Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 03 - Dead In The Water

by Dead In The Water(lit)

  "Yup," the shark said sadly. "Big fucking dude, walks slow, talks slow, but moves pretty goddam fast when it comes to the ladies. Isn't that right, babe?" A hand settled on her waist and prepared to slip down over her hip.

  Harry swore. "I told you, Shugak, I warned you, no fucking around on the Avilda! You-"

  Kate pried the hand loose and turned. "First of all," she told the shark sweetly, "I am not your sweetheart, or your babe. Secondly"-and she looked at Harry Gault with a straight, level gaze-1 told you that your crew was safe from seduction, and they have been. But what I do off this boat is my business, with or without slow-talking, slow-walking men." She turned back to the stove, feeling the gazes of both men fixed on her, one suspicious, the other lascivious, ignoring them both.

  The shark didn't like being ignored and was preparing to say so, but Harry growled, "Let's go up to the bridge."

  Contriving to squeeze past Kate when there was more than enough room to walk around, the shark followed.

  Kate finished cooking breakfast, loaded two plates and climbed the stairs to the bridge. Hearing voices in the chart room and finding the door closed, she kicked it a couple of times. "Skipper? You in there?"

  There was a thump, not unlike the hasty closing of a suitcase, followed by whispers and a dragging sound.

  The door slid open and Harry glared at her.

  "I brought up your breakfast." She met his suspicious eyes with an expression as guileless as she could manage, and looked past him at the shark, for whom she still had no name, noticing along the way a rectangular object, just the size-surprise, surprise-of one of those shiny silver metal suitcases photographers use to pack their equipment, covered by a hastily tossed, olive-green army blanket. There must have been a locker hidden somewhere in the chart room. "And a plate for your guest."

  The shark grinned, employing every tooth back to and including all four wisdoms. A lesser woman might have felt like Little Red Riding Hood but Kate never had intimidated well. "All this and she can cook, too?

  Honey, you're the answer to a red-blooded American male's prayer. Harry, old buddy, you've been holding out on me."

  Kate set both plates down on the empty chart table, contriving to step on the blanket on the way and expose a corner of the suitcase. Aluminum, shiny, silvery bright.

  She grinned back at the shark and wrinkled her nose at him. "My name's not honey, either, handsome," she said, and left the room, swaggering, as the shark gave forth with a long, drawn-out howl.

  Harry slammed the door closed behind her and her grin vanished. So that was it. That was the connection.

  And Ned and Seth were in it up to their ears. No wonder the three of them were so blas6 about their paychecks.

  Their paychecks for fishing, that is. It was a safe bet the extracurricular cash they were pulling down more than covered any losses they took from the crab. She returned to the galley and dished up her own breakfast. She was in a hurry to get to Jack but Kate never neglected her stomach.

  "The fact that Harry could find his way between all those reefs off Anua, in the dark tells me he didn't just start doing it yesterday."

  "What happened to Alcala and Brown?" Jack asked bluntly.

  "I don't know," Kate said impatiently. "Don't you see, it doesn't matter. We can use this to nail them. Gault and the rest of them are-"

  He interrupted her without apology. "The hell it doesn't matter. They are why you were hired on the Avilda in the first place. Their families and the board of Alaska Ventures want to know what happened to them, not to mention two law enforcement agencies and three insurance companies. They don't care about somebody dealing a little dope."

  "It wasn't a little '-ope, it was a lot of dope!"

  "Your first priority," Jack said, raising his voice to match hers, "is to discover the circumstances in which Alcala and Brown disappeared and, if possible, to recover their bodies."

  "Their bodies are probably in a crab pot at the bottom of the Bering Sea, probably because they stumbled onto this business just like I did. I'm telling you, Jack, these guys are dealing dope wholesale. We got a chance here to cut their connection off at the knees. Get a warrant and search the boat. I'm pretty sure I know where he stashes the stuff, I saw the suitcase in the chart room, so why-"

  Again he cut her off. " 'Pretty sure' isn't good enough in this case and you know it. You're only a hired gun, Kate, you aren't official. Besides, you know and I know that dope wasn't on the boat thirty minutes after it hit port." He regarded her, not unsympathetically. "Find out what happened to Alcala and Brown," he repeated, "and everything else will fall into line."

