Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 07 - Breakup

by Breakup(lit)

  marital spats to the list.

  Bang! went the distant sound of the pistol a sixth time.

  Especially when Cindy was so well armed.

  George gave a long, shaky breath and climbed to his feet. "She's empty,

  now, anyway."

  "It was an automatic," Kate said, wriggling free and standing up. Her

  Nikes were wet, dammit. Kate hated getting her feet wet. It ranked right

  up there with turning her back on a bear.

  Three more shots sounded in rapid succession, followed by a whoop of

  triumph from Ben, a snarl of frustration from Cindy and the snapping of

  tree limbs. "Now she's empty," Kate said, relieved.

  "Unless it was a staggered clip," George said. "Staggered clips have

  fourteen rounds."

  "Shit," Kate said, with feeling. They both listened intently, but

  65 there were no more shots. Kate bent to brush ineffectually at the mud

  clinging to her knees. "Let's just hope she didn't have a spare clip."

  "Gee, thanks for sharing, Shugak. You're always such a comfort to me."

  "Mr. and Mrs. Baker?" Kate said belatedly. "Are you all right?" There

  was no immediate answer. Alarmed, she started around the truck, where

  she found Mr. and Mrs. Baker and the widower seated in a row on the

  ground. The widower's hands were over his ears, Mr. Baker's over his

  eyes, Mrs. Baker's over her mouth. Kate, reprehensibly, laughed.

  Mr. Baker sensed movement and uncovered his eyes. He blinked up at Kate,

  rose a little unsteadily to his feet and assisted his wife to hers. Kate

  rearranged her face into a solemn expression and waited for it. It

  wasn't long in coming. "Are you quite all right, Ms. Shugak?"

  "Quite all right, Mr. Baker," she replied, with admirable gravity. "And

  yourselves?

  "Oh, quite," he said. He brushed at his once impeccably creased chinos.

  The seat was soaked through to where you could see what he was wearing

  beneath. Boxers. Only in Boston. "Who, may I ask, was that most

  extraordinary young woman?"

  "Ah," Kate said. "That was Cindy Bingley."

  "And the young man was her husband."

  "Yes."

  "Who appears to have committed some sort of transgression."

  Kate was beginning to be amused. "Some sort."

  Mrs. Baker weighed in. "She certainly seems to have a temper."

  "She certainly does," Mr. Baker agreed, and if Kate was not demented,

  there was even something approaching a twinkle in his eye.

  That was it? Evidently that was it. Kate didn't see any wounds or blood,

  and by this time they had acquired an interested crowd, everyone from

  inside the post office as well as most of the residents of the village

  and a few AWOL high school students, about

  66 three hundred in all and all clustered around George's pancaked plane.

  There was much shaking of heads, a great deal of sagacious commentary,

  which Ceorge bore with gritted teeth, and a few offers of real help,

  which Kate promptly accepted on his behalf. They slid the plane sideways

  until the wing was free of the truck, and George, outrage evident in

  every line of his thin, angular body, marched off to fetch the crane

  truck while the rest of them unloaded everything they could out of the

  plane.

  Between the crane and a dozen willing pairs of hands, the plane was

  right side up again thirty minutes later. "Thanks," George said in a

  gruff voice. The prop was bent into an artistic curve but the wing tip

  wasn't and nothing else looked much hurt, although Kate knew that the

  bent prop alone meant a complete teardown of the engine. George was a

  certified A and P mechanic, but it wasn't much consolation, as he would

  be spending a lot of hours on the ground when he should have been in the

  air making money.

  Everyone in the crowd was thinking the same thing, and Demetri Totemoff

  cleared his throat. "George, you need a plane to keep the business

  going. I'll trade you hours on my 172. It's got the Lycoming conversion,

  so you can get in and out most of the places you do with the Cub."

  George's expression lightened. "When's your annual due?"

  "September."

  "What about you? What will you be flying in the meantime?"

  "The Tripacer's at Tyson's in Anchorage. He says the annual's done and

  the plane's ready for pickup. You know that cantankerous bastard, he

  wants it off the lot yesterday. We could take the 172 in, I can fly the

  Tripacer back, and you can take the 172."

  George considered. Demetri was proposing an hour of maintenance in

  exchange for every hour in the air, the bulk of which would not be

  payable for another five months, and he could work

  67 on the Cub when he wasn't in the air. "Deal." He stuck out his hand.

  "Thanks, Demetri."

