Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 02 - Capitol Offense

by Mike Doogan

  CAPITOL OFFENSE

  ALSO BY MIKE DOOGAN

  Lost Angel

  CAPITOL OFFENSE

  A NIK KANE ALASKA MYSTERY

  MIKE DOOGAN

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  New York

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2007 by Mike Doogan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Doogan, Mike.

  Capitol offense : Nik Kane Alaska mystery / Mike Doogan.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0743-7

  1. Private investigators—Alaska—Fiction. 2. Alaska—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3604.O5675C37 2007 2007008804

  813'.6—dc22

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For my father, Jim Doogan,

  who believed that politics could

  make the world a better place

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank the usual suspects—my agent, Marcy Posner; my editor, Tom Colgan; and most of all my wife, Kathy—and some unusual ones, the generations of Alaska politicians whose exploits and antics were the inspiration for this book.

  CAPITOL OFFENSE

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  PROLOGUE

  Baby Santos got off the elevator on the fifth floor of the Alaska State Capitol. He pushed his cleaning cart to the right, down the hall, around the corner, and through the propped-open door to the House Finance Committee hearing room. At just after 10 p.m., the room, like all of the offices he’d passed, was empty.

  Baby had been cleaning offices here for many years. He knew that if it had been May instead of March, the rooms would be brightly lit and full of people. He was glad it wasn’t the end of the legislative session yet, because working around all those people talk-talk-talking made his job much harder. And the wastepaper they made. Holy Mother!

  He took his CD player from the shoe box that held his music. The CD player was old and heavy and his sons, with their iPod Nanos, made fun of him for using it. But the CD player still worked and he saw no reason to get rid of a perfectly good piece of equipment just because there was a newer one.

  Baby put the player into a pouch he’d made from canvas and clipped it to his belt. Then he put on his earphones, inserted the new One Vo1ce CD into the player, and hit Play. If Corazon, his wife, found out he was listening to these young girls, he’d never hear the end of it. But he liked the bright, R&B stylings. And the girls. Aiee. Even a man as old as Baby could dream.

  He took the thirty-three-gallon plastic garbage can off the cart and started emptying wastebaskets. When he was finished, he took down his vacuum cleaner and ran it over the carpet. He knew some of the other janitors didn’t vacuum every night, but this was his floor and he wanted it just so. Besides, they had spent so much time and money remodeling these offices, it would be a shame to let the carpet get dirty.

  When Baby finished that room, he worked his way from office to office, around the corner, along the hallway, and past the elevator to the women’s restroom. He knocked on the door. When no one answered, he snapped on a pair of disposable rubber gloves, picked up the cleaner and some rags, and, leaving his cart in the hall, scrubbed the pedestal toilets and the big, square sinks of thick porcelain. When he was finished, he returned all the cleaning materials, hefted his mop and bucket, and scrubbed the floor. Then he moved on to the wing that belonged to the Senate, going in and out of offices with his garbage can and vacuum. One Vo1ce gave way to Rachel Alejandro, then Rachelle Ann Go. These young women could sing, and, aiee, did they look good.

  Baby liked his job, liked being able to listen to music and move along the floor in an orderly fashion. The older he got, the more he liked everything just so. He even liked being able to work during the day on the weekends, because it gave him time to be with his family on some evenings. His boys were teenagers now and needed watching. Once he had been their hero. Now they clashed all the time. Fathers and sons. It was the way of the world.

  Baby reached the men’s restroom and looked for his cleaner. It was not in its usual place, with the rags and brushes, but on the bottom of the cart on the opposite side. Odd. Had he put it there? Baby shrugged. As he got older, he forgot many things.

  When he was finished with the restroom, he put a Sugar Pie DeSanto CD into his player. She might not have the shape of the young women, but she had twice the voice. Baby had every CD she’d ever made.

  Baby pushed his cart around the corner. The doors of the Senate Finance Committee room were propped open, too. In one of the offices at the far end, Baby saw a light. He switched off his CD player, removed his earphones, left his cart where it was, and walked softly through the committee room. The room was Baby’s favorite, a big room that had been a federal courtroom when the building was young, carefully restored, and, since Baby had been doing the cleaning, carefully kept up, too.

