Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 07 - Breakup

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by Breakup(lit)


  out to the NTSB. Old Sam Dementieff had Cab Calloway turned up to 9 on

  his tape player and both windows on his Dodge pickup wide open so no one

  would miss the beneficial effects of "Minnie the Moocher." Sergei Moonin

  moved from group to group, freely taking bets on whether Ben Bingley

  would survive the day.

  Kate expected to see the Pace Arrow from Pennsylvania roll up at any

  moment. Too bad Mandy had talked her parents into spending what was left

  of the day at the lodge.

  The sun, low in the southwest, cast a benevolent glow over the scene,

  which lacked only steel drums for a calypso carnival. Jimmy Buffett

  would have felt right at home. "I hate breakup," Kate muttered, but by

  then she had said it so many times it sounded too cliched to be true.

  Billy Mike came puffing up and yanked open Kate's door. Since she'd been

  in the process of opening it herself, he yanked her halfway out of the

  truck and she barely managed to catch herself before sprawling face

  forward into the mud. As it was, she went to her hands and knees with a

  solid splat.

  Mutt peered at her over the side of the seat.

  "Jesus, Kate," Billy said, staring down at her with a horrified

  expression. "I'm sorry. Let me help you up."

  "No." Kate held up one filthy hand to ward him off. She sounded

  amazingly calm. "Mandy usually keeps a roll of paper towels behind the

  driver's seat. Will you check for me?"

  Billy, terrified by her apparent tranquillity, scrambled around and

  found the towels and a plastic container of Wet Ones. Kate cleaned

  herself off, with Billy bleating distressed little apologies every few

  seconds.

  "Billy."

  "Yes, Kate."

  151 "Enough." She looked at him; she even smiled. There was absolutely

  nothing in her expression to make him take a step back, yet take a step

  back he did. She stuffed the dirty towels into the plastic sack hanging

  from the ashtray knob and shut the door of the truck. "All right. Tell

  me what you know."

  "Deidre-their oldest-came running over to my house with the other two

  kids in tow," Billy said rapidly. "They told my wife that Cindy had Ben

  at gunpoint and was threatening to shoot him if he didn't fork over the

  rest of the dividend money."

  "I thought he blew it all in Ahtna."

  "I think he did, and I think Cindy knows he did, but you know, Kate, I

  don't think Cindy cares." Billy's face worked. "The wife called me up to

  the office, so I came down here and tried to talk to Cindy. She ran me

  off with that .30-30 of his."

  "Is it loaded?"

  "I didn't ask her," Billy said indignantly, "and I sure as hell didn't

  wait around long enough for her to show me!"

  "When'd she ask for me?"

  Billy's eyes slid to one side.

  Kate sighed. "You are a scum-sucking, brown-nosing, bottom- feeding,

  lily-livered son of a bitch," she observed, without heat. Even less of a

  tone to take when speaking to a tribal elder, but nobody heard except

  Billy, and he wasn't taking offense. She was pretty sure he wasn't even

  listening.

  "Whatever," he said, patting the air. "You're the closest thing we've

  got to a cop, Kate. You used to be one, for crissake. Just see if you

  can talk her out."

  "Whar part of the house are they in?"

  "They were in the living room when I saw them," Billy said. "You

  familiar with the house?" Kate shook her head. "It's one of the prefabs

  the Association underwrote, so it's just like mine, living room and

  kitchen in front, bedrooms in back."

  "Living room on the left or on the right?"

  "Left."

  152 "Can you see the front door from the living room?"

  "Yes."

  Kate sighed again. "Okay."

  She closed her eyes for a moment and seemed to retreat inside herself.

  Billy watched, half apprehensive, half curious. When her eyes opened

  again, her chin came down so that she looked out from beneath suddenly

  heavier straight black brows, her shoulders squared, her hands flexed.

  Everything about her radiated the message, Mess with me, motherfucker,

  and I will rip you three new bodily orifices before breakfast. She was

  five feet tall and weighed 120 pounds, but the accumulation of power was

  obvious and intimidating, and ignored only at peril of, at best, one's

  dignity, and at worst, one's life.

  Billy took another involuntary step backward.

  "Keep everyone else out of the house," Kate said.

  Unoffended, Billy nodded. What made him such a good tribal leader was

  his ability to pick the right person for the right job, and the

  self-control to stand back out of the way and let them do it. Besides,

  he'd already looked down the muzzle of Cindy's .30-30 once that day, and

  he wasn't eager to repeat the experience.