  "I think I have!"

  Jack folded his hands across his stomach with an air of humoring her that Kate wanted badly to puncture. "Prove it," he said simply.

  "You mean I have to go back out again?" She remembered that Andy was still a member of the Avilda's crew.

  With a sinking heart she realized that of course she had to go back out, if not for the reasons Jack was enumerating.

  "Yes, you have to go back out again. Probably you're right, probably there was a falling out among thieves, probably this is why they disappeared. But we don't know, and the only people who do are on that boat.

  Sooner or later, one of them is going to slip, and when they do, you'll be there."

  "For how long?" Kate inquired with awful patience.

  "As long as it takes." He held up one hand. "And while you're on board they can't take off for Macao."

  "Unless they decide to put me with Alcala and Brown," she pointed out.

  "There is that," he agreed. "Better be careful."

  What the hell happened to Kate's overprotective male watchdog, the one with his testosterone level tattooed on his forehead?

  "In the meantime, I'll call in the troops. We'll plant somebody in every bar in this dump and watch for who'd you say?"

  "I call him the shark." She described him, adding, "I don't know his name, Harry didn't introduce us."

  "Wonderful. 'The shark.' That ought to narrow it down."

  "You saw him," she said defensively. "He was trying to pick me up in the Shipwreck when you found me."

  "There wasn't anybody in the Shipwreck that day who wasn't trying to pick you up. The entire Russian Merchant Marine was trying to pick you up. Anyway, you"-he pointed at her-"you get your ass back on the Avilda and keep an eye on Gault until we gather enough evidence to return an indictment. I don't want him getting wind of us and disappearing into the doughnut hole. It wouldn't be like it was the first time."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "I mean those other names you found. There aren't any men attached to them." He saw her expression and held up a hand. "But wait, there's more. Southeast First Bank is looking for Henderson Gantry. Seems there's a little matter of overdue loan payments, amounting to something like half a million dollars. And they can't find the boats to repossess them." Again Jack forestalled Kate. "It gets better. I had an interesting conversation with the district attorney in San Diego, and they're looking for Harley Gruber. Seems Mr. Gruber subdivided a prime piece of property located, according to the surveyor's marks, somewhere a little to the west of the city, and sold the lots to an Eastern developer for a luxury hotel."

  Kate's brow puckered. "Don't strain yourself," Jack said dryly, "to the west of San Diego is the Pacific Ocean. And it's legal. The buyers apparently didn't check beyond Gruber's references, which were above reproach, naturally, since they were forged, and nobody noticed until after the check cleared that the construction crew building this hotel was going to have to be fitted with scuba gear."

  Kate grinned in spite of herself. "My, I do like style in a villain."

  Jack didn't grin back. "This villain may be a murderer twice over. That we know of." He looked at the bundle of paper in his hand and estimated his chances of producing what he wanted before the turn of the century.

  They weren't better than fifty-fifty, so he tossed the bundle on the table and quoted f
rom memory. I tried to trace some of those boats. So far, I know they worked the oil spill, but that's it. Except for one in dry dock in Valdez with a stoved-in hull, they seem to have vanished off the face of the earth. Oh, yes, and another interesting sidebar-the owner listed on the contract with the guy working on repairs is Harold Gunderson."

  He paused. I told the guy to stop working, that he probably wasn't going to get paid and that there were probably thirteen claims before his if he filed a lien, but I'm not sure he believed me." Jack shook his head, half in disbelief, half in admiration. "This Gault is some piece of work. When he embezzles, he embezzles down to the last dime. And now you tell me he's wholesaling cocaine."

  "He's greedy," she pointed out. "He even shorted us on our crew shares. Not much, a couple hundred each, but he is greedy. Greedy people never get enough.

  What's coke retail for now? A hundred a gram?"

  "More like a hundred twenty-five." him.She shrugged. "You see? It's easy money, or it has been so far. How can he resist?"

  "I suppose you're right." He paused. "Can you stay for a while?"