  Bab
y’s sneakers made no noise on the thick carpet. He was glad; he wanted to see why the light was on before revealing himself. Once, years before, he’d blundered into that office and found a man, a senator, on top of a woman half his age, on the office’s big, leather couch. How embarrassed everyone was. Holy Mother! Baby didn’t want that to happen again.

  He went through the reception area and peeked into the chairman’s office next door. There was a young woman there, but she wasn’t underneath anybody. She lay on the floor beside the desk.

  She is wearing no clothes, or not many, Baby thought. Where are her clothes? And what is that pool around her head? Water?

  Standing over her, holding something in his hand, was a slim, dark-skinned, dark-haired young man. The young man looked up from the woman’s body, his face contorted in a horrible grimace.

  Baby Santos turned and ran out of the office, around the corner and down the hall, screaming with all his might.

  1

  Politics are as exciting as war and almost as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

  WINSTON CHURCHILL

  Tom Jeffords leveled the Glock .45 and pulled the trigger. The automatic tried to kick upward, but Jeffords was a big man and held it level with ease as he fired again. When he’d run through thirteen rounds, he ejected the clip and laid it and the automatic on the counter in front of him. He removed his big hearing protectors and motioned to Nik Kane to do the same. The last shot still echoed in the big room, empty except for the two of them. Jeffords pushed a button on a pole next to his shooting station and a motor began to whir.

  While he waited for his target to arrive, he said, “So you want to go out on your own.”

  His tone made it sound as if Kane intended to do something distasteful.

  “Yes, I do,” Kane said. “I’m bored.”

  Jeffords nodded and examined the target. It was an outline of a man with a gun. All thirteen holes were within the kill zone. Jeffords might be a desk-bound bureaucrat who was pushing sixty-five, but he could still shoot.

  The Glock .45 was the Anchorage Police Department’s standard-issue side arm, but the version lying in front of Jeffords was anything but standard issue. It was chrome-plated and had honest-to-God pearl handles with TSJ inlaid in ebony. A grateful salesman had given Jeffords the automatic after the department selected the Glock .45, and it went well with his $1,000-a-copy tailored uniform, his full head of well-barbered white hair, and his Maui tan.

  It’s easy to mistake Jeffords for a show horse and his automatic for a show gun, Kane thought. But not if you watch him on the firing range.

  Jeffords clipped a new target to the line and hit the button again.

  “I’d think boredom would be preferable to the life you’ve been leading for the past several years,” he said. “I’d think you’d welcome some peace and quiet.”

  Ah, Kane thought. The oblique reference. A Jeffords specialty. So much more elegant than using words like drunkenness, killing, and prison.

  “And if your life were more…exciting…you would be forced to carry a firearm,” the chief said.

  Kane hadn’t carried a gun of any sort since the night he’d answered an officer needs assistance call on his way home from a bar and shot and killed a twelve-year-old. Of course, for seven of those eight years he’d been in prison, where they sort of frowned on inmates packing. He’d finally been exonerated when a witness recanted and admitted the dead boy had been aiming a gun at Kane, but he’d tried to steer clear of firearms since he’d gotten out anyway. Jeffords seemed to regard that as a form of weakness.

  Jeffords put a fresh clip in the .45.

  “A man in your line of work needs to carry a firearm for self-defense,” he said, as he waited for his target to reach the proper position, “even if his assignments are boring.”

  The chief put the hearing protectors back on before Kane could reply. Kane did the same, then watched as Jeffords put another thirteen rounds right where he wanted them.

  When Kane had gotten out of prison a little more than a year before, he had wanted to go back to his old job as a detective lieutenant with the Anchorage Police Department. Jeffords had put the kibosh on that, but had seen to it that Kane was hired by 49th Star Security, a firm in which he was a silent partner. Kane had had an interesting case or two, but mostly he’d been doing corporate background checks, some divorce work, a few pilfering cases, the kind of thing they’d left to the newbies when he’d been with the police department.

  When his target returned, Jeffords regarded it for a moment.

