A Fatal Thaw

by Dana Stabenow

  Kate’s jaw dropped slightly, and the old woman pressed her advantage. “She was unhappy here. If she is happy in the city, perhaps it was good for her to move there. If she had stayed home, who knows? Your mother…” Ekaterina didn’t finish her sentence.

  Kate regarded her with a slowly lightening expression, and unfortunately Ekaterina chose that moment to add, “Besides, the tribe does not need weaklings. There are few enough of us left. Those that remain must be strong.”

  Kate stiffened. “Axenia demonstrated her strength when she had the courage to recognize she didn’t want to live here. She demonstrated her determination when she fought your disapproval to move to Anchorage, and she demonstrated her courage when she moved away from everything and everyone she knew, to a place with no friends or family.”

  “She abandoned her culture,” Ekaterina snapped back, and those watching from a discreet distance were struck by the similarity of their faces, one old, one young, both stubborn.

  “Maybe not,” Kate said, bristling. “Maybe she took her culture with her, to pass it on to those who weren’t lucky enough to be raised in it.”

  “No real Aleut—”

  “Define Aleut for me, emaa,” Kate said in a voice that was almost a shout. “Are we talking about the Kanuyaq River Aleuts, most of whom are descended from Ninety-Niners as much as they are Alaskan Indians? Are we talking about the Kodiak Island Aleuts, who are descended from Russian promishlyniki as much as they are the Alutiiq? Or are we talking about our own family, which in only the last four generations includes a Russian cossack, a Jewish cobbler, a Norwegian fisherman, a Rhode Island whaler and a Cherokee chief? Axenia is as much one of us as you or I, emaa. Just because she chooses not to live in the Park doesn’t make her any less an Aleut. Or any more a weakling.”

  She spun around on one heel and marched off, shoving her way through the crowd, now engaged in wrapping up the remaining food, breaking down the tables and clearing the floor for basketball action. She was angry and wasn’t paying attention to where she was going.

  “Whoa!” a male voice said when she ran full tilt into someone. Two hands caught at her arms to steady her.

  She looked up, shoving the hair out of her eyes. “Oh. Hi, George. Sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  “No problem.” He released her.

  “You get your Koreans off okay?”

  “Yeah, Lottie took them up.” He grinned. “She didn’t look any too happy about it, but I made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”

  Kate halted and stared at him. “Today?”

  He nodded. “Just a couple hours ago.”

  “You stop to get permits?”

  He looked surprised. “Of course. Dan issued them himself. We stopped on the Step long enough to check in with Park Service and then I kicked them out at the base camp.”

  “How’s the weather?” she asked automatically, not really listening to his reply.

  He shrugged. “Looking good for now, but who knows? We’re talking Big Bump here. That mother changes moods the way Princess Di does clothes.”

  Someone called his name and he turned to answer. “Damn,” Kate whispered. Then all her suspicions were true, and there was nothing she could do now to stop it all coming out. Someone bumped into her, jostling her out of her preoccupation. “Damn,” she said, more loudly, “damn, damn, damn,” and shoved her way through the crowd toward the stairwell.

  There was a long hall at the bottom of the stairs. She walked all the way down to the end, stopped in front of the door of the boys’ locker room and banged on it with a clenched fist, venting her anger on the blank and innocent steel. The door opened and Stevie Kvasnikof’s suspicious face appeared. “No girls allowed,” he growled and would have slammed the door shut if she hadn’t smacked her open palm against it and stiffened her arm.

  “I want to talk to Eknaty.”

  “Eknaty who?” he said, thrusting his jaw forward. “There’s no Eknaty in here.”

  “Eknaty Kvasnikof your brother, you idiot,” she told him. “I know he’s in there, he’s the shining hope of Niniltna’s second Class C state championship. Tell him I want to talk to him.”

  He glowered at her for a moment and then turned to yell. “Coach! Hey, Coach! Kate Shugak’s out here!”

  There was a chorus of young and rude male noises. Bernie shoved past Stevie and closed the door behind him. He stood in front of her with his hands on his hips. Any lingering, mellowing effects of the dancing upstairs had dissolved in the cold, bracing anticipation of competitive testosterone. “What do you want?” he demanded. “We got a game to play. If you want to talk to me, see me after.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you, I want to talk to Eknaty,” Kate said, patiently for her.

