by Mike Doogan
The two nodded to each other.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Crawford said. “But what I meant was, if Kane here and his pals had just let the police do what we’re trained to do, he wouldn’t have gotten shot.”
“I didn’t get shot, at least not technically,” Kane said, trying to change the course of the conversation. “It was a piece of rock they dug out of my leg, not lead.”
The woman was not deterred.
“Detective Crawford,” she began.
“Tank,” Crawford said. “Just call me Tank, ma’am. Everybody does.”
“Tank, then,” the woman said, “what do you think would have happened if Sergeant Kane had gone to the police? Did he have enough evidence for a warrant? Could you have gotten a warrant at that time of night? How long would it have taken to round up your SWAT team, or whatever you call it here? Would those men still have been there by the time all that happened? Would you have been able to creep up on them if they were, as Sergeant Kane and Winthrop did? Or would you still be out there trying to get them out? As I understand it, the cave or room or whatever it is they were in would have been difficult to remove them from. How many police officers do you think might have been injured, or even killed, in the process?”
By the time she was finished, Crawford was holding his hands out in front of him as if to stop the flood of rhetorical questions.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “You might be right, ma’am, but Nik here will tell you that civilians taking the law into their own hands makes cops nervous.”
The woman gave him a sweet smile.
“Is it a job-security issue?” she asked.
Crawford’s face got so red Kane was afraid it might explode. Then Tank began to laugh.
“Maybe so,” he said, “maybe it is. But we like to think we’re here to keep citizens safe, not the other way around.”
He turned to face Kane.
“Anyway, I’ve got good news and bad news for you,” he said. “The good news is that the City and Borough of Juneau is recommending to the DA that you not be charged with a crime in connection with the events of last night. Your story matches those of the other witnesses and the forensic evidence, so it’s pretty clear the other guy shot first. Lucky for you, one of our techs found his first bullet in a tree way the hell and gone on the far side of that clearing. Guys don’t usually get off a shot like that after taking three in the pump.”
“That’s good enough news,” Kane said. “What’s the bad news?”
“Your pal Bezhdetny swears he didn’t have anything to do with Melinda Foxx getting killed,” Crawford said, “and he’s sticking to that story like glue. He’s denying everything, of course, but he’s got a darn good alibi for the night she was killed, since he was wining and dining some members of the Putnam administration, including the Commissioner of Public Safety.”
“That is bad news,” Kane said. “What about Frick and Frack?”
“Believe it or not, their names really are Smith and Jones,” Crawford said. “Until recently, they’d been working security for an oil field service company, Dorian or Delorean or something like that. Left there last month. Who they’ve been working for and what they’ve been doing since then is a little murky, but the one you didn’t shoot says they were in Anchorage that night and he’s got the credit card receipts to prove it.”
Kane lay there thinking.
“Maybe you should find out why the state DAs kicked them loose,” he said. “That might tell you who they were working for.”
“And it might not,” Crawford said. “You didn’t hear this from me, because telling you would be very wrong, but after you had them arrested for that little fracas in your hotel room, the DA got a call from the governor’s office, said to let them.”
“That’s interesting,” Kane said. “Where did you hear that?”
“One of the trooper investigators told me when I asked him,” Crawford said. “He was nice enough about it after I let him know I’d be going to ask the DA myself if he didn’t. The other one, though—is he an asshole or what?”
Crawford’s face reddened again.
“Sorry again, ma’am,” he said, then to Kane: “I got to get going. Thought you’d want to know first thing about the charges, and about the White Rose Murder still sitting there. Take care, bubba. Ma’am.”
When they were alone, Mrs. Foster put her magazine down and said, “This is so irritating. Matthew Hope did not kill that woman. Even though I am very upset with him, I know that.”
Kane looked at the woman for a moment, then said, “Perhaps now would be a good time for you to come clean about your relationship with Senator Hope.”
“I’ve already told you,” the woman replied calmly, “I don’t have a relationship with Senator Hope.”
Kane rolled his eyes and sighed.
“You know,” he said, “I’m getting tired of being lied to by all and sundry. In case you haven’t noticed, Winthrop isn’t around to protect you, so there’s really nothing to keep me from turning you over my knee and spanking you. In fact, I might like it.”
The woman showed him a wicked grin.
“I might like it, too,” she said, “but aren’t you afraid you’d reopen your wound?”
Kane didn’t say anything, and after several moments the woman said, “My husband was quite ill there at the end. Senator Hope came to visit him several times and was always so nice and considerate, asking me if there was anything I needed.”
The woman was quiet again for so long that Kane thought she had thought better of talking. But, finally, she continued, “He was so sweet. And he is a very handsome man, and I—God forgive me—began to wonder if, maybe, after Richard died we’d…”
Again she was silent before resuming. “Isn’t that awful? My husband lying on his deathbed and me having lustful thoughts about another man? I thought it was awful. I’ve done some things that are condemned by polite society, but that was the first thing I’d done—thought, I guess, since I never really did anything—that I’m actually ashamed of.”
Kane wondered if he should say something, but he wasn’t sure if her story was done, so he held his peace.