  If he had any emotions, Kane thought, that look might be satisfaction.

  Jeffords took the targets up to the range master’s stand, returned with a handful of supplies, and began breaking down the automatic.

  “Aren’t you a little old to be chasing after excitement?” he asked.

  Kane laughed.

  “I’m, what, seven years younger than you,” he said. “Are you too old to be bossing cops and politicians around?”

  Jeffords shot Kane a look that said age wasn’t his favorite topic of discussion, then shrugged.

  “If you are really thinking about going out on your own,” he said, “then this is a happy coincidence. I have a job offer for you.”

  Kane laughed.

  “And here I thought you just wanted to see my smiling face,” Kane said. “I’m heartbroken.”

  “Very amusing,” the chief said, in a tone that made it clear he wasn’t amused. “There’s a woman in town named Mrs. Richard Foster. She has some work that needs to be done. I’d like you to do it.”

  Kane had so many questions, he wasn’t sure where to start.

  “You’d like me to do it?” he said. “You mean, this isn’t an order?”

  “You aren’t with the department anymore, Nik,” Jeffords said. “I can’t give you orders.”

  Just like Jeffords, Kane thought. We both know he owns the security firm, but he won’t admit it even to me. In an empty room, no less.

  “Why am I hearing this from you instead of someone at 49th Star?” he asked.

  “I’m told the firm can’t take this job,” the chief said.

  He’s told, Kane thought. That’s rich.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  Jeffords was slow to reply.

  “The reasons are…complicated,” he said at last.

  Great, Kane thought. Now we’re in the world of Jeffordsisms, answers that don’t answer anything. Kane had known the chief for more than thirty years. They’d come up through the ranks of the police department together. Jeffords, who had joined the department sooner and had a much better grasp of politics, was always a couple of rungs above him on the career ladder. Since he’d often worked under Jeffords, Kane had had plenty of reason to study him. He had watched the chief become the man he was, each year growing a little more devious and a little less human.

  “You want me to take a job the firm won’t take, for ‘complicated’ reasons?” Kane said.

  “Can’t take,” the chief said.

  “Why not?” Kane asked.

  Jeffords looked around to make sure no one had entered the firing range.

  He probably arranged for this place to be empty, Kane thought. He didn’t want anyone else to hear this conversation, and he’s still not saying anything. I wonder who he thinks might be listening.

  “The case involves a politician,” Jeffords said. “It would be…incongruent…for me, or the firm, to be involved with this.”

  And that’s as close to an admission that he owns the firm as I’m likely to get, Kane thought.

  “Incongruent,” Kane said. “I guess those word-a-day calendars really do pay off.”

  He was silent for a moment.

  “If you’re trying to lay low on this, why send me?” he asked. “All your political pals will figure you’re involved the minute they see me anyway.”

  Jeffords’s job title was chief of police, but for the past decade
or more he’d actually run Anchorage, stage-managing the elections of mayors and assembly members who did what they were told. Because so much of the money that made the city go came from the state and federal governments, he had made himself a force in state and federal politics as well.

  “I’m not responsible for what people may think,” Jeffords said. “But if anyone asks, you can truthfully tell them that I am not involved in this case.”

  Kane decided to let that go.

  “This politician have a name?” he asked.

  “His name is Matthew Hope,” Jeffords said. “He’s a member of the Alaska State Senate.”

  Kane was silent as he thought about what Jeffords had said. Matthew Hope’s name had been all over the news in the past couple of days. He’d been arrested for the murder of a young woman in the state Capitol. The victim had been beautiful and “scantily clad,” as the newspapers and the TV newsreaders put it. She’d also been white, and Hope was an Alaska Native. The story had everything needed to crank up the media—sex, politics, violence, and race. The crime had even been given a tabloidy nickname—The White Rose Murder, for the flower embroidered on the front of the garter belt the victim had been wearing.

  Maybe that’s why Jeffords is being so careful, Kane thought. A case this hot could burn anybody involved. Or even anybody in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “The White Rose Murder case is a lollapalooza,” Kane said. “Is Hope one of yours?”