  “Same thing. You want to talk to Eknaty, you see me after.” He half turned and paused. “Why do you want to see him, anyway?”

  “Max Chaney’s been shot.”

  He froze. “What?”

  “Max Chaney has been shot. He’s dead.”

  He paled. “Like Lisa?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You know about Lisa?”

  His eyes fell. “Enid told me.” He looked up. “Was he? Was Max Chaney shot like Lisa?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “Jesus.” Bernie’s eyes closed and he shook his head.

  “I know,” she said. “We can’t go around anymore with our heads in the sand, hoping something will happen to make this all go away. The killer has killed twice now, has even had a try at me.” She touched the bandage at her temple. His eyes widened. “You said Eknaty was pretty upset at Lisa’s death. If he was odd-jobbing it for Lottie, he may have been there the morning Lisa got shot. He may have seen something. If I can find the rifle that shot her…” Her voice trailed away.

  Their eyes met in perfect, if almost shamed, understanding. “All right,” he said finally. “You can see him. After the game,” he said, raising his hand to stop her when she reached for the door. “And for ten minutes only. I’m not having you play mind-fuck games with my star guard in the middle of the goddam state championship. And Kate,” he said, raising one finger and poking it toward her with vicious emphasis, “if that kid’s free-throw percentage falls after tonight, I’ll be on you like stink on shit.”

  *

  When Kate reentered the gym, the tables and food and signs had disappeared, the floor had been swept clean, and the dancers had abandoned the floor for the bleachers, and were packed in together as tight as a salmon stream in July. The potlatch had left everyone feeling good, and the prospect of three solid days of basketball put the cap on everyone’s enjoyment

  Of the half dozen teams from around the state, first up in the tournament’s rotation were the Kanuyaq Kings against the Seldovia Sea Otters. Cheerleaders in letter sweaters and short skirts stamped and clapped and yelled and worked the crowd into a feeding frenzy. The Kings took to the floor in blue and gold, the Otters in red and white. The Kings’ center was half a foot taller but the Otters’ center wanted it more and Seldovia got the tip-off.

  “Two points, big team, two points,” the Otters’ cheerleaders chanted. “Defense, defense!” the home crowd yelled. The Otters tried too hard and the guards took the ball down the court without waiting for the rest of their team to take position. The lay-up rolled around the rim and out of the basket and was recovered by a King forward who broke and ran with it. His slam went dunk and the crowd went wild. Galvanized, the Otters brought the ball back in and down the court, set up a tight man-to-man offense, worked the ball around the key until their center was clear and fed it to him the way momma feeds strained pears to baby, no nonsense and down the hatch. He pivoted and hooked it in, swish. “Oh, nice one!” Kate called involuntarily, and the crowd, appreciative of good basketball whoever was doing the playing, gave the Otters an enthusiastic hand.

  No player on either team was very tall but all the players were quick, agile, and had a bad case of the wants to win. During the n
ext half hour the lead changed hands with the ball. There was very little fouling and Eknaty Kvasnikof’s legendary free throw ability was sidelined. Kate approved; she didn’t want the Kings to give the ball away but if she wanted to see a fistfight she’d go to a hockey game. The score at the half was 40-41, and both teams looked it. The players hit the locker rooms and the crowd surged outside, to enjoy the cool night air and smoke and talk and recap each play of the first half with all the gravity of Jim McKay recapping an Olympic playoff. A group of young men was passing a pint bottle around, until one of them saw Kate. The bottle disappeared. She held them motionless with a fixed, bleak stare, until they decided they had business elsewhere.

  In response to a short, sharp whistle, Mutt cantered around a corner, ears up and an expectant expression on her face. Kate fed her a handful of caribou steaks she’d pocketed from the buffet. “Sorry it’s taking so long, girl.”

  Mutt, her mouth full of caribou, uttered a muffled ‘woof’ that gave Kate to understand that she was well on her way to being forgiven.

