Campbell came to the door as Chouinard was closing it up. He reached in to shake Kate’s hand. “I appreciate the help.” An eyebrow quirked. “If I deplore the methods.”
Kate grinned at him. “Take a number.”
He nodded and stepped back. He and his wife exchanged a kiss that Kate admired with a connoisseur’s eye, made Shorty and Boyd despair of ever kissing a woman again, and Mason pretended not to see. “Fly safe, babe.”
She smiled. “Always do.”
Campbell closed the door and walked away. “Everybody buckled up?” Wy said. “Good. Got two extra headsets. Who wants them?”
Mason took one, Kate the other. Chouinard faced forward and the propeller cranked over and moved quickly into a steady, comforting roar, pulling the nose down. Across the runway Kate could see Finn Grant’s old hangar, dark now. Gabe McGuire’s Gulfstream was gone, too, probably tucked safely away in the hangar at Eagle Air. If not carrying McGuire to his next red carpet appearance. Wherever, Kate was deeply relieved to be on a heading in the opposite direction.
Just why she was so relieved was not something she cared to explore.
The Cessna gave a little jerk and began to roll forward.
It’s the fucking Wild, Wild West.
Kate looked at the surrounding landscape of the Nushugak River delta, the wide mouth of glacial runoff spilling into Bristol Bay, the richest salmon fishery in the world. She thought of the harbor with the boats rafted together in twos and threes in their slips, of more boats shrink-wrapped in storage yards.
Chouinard’s voice crackled over Kate’s headphones, and the Cessna pulled out onto the end of the runway.
She remembered the photos she’d seen on the walls of Jeannie Penney’s library, of the boats so thick on the water, you could have walked clear across Bristol Bay without getting your feet wet. The story Jeannie had told her of the three fishermen exchanging shots over fouling their nets in someone else’s propeller.
The Cessna’s engine accelerated, and the propeller spun into invisibility.
She thought of the near-shooting war between the local Native corporation, Alaskan environmentalists, fishermen, and everyone who just wanted a job over the proposed platinum mines in the Togiak Wildlife Refuge. She thought of the seventy-five-year-old homesteader headed for his cabin upriver with a load of groceries and supplies in his skiff, who had been enticed into pulling over to help what he thought was a boat in distress, only to discover it was two National Park rangers faking engine trouble so they could force inspections on a good Samaritan who was sap enough to pull over. Shots had been exchanged, big surprise, and the old man and one of the rangers were in the hospital in Anchorage, with a strong public sentiment in favor of, as the delicate phrase went, making the rangers’ services available to the industry.
The Cessna began to roll, picking up speed.
Everything out here seemed to involve the business end of a rifle or a pistol or a shotgun. It wasn’t like Park rats didn’t shoot each other, but the Bay rats seemed to be that much quicker to reach for a .357 to punctuate an argument.
They rose smoothly into the air. The lights of Newenham fell away. The Cessna climbed quickly and easily to altitude through a clear, calm sky and rolled out on a heading for Merrill Field.
And now one of Southwest Alaska’s leading citizens, posthumously perhaps but nevertheless, was found to have been gunrunning, using a vast, unpopulated wilderness and an endless and for the most part unpoliced border to ship stolen automatic weapons to the highest overseas bidder. Which were used at least occasionally, if Special Agent Mason was correct, to shoot and kill American soldiers.
The twilight threw the landscape crawling beneath them into shadow. Distance and inaccessibility were better cloaking devices than anything a Romulan could think up. Dozens of unmarked airstrips for transportation, hundreds of quick-running streams for power—she’d seen a group of hikers come into the Park with a backpack power plant weighing less than thirty pounds that could generate five hundred watts from any stream four feet deep. What couldn’t you do with a reliable source of electricity? The tech was so there for self-contained, anonymous camps tucked away in remote corners of the state, conducting their business far from watching eyes. Where there was one Finn Grant, there had to be more, although she doubted there could ever be another so well financed.
You can imagine the effect on some poor grunt whose ride home gets taken out with a weapon manufactured two states over from where he was born.