“Then—it wasn’t a week before he died—my husband asked me to bring him his wallet,” she said. “He could barely open it, but he took out an old piece of paper and said, ‘I’m leaving you everything, Amber, but I want you to promise me that if any of the people on this list needs help, you’ll give it to them.’ Then he handed the paper to me. I’ve got it right here in my purse. There were eleven names on it. Three had been crossed off. Of those that are left, Matthew Hope’s is number seven.
“I didn’t know exactly what to make of it then, but I gave him my promise and I’m keeping it. And something about that—about the way Richard sounded when he asked, or about Matthew Hope’s name being on the list—it changed the way I felt about the senator. No more lustful thoughts. But I continued to support him politically, and when his name turned up as a suspect—the suspect—in the White Rose Murder, I knew I had to do something. I’d promised my husband. So I hired Mr. Doyle and you.”
Kane let the silence stretch out before saying, “You think Hope is Richard Foster’s son, don’t you? That the list is the names of his children?”
The woman sighed.
“I guess I must,” she said, the words coming in a rush, “because when I tried to figure out why my feelings toward him had changed, all I could come up with is that if he is Richard’s son that would mean…would mean any sort of physical relationship between us would be somehow a betrayal. And I just couldn’t do that. I won’t do that. I won’t betray my husband’s memory. It’s all I have left of him.”
The woman fell silent. Kane lay there thinking about fathers and sons and all the complications those relationships created. He’d never run into one quite like this, but he recognized that fathers and sons and issues like sex were just a bomb waiting to go off. He must have dozed then, because the next thing he h
eard was the squeaky voice of Oil Can Doyle.
“That Ritter is a disgrace to the bench,” Doyle said, throwing his coat on the floor and knocking his toupee cockeyed in the process. “The old fraud is a tool for whoever has power.”
Kane started to say something, but his lips were stuck together. He drank from the cup on his bedside table and said, “I take it the judge didn’t buy your arguments for letting Senator Hope out on bail.”
Doyle went and sat in the other chair in the room. That left Winthrop and Cocoa, who must have arrived while Kane dozed, standing, Doyle and Mrs. Foster sitting.
“Maybe if we got a couple more people in here, we could set a record,” Kane said.
“No, the pompous fraud didn’t buy it,” Doyle said. “Claimed that nothing was proven about Bez-whatever-his-name-is and his pals, and that even if they’d done it there was no way to connect them to the White Rose or the other aide, and that even if there was, there was plenty more evidence against my client. So I guess I should congratulate you, Kane. You have apparently solved a mystery, but not the freaking mystery you were hired to solve.”
The little lawyer closed his mouth with a click and cupped a hand under his chin.
“Feisty little fella, ain’t he?” Cocoa said. “Anyway, I just came here to see when they’re going to let you out, Nik, and whether you’re going to need a ride when they do.”
“Don’t know, Cocoa,” Kane said. “I haven’t seen much of anybody on the staff. Maybe I’ll have to check myself out again.”
The minute the words were out of his mouth, a nurse came in followed by a doctor who looked maybe eighteen.
“What’s this, a convention?” the nurse said. “I’m going to have to ask you all to leave so we can examine the patient.”
“Come back when they’re done, Oil Can,” Kane said. “I’ve got something to tell you that you’ll want to hear.”
After everyone left, the nurse unwrapped Kane’s leg and the doctor poked and prodded for a while, following every painful noise Kane made with an even more vigorous thrust. When he was finished, he said, “I’m told that back when you were my age, doctors kept people like you in the hospital for several days. But I want you on your feet walking by tonight, and if that doesn’t open anything up, I’ll send you home tomorrow.”
While the nurse rewrapped Kane’s leg, the doctor made some notes on the chart that hung at the end of the bed. The two of them left together and everyone but Winthrop returned.
“He’s bringing the car around,” Mrs. Foster said. “I’m going back to the hotel for a while. What did the doctor say?”
“He said I could get out tomorrow,” Kane said. “So I’ll call you, Cocoa?”
The cabbie nodded and he and the woman left the room. Ignoring the fact that the little man’s toupee now seemed to be on backward, Kane told the lawyer what Tank Crawford had said about the governor’s office intervening on behalf of the two criminals. By the time Kane was finished, Doyle had a big grin on his face.
“Oh, I hope I can get to a reporter or two with that before they’ve finished their stories,” he said. “This blackmail and kidnapping and shooting is so hot right now that everyone’s pretty much forgotten about the White Rose for the moment. If I can tie this around that idiot Putnam’s neck, it’ll help when I show that he’s been messing around in the White Rose case, too.”
Kane thought about what he’d told Alma and Grantham about trying to keep their statements quiet and decided he didn’t care. They’d each had a chance to choose between right and wrong, and they’d both chosen wrong.
The lawyer picked his coat up off the floor.
“So what you’ve done so far isn’t really a complete loss,” he said. “You might not have proved that Hope is innocent, but you’ve given me plenty of the kind of skulduggery juries love.”
Doyle bustled out of the room. Kane lay there thinking. If Bezhdetny wasn’t involved in the murders, he would pretty much have to start from scratch. And he wasn’t going to get very far until he talked with the people in O. B. Potter’s office.
