Restless in the Grave

by Dana Stabenow

  There were, mercifully, few nuisance calls the rest of the morning. At noon, he caught up on his paperwork and went down to the Riverside Cafe for lunch in a slightly better frame of mind. He sat at the counter, the better to be fussed over by proprietor Laurel Meganack, a pocket Venus in T-shirt and leggings, her smartly cut black hair flopping flirtatiously in bright brown eyes that took in his hunger and his fatigue at a glance. There was a large mug of coffee in front of him before he had his jacket off, and she began assembling a canned salmon salad sandwich with onions and sweet pickles and mayo on sourdough bread before he ordered. He got himself on the outside of that and got a refill on his coffee and started to feel something approaching human.

  He looked around. The cafe was surprisingly only half full. Before they’d started exploring the Suulutaq, the Riverside had been a Park rat hangout. Afterwards, it was eternally full of young McMiners, dog-dirty and loaded for bear. Today was a welcome respite.

  He nodded at the man two stools down. “Demetri.”

  “How you doing, Jim.”

  “Busy,” Jim said.

  “I bet.” A rare smile lit the other man’s square, serious face. Echoing Jim’s thoughts, he said, “Nice to be in here without the rabble rousers bringing the roof down.”

  “Isn’t it, though.”

  “You see this?” Demetri handed him something that proved to be a trifold brochure, with the name GAEA next to a circular logo of a woman with long dark hair cradling the earth in her arms. The distinct outline of Alaska was visible.

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Looks professional.”

  “That it does. And that was some hatchet job they did on the head of Suulutaq Exploration’s love life.”

  “Forced him to resign, I hear,” Demetri said.

  Jim nodded. “They’ve got someone with money backing them for sure.” He scanned it. “Same message as the last one. Suulutaq, baaaa-aad.” He refolded the brochure and handed it back.

  “You don’t agree?” Demetri said.

  “You do?” Jim said, his coffee mug arrested halfway to his mouth.

  Demetri shrugged and tossed the brochure farther down the counter. “I do sometimes wonder if the world needs another gold mine.”

  “Have you checked the price of gold lately?” Jim drained his mug and paid his bill. “There’s no stopping the mine now, Demetri.”

  “I suppose not.” Demetri didn’t sound convinced.

  As the owner of a high-end, extremely lucrative hunting and fishing lodge in the Quilak foothills, Jim supposed Demetri Totemoff had reason to regret the discovery of the world’s second largest gold deposit on Park land. But at eighteen hundred an ounce, there were just too many people who were going to want to get it out of the ground.

  “I don’t love it, Demetri. I doubt you can find a Park rat who does, no matter how much money they’re making off it.” Least of all Kate Shugak, he thought, and when she finds out the Suulutaq brought Erland Bannister into her Park, she’s going to love it even less. “About the most we can hope for is the economy comes back gangbusters fast and the price of gold goes back in the toilet.” Jim shrugged into his jacket and slapped Demetri on the shoulder. “Later.”

  He did a routine patrol out on the road as far as the turnoff to the Roadhouse, and then up to the Step. The natives were not restless. The Natives weren’t, either. He went back to the post and caught up on his paperwork, of which there seemed to be more every day.

  Off and on, he wondered what Kate was doing.

  Wondered if there’d been any more close encounters of the chest freezer kind.

  Wondered if the bed she was sleeping in felt as empty as the bed he was sleeping in.

  Wondered if Liam was having the same effect on Kate that he did on any other double-X human being.

  Wondered if he should call her and tell her the news about Erland Bannister.

  Know your enemy.

  He reached for the phone and called Anchorage instead. One ring and it picked up on the other end. “Brendan? Jim Chopin in Niniltna.”

  “Jim!” The fruity voice, an Americanized Rumpole, rolled out of the receiver. “Tell me that luscious little cupcake of a Shugak has finally left you for a better man. Namely moi. Even now she wings her way west into my gentle but manly arms—”

  “In your dreams,” Jim said. “I need a favor.”