  They shook on it. Kyle Kirkus, one of the schoolteachers who had only

  been in the Bush since the school year began the previous September,

  blurted, "You're going to loan him your plane? He just wrecked his own!"

  Demetri looked at Kirkus with his usual impassive stare and said flatly,

  "At this moment, George is the safest pilot in Alaska."

  Kirkus looked around for support, found none and wandered off, shaking

  his head.

  The Cub was rolled across the airstrip to George's hangar, the rest of

  the crowd following with the seats. Once inside, it became obvious that

  the inside of the Cub and its seats were in urgent need of immediate

  swabbing down, preferably with an ammonia- based, industrial-strength

  cleaner, but this task the helpers seemed to feel George was capable of

  handling on his own, and scattered for home.

  Kate crossed the "Strip and discovered that the Bakers had wandered into

  the post office, presumably to see if the same wanted posters hung on

  the walls there as in the post office on Beacon Hill, although now that

  she thought of it, she was pretty sure the Bakers didn't do anything as

  plebeian as post their own mail. The widower stood next to the truck,

  staring vacantly off into some never-never land, surrounded by several

  villagers who had by some subtle osmosis become aware of the bear attack

  and clustered around in an awkward attempt at condolence.

  She headed up the single road that connected the houses of the village

  to the riverbank. The NorthCom shack was fifty feet up from the Niniltna

  school, and it was just that, a shack made of plywood stapled to a

  two-by-four frame and covered with tar paper. Behind it stood a 112-foot

  steel tower surmounted by a satellite dish.

  Inside, unfinished interior walls leaked pink insulation all over the

  plywood floor and a tiny woodstove burned red-hot. A counter

  68 divided the work space from the living space, if you could call one

  room with a camp cot and no running water living space. The work area

  was a counter with a bank of electronic gear stacked on it, surrounded

  by a litter of notepads and a scattering of ballpoint pens. A thin

  curtain of faded, fraying flowered cotton divided the two. The air was

  redolent of hot grease. "Mel?" Kate said. "You in here?"

  A head crowned with shaggy dishwater-blond hair poked around the

  curtain. "Well, hey, Kate, how you doing?" The rest of his slight frame,<
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  clad in jeans and bright red aloha shirt, followed, one hand holding a

  plate of chicken-fried caribou steaks. Kate's mouth watered. She must

  have looked extremely needy, because Mel grinned and held out the plate.

  Melvin Haney was young, the only kind of people Northern Communications,

  Inc., could bribe to stay this long at remote Bush earth stations with

  their primitive living conditions, although working a month on and a

  month off eased the pain somewhat. So did the salary, which astronomical

  sum Mel considered barely adequate compensation for having to use a

  chemical toilet he had to empty himself. A graduate of East High in

  Anchorage, where he'd spent a thoroughly enjoyable five years majoring

  mostly in trouble, his father, a NorthCom executive, had given him a

  choice: the job in Niniltna offering the Park population communication

  with the outside world via satellite, or a one-way ticket Outside. Mel

  had been to Disneyland, and after one look at the L.A. freeways had

  decided that while Outside was a nice place to visit, no sane person

  would want to live there. To his own surprise and to his father's

  amazement he had proved a success at the Niniltna site, and the rest,

  along with a succession of girlfriends provided by Kate's extended

  family, was history.

  Kate liked him, scrawny, cheeky little squirt that he was. "Hey, Mel,"

  she said, around a mouthful of steak. "Good stuff."

  "The best." A generous and kindhearted young man, he put the plate on

  the counter between them. "What can I do you for?"

  69 "You can marry me if you can cook this good," Kate mumbled around

  another mouthful.

  "Nah," he said, snagging his own steak before they were all gone. "I

  know you, you'd be the jealous type, you wouldn't let me play the field."

  "True." She swallowed. "Can you raise the trooper's office in Tok?"

  "Really, Kate." He licked his fingers and did his best to look hurt. "I

  can raise the Viking Lander on this thing if I have to."

  "You've been spending way too much time with Bobby Clark," Kate said.

  Mel laughed and didn't deny it. "What's going on?"

  "Bear attack up to the mine."

  He made a face. "Is it bad?"

  "She's dead." Remembering how dead, Kate lost her appetite and shoved

  the plate of steaks to one side.

  "I'd call that bad, all right," he said soberly. "Who was it?"

  "Don't know. EveVi if I did know her, I probably couldn't say now." In

  answer to his look, she added, "There's not much of her face left."