  She shook her head. "We're not leaving for another six hours, no, but I can't stay."

  "Why not? Is Gault on to you? If-"

  "No, it's not that. There's somebody I've got to see."

  "In Dutch Harbor? What, are the Russians back?"

  "You said we need a witness. I might have one for you.

  Twenty minutes brisk walk brought her back to the little clapboard house on the edge of Unalaska village. The lights were on in the kitchen and Kate could see Olga sitting at the table, surrounded by the detritus of basket weaving. She stood still for a moment, watching through the window as the old woman's strong brown fingers attached another spoke with deft movements.

  Something in the scene wrung her heart. One woman, old, alone, practicing a craft that had almost died out, that might have had it not been for her. She was the last of her race, and yet there were those six young girls, making their spending money at a skill as old as recorded time. There was something for everyone in the picture, Kate thought, optimist and pessimist alike. A traditionalist might be appalled that basket weaving went on only to fulfill an urgent need for the latest from Run D.M.C., but at least it went on. Andy would approve wholeheartedly.

  A movement caught the corner of her eye and she turned her head toward the beach. Sasha sat hunched over at the water's edge, alone, her back to Kate. Kate looked from daughter to mother and back again, and after a brief tussle with her conscience went to squat next to the daughter. When Sasha said nothing, she said,

  "Hello, Sasha."

  Sasha didn't look up. " 'Lo, Kate," she said in her slow, thick voice.

  "How did you know it was me?"

  The hand holding the storyknife didn't pause in its deft, swooping, graceful strokes. "Hear footsteps. Know footsteps. Know you."

  Kate smiled a little. "You hear like a fox."

  Magically, a fox appeared in front of her in the sand, all ears and tail and pointed, inquiring nose. Sasha looked up and smiled. The smile was crooked, a little unfocused, but the gleam in the brown eyes, half-hidden by drooping lids, was alert and intelligent. "Move like fox. When want."

  "I'm sure you do," Kate said, and pointed to a figure off to one side. "More thunderbirds?"

  "Thunderbird," Sasha corrected. Both fox and thunderbird disappeared, to be replaced by another thunderbird closer to center stage.

  "And kayaks."

  "Kayak. Big kayak."

  "With men on it," Kate said, watching the tip of the storyknife. "Five men."

  Five Y's with legs appeared, to be encompassed with the thunderbird and the kayak inside two concentric circles.

  "Home."

  "Home," Kate repeated. "Where is home, Sasha? Is your island home? Is Anua home?"

  "Home," Sasha said firmly, drawing a set of concentric rings, the first just inside the second, to enclose the other figures in two perfect circles. She paused, elbows resting on her knees. A ray of sun gleamed briefly through cloud and fog, shining off the wet sand, throwing the figures drawn there into stark relief. A boat passed by offshore, sending a wavelet to taste the edge of Sasha's drawings.

  Kate held her hand out, palm up. "May I try? Please?

  I've never told a story."

  Sasha considered the matter with a thoughtful frown.

  She must eventually have reached the conclusion Kate was a trustworthy person because she extended her two hands, the storyknife balanced between them like a ceremonial offering. Kate accepted the rich weight of the thing with care. "How do I hold it? Just like a knife?

  Like this. I see."

  "Wipe.

  "Wipe?" Kate echoed her teacher. "Oh, I see. Wipe the sand smooth for my story. Okay." With a broad stroke of the blade she swept the sand clear and began to draw. "Thunderbird."

  Sasha watched intently. "Longer."

  Kate extended the thunderbird's wing. Next to it she drew a crude hull shape. "Kayak."

  Sasha made a face. "Everybody's a critic," Kate muttered, and made the three wavy lines beneath the kayak symbol, indicating the ocean. The stick figures were easier, if not as clear or as spirited as Sasha's. "Men come on the kayak." She paused. "Did men come with the thunderbird, too, Sasha?" She made the male figure next to the thunderbird.

  "No." Sasha shook her head violently. "No no no no."

  Snatching for the storyknife, she erased the man figure.

  Oh," Kate said, disappointed but not really surprised.

  It had been only a guess, after all.