  Kate walked through the crowd to the house, a buzz of speculation rising

  behind her. Sergei's odds shortened. Her muddy jeans clung clammily to

  her legs, an untimely reminder of the broken washing machine in her

  garage. And Cindy thought she had things bad. By the time Kate got to

  the front door she was mad all over again, and she thumped on it with a

  vicious fist. "Cindy? It's Kate Shugak. I'm coming in."

  There was a pause, and then the sound of a distant voice. Kate couldn't

  make out the words. "Cindy," she said, raising her voice, "I can't hear

  you, I'm going to open the front door."

  She opened the door and stuck her head in. "My head's in the door,

  Cindy. It's Kate Shugak. I'm alone, and I don't have a gun. I want to

  talk, so don't shoot, okay?"

  Nobody did, so she chanced sticking a foot inside, followed by the rest

  of her body when no shots went off.

  153 The hallway consisted of an anteroom between front door, kitchen and

  living room. All three were empty. Kate listened and heard nothing.

  "Cindy?" She took a step forward. "Cindy, where are you?"

  Cindy wasn't in either of the bedrooms in back of the kitchen, she

  wasn't in the bathroom at the end of the hall. The door to the bedroom

  on the left was almost shut. Kate put her hand on it and pushed slowly.

  "Cindy?"

  The light was dim through half-closed drapes. When her eyes adjusted,

  the first thing she saw was Cindy, squatting in a corner, hands

  clutching a rifle, cheek leaning against the barrel. She didn't look up

  when the door opened.

  Ben was there, too, naked and spreadeagled across the queen- size bed,

  tied to the frame at wrists and ankles with what looked like black wire.

  He was also gagged, which Kate decided improved the odds of his

  surviving the day tenfold. She knew a moment's regret that there was no

  way to place a bet with Sergei before the booth closed.

  Ben's eyes bulged at the sight of her, and he all but twisted himself

  into a pretzel to preserve his modesty. She allowed herself a long, cool

  look and a brief, pitying smile. He flushed. All over. Interesting.

  She slipped into the room, Cindy on her right and Ben in front of her.

  Leaning against the wall, she let herself slide down until she, too, was

  squatting on her haunch
es, elbows resting on her knees, 'empty hands

  hanging loosely, unthreateningly, between them.

  Minutes passed. She let herself become a part of the interior landscape,

  allowing her presence to seep into Cindy's consciousness. This landscape

  included the bed, a straight-backed chair and a closet with folding

  doors standing open to display Blazo boxes stacked side on side, shoes

  on the bottom shelf, socks, T-shirts, bras and underwear on the middle

  shelf, belts, hats, mufflers and boxes of cartridges and shotgun shells

  on the top. There was a nightstand on either side of the bed, each with

  a lamp. One was

  154 piled high with Alaska Fisherman magazines, the other supported a

  stack of romance novels, the top one featuring a cover with a

  spectacularly endowed young woman with enormous quantities of golden

  hair almost wearing a lavender gown. She was bent backwards over the arm

  of a bronzed young giant almost wearing buckskin pants. He, too, had

  enormous quantities of hair, only his was black.

  Everything looked recently organized and folded and dusted. The hangers

  were lined up like soldiers in the closet, the books and magazines were

  in neat piles, the earrings on the dresser hung in neatly spaced pairs.

  A hardcore neatnik herself, Kate would have approved if she hadn't been

  so acutely aware that excessive outer neatness often indicated severe

  inner turmoil.

  She glanced across at Cindy. Cindy's cheek was still pressed against the

  barrel of the rifle, vacant eyes fixed on nothing. Kate leaned her head

  back into the corner and gazed at the ceiling, letting her mind drift.

  It had been an eventful thirty-six hours, to say the least. Airplane

  engines falling from the sky, bears on the attack, plane wrecks,

  shootouts, bodies lying around indiscriminately. Not to mention the

  Park's own generation gap in the form of Baker pere, mere et fille. Park

  springs were always a little wacky but this one was pushing it- She

  wondered if Jim Chopin was still in the Park, if Mark Stewart was still

  with him. She wondered why Jim had brought him. She wondered why Jim had

  come himself. He'd never been one to chase his tail. As the old saying

  went, and yesterday with more emphasis than usual, some days you get the

  bear, some days the bear gets you. The whole incident was cut and dried,

  there wasn't going to be any way to prove otherwise. A grizzly bear was

  one of your more efficient eradicators of evidence. There would be no

  way to tell if the victim had been dead before or after the bear attack.

  She forced herself to examine her memory of Carol Stewart sprawled in

  awkward death. The torn face and throat, ripped belly, shredded thighs.

  No. No way at all.

