Restless in the Grave

by Dana Stabenow

  Under the phone book was a sales flyer for the local gear shop. A Ruger nine-millimeter automatic for $350. A Taurus Judge Magnum for $470. At least the Ruger was made in the U.S., but it wasn’t like you could take either handgun hunting and bring home anything to eat. Her eyes dropped to the bottom of the page. A Honda thousand-watt generator, good for ten hours on a gallon of gas, nine hundred dollars. It was the size of a suitcase, and even had a handle. She was about to tear out the ad when she noticed the date was May of the previous year.

  She washed the dishes and called Campbell at the post. He sounded very mellow this morning. “How’s Evelyn Grant?” Kate said.

  Campbell switched gears from mellow to business. “Conscious.”

  “And talking?”

  “Says she can’t remember anything at all during the time we most need her to.”

  “Really,” Kate said. “She say why she was there?”

  “Not very convincingly, she says she remembered some unspecified paperwork of her father’s that she needed. Can’t remember much about that, either.”

  “She say why she waited until four in the morning to come looking for it?”

  “No.”

  “So,” Kate said, drawing out the word, “not your star witness in the case of the State of Alaska versus John Doe, in the little matter of aggravated assault, firearm involved.”

  “Not at the moment.” He paused. “I heard a bit of a hoohaw between Tina and Oren in the hospital waiting room, before they saw me coming. Oren’s pissed at Tina over money.”

  “Put that together with the argument I saw between Oren and Evelyn,” Kate said. “My professional estimation would be that that was mostly Oren, too, and my professional estimation of his character would I’d guess match yours. He has all the personal charm of a dung beetle. To be fair, though, we have to remember that in the space of, what, two months, Tina and Oren have lost a daughter and a sister and a husband and a father, and last night they almost lost another daughter and another sister.” She touched the scar on her throat. “No one ever shows to advantage after that kind of personal trauma.”

  “Yeah.”

  Campbell didn’t sound convinced, and he didn’t sound happy. Kate had heard that exact same tone in Jim’s voice when he knew he was going to have to bust someone he liked, or maybe just someone he knew. Price you paid when you policed a small community. Propinquity was hell on a law enforcement officer. One of the reasons why the divorce rate was so high in the profession.

  And Campbell didn’t tell Kate to stand down, either.

  * * *

  The Newenham Public Library was laboring beneath the same kinds of budget cuts as starving libraries all over the nation, to the point that they’d cut back their hours to thirty a week. It was a pretty draconian measure for a Bush Alaska institution that, quite apart from being the sole-source provider of reading and reference material for three hundred miles, provided a refuge for residents who just wanted to get out of the house occasionally. If the library closed entirely, nondrinkers would fall back on the school gym, while everyone else would be at Bill’s. Sergeant Campbell’s workload would rise accordingly, which wouldn’t make him happy.

  The librarian was Jeannie Penney, whom Tina Grant had introduced to Kate two days before. Kate was not the first library patron that morning, and was also less preoccupied with casing the library for a late-night burglary, so she paused to take a little time to run a mental make on Tina Grant’s best friend.

  Jeannie Penney was a vibrant sixty-something who looked a lithe, well-packaged forty. She had long straight blond hair all the way down to her ass, electric blue eyes peeping shrewdly out from behind artfully tousled bangs, and skin like cream velvet. She dressed plainly, in pressed jeans and a snug cream-colored turtleneck, and wore the simple clothes better than anyone Kate had ever met. She moved rapidly around her one-room-in-a-strip-mall domain, scooping up books discarded by patrons and reshelving them in one continuous graceful movement, checking out a copy of David Wiesner’s Tuesday to a four-year-old who could barely see over the edge of her desk, his amused mother allowing him to do it himself, after which she helped a high school student find Vic Fischer’s book on the Alaska constitutional convention for a term paper.