At that moment she became aware that the Cessna’s engine was running rough. She sat up straight.
There were black streaks coming up over the windshield.
Oil. The engine was leaking oil, and it was running rougher now, rough enough for Kate to see the cowl shaking, rough enough for her to feel the fuselage begin to vibrate beneath her feet. Chouinard’s voice crackled over the headset. “Newenham tower, Cessna six-eight kilo, declaring an in-flight emergency, requesting immediate clearance for return and landing.”
She sounded tense but not panicked. It seemed to Kate in the few seconds before Newenham tower responded that the engine started shaking even harder. They were already wing down in a hard right bank and in the distance Kate could see the lights of Newenham airport. Too far?
Mutt, who knew what a smooth-running airplane engine sounded like as well as any frequent flier, added her own into the mix with a big “Woof!” that in that small, enclosed space approximated the decibel level of a sonic boom. It sounded far too close to the unprotected ears of the two men sitting in front of her, and it was followed almost immediately by the distinct, acrid smell of fresh urine.
The engine ran rougher, the aircraft starting to shake like a maraca in a salsa band. For all her hours in the air, Kate had never been in anything even remotely approaching an accident, but what bothered her most was that there was absolutely nothing she could do. It was all up to the plane and the pilot now.
Correction. Shorty started yelling and lunging in his seat. Boyd started cursing. Kate grabbed them both by the hair and banged their heads together as hard as she could. It didn’t have much effect, so she did it again. This time they shut up.
She used their hair to pull them apart so she could see out the windshield. The oil had streaked it so heavily by now that she didn’t see how Chouinard was going to be able to see to land. The lights of the Newenham runway seemed much closer through the oily film, and she looked out her window to see the tops of the scrub spruce passing a foot beneath the right wheel. The rate of descent seemed to be a lot faster than usual and bam! they hit the runway on all three wheels hard enough that Kate thought the gear might come right up through the fuselage. It didn’t, but she bit her tongue.
In the meantime Chouinard cut the throttle and the engine and the Cessna coasted down the runway until the friction of the tires on the pavement and the drag of air against the fuselage brought them to a halt.
Chouinard killed the engine, ripped the headset off, and turned to glare at the two men in the middle seats. “Did one of you sonsabitches actually just pee in my airplane?”
Neither of the prisoners said anything.
A sound from Mason sounded suspiciously like a groan. He was hunched over in the shotgun seat, holding his head. “Oh great, what, you hit your head? Did you hit any of the instruments?”
“No,” Kate thought she heard him say, but he was still holding his head and his voice was muffled.
A pickup with its headlights on bright bore down on them at speed, followed by the screech of rubber on pavement, a door slamming open, and running footsteps. Campbell had the pilot’s door open and Chouinard unbuckled and hauled out of her seat. In the next moment her face was mashed into his shoulder with his hand at the back of her head and his other arm cinched around her waist, her legs dangling in the air. “Jesus, babe, jesus jesus jesus,” was all he seemed able to say, over and over again into her hair.
She was still trying to get her face out of his shoulder w
hen Kate climbed out on the tarmac. She busied herself with getting Shorty and Boyd out of the aircraft. She left Mutt to guard them and went around to the other side to scoot Mason’s seat back and help him out. His nose was bleeding and one eye was swelling but he still had all his teeth and he was mobile.
“I’m okay, babe,” she heard Chouinard say. “I’m okay, we’re all okay.”
There was a shaky laugh. “I know. I know. Jesus, when I heard your call.”
When Mason and Kate got around to the other side of the aircraft Chouinard was saying in a soft voice, “You were on the scanner?”
“I always am when you’re in the air.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Just because you’re fearless in the air doesn’t mean I am, as you well know.” Campbell saw Kate and she could tell it took a physical effort for him to release his wife. “Kate. You okay?”
She managed a smile and hoped no one could see how badly her knees were trembling. “They say you aren’t really an Alaskan until you’ve walked away from at least one airplane crash.”
