Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 02 - Capitol Offense

by Mike Doogan

  Kane looked at the cat and the note. It seemed needlessly cruel to kill a cat just to scare him, particularly when it didn’t work. He thought about calling the cops, then thought about the time it would take for them to get there, take his statement, and ask questions. He was just too tired for all that. He put the cat back into the shipping envelope, put the envelope in the closet, and shut the door. Then he got ready for bed. He was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, and he didn’t dream of dead cats or live women or anything at all.

  17

  Men are moved by only two things: fear and self-interest.

  NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

  The beeping of Kane’s travel alarm sounded as loud as the backup warning of a truck about to run over him. He groped around and managed to knock the alarm off the bedside table. It lay on the floor, still beeping. He said a bad word loudly, but that didn’t make him feel any better. He felt around, found the alarm and silenced it, then lay back. Tension locked his neck muscles, his ears rang from all the bar noise, and the secondhand tobacco smoke left the inside of his mouth feeling like something foul had crawled into it and died.

  Great, he thought. I didn’t have a drop to drink and I’ve got a hangover anyway.

  Kane groaned his way out of bed and stood under the hot shower for a long time, then turned the handle all the way to cold and capered around under the icy blast for as long as he could stand it. As he toweled himself off, he looked in the mirror and inventoried the damage of aging and a life lived hard.

  Just a collection of scars, wrinkles, and bags, he thought. It’s a good thing that poor woman passed out and didn’t have to see this.

  He put on his suit and looked around the room. He walked to the closet, opened it, and picked the envelope up off the floor. Then he looked at the automatic. No sense carrying it to the police station, he thought. Or trying to get it through security at the court building.

  He left his room, stopped at the bellman’s station, and asked, “What do you people use to keep your feet around here?”

  “Cat-quick reflexes,” the bellman said. “But those Yak things, the ones that go over your shoes, they help. You can buy some at the outdoor store across the street.”

  Kane did, and, walking out of the store, found that he was much steadier on his feet. The minute he stepped on the linoleum floor of the coffee shop, though, his foot tried to slide out from under him.

  “That’s the downside of those things,” the guy behind the counter said. “If they can’t dig in, they’re like ice skates.”

  Kane sat on a chair and pulled them off. He got the biggest cup of coffee the place sold and a bagel with egg and cheese and sat at a table eating and watching people come and go. Most everyone else seemed to know one another, and from their conversation he gathered that many worked for the legislature. They were, for the most part, young and healthy looking, and watching them made Kane feel older and more used up.

  Letitia Potter entered the coffee shop and got in line. In a few minutes she turned to go, a bag of bagels in one hand and a cardboard carrier studded with paper cups of coffee in the other. When she got to the door, Kane got to his feet and opened it for her.

  “Thank you,” she said, then seemed to realize she’d seen Kane before.

  “Hello,” she said. “You’re the man from Nikiski, aren’t you?”

  “Close enough,” Kane said. “Do you have a moment to talk?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not really,” she said, paused, and went on, “Oh, why not.”

  Kane moved the envelope off the table. Letitia set her purchases on it and sat down. She worked one of the cups loose from the carrier, took a sip, and opened the bag.

  “Bagel?” she asked.

  Kane pointed at the crumbs of his breakfast and shook his head. Letitia removed a bagel. As Kane watched, she sawed the bagel in half with a plastic knife, spread cream cheese on it, and ate it with ferocious concentration, washing each bite down with a sip of coffee, not pausing until she was finished.

  “I was hungry,” she said.

  “I can see that,” Kane said. “Ms. Potter, I was hoping you could answer a few questions about Melinda Foxx.”

  Letitia looked at Kane. He could read nothing in her eyes.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t know her very well,” she said. “We just worked together. Or, rather, she worked. I’m a volunteer. The stupid rules won’t let me work for pay in my daddy’s office.”

  “That’s too bad,” Kane said. “What can you tell me about Melinda?”