  He shuddered, and moved to adjust a switch on a bank of electronic

  equipment. He punched some numbers into a keypad and gave her the

  handset. It rang twice before the other end picked up. "Alaska State

  Troopers, Tok."

  Kate recognized the voice. "Elaine, this is Kate Shugak in Niniltna."

  "Well, hey, Kate. Long time no see. You survive the winter okay?"

  "The winter was fine. I may not make it through breakup."

  "Oh, yeah? What's up?"

  "Bear attack. One woman dead."

  "They're up, are they?"

  "They're up and grouchy," Kate said. "Can you tell Jim to rod on over

  here with a body bag?"

  70 "Wasn't he just over there picking up another body?"

  "Yes."

  "Breakup," Elaine said. "Hang on." She muffled the receiver for a moment

  before coming back on. "He's on his way, Kate. Don't you just love this

  time of year?"

  "I downright adore it, Elaine. Tell Jim I've got the remains rolled in a

  tarp in the back of a truck parked on the Niniltna airstrip next to the

  post office."

  "Okay. He'll be there inside the hour."

  Mel accepted the handset and signed off. "Want me to call Dan O'Brian next?"

  In Alaska, every accidental death required an investigation and an

  autopsy, and the ones involving close and fatal encounters with wildlife

  usually involved a fish hawk or a ranger as well. "Might as well."

  She visited with Mel for a while before returning to the airstrip. In

  the post office she checked her mail, avoided looking at the ubiquitous

  piles of tax forms stacked on the counter and went back outside in time

  to see Dan's Super Cub lining up on final. He landed, taxied to the head

  of the runway and got out. "Just couldn't wait to see me again, could

  you, Kate?" he said cheerfully.

  "It's not pretty," she warned him as he began to unroll the tarp.

  "It never is," he agreed, but when the body was bared the muscles in his

  face shifted. Kate watched him in silence. She had been too preoccupied

  with her own problems that morning to take a good look at him, which was

  a shame, because the view was not bad.

  Armed with a degree in forestry, Dan O'Brian had come into the Parks

  Service by way of the Everglades in Florida, where he discovered an

  aversion to snakes, and Volcanoes National Park on Hawaii, where he

  discovered an even greater aversion to lava.

  He transferred to Alaska just in time for the d-2 lands bill, which

  doubled the size of the Park. He'd been chief ranger for

  71 fourteen years, steering a course between the Scylla of the rights of

  the Natives and homesteaders and miners around whose property the Park

  had been created, and the Charybdis of his responsibilities as custodian

  of twenty million acres of public property. He succeeded so well that

  not once had he ever been shot at on duty, which had to be some kind of

  record for a federal employee in the Alaskan bush. Off duty was another

  matter. As much of a skirt chaser as Chopper Jim, he was less successful

  at it, and thus less irritating to local husbands, but they couldn't

  shoot at a state trooper. A park ranger made a not disgraceful second-best.

  About the time Kate started comparing the blue of his eyes with the blue

  of Chopper Jim's, she came to her senses and pulled herself together.

  She'd always had a healthy respect for the sexual urge but fantasizing

  over a man she'd known as a friend for more than fourteen years veered

  dangerously close to the ridiculous. She was angry with herself, and

  deep down, a little afraid. Control was very important to Kdle Shugak,

  and over the last two days control seemed to be slipping from her grasp.

  "Nope," Dan said heavily, "not pretty at all." He quietly refolded the

  tarp around the body. He looked up and surprised a look of fierce

  concentration on her face. "What?"

  "Nothing."

  He waited, but that was all she was going to say. "So." He nodded at the

  still figure in the tarp. "When did you find her?"

  With a slight shock Kate realized that it was almost six o'clock. "Less

  than two hours ago. Her husband said they went up to take a look at the

  mine this morning, and the bear attacked them."

  Dan frowned. "Tourists?"

  "I don't know. That's him." Kate nodded at the man leaning up against

  the post office wall just out of earshot. The little crowd of

  sympathizers had dispersed once the mail started being sorted, and he

  was alone again, head back against the logs, hands in his pockets, eyes

  closed. "He hasn't said much."

  72 "The bear just attacked them? Without provocation?" "I don't kn
ow,"

  Kate said. "I didn't hang around to see if the bear wanted to make it

  two for two. And I've got Mandy's parents with me."

  Dan brightened. "You've got the Original Eastern Establishment Royalty