Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 02 - Capitol Offense

by Mike Doogan

  He dropped the cell phone into his shirt pocket, stuffed the gun into his pants, picked up the pick mattock, and attacked the door.

  Chewing through the door with the pick end of the tool was slow going, especially since he had to stop every few minutes to rest. With every chop, the headboard banged him somewhere, and it got in the way of any full swing. Kane was convinced that his captors would return long before he finished. He concentrated on cutting away the wood around the hasp and, when he could see it he dropped the mattock, pulled out the automatic, pointed it at the hasp, and pulled the trigger.

  The noise pounded his ears closed. The hasp sagged. Kane hit the door with his shoulder, but all he got for his trouble was another bruise. He put the automatic’s barrel back in place and fired a second shot. The hasp parted. He pushed the door open.

  Kane stepped out and looked around. He was in the middle of nowhere, at the end of a narrow, brushy road. He had no idea how far he was from the city. He might be on an island somewhere, for that matter. Southeast was lousy with uninhabited islands. He flipped open his cell phone, turned it on, and was relieved to see that he had a signal. He punched in Cocoa’s number.

  “Cocoa?” Pause. “I don’t care what you were doing, pal. Some goons snatched me up, and now I’m standing in the tules handcuffed to the headboard of a metal cot.” Pause. “Okay, here’s what I can see.” He described his surroundings. Pause. “Okay, then get out here as fast as you can. These guys are coming back, and I’m in no shape to receive them. I’ll start walking now.”

  He closed the cell phone and dropped it into his pocket, got a good grip on the automatic, hoisted the headboard onto his shoulder, and set off. A chill wind cut through his shirt and the headboard tried to snag itself on every branch and bush. He fell once and lay there, willing himself to get up. As he looked into the woods, he thought he could see all of his family looking at him and shaking their heads: his parents, his brothers and sisters, Laurie and the kids. All of them filled with pity and disappointment.

  “This isn’t my fault,” he yelled. The figures faded from his vision, replaced by the awful emptiness of the Alaska landscape.

  Too much to do before I die, he thought, just as he had thought in the jungles of Southeast Asia and on the streets of Anchorage. He pushed himself to his feet and set off again. I just hope I have a chance to make things right, he thought as he staggered along. Make peace with Laurie and the kids, try to be the father Dylan should have had instead of some bad Xerox of my own father.

  Make things right, he thought. Make things right.

  His foot hit a tree root and he fell hard. He didn’t have the strength to get up again, so he lay there mumbling to himself. The noise of tires crunching along the old snow and ice of the road reached him and grew louder. He tried to get the automatic around to where he could shoot, but the effort was too much. The last thing he saw was his father, shaking his head.

  25

  Too bad ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

  HENRY KISSINGER

  Kane awoke fighting for his life. He thrashed and kicked and bellowed and tried to get to his feet. A pair of powerful hands held his shoulders until, exhausted, he lay back and opened his eyes.

  The room was small, its gleaming surfaces all white. Winthrop’s broad brown face stood out like a bear crossing a snowfield. He took his hands off of Kane’s shoulders and stepped back, leaving behind a faint undertone of expensive cologne that was immediately masked by the smell of disinfectant and body odor.

  That must be me, Kane thought. I don’t smell too good.

  He was lying in a hospital bed cranked halfway up, a needle sticking into his forearm and monitors clipped here and there. A plastic bag hung from a metal pole. Clear liquid dripped from it down a plastic tube, through the needle, and into Kane’s arm.

  Hospital, Kane thought. I’m in a hospital.

  He felt like he should be in a hospital, like he’d been beaten by an angry mob of small boys with sticks. Some of his muscles hurt. The rest ached. His head felt like it had been inflated to twice its size. And his arm hurt like it had been stabbed several times with a hot poker.

  “How are you feeling, Sergeant Kane?” Mrs. Richard Foster trilled.

