She was up on the trunk and halfway across before the trooper caught up with her. The trunk shook beneath his added weight, and then shook again when Jack and Johnny mounted it.
It wasn’t simple erosion, others had walked that trunk before her, and not just Johnny. Once on the bank, she could see a faint but clearly discernible trail leading through the brush, a trail which appeared to parallel the direction of Amartuq Creek. Could be a game trail, she thought. Certainly could have started out as one, and been used by the occasional sport fisherman.
Not to mention the occasional murderer.
A hand grabbed her arm. “Hold it, Kate,” Jim said. “We can’t leave her for the critters to eat on.”
“They left her alone overnight, didn’t they?” she said impatiently.
“So we got lucky,” he said. “Come on.”
“You go, you bring her out in the skiff. I’ll meet you on the beach, at the Meanys’ setnet site.”
“You take the body, I’ll take the trail.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right,” she said, and was gone.
Before Jim could stop them, Jack and Johnny had shoved past and vanished in her wake. He swore once, and then, realizing he was alone with a body that would only ripen with the day, taking any forensic revelations it had with it, he turned back to the grim task of removing both it and himself from four-legged temptation.
Sixteen
THE UNDERGROWTH WAS STILL WET from the rain, and they were soon soaked through to the skin. No one complained, not even Kate.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said, crashing through the brush behind her. “Johnny should have told you what he saw.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“I told him not to.”
“I see.” The trail turned sharply and she passed beneath a low-lying branch without giving warning of its existence. She was pleased with the resulting crack of wood on bone, followed by a yelp of pain and a curse.
“You okay, Dad?”
“I’m all right,” Jack muttered, and raised his voice. “I know it was stupid, Kate. I know it was interfering. Hell, it was probably obstruction of justice. I just—” They came to a dry creekbed with steep sides. The trail led down into it and up again, and without hesitation Kate bent her knees and slid down it and up the opposite side.
Breathless behind her, Jack continued, “From your descriptions of the Meany family, I figured it was the daughter and the summer hire. But I didn’t think it had anything to do with Meany’s murder.” She glanced briefly over her shoulder. “Okay, okay, everything has to do with murder.”
He quick-stepped over the gnarled root of a very old Sitka spruce. “I just didn’t want Johnny involved. Not in any of it, not even peripherally. I’m sorry,” he repeated, like a mantra, or a magic charm powerful enough to exonerate himself. “I—”
“Don’t be an idiot,” was her comforting reply, and his head snapped up to see her stopped on the trail, smiling at him. “You’re supposed to be overprotective, you’re his father. It’s in the job description.”
He stared at her for a moment. Then in a movement so quick she didn’t have time to dodge back out of the way, his hand whipped out and caught the back of her neck.
Johnny, who had fallen a little behind, came panting up from the rear. “Jeez, you guys!” He pushed through the bushes to get around them and was off up the trail like a hare in front of the hounds.
Confession, absolution and a Mariners cap and Johnny was ready once again to take on the world. Boys of thirteen believe they are strong and true and immortal and invincible, and drawing attention to the fact that they are only aspiring heroes with a long apprenticeship ahead of them is tactless in the extreme. Kate didn’t try, merely fell in behind.
Jack, crashing along in their rear, said, “Who looks good to you for this one?”
“It has to be the same person who killed Meany.”
He agreed, but played devil’s advocate anyway, a routine they’d performed a thousand times before. “Why?”
“He made it back to Alaganik after all, and somebody finished him off there, not Cordova, like I thought.”
“You thought he’d been killed in Cordova, and his body brought back to Alaganik?”
“Yes. Gull saw Meany trying to tie up his drifter at ten o’clock. Said Meany rammed the slip and stripped the gears.”
“This would be Shitting Seagull of Intergalactic Space Dock fame?”
“He’s a perfectly reliable source,” Kate snapped.
There was a brief silence as they pushed through the brush, which Jack broke with a reluctant laugh. “Jesus. Kate, we’ve got to talk.”
