by Неизвестный
She slid back into the car and coasted it down the ramp to Lambale’s level. No cars, no people.
Which spot was his? Each space was numbered and she hadn’t a clue. Move—just go for it. She chose one that felt right, killed the engine, and pulled out the key. What else? Look. Think. Shit, the flashlight. She dug it out of the parka’s pocket, wiped it down, and opened the trunk stashing it under the spare. Wait. She scrambled for it. Leave it on, explain the dead batteries.
Is he dead yet?
She lowered the trunk and leaned on it. It clicked shut. No noise. Nobody. She turned her head, scanning, probing: the garage was empty. She walked slowly—walk normal—to the emergency exit at the rear and squeezed through the heavy door onto the landing. Her footprints— two hours ago?—were gone, filled with new snow. The door clunked-clicked behind her. She exhaled.
It was still snowing. Good.
Kris backed into the shadows and looked down the wharf. At the far end, under a light, someone was walking a dog. He was headed away. The garage hid the other end of the wharf. She put on the parka, raised the hood, zippering it closed. She walked down the stairs. Kicking at the snow, she walked out onto the wharf. No one but the person walking the dog. She wandered in the other direction, occasionally scooping up a handful of snow, packing it into a ball, and lobbing it into the water. Without breaking her rhythm—scooping, packing, throwing—she pressed the car keys into one and heaved it into the night. It plopped into the black sea water, bobbed to the surface, turned clear as it absorbed water, and then, disintegrated.
She scooped, packed, and lobbed another.
Is he crawling up that hill now?
The wharf ended at a gangplank for driving cars onto ships. She walked over a metal gantry back to the shore, walked around the gangplank and back onto the wharf on the other side. It was darker on this side, fewer lights and no houses up on the hill. She threw another snowball; it curled into the night. She knelt, pulled out the pistol and packed snow around it. Standing at the edge of the wharf, she lobbed it like a grenade. It broke apart in the air and the pistol splashed sharply into the water a moment before the flying snow pattered into the water around it.
She waited a moment and then lobbed another snow grenade.
Enough.
She turned slowly around. Looking for peeking faces, unwanted eyes. She was alone.
Ben had probably registered the gun. If they found it, it would be traced to him, ballistics would match the bullets and since he was lying in bed pissing in a bottle, it would come straight to her. He would tell them she knew it was in his cupboard.
Damn. Fingerprints. She hadn’t wiped it down. Will the sea water wash them off? She looked back at the black water; the snowflakes vanished into it like magic. Was that her first mistake?
What else?
His eyes—they’d blinked.
Had someone heard the shots?
Someone could be walking down that path right now.
Kris walked off the wharf, her head down, tucked in her hood. She cut across the dark edge of the parking lot, crossed the road, and walked toward town. At the first staircase, she climbed up to Gastineau Avenue. The street was squeezed by old houses and a line of parked cars. No one was on it. Cars had chewed the snow gray.
Ten minutes later she pushed open the door to Justin’s dark apartment. Empty. Good. She shook the snow off her parka and hung it in the closet.
Alibi.
She had to make it look like she’d been there for hours. Since five. She turned on the TV and DVD player, slid in a disk, and hit fast forward. There was nothing she’d eat in the refrigerator, but the freezer was stuffed with frozen pizza. She stripped the box off one and put it in the microwave. Back to the DVD, she switched it to “play” and men and women appeared on the screen. Laundry. And a shower. Did she have the time? Go for it. Dirt and blood streaked her pants. Damn. Remember to check the parka and the mittens. She followed a hallway back and found a utility room with washer and drier. She stripped, dumped everything in the washer, added soap and kicked it off. Clothes. Check Justin’s bedroom for a shirt. She dug a thick blue shirt out of a box in his bedroom. It came to mid-thigh. Most sex he’s had in months. Shower. Can’t stay in too long. Don’t want him to find me here. The water stung; she edged up the hot until it flailed her skin. Pink. Red. Should change the bandage on this nipple. Out. Dry. Yuck, doesn’t he ever wash his towels? Shirt on. Socks? Back in his bedroom, a pair of woolen ones in the same box.
Had she over nuked the pizza? She stuck her finger in the cheese. Warm, not hot. A couple more minutes. Can’t eat yet. Check the parka for blood. Brown smears on it and smears all over the mittens. Wipe them down: sponge and cleaner under the sink. Ecoshit. Better be strong. Hang parka back in closet. Should dry clean it when get a chance.
After eight. How much longer have I got?
Listen for the washer. Spin cycle.
Manuel!
Call Manuel. Supposed to do that yesterday. Good. That will prove her here at 8:05,
“Manuel? Kris…Juneau…Yeah, I know…What am I, a Buddhist? Yeah, I know it’s Christmas…She was murdered…Thanks…Not a clue…The cop’s a white boy, you know what that means –…Exacto…Thanks, Manuel…Yeah. Adios.”
Hang up. Click. Do what you got to do. Manuel’s OK.
Washer’s stopped. Throw everything in the drier. Crank it on high.
Find a blanket, reheat pizza.
Is that everything?