  Kane couldn’t see her, so he tried to sit up. The minute he tensed his muscles, he thought better of that. Instead, he tried to say hello, but all that emerged was a croak. Winthrop took a plastic glass from a bedside table and held its straw to Kane’s lips. He sucked in a little water.

  His stomach tried to turn itself inside out. Kane clamped his throat closed until the wave passed, then said, “I’ve felt better, Mrs. Foster. What are you doing here?”

  “Why, when you disappeared,” the woman’s voice said, “I felt we had to come. I thought my presence might stir the authorities to greater effort, and Winthrop is very handy.”

  About halfway through, the woman’s answer stopped making sense to Kane. The world began slipping away. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Slowly, reality stabilized.

  “Could you crank me up?” he asked Winthrop.

  Winthrop hit a button, the back of the bed began to rise, and Mrs. Foster came into view. The black veil was gone.

  “You, I can see your face,” he said.

  The woman smiled.

  “Yes, you can,” she said. “My year of mourning has ended. Do you recognize me?”

  He’d known her the minute he saw her.

  “Amber Dawn,” he said.

  The woman’s smile lit up the room like a searchlight.

  “Why, Sergeant Kane,” she said, “how nice of you to remember. We didn’t see that much of each other before your…mishap.”

  “Once,” Kane said. “I saw you once. But you were pretty unforgettable.”

  The woman bowed her head and something like a blush crept up her neck.

  “You’re too kind,” she said.

  Kane remembered the only time he’d seen Amber Dawn, hanging stark naked except for a G-string from a pole in a topless-bottomless place called the Beaver Trap. It was maybe three weeks before he shot Enfield Jessup and began his journey to prison. He’d been in the Trap with a bunch of other cops, celebrating somebody’s birthday, when she’d come out to dance. Thirty seconds into her routine, all the bullshit and horseplay in his group had stopped and every man at the table was staring at her like she was his chance at heaven. Every other man in the place was doing the same, even the bartender and the bouncer, who had seen it all. She didn’t move so much as she flowed, her eyes closed, arms above her head, dancing for all the world like she was alone somewhere, somewhere much nicer than the seedy bar with its sketchy patrons. As the music went on, Kane could see a line of sweat run out from under her honey-colored hair and trace a line down the curve of her neck, then run up and over one perfect breast. He’d never said anything to anyone, but that one memory, that image, had helped him through a lot after the shooting and during his long stretch in prison.

  The body, that nearly perfect body, had belonged to someone far too young to be dancing in such a place. When her dance ended and she’d harvested the bills that littered the stage floor, he’d gone up to her, shown his badge, and demanded to see her ID, telling himself he was only doing his duty. She’d led him backstage and produced it, standing there as he examined it, making no effort to cover her nakedness. The ID was very professional and absolutely phony. But as he handed it back to her, Kane realized that he couldn’t stand for another second so close to her without doing something he would regret. So he’d mumbled his thanks and fled, barely pausing to tell the others he was going. And he hadn’t gone back to the Beaver Trap since.

  “I know why I remember you,” he said, “but why do you remember me?”

  The woman looked up. Her smile was fond.

  “You were very nice, the way you dealt with me,” she said. “Other cops weren’t nearly so nice. And you were polite. It was almo
st like you were afraid of me.”

  “I was afraid of you,” Kane said. “I still am, although I’m older now so I hide it better.”

  The woman’s smile changed, and as they looked at each other, Kane felt something like an electrical current pass between them.

  Easy now, he thought.

  “How did you become…how did you end up…,” he said, then laughed. “See? I told you I was afraid. I can’t even finish a sentence.”

  The woman looked at him for what seemed like an hour, then shook her head as if breaking a spell.

  “How did I end up as a rich widow?” she asked. “Richard came into that place I was dancing with a big group. He was celebrating some business coup and, if I remember correctly, had a woman on each arm. The next thing I knew, Winthrop was backstage with an armload of flowers and an invitation to dinner in a private room at the top of a hotel downtown. Six weeks later, Richard Foster and I were married.”