  The voice sobered. “Name it.” As annoying as Anchorage Assistant District Attorney Brendan McCord could be on the subject of Kate Shugak, he was one of any Alaska state trooper’s best assets on the job.

  “I need a look at a cold case.”

  “Name?”

  “I mean a really cold case, Brendan.”

  “How cold are we talking here? North Pole?”

  “Try Saturn.”

  “Name?”

  “Emil Bannister.”

  There was a long silence. “Erland Bannister’s father?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re the second person in the last four months to ask for a look at that file, Jim.”

  “I know,” Jim said.

  Twenty

  JANUARY 20

  Newenham

  Kate and Mutt had been waiting only ten minutes when Wy Chouinard landed at Newenham airport. She waved at the two of them and taxied to the Nushugak Air Taxi tie-down. Kate helped her push the Cessna back into its parking space. The last two rows of seats had been removed and the back of the airplane was filled with packages and boxes and brown canvas mailbags. Chouinard backed her pickup to the cargo door and began loading. Kate helped.

  “Thanks,” the pilot said, giving her a quizzical glance.

  “Tell me about your grandfather,” Kate said.

  Chouinard raised an eyebrow. “I, ah, haven’t seen him today.”

  “I have,” Kate said with feeling. “Way too early.”

  Chouinard tried unsuccessfully to turn a laugh into a cough. “Better you than me.”

  “He keeps telling me, ‘He didn’t do it.’ You heard him yesterday morning. Do you know what he means by that?”

  Chouinard shrugged, pulling another mailbag out of the tail of the plane. “No one ever knows what Moses means.” In a lower voice Kate was pretty sure she wasn’t meant to hear, Chouinard added, “Not until it’s too late, anyway.”

  “Jeannie Penney down at the library? She says he’s some kind of seer.”

  “Does she?” Chouinard said, noncommittal. She pitched a mailbag into the back of the truck and turned with a determined smile. “I wouldn’t worry about it. He’s been around a long time, he’s probably confused you with someone else.”

  Kate had known another old man who was never confused about anything, but she let it go. Moses had only been her toe in the door. The two women worked in silence to empty the plane, and Chouinard buttoned it up as Kate closed the tailgate on the pickup. They turned to face each other at the same moment.

  “But you didn’t come here to talk about Moses,” his granddaughter said.

  Kate took in the other woman with a measuring glance, and liked what she saw. Chouinard’s gaze was direct and unflinching, her hands and clothes showed she worked for a living, her airplanes were spotless, and Kate had personal experience that the engine on at least one of them purred like a baby in the air. Kate had flown a lot of miles and she knew a lot of pilots, and she was aware that love had a lot to do with the care and feeding of aircraft. It was obvious to the meanest observer that Chouinard loved hers, and that she loved flying.

  Of course, to all reports, so had Finn Grant.

  Kate made up her mind. “No, I didn’t.”

  The pilot folded her arms and leaned against the Cessna. Kate folded her arms and leaned against the truck. Mutt looked from one woman to the other, made a conscious decision not to referee this power play, and trotted off into the scrub brush to scare up a snack.

  “Cyril Wolfe,” Kate said.

  Chouinard’s eyes flickered.

  “You were spotting
for two different herring seiners during the same season about four years back, a honking big no-no that if it became known to the fishing community would have blackballed you from ever spotting for anyone again. It might even have destroyed your air taxi business, given that most of your customers have to be either fishermen themselves, or fishing-related family, friends, and businesses.”

  Chouinard waited, outwardly calm, but Kate saw her fingers bite into her arms.

  “I found the file Grant kept on you,” Kate said. “I’ve seen the evidence, including notes on separate statements he got from deckhands working for both of the fishermen you were spotting for. Bastard even managed to get a copy of the bank statement, transferring funds from Wolfe’s account to yours.”

  Chouinard’s eyes narrowed. “Who the hell are you?”

  “He was blackmailing you,” Kate said. “What did he want? To buy your business for pennies on the dollar?”

  “Who the hell are you?” Chouinard said again.

  “What did he want?” Kate said.

  There was a brief, sizzling silence.