“And Mary Balashoff saw him drop anchor in Alaganik two hours later. She said he was clumsy, stumbling around the deck. That wasn’t the man I saw when he delivered on the opener, so I thought it was somebody else. The boy, maybe, or the brother. Then we found out about the fight.”
“I’ve met Tim Sarakovikoff,” Jack observed. “If I’d had that young man teaching me my manners, I might not be walking any too steady my own self.”
“True. So Meany did make it back to Alaganik, which means he was killed in Alaganik.”
“And you think Dani Meany saw something she shouldn’t have, and got dead for it.”
“Yes.”
“What was she like?”
She thought for another ten feet. “Lolita with heart,” she said at last.
He digested this as the trail narrowed to snake around a knoll of mountain hemlock. “You liked her.”
She remembered Dani’s angry face during Kate’s interrogation of her brother in the Meanys’ cabin. “I admired her loyalty to her brother.”
“Was she capable of blackmail?”
Kate’s laugh was short and unamused.
“I see.” He followed in silence for a moment. “So? Who looks good to you for Meany?”
“You mean besides the Anchorage family he screwed out of the setnet site, the setnetter whose gear he cut loose, the aunties whose fish camp he wanted to usurp, the husbands of the other wives he screwed and the fishermen whose strike he broke?”
“Besides those,” Jack agreed.
She shrugged. “The family looks best, like always.”
“Morgan’s First Law,” he agreed cheerfully.
“Now excluding Dani. And Frank’s got an alibi.”
“So. The wife or the brother.”
She nodded. “They were here, anyway. The brother’s got a weak-kneed alibi, but I haven’t been able to figure out how he’d get from the beach to the drifter without anybody seeing him. I’m telling you, Jack, I’m still surprised there was only one death that night. It was totally nuts out.”
“Nuts how?”
“Fourth of July nuts. They were jousting with boat hooks and water-skiing on hatch covers and playing chicken, for crissake!”
“Uh-huh.” Jack nodded. “Maybe drinking a little, too?”
Kate snorted. “Yeah, maybe. Anyway, pretty much everybody was pretty much up all night. If the brother went out to the drifter, if he wasn’t spotted, he would have been run over and sunk.”
“Or just lost in the crowd,” Jack pointed out.
Kate had thought of that, too. “True.”
“And the wife?”
Kate remembered Marian’s hurtle down the beach to their skiff. You’re sure he’s dead? she had asked them. You’re sure? Kate gave a mental shrug. It wouldn’t be the first time a suspect had acted the part of the grieving survivor. And now Dani was dead, Dani who had been the only witness to whether or not Marian had spent the night of the Fourth in the cabin. Kate could understand, even approve of the impulse to kill Cal Meany. But a teenage daughter as well? Still, “Meany was strangled. His trachea was crushed.”
“By hand?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rope burns, like that?”
“Jim didn’t mention any.”
“Then there weren’t any. How strong did she look to you?”
&nb
sp; “Not that strong.”
They shoved through wet salmonberry bushes. “She still could have done it, Kate. Remember the time it took us plus six cops to subdue that woman up on Hillside?”
“I remember.”
He raised his voice. “Johnny! Slow down!”
*
After what seemed like an unnecessarily long time thrashing through the brush the three emerged together into a clearing. Beyond the clearing was the mouth of the Amartuq. Through the trees they could see beach, driftwood, drifters and Freya riding peacefully at anchor. The tide was almost all the way in, the ceiling had come back down and it was threatening rain again.
Kate turned east. A small plume of smoke spiraled up out of the chimney of the small cabin. The trail they were on led almost directly to it.
“That the Meanys’ cabin?” Jack said.
She nodded.
“Convenient.”
She nodded again. “Johnny?”
“What, Kate?” The boy’s color was back to normal, the awful beginnings of shock checked by the excitement of the chase.
“How long does a game of Monopoly last?”
He was taken aback, convinced this was some elaborate grown-up joke with a punch line that was going to come at his expense.
“I mean it,” she said. “How long?”