  “And lived happily ever after,” Kane said. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded full of innuendo.

  The woman gave him a sharp look.

  “Lots of people said lots of mean things about us getting together,” she said, “but we were happy. I know it seems odd, me marrying someone old enough to be my grandfather, but Richard was so kind and so full of life and I felt safe with him. Safe and appreciated for who I was. He never judged me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kane said. “I wasn’t really judging, either. More like envying the old goat.”

  That brought a smile from the woman.

  “There was a lot to envy about him besides marrying me,” she said. “He had a life. I remember once, just before we got married, I got my courage up to tell him all the things I’d done—I’d had to do—to stay alive. And he just put a finger on my lips and said, ‘I don’t want to hear it. If you tell me the bad things you’ve done, then I’ll have to tell you the bad things I’ve done. And we’ll be here for a month.’”

  She shook her head.

  “I miss him,” she said. “I don’t mean sometimes, I mean all the time. I mean right now.”

  Kane let the silence lengthen, then asked, “You said before that you came down here when you learned that I was missing. What did you mean?”

  “I guess you had arranged to meet Mr. Doyle after he came back from Anchorage Sunday night,” she said. “When you didn’t turn up, he tried your hotel room. He let it go until the next day, then he called me. We persuaded the hotel to let us look in your room and when we didn’t find anything and you didn’t turn up, we called the police. They grumbled about how you are a full-grown adult, but they at least went through the motions. We were starting to get really worried, when your cabdriver friend called and told Mr. Doyle he’d found you.”

  Kane had a hard time following the woman’s story. She made it sound like he’d been gone a long time.

  “What day is today?” he asked.

  “Wednesday,” the woman said. “It’s very early Wednesday.”

  Adrenaline shot through Kane’s body.

  “Wednesday,” he said. “What’s happened while I’ve been gone?”

  “What’s happened?” the woman said. “For one thing, the authorities have rearrested Senator Hope. They say that woman, that Melinda Foxx, was pregnant and that DNA evidence proves he was, is, whatever, the father. And they also say that there is evidence that the other staff member was pushed off the fire escape. They’re trying to say Senator Hope did that, too. So they argued that he is a flight risk and a danger to the community and, on Monday a judge named Ritter let them put him back in jail.”

  Kane closed his eyes. Four days. He’d been out of commission for four days. He opened his eyes again. It didn’t sound like he had much time to lie around.

  “I need a telephone,” he said to Winthrop, “and a directory of legislative phone numbers.”

  Winthrop and Mrs. Foster looked at him oddly.

  “It’s two a.m.,” she said. “No one will be at the office.”

  “Two a.m.?” Kane said. “What are you two doing here?”

  Mrs. Foster smiled at him.

  “Winthrop is spending the night in case anything happens,” she said. “I’m here because I couldn’t sleep.”

  Kane was silent for a moment.

  “What else has happened?” he asked. “Anything in the Capitol?”

  Winthrop and Mrs. Foster exchanged looks.

  “Well, with Senator Hope in jail, they sent the oil tax bill to the Senate floor this morning and Senator Grantham switched his vote without telling anybody,” the woman said. “The tax failed. And both his aides quit. At least, that’s the rumor in the Capitol.”

  “Better give me that phone anyway,” he said.

  When he had it, he punched in a number and waited. He closed it again without saying anything.

  “She’s not home,” he said. “Or she’s not answering.”

  He punched in another number and waited. After some time, he said, “Laurie? It’s Nik.” He listened. “Yes, I know what time it is. I wouldn’t be calling unless it was necessary. I need Dylan’s home telephone number in Juneau.” He listened some more. “No, it’s business. I wouldn’t bother him, either, if it wasn’t.” He listened again. “Why don’t you let me worry about how he’ll react. Please. Okay, thanks.” He listened some more. “Yes, I told you. I’ll come and get that stuff as soon as I’m done here. I haven’t forgotten. ’Bye.”

