mackinaw and a brown-billed cap with earflaps. A chill shivered down her spine. She took her time lining up her shot. No matter what this yo-yo had done, she didn’t want to kill him. She had enough on her conscience without another death, however justified.

  He was almost upon her when the snow of the road exploded in front of his machine. Pieces of ice flew up and hit the windshield and his face. He yelled and jerked. The machine swerved. The handlebars ripped out of his hands and he fell, rolling awkwardly, slung rifle and all.

  Kate plunged out between the branches of the spruce. One caught in her hair and almost yanked her off her feet. She slipped and lost her grip on the shotgun. It smacked into the snow and slid several feet from her. Across the road, the killer staggered to his. feet and unslung his rifle. She felt around and grasped a piece of deadwood and threw it at him as hard as she could. It caught him square across the face. He staggered a little. “Doggone it,” he said. He recovered, and in one automatic action raised his rifle and sighted down at her.

  Her hair still tangled in the spruce, the stock of the shotgun several feet away, Kate froze. She stared across the hard, packed roadbed into his calm, clear, quite mad eyes, and she knew she was staring at an escape from pain, a loss of laughter, the cessation of joy, all of them, straight in the face. She didn’t move, couldn’t.

  He smiled at her. “Know anywhere around here somebody might get a bite to eat?”

  There was a crash of tearing brush, and Kate was hit hard in the back of the knees. Her feet went out from under her, her hair ripped free of the branch and the world whirled around as she made a perfect backward somersault, landing on her chest with a thump that drove all the breath out of her.

  Mutt’s forepaws hit the killer square in the chest. He fell flat on his back with a hundred and forty pounds of proprietary rage on top of him. In a movement faster than Kate could follow Mutt clamped her teeth in the stock of the Winchester and shook it loose from his grip like a bear shaking off a mosquito. The rifle hit the ice six feet away and slid for twenty more. The killer lay where he was, dazed, his throat exposed, and Mutt lunged directly for it, her teeth closing in on either side.

  Kate’s breath returned with a rush. “Hold!” she shouted.

  Mutt froze, her teeth indenting but not breaking the skin of his throat. “Hold, girl,” Kate repeated, grasping at air, her voice a husky croak, “hold.”

  It took her two tries to climb to her feet. She stood where she was, trembling, eyes closed, gulping in great breaths of air. Her chest hurt. Her scalp ached. Her lungs burned. Somewhere behind them the Polaris was still running. The engine rose in whiny protest, spluttered and died. Kate sucked in another deep breath and opened her eyes.

  The killer lay where he had fallen. Mutt stood over him, teeth bared against his throat, a low, rumbling growl issuing unbroken from deep in her throat. In that moment she seemed all wolf. Kate recovered her shotgun and approached them warily. She reached his rifle, kicked it away. “All right, Mutt.”

  The dog lifted her head slightly, her teeth no longer touching the killer’s throat, but that continuous, rumbling, paralyzing growl never stopped. “It’s all right, girl,” Kate said and reached out a steadying hand. Beneath it Mutt flinched once, and Kate tensed. “You done good, girl. Now let go. Mutt,” she repeated, more sternly this time, “release.” The growl missed a note, diminished, and died. Mutt looked up at Kate and gave her tail a single wag. Kate inhaled again and straightened. “Good girl.” And then, more fervently, “Good girl.”

  The killer was conscious. He looked up at them calmly, all tension drained out of his body. He even smiled, a happy, bloody smile that reached all the way up into mischievous, twinkling eyes, one nearly swollen shut. He giggled. “You’ll never guess what I’ve been doing.” He giggled again. “I’ve been a bad boy.” He licked the blood from his lips and appeared surprised. He raised one wondering hand, touched it to his mouth and looked at his stained fingers. “I’m bleeding,” he said. His face puckered. “He should have sold me Boardwalk. I told him. He should have sold it to me.” He started to cry.

  Kate took three faltering steps to the side of the road and was thoroughly and comprehensively sick, which was how Chopper Jim found her when he landed twenty yards down the road a few minutes later.

  Looking for More Mystery?

  Try Archer Mayor’s

  Joe Gunther Series

  Vermont is 1/68th the size of Alaska, but its crimes are no less brutal, its criminals no less evil, and its police no less resourceful. Archer Mayor's New York Times bestselling series is now on its 23rd volume, and shows no signs of stopping. Fans of Kate Shugak will find much to like in Joe Gunther, the stoic Yankee cop.

  #1, Open Season. A mysterious ski-masked figure is committing ever more elaborate murders, all seemingly tied to a long-closed case. Can Gunther connect the dots in time?

  #2, Borderlines. Lt. Gunther is temporarily reassigned to his childhood home, Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, but arson, kidnappings, and an isolationist new age cult make it anything but a happy homecoming.

  #3, Scent of Evil. Vermont isn't all fall foliage and maple syrup… in summer, it can swelter. When a body is discovered in a shallow urban grave and suspicion falls on a fellow police officer, Lt. Gunther finds himself enmeshed in a series of twisted revenge killings.

  And that’s just the beginning. Find out for yourself why The Chicago Tribune calls it “the best police-procedural series being written in America.”

  About the Author

  DANA STABENOW was born in Anchorage and raised on 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere and after having a grand old time working in the Prudhoe Bay oilfields on the North Slope of Alaska, making an obscene amount of money and going to Hawaii a lot, found it in writing.

  Her first science fiction novel, Second Star, sank without a trace, her first crime fiction novel, A Cold Day for Murder, won an Edgar award, her first thriller, Blindfold Game, hit the New York Times bestseller list, and her twenty-seventh novel and eighteenth Kate Shugak novel, Though Not Dead, was released in February 2011.

  Find her on the web at www.stabenow.com

  Also by Dana Stabenow

  Kate Shugak Mysteries

  A Cold Day for Murder

  A Fatal Thaw

  Dead in the Water

  A Cold-Blooded Busine
ss

  Play with Fire

  Blood Will Tell

  Breakup

  Killing Grounds

  Hunter’s Moon

  Midnight Come Again

  The Singing of the Dead

  A Fine and Bitter Snow

  A Grave Denied

  A Taint in the Blood

  A Deeper Sleep

  Whisper to the Blood

  A Night Too Dark

  Though Not Dead

  Restless in the Grave

  Bad Blood (coming Feb. 2013)

  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

  Others

  Blindfold Game

  Prepared for Rage

  Copyright

  A Cold Day for Murder was first published in paperback by Berkley in 1992. The first hardcover edition was published by Poison Pen Press in 2011. This digital edition (v.2.1) was published in 2012 by Gere Donovan Press.

  If you downloaded this book from a filesharing network, either individually or as part of a larger torrent, the author has received no compensation. Please consider purchasing a legitimate digital copy—they are reasonably priced, and available from all major outlets. Your author thanks you.

  Copyright © 1992 by Dana Stabenow, www.stabenow.com.

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

  Author’s photo by Chris Arend, www.chrisarendphoto.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Errata