  What was on the shelves looked ready-made for a rural Alaskan community. A full bookshelf was given over to Chilton manuals, another entire shelf was packed with books about guns, including Shooter’s Bibles that went back twenty years, and one entire aisle was dedicated to handcrafts and DIY. The fiction section consisted mostly of popular fiction going back to Nevil Shute and Georgette Heyer and forward to Stephen King and Nora Roberts, all of them looking well thumbed.

  “Sure we have a computer,” Jeannie said, tossing her hair back like a filly who was ready for the race. “Back in the corner there, see? Internet access? Of course! The city council and I had words about it, but we’ve got it.” The steel behind her smile was plain for anyone with the wit to see it. “And on a one-meg DSL line, too, none of this dial-up nonsense.”

  Jeannie told Mutt she could wait outside, and Mutt went back outside and waited. Jeannie demanded Kate’s driver’s license and got it. “I will hold this hostage until you log off. Sign here.” One well-manicured finger pointed at a register, and Kate signed obediently. “You get half an hour. After that, if no one is waiting, you can have another half an hour.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said, as it seemed like that was all she was going to be allowed to say. Jeannie Penney gave her a bright smile displaying perfect teeth and turned to her next patrons, an old Yupik man and his granddaughter who wanted help accessing the National Archives because he didn’t have a birth certificate and those—here was spoken a terrible-sounding word in Yupik—people in Social Security wouldn’t believe he had been born in his own village. Jeannie had the phone number of the right person to call at her fingertips and she dialed it for them then and there.

  Kate admired efficiency in any endeavor and she had a soft spot for librarians and teachers anyway. She was, however, a little breathless as she made for the computer in the corner and logged on with the password Jeannie had given her. When she opened the cap on the thumb drive she saw that it had 256 gigabytes of memory, which seemed like a lot, until she plugged it in and a folder marked, originally, “Finn’s Notes” popped up. There was no demand for a password. She crossed mental fingers and clicked on it. It opened.

  The only security she had encountered thus far in Newenham was the password-protected laptop on Tina Grant’s desk. It made her wonder what was on it.

  The files on the thumb drive were folders, numbered and listed chronologically, the most recent items saved listed first. The folders held mostly Word documents, but there were also some audio files and the most recently saved folder contained a video file dated October of the previous fall. She found the volume control on the computer and turned it down as far as possible before hunching over the computer and clicking PLAY.

  Ten minutes later she sat back and blew a long, silent whistle.

  The video’s audio quality was poor and the camerawork left a great deal to be desired, but when you got past those you were left with unmistakably court-worthy evidence of an Alaskan big game guide not only flying and shooting the same day, but violating the wanton waste law when he and his client took only the trophy rack, leaving the moose carcass to rot. The camera even managed to capture the tail numbers on the Beaver sitting on a lake in the background.

  Kate had seen videos like this before, shot by undercover Fish and Game agents on illegal hunts. Shortly thereafter the guide would show up in court, and upon conviction to be stripped of license, airplane, a large chunk of change, and considerable free time. And they were always convicted. Never mind voir dire, Alaska juries always had at least one member who hunted for personal use who had stumbled over one of those carcasses themselves.

  Kate got online and Googled the guide’s name, Leon Coopchiak. It didn’t pop up in any court cases, federal or
state. It did find a website on AlaskaHuntingGuidesDirectory.com, Jackknife Pass Outfitters, based in Newenham, where he was listed as one of three guides. It wasn’t a very sophisticated site, one page with a photograph of grizzly bears fishing for salmon in a small waterfall, with a two-button menu bar, RESERVATIONS and CONTACT US. Kate clicked on RESERVATIONS, and her eyebrows twitched together when the website for Eagle Air, Inc., Newenham, Alaska, popped up.

  This was a much ritzier, multi-page website, with a gallery of photographs, a page of videos, a choice of lodge or camping adventures, full outfitting (“We carry only the highest-rated camping, hunting, and fishing equipment”), a list of the different trips offered (“You only shoot with a camera? We have nature tours from a day to a week, guaranteed to put you nose to nose with Alaskan wildlife from grizzly bears fishing for salmon to bull moose in rut to migrating caribou herds twenty-five thousand strong!”) and a picture of the chef (“The best gourmet camp food you will ever eat!”).