  Chouinard gave a short laugh. “Maybe he wanted to buy me out, but that was only for starters. I don’t think once Finn got his hooks into you that he ever stopped wanting more.”

  Their eyes met in perfect comprehension for at least one moment.

  “He could have had the business,” Chouinard said. She shrugged. “Hell, he might even could have had me, I might have gone that far. Then.”

  “Why?”

  At first Kate thought Chouinard wasn’t going to answer. Then her gaze fell and she shifted where she stood. When she spoke again her voice was hard but not defensive. “I have a son. Tim. He’s adopted. The adoption process costs a lot of money. I went looking for it. I found it. Finn found out somehow.” She shook her head. “It would have hurt my reputation, no question, but by then it was all far enough in the past that I don’t think it would have put me out of business completely. Alaskans have forgiven a lot worse.” Her mouth tightened into a thin line. “Besides, there’s no law against spotting for two different fishermen. It’s not very ethical, if you don’t tell them about it. I’m not proud of it, but I wasn’t going to go to jail for it and I knew it.” Her eyes narrowed. “And I sure as hell wasn’t going to sell my soul to Finn fucking Grant to keep a secret we both knew he’d blab all over Southwest the first time he felt like it.” She looked Kate straight in the eye. “So, no. He wasn’t blackmailing me. Not that he didn’t try.”

  Kate was almost certain she believed her.

  “What’s this about?” Chouinard said. “Really?”

  The ability to lie, lie off the cuff, and lie well was an essential skill in any undercover investigator’s toolbox, but Kate had already lied once that day to a woman she’d liked at first sight. She went with her gut. “There is a possibility that Finn Grant was murdered.”

  Chouinard stiffened. “You mean…”

  “Someone may have sabotaged his plane, in the hope it would crash and kill him, yes.” The thumb drive with motive enough to murder ten men burned a hole in the pocket of her jeans.

  Chouinard thought. “Finn was an execrable human being, but he was a damn good pilot. I found it real hard to believe at the time that he would have taken off in an aircraft with the nut backing off the oil screen.” She looked up. “Do blackmailers ever blackmail only one person?”

  “Not if they are successful the first time they try it, no. Liam tell you about the oil screen?”

  Chouinard nodded. “The NTSB guy called him at home.”

  “Were you around, the morning Grant took off?”

  “I was in town,” Chouinard said. “I sleep with the local state trooper, however, so…” Her eyes widened and her voice trailed away.

  Uh-oh, Kate thought.

  “Liam,” Chouinard said through her teeth. “Liam!”

  She marched around the truck and got in. Kate barely got vertical before Chouinard hit the gas, and if the pavement had been dry, she would have left a twenty-five-foot strip of rubber behind. As it was, the ass end of the pickup skidded around nearly 180 degrees before the wheels found purchase and the truck launched itself forward on a ferocious course Kate was only too sure of.

  Mutt bounded out of the underbrush, a ptarmigan feather hanging from the corner of her mouth and an expression of wild surmise on her face.

  “I think we better head on over to the trooper post,” Kate told her.

  * * *

  Sure enough, Chouinard’s pickup was in front of the aging but neat little building. Kate parked the four-wheeler and went to the pickup, pulled it all the way into the parking space, and turned off the key. With the engine off, the shouting from inside the post was much louder. She looked at Mutt. “We who are about to die, salute you.” She went up the steps and looked over her shoulder. Mutt was still standing next to the ATV. “Come on, you little coward. Once more into the breach. Into the valley of death and all that.”

  Mutt squared heroic shoulders, went up on tiptoe in that half-sidling, half-gliding step that instantly labeled her lupine ancestry, and followed Kate warily inside.

  Where the shouting had come to a halt. Chouinard and Campbell were glaring at each other over Campbell’s desk.

  “Uh,” Kate said.

  They both whipped around to fix her with furious stares. Mutt gave out with something between a sneeze and a whimper, but she remained loyally at Kate’s side. Besides, the door was closed and she didn’t think the situation had deteriorated to the point where she had to go through a window. Yet.