  Letitia shrugged.

  “She was a good worker,” she said. “That’s all.”

  She paused, then smiled.

  “She had very good penmanship.”

  That seemed to exhaust the subject for Letitia. She reached out to touch Kane’s scar, then pulled her hand back.

  “Did that hurt a lot?” she asked. “It must have hurt a lot.”

  She gave a little shiver. Revulsion? Excitement? Kane found he couldn’t read her at all.

  “Did you know anything about her personal life?” Kane asked. “Was she involved with anyone?”

  “We aren’t a family, Mr. Nikiski,” she said. “I mean, my daddy and I are, but the others just work there. We aren’t involved in their personal lives, and they aren’t involved in ours.”

  She gave a little nod and got to her feet.

  “I have to get this up to my daddy and his friends,” she said. She picked up the bag and the coffees and turned to go.

  “Ralph Stansfield says she was involved with someone,” Kane said.

  Letitia turned back so fast one of the coffees toppled from the holder and burst open on the floor.

  “Oh, no,” Letitia said, her voice sounding like a little girl’s. “Daddy will be angry.”

  “Let me get another one,” Kane said. “What was it?”

  She told Kane, and he went to the counter and ordered.

  Kane tried again to draw her out, but Letitia stood silently until the coffee was handed over the counter. She put it into the carrier. Kane handed her the bag of bagels and their hands brushed and he felt…nothing. No warmth, no spark. Nothing.

  I know your libido diminishes with age, he thought, but this is ridiculous.

  He picked up his envelope and put it back on the table, then swung the door open for Letitia.

  “What’s in the envelope?” she asked, her voice a woman’s again.

  “A dead cat,” Kane said.

  Letitia looked at him without expression, turned, and walked toward the Capitol.

  Kane looked at his watch. If he moved fast, he had time to report his “gift” to the police and still make Hope’s bail hearing. He put his ice grippers back on, crept across the linoleum and back out onto the ice.

  He explained his errand to the same woman at the front desk of the police station, sat, and waited. Crawford came out and led Kane to his desk. Malone sat, as before, facing them.

  “Now what?” Crawford said.

  “This,” Kane said, setting the envelope on Crawford’s desk. “Somebody left it for me at the hotel last night.”

  Crawford prodded the envelope with a pen.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s open,” Kane said. “See for yourself.”

  Crawford picked up the envelope, tilted it and shook. The plastic bag containing the dead cat slid onto his desk. He leaped to his feet, sending his chair shooting backward.

  “Jesus Christ, bubba,” he yelled, “is this your idea of a joke?”

  Kane shook his head.

  “No joke, Tank,” Kane said. “Somebody’s trying to scare me. Read the note.”

  Crawford flipped the plastic bag over with his pen and read the note.

  “Somebody doesn’t like you,” he said.

  “Yeah, and we both know who it is,” he said. “Or, rather, you do. I know what the two of them look like, but you know who they are.”

  “Can you prove it was them?” Craw
ford said.

  “You’re the cop,” Kane said. “There’s the evidence. You prove it.”

  “Hey,” Malone said. “Hey, you two.”

  Crawford walked to a coatrack, removed an overcoat from a hanger, and shrugged his way into it.

  “Let’s walk,” he said to Kane.

  Kane followed him out onto the sidewalk. Crawford led him across a street and onto the wharf. Crawford moved across the icy ground like he was skating. They walked along until the cop turned and leaned on the railing. Kane followed suit.

  “I don’t know who those guys are, Kane,” Crawford said. “I could probably find out, but why would I bother? Nobody’s going to prosecute them for killing a cat, even if we could prove they did it.”

  “What about the threat?” Kane asked.

  “You want them on something sure to get kicked down to a misdemeanor?” Crawford asked.

  “No,” Kane said, “I want to know who they are and who they’re working for.”

  “Well, I can’t tell you that and I ain’t finding out,” Crawford said, his voice harsh.