  Kate had spent most of her life avoiding a nose-to-nose confrontation with any of the above, but one man’s meat. She backed out of the Eagle Air website to Jackknife Pass Outfitters and clicked on CONTACT US. The website for Eagle Air, Inc., Newenham, Alaska, appeared again.

  She felt someone hovering behind her, and turned to look. A dark-haired man of medium height stood in front of the magazine shelf, nose in a copy of Ms. magazine. My, wasn’t he evolved.

  She turned back to the computer. So Finn Grant had video evidence of an Alaska big game guide committing two of the highest penalty offenses you can commit as a hunter, either one of which was guaranteed to lose a guide his license. And the website of the guide caught committing these crimes on camera was now automatically forwarded to the Eagle Air website.

  Kate clicked on the folder again and counted.

  There were eleven separate files.

  Campbell’s voice echoed in her ears. He strong-armed a lot of the businesses he bought out. Bought up their debt and foreclosed. Bought the buildings they were doing their business out of and raised the rent on them, or just booted them out. Bought out their competitors and lowered prices to drive them out of business.

  The dates on the documents went back more than fifteen years, so this was not an activity Grant had begun recently. She clicked through the files, one at a time, with a steadily increasing feeling of incredulity, and disgust. Infidelity, wife abuse, child abuse, prostitution, driving while drunk, flying while drunk, same flying and shooting, cheating on taxes federal, state, borough, and local, fishing inside the markers, fishing in a closed area, and fishing with illegal gear. Grant even had evidence of the Newenham postmaster refusing to give someone their mail because that someone refused to attend the postmaster’s church. It was the only other video file in the folder. It looked like Grant had worn a hidden camera when he went in to pick up his mail.

  Interfering with the mail was a federal offense, for which you could do federal time. Kate wondered what Grant had gotten from the postmaster in question in return for keeping quiet about it.

  Most of the documents had been created by Grant, but every instance had corresponding evidence, a date, a place, a time, copies of documents and faxes, sometimes a statement by a corroborating witness. In the case of the post office video, there were half a dozen witnesses, and most of them had signed statements. Kate wondered what they had received in return. Finn Grant looked to her like a quid pro quo kinda guy.

  There was nothing nastier, nothing dirtier, nothing more soul destroying than blackmail. She longed violently for a shower, a hot, scouring shower, preferably with a Clorox rinse. She wanted to return to the apartment, pack up her gear, and even if she had to walk to the airport get on the first plane going anywhere, just away from here.

  Being tossed into the chest freezer now seemed more like a reasonable reaction to outrageous provocation than personal assault. Any one of Grant’s victims would be frantic to recover the evidence Grant had held over their heads all these years. They would start on the outbuildings, the shop, the garage apartment. She made a mental note to ask Campbell if there had been any reports of break-ins at Grant’s house, Grant’s Newenham hangar, or out at the Eagle Air base.

  Well. Other than the one of which he had personal evidence right at the scene. Currently occupying a bed in the Newenham hospital.

  She glanced at the clock on the wall and went grimly to work. Each folder was dedicated to one person. There was no indication as to how Finn Grant had started his little hobby, just a steady accumulation of information over the years. An item in a tax cheat’s folder read

  Last night at Bill’s WW said he hadn’t paid income taxes in twenty years. Terry Ballard said today that WW’s been high boat for herring spotting the last three years. Have to find out how much that comes to. Ten percent of that, plus interest and penalties, is a pretty good stick. Might even be worth turning WW in myself.

  A note in an adulterer’s folder read

  Got in from Jackknife late last night, crashed at the hangar, on the way home this morning saw Chris Bevens backing out of Tasha Anayuk’s driveway. Think Chris’ wife Annika is the one with the money, have to check.