  “You had to tell her,” Campbell said.

  “I didn’t have to tell her anything,” Kate said. “She figured it out on her own.”

  “What’s this about Finn Grant and blackmail?”

  Kate pulled the thumb drive from her pocket and tossed it. Campbell caught it by reflex. “A bullet? No, wait, what?”

  “It’s a thumb drive,” Kate said at the same moment Campbell pulled off the cap to display the USB connector. “It was in the box of ammo in Finn Grant’s desk drawer.”

  His head whipped up, and the dangerous look in her eye made her hope that the Get Out of Jail Free card Jim had given her still worked. “On it,” she said, “you will find a folder labeled ‘Finn’s Notes.’ Inside ‘Finn’s Notes,’ you will find evidence which would lead any rational person to believe that over the years Finn Grant collected a fair bit of information on eleven different people, and that he used that information to, ah, influence them.” Kate shrugged. “You said he had pressured a lot of businesses into selling to him. I figured he didn’t do that strictly from charm of manner. I looked for what he did do.”

  “When did Liam say that?” Chouinard said, still glaring at her husband.

  “The only name I recognized was your wife’s,” Kate said, not looking at Chouinard, “so it seemed logical to talk to her first.” She paused. “You also said, back in Niniltna, that you thought Finn Grant’s death was suspect.” She nodded at the thumb drive. “You’re holding what I’d call serious motive for eleven different killers right there in your hand.”

  “You hired her to look into Finn’s death,” Chouinard said. She was very nearly giving off sparks. “Goddammit, Liam, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Goddammit, Wy,” Campbell said in a near bellow, “why didn’t you tell me!”

  “You knew about the spotting!”

  “I didn’t know Finn was blackmailing you!”

  “He wasn’t!”

  The door opened and everyone turned around to see who it was.

  Jo Dunaway walked in.

  “Jo,” Chouinard said, surprised.

  “Fuck,” Campbell said, not.

  Kate said nothing at all, but Mutt caught the vibe, and a rumble started deep in her breast.

  “What are you doing here?” Dunaway said to Kate.

  “What are you?” Kate said.

  “None of your goddamn business,” Dunaway said.

  “Back
atcha,” Kate said.

  Mutt growled some more.

  “Yeah,” Dunaway said to her, “we’ve met. Put a sock in it, why don’t you?”

  Kate almost smiled. “Mutt,” she said.

  The growl petered off, although Mutt kept in practice by giving Dunaway the beady yellow eye, which would have been enough to back down a lesser woman.

  “You know who she is?” Dunaway said to Campbell, pointing at Kate. “She used to work for the Anchorage DA. Until she killed a perp in a knife fight. What, you never wondered how she got that scar? Nowadays, I would venture to say understandably, she’s a PI.” She looked from Campbell to Chouinard and back again. Her brow darkened. “So you did know.”

  “Some of us knew sooner than others,” Chouinard said, and turned back to Campbell. “Liam, I had nothing to do with Finn Grant’s death.”

  “I know that, Wy.” Campbell now looked about as wretched as a human being could.

  “I knew it!” Dunaway’s voice went up an entire octave.

  “Knew what?” Chouinard said.

  Dunaway leveled a finger at Campbell. “Knew he had you down as a suspect!”

  Campbell ignored her, speaking directly to Chouinard. “You never got along. You had a big fight with him the day before he died, in front of about six upstanding citizens of the city of Newenham. No one’s been talking about anything since, and you know it. I had to do something, or the rumors and the innuendo would have run us out of here. You want to move?”

  Chouinard bit her lip and looked away.

  “’Cause I don’t,” he said. “When I went up to Anchorage to testify in the Berdoll case, I made a side trip to see Jim Chopin. Remember I told you about him? One of my training officers. I told him the story. He recommended Kate, and she agreed to look into it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because the fewer people who know about something like that, the longer an undercover investigator has before people find out and things start to unravel. And I was right. Already she’s turned up this.” He held up the thumb drive, although he directed an unfriendly look in Kate’s direction that promised she hadn’t heard the last of her delay in handing it over.