  “What the hell is going on, Crawford?” he said. He could hear the anger in his own voice.

  “That’s all I’m telling you about this,” Crawford said. “But I will tell you, you’ve got some powerful people taking an interest in you, and not in a good way. So like I said yesterday, watch your ass.”

  Kane realized that his hands were knotted into fists. He relaxed them slowly. Taking his irritation out on Crawford wouldn’t help anything. Besides, Tank might kick his ass.

  “Why’d you bring me out here, Tank?” he asked. “You could have told me this at the station.”

  Crawford swept a hand across the scene in front of them.

  “I like looking at the water,” he said. “It calms me down. I like to think about doing something simpler, like being out in a boat, fishing. There are king salmon that swim through here even in winter, feeding, getting ready to run up the rivers to British Columbia in the spring to spawn. They’re good fighters and great eating, really moist from the fat that insulates them against the cold water. There are days I like my job and days I’d rather be fishing. Lately, there are more days I’d rather be fishing. This is one of them.”

  Crawford straightened up.

  “Like I said, bubba, watch yourself,” he said and walked back toward the police station.

  18

  A judge is a lawyer who knows a politician.

  ANONYMOUS

  Kane walked thoughtfully up the hill to the court building. He cleared security, sat, removed his ice grippers, and put them into his pocket.

  All this putting them on and taking them off, he thought. I guess this isn’t a very practical solution to the ice problem.

  He looked at the directory and found the courtroom. It was small, with only three rows of wooden benches for spectators. The benches were nearly full, and almost everyone on them looked like a reporter of some sort. The man Kane had shoved around the day before gave him a hard look. Kane responded with a big smile and took a seat in the back, squeezing between a pair of old-timers who looked like regulars. One of them was sitting on a padded seat she’d brought along, and the other had a yellow pad balanced on one knee and a pen in his hand. Every courthouse Kane had ever been in had its regulars, older people who used up their days watching the real-life dramas that played out in courtrooms.

  “Courtroom always this full?” he asked the woman.

  The woman shook her head.

  “Nope,” she said. “Most days it’s just me and Herman there, maybe some family members or friends. But this is a big case. Murder, and it’s political, too.”

  Doyle was sitting at a table inside the low railing that separated the spectators from the actors. A tall, dark-haired man and a short, stout woman with flyaway hair sat at the other table. The jury box was empty. A woman sat at a desk next to the judge’s dais, fiddling with paperwork. She looked up at the clock on the wall, then at the lawyers.

  “Are we ready for the defendant?” she asked.

  The lawyers nodded, and she pushed a button on her desk. Matthew Hope came through a side door, wearing handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit. The orange suit would make him stand out better if he made a break for it. He was accompanied by a state trooper wearing a flak vest. Camera shutters clicked. The trooper herded him into the seat next to Doyle. He leaned over and removed Hope’s handcuffs, then walked back to the door he’d come through and leaned against the wall.

  The woman at the desk looked around, nodded to the lawyers, and pushed another button. The door behind her opened and a short, frizzy-headed guy in a black robe walked into the room. The woman and the lawyers and the spectators got to their feet.

  “Superior court in and for the state of Alaska is now in session, the Honorable Gerald Sellers presiding,” the woman said.

  “That’s funny,” the woman next to Kane whispered. “This is supposed to be old Judge Ritter’s courtroom.”

  The judge mounted some steps and sat down on the dais.

  “Please be seated,” he said, looking around the room.

  “He’s a good one,” the woman whispered to Kane, “not one of these political hacks.”

  The man on the other side of Kane was writing furiously on the legal pad in what looked like pictographs. He muttered quietly to himself as he wrote.

  “The first case is State of Alaska v. Hope, a charge of murder in the second degree, petition for bail,” the clerk said.

  “Mr. Doyle,” the judge said, looking at Oil Can, “how would the defense like to proceed?”

  Doyle got to his feet.