Johnny grinned. “Depends on how good one of the players is.” He added, “And on how you play.”
Kate frowned. “You mean there are different ways to play?”
“Uh-huh. You can deal out the deeds, that shortens the game a lot. And if you don’t put any money in Free Parking, the game could last forever.”
“What’s the shortest game you ever played?” Jack said.
Cocky, Johnny said, “Twenty-three minutes.”
“You win?”
With the flip of a hand Johnny dismissed the question as not worth answering.
“So,” Jack said, “Neil Meany could have come home earlier than he told you, seen the drifter drop anchor on his way back to the cabin, taken a little detour and killed his brother, and been back on shore and in his bed before anyone was the wiser.”
“Or Calvin Meany could have come ashore for a little TLC after his beating in Cordova and gotten a little more than he expected from his wife,” Kate said.
“Let’s go find out whodunit,” Jack said. “Johnny, keep behind us. If there’s action, run.”
“Daa-aad!”
“Run,” Jack repeated firmly, and in another of those odd flashbacks Kate remembered the bear charge and her father telling her to run. She hadn’t. She saw the determination in Johnny’s eyes, and knew he wouldn’t, either.
She led the way to the cabin. Her knock on the door echoed hollowly, and for a moment she thought there was going to be no reply. Then the door swung inward.
A fire burned briskly in the barrel stove, and there were signs of packing, a suitcase open on one lower bunk with a strip of bright blue material hanging out of it, a box on the counter half full of toiletries.
No one was home. This fact registered at the same time they heard a shout. Kate turned to see Marian Meany coming down the beach at a fast clip, son in tow. “Where’s my daughter? Have you seen my daughter?” She skidded to a halt, panting and disheveled. “My daughter is gone.
She was gone when we got up.” She grabbed Kate and shook her. “Where is she? Where is she?”
Over her shoulder Frank was frightened and belligerent about it. “Where is she? Have you seen her?”
It was to him she spoke. “Bring your mother inside.”
Something in the quality of her reply must have warned them. Frank’s face went white. Marian gave a low moan and sagged. Jack caught her before she fell, only to be shoved away by her son. “I’ll take her.” Frank put an arm around his mother’s waist and assisted her inside. Kate and Jack followed them in. Johnny remained on the porch, staring in the open door with wide eyes.
“I knew something was wrong, I knew it.” The words were wrenched out as if by force, and seemed to drain all the energy from Marian’s body. She slumped into a chair. “She wouldn’t talk to me, she just wouldn’t, and I couldn’t force her. Could I?” Marian raised her head. Her face was wet with tears. “Could I?”
Frank, looking far older than he should have, said quietly, “Where is my sister?”
Kate said, as gently as she could, knowing it wouldn’t do any good, “She’s dead, Frank. I’m sorry.”
Marian stared at her through blurred eyes for a moment, and then she screamed. It was a loud, long, drawn-out scream that raised the hair on everyone’s neck. It went on and on and on, and might never have stopped if Anne Flanagan had not stepped around Johnny, frozen in the doorway, and dealt Marian Meany a deliberate slap across the face. The sharp crack of skin on skin echoed around the cabin, and Marian’s scream cut off abruptly. She stared at the minister dazedly for a split second before dissolving into sobs.
“It’s all right,” Anne Flanagan said. “It’s all right, Marian.” She shouldered Frank to one side and drew the other woman into her arms. “Shhh, now. Everything’s going to be all right. Shhhh, now.” She looked over the sobbing woman’s shoulder. “Could somebody maybe make some tea? And if there’s any liquor in the house, now would be the time to get it out.”
“I heard that.” A grim-faced Jack rifled the cupboards, lit the camp stove and put on the teakettle.
Kate motioned Frank outside. He followed, stumbling a little. “When did you first notice Dani was missing?”
His eyes were dull with grief and fatigue, his voice numb with grief. “This morning. We woke up and she was gone.”
“So she must have gone out last night sometime. You didn’t hear her leave?”