He could feel his eyelids trying to close. Being drugged and shot really takes a lot out of you, he thought.
His mind wandered until he was standing in the doorway of the rock room again, aiming along the barrel at the blond man. He felt the shock of the automatic firing run through his arm. Breathe normally, he thought. Level the barrel. Squeeze. The gun went off again, then again, Kane firing until the blond man went down, the way he’d been trained to. Now he was looking down at the lifeless body, searching inside himself for how he felt. Once, he had promised himself that he would never kill anyone again. He expected to feel guilt, and disappointment in himself. Instead, he could hear his lungs working and the blood rushing in his veins, and he felt alive and happy to be that way. In the doorway, in the moment, he’d had no choice. Someone was going to die, and he was elated that it wasn’t him.
He opened his eyes. The white room was gray in the late-afternoon light, the shapes of the chairs blurry and indistinct. I’m alive, he thought, and the next thought came unbidden: And I have a job to do. I should be figuring out how to do it. Instead, images flowed through his head in an unchanneled stream: Letitia Potter, Alma Atwood, Melinda Foxx, Mrs. Richard Foster, the woman—what’s her name—with the streaked hair, Dylan’s friend. With that, he was asleep, dreaming that Dylan was shooting at him with an AK-47 and shouting something important. But he couldn’t quite make out what it was.
30
It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.
AUBERON WAUGH
Kane was easing his way out of Cocoa’s cab when his cell phone rang. It was Dylan.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in the hospital?” he asked.
Kane leaned back against the cab to take the pressure off his wounded leg. A clump of men in suits came through the hotel’s glass doors, turned right, and headed up the hill. A misty rain, or maybe fog, hung in the air, which was fresh and sharp with the joy of spring.
“I didn’t know you’d be interested,” Kane said.
A long silence ensued. Kane couldn’t believe how tired and weak he felt. All he’d done that day was listen to the doctor tell him to take it easy, get dressed, ride a wheelchair to the cab and the cab to the hotel, but he felt like he’d been wrestling bears for a week.
“What happened?” Dylan asked. “Did you fall down again?”
Kane laughed at that. More proof, he thought, that I am ridiculously happy to be alive.
“Which time?” he said.
“Which time?” Dylan asked.
“You’re going to have to pay closer attention if you want to keep track,” Kane said. “I’ve been in the hospital twice since you threw a fit and walked out of the restaurant. The first time, I was kidnapped and drugged. The second time, I was shot.”
The silence was longer this time.
“I’m sorry about the other night,” Dylan said. “I behaved badly. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help myself.”
He was quiet again.
“I’d love to continue this conversation, Dylan,” Kane said, “but I’m standing in the rain on one good leg. Maybe you could stop by the hotel at lunch?”
“Maybe, if I have the time,” Dylan said.
“Good,” Kane said. He gave his son the room number, then added, “How did you find out? That I was in the hospital?”
Dylan snorted.
“This is Juneau,” he said and hung up.
Leaning on Cocoa’s arm, Kane hobbled through the lobby, into the elevator, down the hall, and into his room. He sank thankfully into the chair. Cocoa tossed the plastic bag that held the remains of Kane’s change of clothes on the bed.
“Now what?” he said.
“Now I rest,” Kane said, “until I can muster the strength to go out and buy some more clothes. The ones I’m
wearing haven’t been washed in I don’t know how long, and those”—he gestured toward the plastic bag—“are trash.”
“You’re as trashed as they are,” Cocoa said. “Why don’t you give me some money and some sizes and I’ll go buy the clothes.”
Kane looked Cocoa up and down. The cabbie was dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans, and motorcycle boots.
“Maybe I should ask Winthrop to do it,” he said, shifting so he could get at his wallet, “considering he dresses so much better than you do.”
A broad smile split Cocoa’s face.
“Yeah, that’s one Native knows how to dress all right,” he said. “’Course, I’d be dressing fine, too, if a rich white lady was buying my clothes.”
Kane handed Cocoa an ATM card, then rattled off the PIN number and his sizes. The cabbie left. Kane was dozing when his phone rang.
“Dad?” Dylan said. “Something’s come up. I can’t make lunch. How about if I come by after work.”
“That’s fine,” Kane said and Dylan hung up.
Kane thought about shifting to the bed, but it seemed like a lot of work.
I probably ought to take off my coat, though, he thought, so he got to his feet, removed the coat, hobbled to the table, and hung it over the back of a chair. He went into the bathroom, drank a glass of water, and made it back to the bed. He took the automatic from the plastic bag and threw the bag on the floor. He set the gun on the bedside table and lay down. I should get rid of these shoes, he thought, and went to sleep.
Pounding on the door awakened him. For a moment, he had no idea where he was. Then he looked at the clock. He’d been asleep for all of fifteen minutes. The pounding continued.
“I’ll be right there,” he called.
Groaning, he got to his feet, limped to the door, and opened it to find Oil Can Doyle standing there.
“We’ve got to talk,” the lawyer said, scooting past Kane into the room.
Kane closed the door, went back to the bed, and lay down, propping his head up on the pillows so he could see Doyle. The little man was hopping around like a cat on a griddle.