  “Hey there, you dancing fool,” somebody said, and she turned to find Bobby skidding dangerously across a thick layer of slush that was rapidly refreezing with each dropping degree of temperature. He half rolled, half slid to a stop next to her, barely missing her toes. Mutt sent a cold, yellow stare his way, and he said hastily, “Now you know I wouldn’t dare to roll my chair across your toes, Mutt old girl. It has never been my ambition in life to serve as first course at a wolf banquet.” He looked up at Kate, and she squatted down next to him, leaning against the arm of his chair. “You really know how to shake your booty, woman. You have unsuspected talents.” She smiled with an effort, and he examined that smile. “You okay?”

  On a long sigh, she said, “Max Chaney’s been shot.”

  He nodded. “It’s all over the crowd.”

  “Who told?” she said, annoyed.

  He shrugged. “You know the bush telegraph. It was all over the Park a hour after. What are you going to do, Kate?”

  “What I have to,” she said, staring past him, unseeing. “What I should have done in the first place.”

  A big, large-knuckled hand gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze. “Don’t tear yourself up over it. That whole situation was a mess. That whole family was a mess. We all knew it was just a disaster waiting to happen. Hell, Kate, we’ve had earthquakes that were less of a surprise than Lisa Getty’s shooting.”

  “But now Chaney’s dead. If I’d moved quicker, he might not be.” She thought of the dead man the only time she’d seen him alive, his burned-out eyes exhausted in a face streaked with black makeup, his thin body tense beneath worn fatigues. “To have come all the way through the war, to have made it this far, and then to die like that.”

  “Your grandmother would say you were only trying to take care of your own.”

  Her head snapped up. “My grandmother would say a lot of things I wouldn’t agree with. My grandmother would say a lot of things I would say were full of shit.”

  He left his hand on her shoulder, a warm and sympathetic presence. “Looks like people are going back in,” he said after a while. “You coming?”

  She roused herself and gave him a wan smile. “You bet I’m coming. This game’s going into overtime. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Mutt gave a long-suffering sigh and collapsed in a heap with her nose buried pointedly beneath her tail as Kate followed Bobby inside.

  The second half was as hard fought as the first, with increasing fouls as each team tired and the final quarter ran out. With twenty seconds on the clock Eknaty Kvasnikof was fouled going in for a lay-up, and the ref called for a one-and-one. Swish, swish, and the score at the buzzer was tied, 73-73. Overtime was quick and dirty and the Kanuyaq Kings took it, much to the delight of the hometown crowd, which got to its feet and cheered both teams impartially, and indeed seemed reluctant to leave the gym at all.

  As his victorious team trotted off the floor with much less energy than they had shown trotting on, Bernie looked up and found Kate in the stands. He held up five fingers and pointed at the door. She nodded and slipped outside.

  People were standing around in excited groups, shivering in the now cold night air but reluctant to bring the evening to a close. Proud parents reenacted particularly brilliant plays made by their offspring, built up Seldovia’s defensive capabilities so that it was a miracle of talent and guts every time Niniltna scored, and argued heatedly over each and every referee call. Kate saw money change hands more than a few times.

  “Kate.” She turned to find Bernie with Eknaty Kvasnikof, the latter bundled in sweats. The coach hovered protectively over his player, reminding Kate of nothing so much as a mother duck shepherding her duckling across a pond.

  There was a tendency on the part of the crowd to muscle in next to Eknaty. Kate signaled to Mutt. Mutt rose and stretched and stalked purposefully between Kate, Bernie and Eknaty and everyone else on the school grounds. Everyone else on the school grounds halted their forward motion. Mutt didn’t bark, she didn’t even growl, she just grinned at them, her tongue lolling out between two rows of extremely large and pointed teeth, as Kate and Bernie and Eknaty disappeared around a corner.

  They found some privacy between the school’s utility outbuilding and a World War II Quonset hut that served as the administrative annex. “Bernie tell you why I wanted to talk to you?” she asked the boy.

  He was tall and slender, with smooth skin and troubled brown eyes. His straight brown hair fell over his forehead, and brushing it back was a nervous habit. He nodded without looking at her.

  “Were you at Lisa and Lottie’s that morning? The morning Lisa was shot?”

  He nodded again.