  155

  She swallowed hard, and as a kind of mental exercise retraced her route

  through the abandoned mining community the previous afternoon. Sunshine,

  brisk breeze, fluffy cumulus clouds. Roads muddy slush during the day,

  frozen over at night. Houses peeling paint. Windows broken, doors ajar,

  interiors stripped of anything useful long ago. Great view. Warm day.

  And no claw marks. She had not seen any claw marks on any of the houses

  she passed, and she had walked down to the last one in the row before

  she found Carol Stewart's body. She had walked that far because Mark

  Stewart said-what did he say? His wife was on the roof of a cabin. But

  if he left her on the roof, and Kate found her in the middle of the

  road, the bear would have had to get her down, and the bear would not

  have been able to do that without leaving evidence of it behind. Kate

  remembered the matching sets of five-inch claws on the upraised,

  bloodstained paws, and thought, Deep scratch marks.

  Come to think of it, there hadn't been any scuff marks on the peeling

  walls, either, such as might be left by the toe of a frantically

  scrabbling shoe. She tried to remember the kind of shoes Carol Stewart

  had been wearing. Wafflestompers, weren't they? Leather and Gore-tex

  uppers, Vasques, that was the label on the tongue. Decent brand, readily

  available at REI, characteristic choice of the urban hiker. Herself, she

  stuck to Sorels. Except in the winter, when she got out the bunny boots.

  She looked at Cindy. Cindy hadn't moved.

  Of course Carol Stewart, instead of climbing out of reach, could have

  tried to run for it. People are dumb, and Kate had noticed that the

  degree of dumbness increased in direct proportion to proximity to the

  Bush. After all, the victim hadn't had any kind of a weapon with her,

  either.

  Kate would much prefer the bear attack that resulted in Carol Stewart's

  death to be one of those random occurrences that wake up everyone to the

  fact that they aren't in Kansas anymore, because the alternative was a

  hell of a thing to contemplate. What was the line from the old song? You

  always hurt the one you love,

  156 or something like that. Kate wondered if that included feeding the

  one you love to a bear. Could anyone deliberately inflict that kind of

  damage, that kind of pain on someone they once loved enough to marry?

  She thought of the five years she had spent in Anchorage investigating

  cases of abuse inflicted by parents upon their own children. Yes, she

  thought. Only too many could do exactly that.

  At that point she realized with no little annoyance that she was

  beginning to think there might be something to Dan and Jim's suspicions,

  and was glad when Cindy stirred.

  The other woman gazed around the room with a dazed look on her face.

  "Kate," she said, on a note of discovery, as if she had only just

  realized Kate was in the room, which in fact she probably had.

  Kate kept her reply low and calm. "Hello, Cindy."

  Cindy became aware of the rifle. "Oh." She leaned it against the wall.

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to wave this thing at you."

  Kate smiled without moving. The rifle was still within quick reach. "I

  didn't think you did."

  Cindy sighed and shoved a hand through her hair. "I've really fucked it

  up this time, haven't I?"

  "Not necessarily, Cindy."

  As if she hadn't heard, Cindy looked at Ben and said, "I've just had

  enough, you know? Enough. Enough of you drinking up every dime that

  comes into this house, so that we don't have enough money to buy food

  for our children."

  Her voice was rising, and Kate said soothingly, "It's okay, Cindy."

  Cindy's head snapped around. "It's not okay!" Her face contorted. "It's

  not okay, Kate. It used to be, but it's not now, and it's never going to

  be okay again. It was bad enough before, but since Becky-" Tears filled

  her eyes and overflowed onto her cheeks. She snuffled and rubbed a

  sleeve across her face. "I love my kids!"

  "I know you do."

  "I never pretended to be any kind of a saint, but there has always been

  food on the table in this house!"

  157 "I know there has."

  "Now there isn't even that much!" Her head snapped around and she stared

  at Ben, her face twisted. "Maybe if I keep you tied to that bed, you

  asshole, maybe then I'll get to the mail before you do and to t
he checks

  before you do and keep some of the money you've been blowing on beer and

  whores!"

  Cindy stood with an abrupt movement. Startled, Kate followed her, and

  the blood rushed to her head. It took a dizzy moment to reacclimate, and

  when she did Cindy had the rifle clenched in her hands again, lips drawn

  back from her teeth. "You can't treat us like this, Ben! Your sister

  might be dead but that's no excuse to pretend we are, too!"

  Becky Jorgensen, nee Bingley, had been Ben's sister, Kate remembered

  now. Ben and Becky had always been very close, and Becky had welcomed

 

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