  He closed the phone, opened it again, and punched in another number.

  “Dylan,” he said. “No? I need Dylan Kane. This is his father.” While he waited, he said to Winthrop, “I’ll need clothes. I’m getting out of here.”

  “The doctor said you should have at least a couple of days’ rest, to let the drugs work their way out of your system,” the woman said.

  Kane grimaced at her.

  “Hello, Dylan,” he said. “This is your father.” He listened. “Yes, I know what time it is. I need some information.” He listened again. “I don’t really have time to listen to you tell me what a son of a bitch I am, Dylan. What do you know about Alma Atwood? Has anything happened to her?” He listened some more. “Dylan, this is important,” he said sharply. “Stop being childish and answer me.” He listened. “What?” he said. He listened some more. “Thank you, Dylan. We’ll deal with your issues before I leave.” He snapped the cell phone shut and handed it to Winthrop.

  “Thank God for the Juneau rumor mill,” he said. “The woman I need to talk to quit, and she’s ticketed on the ferry that leaves Auke Bay at eight a.m.”

  He looked at the clock.

  “That means I’ve got time to shower, thank God,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me on a cattle boat the way I smell. Winthrop, I thought I asked for clothes.”

  Wordlessly, the big Native opened the door to the closet section of the all-in-one piece of furniture that shared the room with the hospital bed. Kane’s clean clothes hung there. The detective reached over, peeled the surgical tape from his forearm, and slid the needle out of his flesh. Then he began disconnecting monitors.

  “Nurses will come running,” he said to the woman. “Would you mind dealing with them? If nothing else, it will get you out of this room before seeing a sight no decent woman should see when I climb out of this bed.”

  The woman laughed and got to her feet.

  “I like the decent woman part,” she said and left the room.

  “You’re not so lucky, big boy,” Kane said. “Give me a hand.”

  Winthrop took Kane by the shoulders and lifted him to his feet like he was a baby.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to look,” Winthrop said as he was doing so. “I value my eyesight.”

  26

  Think of a politician’s soul as an apartment. Think of lobbyists as renters. Each year, the renters show up, waving wads of cash.

  TONY SNOW

  The MV Fairweather is 235 feet of aluminum twin-hulled ferry, designed to carry 35 cars and 250 passengers at 32 k
nots. It was set to scoot up the Inside Passage from Juneau to Skagway and Haines in just two hours’ time. Once on the road system, the passengers could go wherever their desires and credit cards took them.

  Kane walked aboard as the crew was securing for departure, carrying a big cup of coffee. He’d had to talk both Winthrop and Cocoa out of coming with him.

  “You keep a close eye on your employer,” he said to Winthrop. “These people are idiots, but they’re violent idiots.” To Cocoa, he said, “Here’s what I want you to do,” then gave him instructions.

  “What if your bad friends are on the ferry?” Cocoa asked.

  Kane patted his side, where the automatic hung from his belt in its holster.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  He walked through the car deck as the ferry left the dock, sipping coffee and looking for Alma Atwood’s license plate. He found it on a battered Subaru crammed with boxes.

  “Hey,” a crewman called to him, “nobody’s allowed on the car deck while we’re under way. You’ve got to go up to the passenger deck.”

  Kane nodded and waved, found a companionway, and climbed to the passenger deck. The ferry seemed to be about half full. He worked his way from the stern to the bow and found Alma sitting in the observation lounge, ignoring the attempts of a hairy young fisherman to chat her up.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said to Alma.

  She looked up, gave a little squeal, and swiveled her head around as if looking for an escape route. Kane stepped closer to keep her from getting to her feet.

  “Thanks for keeping my daughter company,” he said to the fisherman.

  The young man looked at Kane, at Alma, at Kane again. He opened his mouth to say something, stopped, shrugged, rose, and walked away. Kane sat in his abandoned chair and rested his hand lightly on Alma’s arm. She was trembling.

  “We’ve got to talk,” he said.