  “Your Honor,” he said, “my client is a member of the Alaska State Senate, a man without a criminal record, and the state has not seen fit to bring its case to a grand jury. We request release on his own recognizance.”

  Doyle sat down.

  The dark-haired man and the woman had been whispering furiously during Doyle’s remarks.

  “Mr. Davies?” the judge said.

  The pair continued whispering.

  “Who are the other lawyers?” Kane asked the woman.

  “The guy is Bob Davies,” she said. “He’s an assistant district attorney who tries lots of cases here. But I don’t know the woman.”

  “Mr. Davies?” the judge said sharply.

  The dark-haired man got slowly to his feet.

  “Sorry, Your Honor,” he said. “We were expecting Judge Ritter.”

  The judge nodded.

  “Judge Ritter is ill and I’ve been assigned to take his cases today,” he said.

  “Old sot’s probably got the brown bottle flu,” the woman whispered.

  The dark-haired man shuffled some papers on the table in front of him.

  “Your Honor,” he said, “the state has substantial evidence linking the defendant to this crime and expects DNA evidence that is being processed now to provide more. We anticipate going to the grand jury soon, and ask that he be held in custody until then.”

  Doyle was on his feet like he’d been shot from a cannon. The judge held up his hand.

  “I’ll hear from you in a moment, Mr. Doyle,” the judge said. “Now, then, did I hear you correctly, Mr. Davies? The state wants to keep Senator Hope here in jail because it might have more evidence that might result in an indictment?”

  The dark-haired man shifted from one foot to the other and looked at the woman sitting next to him.

  “Well, Your Honor, it’s more than that,” he said. “The defendant was found with the body and—”

  The judge cut him off.

  “I’ve read the file, Mr. Davies,” he said. You could have used the tone in his voice to cut diamonds. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  The dark-haired man looked at the woman again.

  “Mr. Davies,” the judge said, “are you in charge of this case or not?”

  The dark-haired man looked at the judge.

  “Well,” he said hesitantly, “yes, Your Hon
or, I am.”

  “Then,” the judge said, “who is this woman who is so clearly giving you orders?”

  “Your Honor,” the dark-haired man said.

  “Don’t ‘Your Honor’ me,” the judge said. “Kindly identify your associate. I don’t like strangers in my court.”

  The dark-haired man said, “This is Miss Talia Dufresne, Your Honor.”

  “See?” the judge said. “That wasn’t so hard. Does Ms. Dufresne work for the district attorney’s office?”

  The dark-haired man seemed to be squirming now.

  “No, Your Honor,” he said.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Well,” the judge said, “what’s she doing here, then?”

  More silence.

  “Mr. Davies,” the judge said, his voice heavy with warning.

  “Ms. Dufresne works for the governor’s office,” the dark-haired man said. “She’s here observing.”

  That set the spectators buzzing. Photographers tried to get a better angle on the woman, and the clicking of their cameras joined the hubbub.

  “Your Honor,” Oil Can squeaked.

  The judge held up his hand again.

  “Not yet, Mr. Doyle,” he said, “I think I can handle this one. You spectators, please be quiet.”

  The noise stopped.

  “Is Ms. Dufresne a part of the prosecution team, then, Mr. Davies?” the judge asked.

  The dark-haired man squirmed some more.

  “Well, not exactly, Your Honor,” he said. “She’s more of an advisor.”

  The judge nodded.

  “If your presentation here is based on her advice, Mr. Davies, I’d tell you to get a new advisor,” the judge said. “You and I and everyone else in this courtroom know that Senator Hope is entitled to bail as a matter of settled constitutional law in Alaska, unless you can show the most unusual and exigent circumstances. Can you do that?”

  The dark-haired man shook his head.

  “No, Your Honor,” he said.

  “Then sit down,” the judge snapped.

  The dark-haired man sat. The judge turned to look at Oil Can.

  “Mr. Doyle,” he said, “I am releasing your client on his own recognizance—”