“We didn’t crash,” Chouinard said indignantly. She glared at Boyd and Shorty. “Although somebody did pee in my plane. Do you know how hard it is to get that smell out of the seat cover?”
“What happened?” Campbell said.
Chouinard’s expression darkened. “Oil pressure started dropping, oil temp starting rising. Next thing I know, there’s oil all over the windshield and the engine’s running rough.” By then other trucks were arriving, including Newenham’s one crash truck, and there was more than enough light. Someone had a stepstool and Chouinard used it to unbutton the cowling and take a look at the engine. A moment later she stepped down, her expression angry and baffled. “The oil filter adapter separated. I know I checked that when I did the last change.”
“I know you did, too,” Kate said.
Everyone looked at her askance.
“He was murdered,” Kate said.
“Who was murdered?” Campbell said.
“Finn Grant,” Kate said.
Campbell looked from her to Chouinard, to the Cessna, and back to Kate.
“I know why he was murdered,” she said. “And when you know why, you know who.”
Thirty-two
JANUARY 22
Newenham
“I’m such a moron,” Kate said. “What’s the first thing I learned on the job, what’s Morgan’s First Law? ‘The nearest and the dearest got the motive with the mostest.’”
“Huh?” Campbell said.
They were speeding down the Icky Road, on their way back to Newenham, leaving behind an apoplectic Chouinard, an FBI agent with what was now a magnificent shiner, and two terrified suspects, one of whom needed a change of pants.
They hadn’t left behind the stepmother, who was riding shotgun next to Campbell. Kate and Mutt were in the backseat, Kate with her nose pressed against the security screen. She noticed that the brunette’s belly barely fit in the space between the dashboard, the passenger side door and the shotgun bolted next to the gear shift. “Wow,” she said, “you’re really pregnant.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” the other woman said, hanging grimly to the hand strap. “Could you take it a little easier on the gas, Liam?”
“You’re the one who wanted to get out of the house, Stepmama,” Campbell said.
“Stop calling me that!”
Campbell looked in the rearview. “Who’s Morgan?”
“We’re taught to always look at the spouse first,” Kate said. “For good reason.”
“Tina?” Oncoming headlights appeared and Campbell transferred his gaze back to the road. “Yeah, plenty of motive, but we agreed early on Tina’s not a pilot or a mechanic. Plus she’s got an ironclad alibi.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Kate said.
“What do you mean?”
She still hadn’t answered him when they pulled up a little down the street from Grant’s house. The day Kate had moved into the apartment over the garage next door seemed like a year ago. The house next to it looked the same, harshly new, overweeningly ostentatious, and eerily empty in spite of all the lights on inside.
Kate headed for the front door. “We don’t have a warrant,” Campbell said behind her, sounding a little out of breath.
“If she doesn’t want to let us in, she doesn’t have to let us in,” Kate said, and knocked on the door.
“At least you knocked,” Campbell said. “More than I expected.”
They heard footsteps on the other side of the door. It opened. “Hello, Jeannie,” Kate said. Mutt shouldered between Kate and the door, forcing Jeannie back a step, and trotted inside. Kate promptly followed.
Behind her, Campbell made an effort not to roll his eyes. He doffed his cap and gave an indignant-looking Jeannie Penney an apologetic smile, but he stepped inside, too. Something told him that Kate Shugak was following a hot lead, and he wanted to be there when it paid off. He had become accustomed to closing cases in Newenham, and he didn’t want to ruin his record.
“Where’s Tina?” Kate said in the hallway.
“She’s not really feeling up to visitors,” Jeannie said, not quite glaring.
“Who is it, Mom?” The door to the TV room cracked, and Oren looked out. “Oh, Jeannie, hi. Didn’t know you were here.” He saw Kate, and Mutt, and Campbell. “Oh.”
He shut the door.
“Neighborly,” Campbell said.
“Or a guilty conscience,” Kate said.
“No one was expecting visitors,” Jeannie said, glowering.