  Sasha was drawing in the sand, next to Kate's shaky thunderbird. She drew a male figure. She drew a second.

  "Mans," she said, sounding like a not very patient schoolteacher trying to impart valuable information to a not very bright student. "Mans."

  "Oh," Kate said, light breaking. "Not one man with the thunderbird. Two men with the thunderbird."

  "Mans," Sasha repeated, satisfied. She handed back the knife and waited expectantly.

  "Okay." Kate hunkered down, shoulder to shoulder with Sasha, both of them absorbed in the drama unfolding in stick figures on the sand before them. "Five men on the kayak, two men with the thunderbird, all home."

  She paused. "Then what happened?" She balanced the storyknife on her palms and held it out. "What happened after the thunderbird and the kayak came home?"

  Slowly, reluctantly, Sasha took the knife and began to draw. It was the man figure again, but twice the size of the others and with eight arms and what looked like horns and fangs and maybe even a tail. "A monster?"

  Kate guessed.

  Sasha looked grave. "Bad. Kill mans."

  "The monster killed the men," Kate said, her voice calm although her heart rate had picked up. "All of them? Did the monster kill all the men?"

  The storyknife wiped out two of the male figures.

  "Bad kill mans."

  "The monster killed two of the men," Kate agreed.

  "Did the rest run away?"

  Sasha, obviously pleased at this display of intelligence by her backward pupil, gave a firm nod. "Rest run away.

  "Sasha," Kate said. "Did the monster kill the men, or did the men kill each other?"

  "Bad kill mans," Sasha repeated. "Rest run away."

  Kate sat back on her heels and regarded Sasha thoughtfully.

  "Is home an island, Sasha?" she asked gently. "Is home Anua?"

  "Bad kill mans," Sasha said stubbornly. "Rest run away. That's all."

  Kate reached for the storyknife again and held it poised, hesitating. There wasn't much point in further questioning. Sasha was no kind of credible witness, and besides, if she had gone home the previous year, she had not gone home alone.

  She made as if to sweep the sand smooth once again.

  "No," Sasha said, gripping her hand and removing the storyknife from it. "Let water take."

  Kate relinquished the storyknife with a reluctance she only dimly recognized. The smooth, worn ivory wa
s so warm to the touch, the weight perfectly balanced. It fit so well into her hand. Olga was right. The storyknife was a living thing, with its own spirit. Kate felt privileged to have been permitted to speak through it and she was glad that, as before, she had been judged and not found wanting.

  Kate let herself into Olga's house and walked down the hallway to the kitchen.

  The old woman looked up from her weaving and smiled. "Hello, Kate."

  "Hello, Auntie."

  Olga indicated the table. "Did you come for another lesson?"

  Kate sat down. "Why not?"

  "I kept your basket for you."

  Olga handed it over and Kate eyed it. "This looks like the cat's been chewing on it."

  "It's exactly as you left it," Olga said mildly.

  "I'm sure it is," Kate said with a sigh.

  Olga made tea and put a plate filled with round, golden sugar cookies on the table. The tea was strong and hot and sweet, the cookies crunchy and flavored with lemon.

  Kate, chilled from the half hour of squatting half in and half out of Iliuliuk Bay and probably still from her swim in the survival suit as well, ate and drank everything she was offered.

  Putting her cup down, she said, "I saw Sasha on the beach."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. She was drawing with the storyknife. The story about the thunderbird and the kayak and the men."

  Olga squinted down at her basket, working out an intricate stitch with intent care.

  "This time, she told me about a monster with eight arms. It was bad, she said."

  "The kelet," Olga said, nodding. "An evil spirit."

  "The kelet," Kate said, testing the word on her tongue.

  "Sasha says this kelet, this evil spirit, killed two of the men."

  "Two of the men?" Olga displayed only polite interest.

  "This kelet must have been very evil indeed. But then they usually are."

  "I see." Kate wound a weaver around a spoke. The grass was dry and difficult to work. "She says the other men who came with the thunderbird and the kayak got away."

  "In that story, usually the men trick the kelet and they all get away. And usually the story says the men are women."