  Another note read

  Saw Father Tom with Sergei Watson’s little boy. Wasn’t the archbishop at that Chamber of Commerce meeting in Anchorage in June?

  By the time she got to the last folder she wanted to throw up. When she clicked on it and saw the name there, she was sure she was going to.

  Jeannie had granted her a stay when her first thirty minutes were up, but half an hour later she looked over her shoulder at the librarian’s desk and Jeannie spread her hands and mouthed Sorry and nodded at a man pretending to read a newspaper. It was the same man she’d seen earlier reading Ms. His left hand was missing the top half of its middle finger. Another fisherman who hadn’t moved fast enough to get his hand off a running line between a winch and his cork line.

  She wasn’t sorry to close out the folder and pull the thumb drive. She stuck it in her pocket and hoped it didn’t smell. When she stood up, the man with the newspaper hustled over and elbowed her aside to get in front of the computer before anyone else could.

  The library had filled up over the past hour. All the seats at the two tables were filled and there was someone browsing at each of the six bookshelves. The library had been arranged so that anyone sitting at the desk could see straight down the rows of shelves. Kate was pretty sure she knew who had made certain of that. Jeannie Penney was seated at her desk and Kate stopped on her way out to thank her for the extra half hour.

  Jeannie waved her off. “It’s there to be used. Some people—” She cast a dark blue look at the man who had taken Kate’s place. “—think they can park on it all day, so I had to make rules so everyone would get a chance.”

  “Is there a fee?” Kate said. “I’m happy to pay it.”

  “This is a public library,” Jeannie said firmly, “and by definition is a free service for all citizens.” She grinned and shoved forward a large glass jar with a punctured plastic lid, half full of bills and coins. “Far be it from us to discourage anyone from supporting their local public library, however.” She watched with approval as Kate stuffed a five-dollar bill into the jar.

  “How long have you lived in Newenham?” Kate said on impulse.

  “Honey, I was born here.”

  “You’re local?” Kate hadn’t meant to sound so startled, and Jeannie flashed an appreciative smile.

  “You think I’m a little too high end for a Newenham librarian? Honey, that’s so nice of you.” Jeannie twinkled. If Kate had been a man, she would have gone down like ninepins. “My parents were BIA teachers. I grew up hating every living thing in this town and in the entire state, too. I married young and well, a high boater from Anacortes, and moved us Outside first chance I got. We were happy there for over thirty years. And then my children grew up and moved out, and he died and left me more than enough money to spend every winter in Hawaii, so I started lookin
g around for something useful to do with myself.” She shook her head. “Don’t ask me how I ended up back here, because I don’t know myself. It is not my favorite place in the world, but someone has too look out for these people. They were going to let the library close, can you imagine?” She cocked her head. “You?”

  For the first time on this job, Kate was sorry she had to lie. “Kate Saracoff. I’m not from around here.”

  Jeannie laughed. “Honey, I’d know you if you were.” She looked expectant.

  “Anchorage,” Kate said, “at one time, anyway. I got to Newenham by way of a man.” It had worked before.

  Jeannie looked wise. “And you wouldn’t be the first to do so. You got a job yet?”

  Kate nodded. “Waiting tables at Bill’s.”

  Jeannie nodded approvingly. “Bill’s a good person, she’ll look out for you.” She added, “So long as you can abide that drunk shaman she’s landed herself with. Anyone who would invite drinking and prognostication into their lives in one package must have some kind of death wish.”

  “Prognostication?” Kate said.

  Jeannie rolled her eyes. “He’s supposed to be some kind of seer.”

  “Seer?”

  “You know, predict the future, or know if you’re telling lies, or talk to the dead.” Jeannie rolled her eyes again. “Personally, I think it’s the box checked ‘None of the above,’ but the locals, especially the Yupik locals, think he’s the real deal.”

  “He kidnapped me my first morning and made me do something he called form.”

  Jeannie’s eyes sharpened. “Really. Interesting.”

  “Why?”