The manic energy that had driven her since she’d climbed back up the slope to the trail suddenly exhausted itself. She slumped into the sofa, set the plate of pizza down beside her and, from deep in her core, began to shake.
The screen was blue—Kris couldn’t remember when the DVD had ended—and the pizza still uneaten when she heard Justin coming down the stairs. He opened the door, hair and eyelashes snow-flecked.
“Hey, this is great.” Justin smiled and shook himself out of his jacket. It was a new one. No bullet holes. “How long have you been here?”
“Since about five.”
“Really? I guessed seven-thirty, by your footprints on the steps.”
Oh shit.
“Went out for a smoke.”
“Should’ve guessed. Hey, you’re wearing my Klondike shirt. Good to see some skin.” He looked at her legs showing under the blanket.
“I took a shower and did a laundry.”
“Didn’t like the pizza?” he said, looking at the uneaten slices on her plate.
She touched one, it was cold. “I forgot about it.”
Justin looked at her. “You OK?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “Where’ve you been?”
“Work. It took me forever to install the new version of Big Bruiser.”
“Big Bruiser?”
“System scheduler. The old one ran in Windows. Talk about antique. The new one runs in Linux. Not any better, really, but at least it’s compatible with the rest of the system.” Justin picked up her plate. “Mind if I heat this up?”
She shook her head and he stuck it into the microwave.
“Beer?” He poured himself a glass.
“No, thanks.”
He emptied the glass and refilled it. “What were you so steamed about this morning down at the station?”
Kris looked at him blankly. This morning was a long time ago. Oh. She considered. Justin didn’t need to know about Ben being father to her brother.
“He’s such an asshole.”
“Barrett?”
Kris didn’t answer. Ben. The numbness that buffered her crumbled away and a clammy chill settled in its place. She remembered Ben’s voice—cold and angry. Why did he have to yell at her?
“I think he’s doing a decent job,” Justin said.
“He talks down to me.” Kris was dismissive; she didn’t want to talk about it.
Justin collected the pizza carton and squashed it into a trash can under the sink.
“Did you ever call
that number?”
“What number?”
“The one we found in the cookie tin. At Vern’s.”
“Oh, yeah.” Scramble. “It was disconnected. All I got was a recording.”
“I wonder if the phone company would tell us whose it was and when it was disconnected.” He glanced at her. She shrugged; she wanted him to forget about it. “Why don’t you call me at work with it tomorrow and I’ll see what I can find out.”
“OK.” Shit, he wouldn’t forget.
The microwave beeped. Justin pulled out the pizza, picked up his glass, and walked over to the sofa, pushing aside newspapers so that he could sit down next to her. She shook her head when he offered her a slice.
“Did you see my picture in the paper today? Good article, too.”
Kris shook her head again and he handed it to her.
“You know. Something’s been bugging me. Yesterday, in Barrett’s office, near the end when he was asking you about Ben, you said that the last time he’d been up to his cabin was six years ago.”
Kris nodded. It was a good picture of Justin on the front page. He had the piece of pipeline in one hand and the jacket with the bullet holes in the other.
“You’re sure he said six years?” He looked at her, chewing; strings of cheese connected his mouth to the piece in his hand.
“Uh huh.”
“Well, remember when we went up to his place after we’d been down Thane? He said then that he was last out there the winter after the Koyukuk flooded. That was 2013, two years ago. I know the guy who headed up the emergency response and relief effort for the governor.”
“So?”
“He didn’t tell us how long he’d really been down Thane, either.”
He didn’t tell her he and Evie had a boy together, either.
“Seems curious. Something you might want to ask him.”
“Can’t.”
Justin had just taken another bite, and she watched him reduce it before asking her why.
“He hurt his back. I went out and got him a nurse and he got pissed off. He jumped all over me.”
“Alaska bushman won’t take help from nobody.”
“Hang on,” Kris said and walked down the hall to check her clothes. They were hot. She changed, dropped his shirt in his bedroom, and came back into the front room. Justin was working on another slice.
Kris looked again at the newspaper. The article spelled her name wrong. Chris.
“How old is he?” Justin asked.
“I don’t know. He got up here in the fifties, though. Worked on radars on the north slope.”
“The DEW line. Mid-nineteen fifties and sixties, which puts him in his mid-seventies today. So he was getting a Bonus six years ago.”
Kris looked at him, lost.
“If he was getting a Bonus, we have his address on file. We can tell where he was getting his check sent to.”
“What Bonus?”
“Longevity Bonus. Remember I told you I work on the system that sends monthly checks to Alaskans over sixty-five?”
“Oh, yeah.” Kris couldn’t remember him telling her.
“So you want to go look?”
“Where?”
“At the office. I’ve got keys to the state office building. If we want to go now, we’ve got to move. Big Bruiser’s scheduled to kick off at nine. It’s ten till.”
Checking up on Ben was pointless; Evie’s murderer was dead. But she couldn’t tell Justin that. “OK,” she said.
__________
It was still snowing. The sidewalks were covered with a foot of snow, so they walked in the streets. Orange trucks, with whirling yellow lights, rumbled in and out of sight behind the city blocks spinning dirty snow off plow blades like breaking waves.