He shook his head. “What happened to her?” He swallowed. “Did she—was she—”
Kate, watching him intently, said, “Was she what? Murdered? Yes. Somebody hit her over the head with a chunk of wood. She either died at once or fell face forward into the water and drowned.”
His white face turned green. He stumbled to the edge of the deck and vomited over the side. She waited, motioning Johnny back when he would have gone to help the other boy. They waited. He retched until he couldn’t bring anything else up, and staggered over to the bench and sat down limply. “Frank,” Kate said, “I know this is the worst possible time for you to have to answer questions, but I have to know everything you know, and I have to know it now. What was Dani doing up the creek last night?”
“She was meeting Mac,” he said, his voice exhausted. “She’d been meeting him on that little beach all month, since after the first day Dad hired him.”
Kate frowned. “You’re sure it was Mac she was going to meet last night?”
“Who else could it have been?”
“Where is Mac?”
“I don’t know.” The boy looked around as if expecting to see the hired man spring out of the air.
“Was he here this morning when you got up?”
“No.”
“So they met last night, and neither of them came back?”
“I guess so. I don’t know, I didn’t see him, either.” His eyes filled with tears. “He sleeps out back in a hammock. Uncle Neil said he got up early and went hunting.”
Hunting? Kate thought. In July? “Where is your uncle? Was he home this morning?”
He nodded. “Yes. We were all here. All except Dani.” A tear slid down his cheek.
“Where is he now?” He didn’t answer and Kate, remorseless, repeated, “Where is your uncle now, Frank?”
“Ms. Shugak.” Kate looked up to find Anne Flanagan in the doorway. “I think that’s enough. The boy’s had a considerable shock, and it’s not helping him to have you hammer away at him.”
“I’m not enjoying it any more than he is, Ms. Flanagan.” Kate said curtly, “but a young girl has been murdered, and every minute that goes by, every second, lets her killer get that much farther away. Where is your uncle, Frank?”
/> He blinked at her, as if she might be a little fuzzy around the edges to him. “I don’t know. He didn’t come with us to the Flanagans’. I don’t know,” he repeated in that same monotone. Frank Meany had had as much as he could take and no more.
A low buzz sounded from the mouth of the creek, and Kate looked up to see Chopper Jim grounding Old Sam’s skiff. “Johnny. Find a tarp and take it down to the skiff. Move!” she said when he hesitated.
“There’s one under the porch,” Frank said, his head leaning back against the railing, his voice exhausted.
Johnny looked at Jack, and Jack nodded. Johnny went.
“Ms. Shugak.” Anne Flanagan’s voice was calm but urgent. “Do you think Mac McCafferty killed Cal and Dani?”
“No. Mac McCafferty had nothing to gain from these murders. I don’t think he killed either Cal or Dani.” She paused.
“What?” Jack said.
She met his eyes. “I don’t think he killed them, but I think he knows who did.”
Jack examined her shrewdly. “And you do, too.”
“Well, hell. Jack,” she said with asperity, “who’s left? Ms. Flanagan, what kind of Monopoly game did you play with Neil Meany the night of the Fourth?”
The other woman stared at her with gathering anger. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Dammit, did you play the short way? Did you—” Kate had forgotten what Johnny called it.
Jack said, “Did you deal out the deeds?”
The minister’s mouth tightened, but she answered. “Yes, we did.”
“How long did the game last?”
“I don’t know.” Anne Flanagan made a visible effort to collect her thoughts. “Neil won. He’s very good at it.” She paused. “It was a short game,” she said slowly. “He bankrupted the girls in nothing flat. I held on longer, but not much.”
Kate told Jack, “Any Monopoly game I’ve ever played lasted three hours or more. I figured Neil Meany was at the Flanagan site long past the time his brother made it back to Alaganik, and Chopper Jim says the time of death was figured around midnight. Roughly.”
From where he came to a halt on the beach below the deck, Chopper Jim said, “There’s a lot of leeway in that figure because of the time he spent in the water.”
Killing Grounds Page 19