Kate brushed by her like she wasn’t there, walking down the hall to a door on the left. She opened it without knocking. “Hello, Tina.”
Jeannie transferred her glare to the trooper. He refused to wilt beneath it, waiting until he heard Tina Grant’s low-voiced greeting. It definitely wasn’t a shrieked “Get out!” He followed Kate into the room.
Kate was looking at a gun rack hanging on a wall opposite the desk, behind which Tina was sitting. “Where is it?” she said.
“Where’s what?” Tina said.
“The M4,” Kate said. “I saw it here the other day.”
Tina shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I saw one just like it out at Eagle Air, too,” Kate said.
If Tina had seemed bewildered, or looked to Jeannie or even Campbell for help, he would have stopped whatever was going on right now. But she didn’t. She looked exhausted, washed out, leaden of thought and movement, as if she didn’t have enough energy to get out of her own way. She looked like she had come to the ragged end of her endurance.
All that could have been explained away by her recent double loss and by her second daughter’s assault, and Jeannie Penney’s increasingly volcanic glare demanded a recognition of them. But his gut told him there was more. He waited on Kate Shugak to tell him what.
“I thought it was odd,” Kate said. “One I could understand, but two brand-new M4s seemed excessive, even for a collector, which it is obvious your husband was.”
“Yes,” Tina said, her voice a monotone. “Yes, he collected rifles, shotguns, assault weapons.”
“Tina,” Jeannie said, “you don’t have to—”
Kate crossed the room and leaned against a corner of the desk. When Tina raised her eyes to look at Kate, Campbell wasn’t certain that blank gaze was really focussing on anything. Tina looked as if she ought to be feeling around for her cane.
“Your daughter was killed in Afghanistan,” Kate said. “A sniper took out her helo with an RPG.”
“Yes,” Tina said, still in that dead-and-alive voice. “That’s what they told me. Her commanding officer. What he wrote in the letter.”
“Tina.” Jeannie Penney marched around the desk and put her hands on her friend’s shoulders. “You’re tired. You should be in bed.”
“But it wasn’t an RPG, was it.” Kate walked over to the filing cabinet and reached for a file folder that sat on top of it.
“Illegal search and seizure,” Campbell almost said, but some quality of Tina’s immobility, combined with her lack of protest, stopped him.
Kate opened the folder. There were two pieces of paper inside it. She held the first one up. “The condolence letter from her commanding officer.” She put it back and held up the second one. “A letter to Tina from one of the soldiers Irene was supposed to fly out with that morning.”
“Put that back,” Jeannie said sharply.
It wasn’t Jeannie’s house, Campbell thought, it was Tina’s, and she still had nothing to say. They were probably still constitutionally okay.
“They recovered the sniper’s weapon. It was American made, a Colt M203, a variation of the M4 automatic rifle. He sounds pretty bitter about it. Can’t say I blame him much. You don’t travel halfway around the world and expect to get shot at with your own gun.”
Campbell’s eyes widened.
Kate nodded. “Remember what Mason said? That the Taliban were using American-made weapons to shoot Americans and leaving the weapons to be found as a means of disrupting morale?”
He nodded.
Kate looked back at Tina. “I guess the next question is, when did you find out your husband was smuggling them out of the country and selling them to arms dealers who were selling them in Afghanistan?”
Campbell drew in a sharp breath.
“And,” Kate said, “that the very weapon that killed your daughter Irene might actually have been shipped there by her own father?”
Tina closed her eyes. Later, Campbell thought he would never forget that moment, that scene. Tina sitting behind the desk looking like the walking dead. Jeannie standing behind her chair, back to the window, hands on Tina’s shoulders, looking like an avenging Valkyrie. Kate Shugak standing in the center of the room, the overhead light turning her short cap of thick hair an iridescent ebony, casting shadows beneath those high cheekbones, thinning the line of that wide mouth, a quality of expectance, almost even of invitation in her silence. Next to her stood the enormous gray dog, equally unmoving, yellow eyes fixed on Tina Grant, appearing nothing less than an extension of her mistress’ will.
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