Kris followed Justin into the state office building through a door on a loading dock.
“It’s easier, ALB is on this floor.”
“What about security?”
“Most of them know me. Any time month-end blows, I’m camped out down here all night mothering it along.”
Justin opened the inner door leading from the loading dock into a long, windowless corridor that looked like it had been bored through the belly of the building. They walked down it, turning left into a narrower hall. Justin punched buttons on a panel and a line of light appeared under a door at the far end; he opened it with another key.
“This is it. Home. I probably spend more conscious hours here than anywhere else.” He led her back to a corner cubicle packed with manuals, stacks of paper, and the scattered guts of electronics. On the desk were a couple of PCs. “Let me reschedule Big Bruiser.” Justin booted a machine and Kris lost interest. Behind his desk, a window blackened by the night reflected her lighted forehead and chin. The night pooled in the hollows of her cheeks and the cavities of her eyes. She ran her fingers through her hair, black and coarse, shaking it out on her shoulders.
What if they find him?
“OK. Big Bruiser’s out of the way. Let me fire up the system and take a look at Ben’s file.” Justin waited while the computer did its thing.
“What was his last name? Stewart, right?” More clicks. “Whoops. We got a few Ben Stewarts. Must be this one, only one with a Juneau address.”
Kris watched over his shoulder. She couldn’t follow the boxes and windows that leapt around the screen at Justin’s frenzied clicks.
“He started getting his checks at the Third Street address here in Juneau last May. Before that, he got them at a P. O. box in Fairbanks. No change of address since 2006. So if he went up to the Alatna, two winters ago, his checks kept going to Fairbanks.”
“What about before 2006?”
“Can’t say, that was the year we put in the new system and the old system didn’t keep historical data. Let’s see. No remote status either. Remotes are people who live in the bush and can’t get to a post office every month. So we hold their checks until they come out. You figure if he was at his cabin for the winter, he’d be on remote. Let me pull his file.” Justin left the cubicle. A file drawer screeched and in a second he was back with a manila folder which he dropped on the desk and started paging through.
“Yup. Here’s a remote application for ’99. Looks like he was remote every winter through ‘06. Six years ago.”
“What’s going on?” Kris wasn’t tracking.
“The computer thinks he was in Fairbanks the winter of ’13-14, which was the winter after the flood. But I’m sure he said he was last up at his cabin then.” Justin looked at her but his eyes were focused in space.
“Maybe they were forwarded. Like up to Allakaket,” she said.
He clicked up another box on the computer. “No, look, all his checks that winter were cashed on the third or fourth of each month. No time to forward them north.”
“Maybe someone else deposited the checks for him,” Kris said.
“Wouldn’t do any good. He’s still got to sign the stub. Recipients have to attest that they are in state each month they get a Bonus. You can’t get a Bonus if you’re out of state.” Justin riffled through a stack of papers and pulled out a piece of light blue paper about a third the size of a normal sheet. He pointed to the signature line. “They have to sign this and send it back here.”
“They have to do this every month?” Kris asked.
“Yeah.”
“You check all the signatures?”
“No, only that there’s one there.” Justin was slumped in his chair, diddling with the mouse. “Shit.”
It was the first time Kris had heard him swear. “So, someone else could’ve signed it,” she said.
“Of course” Justin sat up and started clicking again. He wrote down numbers, his finger following them down the screen. “Batch numbers. We digitize all the stubs and the number tells us which batch a stub was processed in.”
Kris followed him to the other side of the office. It was dark; the lights weren’t on. Justin opened a file and began flicking through CDs checking their label
s against the numbers on his sheet.
“We’re old school—none of this is kept online.”
“Let’s start with the middle of the winter. January.” He pulled a disk and went back to his computer.
“Check me. They’re five hundred stubs to a batch; we have to check each one until we find Ben’s. Look here.” He pointed to a name and address printed in the upper right hand corner of the stub as it flashed on the screen. He started scrolling through the batch.
Kris focused on each one as they flashed past. Justin saw it first. Ben’s name was in the corner and on the signature line was an angry scrawl.
“Let’s make a copy.” Justin printed the screen and the printer on his desk came to life. He pulled a green sheet out of Ben’s folder and held it next to his copy of the stub.
“Bingo.” He handed the pages to her.
The signatures were not the same. Ben’s, on the green sheet, was stiff and angular, nothing like the one on the stub. She looked up. Justin stared at the signature, thinking.
“He probably went in in November, just after freeze-up and came out in April before breakup. So let’s look at the stubs for November and December and April and May and see if the signatures change.”
It took them twenty minutes to learn that Justin had been right. The last stub Ben had signed that winter was in the first week of November; the first stub he signed the next spring was in May. Someone else signed the others.
“Pretty good work, don’t you think?” Justin was leaning back in his chair, the messy pile of Ben’s file and copies of the stubs on the desk before him. “This would get him kicked off the program, if anybody here found out about it. I wonder why the hell he didn’t just go on remote. We’d keep his checks during the winter and send them to him when he came out in the spring. Not like he could do anything with the money sitting in his cabin up the Alatna.”