  “What time?” He said nothing, and she said, “Eknaty, what time were you there?”

  He remained silent. Kate looked at Bernie. Bernie said, “Natty.”

  That was all, but the word of a boy’s basketball coach carries a weight with that boy that will not be denied. “Early,” the boy said, mumbling the single word.

  “How early?”

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bouncing. “Lottie wanted me there at sunrise. I got there a little late, around seven.”

  “To do what?”

  He shrugged, hands dug in his pockets, kicking at the snow. “Whatever needed doing. Chop wood, do the spring service on the tractor. She said something about scraping the hull on the boat, too. She was going to tell me what to do, but she wasn’t there when I got there.” He flushed painfully, and in the harsh, pitiless glare of the school’s outdoor lights Kate saw that his eyes were filling up with tears.

  Suddenly, she knew. “Lisa was there, though, wasn’t she?” she asked him.

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  Kate’s eyes met Bernie’s. She gave her head a tiny, significant jerk. His brows drew together and he opened his mouth as if to protest. Something in her set, stern face dissuaded him. He hesitated, looked from her to the boy, and moved out of earshot.

  A quick look around satisfied her that no one had discovered them, and in a low voice Kate said, “Okay, Eknaty. What did she do?”

  He dug the toe of his sneaker into the snow. “Nothing.”

  “Eknaty, somebody shot her—”

  “I didn’t!”

  “I know you didn’t,” Kate said soothingly, “but somebody did, and I’ve got to find out who, and that means I need to know everything about her. Talk to me. What did Lisa do that day?”

  He looked hard at the blue tin side of the gym. “One of the things Lottie told me she wanted me to do was haul their winter’s trash to the dump. I’d been working at it for an hour, hour and a half, and I was bagging it up in the backyard when Lisa came out. She—” He stopped, his face scarlet.

  But Kate knew. “Did she touch you?” He nodded. “Kiss you?” He nodded again. “Maybe more than that? Maybe make love to you?”

  “It wasn’t making love,” Eknaty said in an agonized voice. Th
ere was a brief, pain-filled pause, and then the words seemed to burst forth, tumbling one over the other, as if the story had been dammed up for too long behind a barrier of shame and embarrassment and the overwhelming uncertainty and awkwardness of adolescence. “When I touch Betty”—Kate identified Betty as Betty Moonin, one of her cousins on her mother’s side, a plump, sweet-faced girl of sixteen—“it feels good. Lisa was like… she was like an animal, like… like a dog dragging its butt on the ground when it comes in heat. She smelled funny, like, I don’t know, almost sour, but sweet, too, only too sweet. She kept touching me, all over. I… I didn’t want to, but she kept touching me, all over, and I…”

  “Ssshh,” Kate said, stemming the flow of near hysteria with a soothing voice. She didn’t make the mistake of forcing another unwanted embrace on the boy. “Ssshh, now, Natty. It’s all right now.”

  “No, it’s not,” he flared, wiping tears away with a clumsy hand. “I hated it, but I couldn’t stop doing it. I know they say teenagers never think about anything else, but I really didn’t want to. But I couldn’t tell her no. She wanted me and she made me want her. I thought I was going to… I had to go along. I couldn’t stop it.”

  He hung his head. Kate saw another tear slip down his cheek and suddenly felt very old. There were a number of things she could have said then. She could have pointed out how a seventeen-year-old boy was more in the charge of his hormones than of his head. She could have explained how much distance there was between having sex and making love. She could have run down the notches on Lisa Getty’s bedpost for him.

  She waited until he’d regained some of his composure. “Eknaty,” she said, “somebody shot her. Somebody looked down the barrel of a 30.06 and sighted in on her the way you or I would a moose. Somebody pulled the trigger, knowing they were aiming at a person, a human being.” She raised her hand, pointing to her bandage. “When I started trying to find out who, they took a shot at me.” He looked up, startled out of his misery. She nodded. “I was lucky. Max Chaney, the new ranger, wasn’t. They found his body this afternoon.” He sucked in a breath. His face, already bleached out in the merciless glow of the electric lights, went white to the lips. “We have to find out who did it, Eknaty, all of it. We have to make sure they never do it again.”