“Did he see you?” Kate said.
“I don’t think so,” Jennifer said, “but I don’t know for sure.”
“He didn’t yell or anything?”
“He wouldn’t,” Jennifer said. “He would have held it over me, used it to get something he wanted.”
Kate stared at her, not hiding her suspicion.
“No,” Jennifer said. “No, Kate.”
“What?” Ryan said.
“We did not kill Tyler,” Jennifer said.
“Huh?” Ryan said. “No, we sure as hell did not! We beached Jennifer’s boat and we went to a little clearing around the point, on Cataract Creek side. That’s when we saw him.”
“Saw who?”
Even then, it was hard for him to get the words out. “Kenny.”
“What was he doing?”
“He was in his skiff, floating down the creek toward the river. He must have hidden it there.”
“Did he see you?”
“No. We didn’t know what he was going to do, so we kept quiet. If we’d known…” He hesitated, and Jennifer took his hand and held it in a firm grip. He gave her a grateful glance and looked back at Kate. “He beached his skiff way down at the end of that gravel bar the Kushtaka fish wheel is on. He snuck up on Tyler when Tyler was pitching fish out of the holding pen. He had a piece of rebar.” He stopped.
“Tyler didn’t hear him?”
“I wish,” Ryan said, his face gray. “If we’d known, we could have done something, anything—”
“It happened so fast,” Jennifer said. “We didn’t even have time to shout.”
Kate looked at her, and she wondered. If Tyler Mack had seen Jennifer meeting Ryan, and if Jennifer knew Tyler had seen them, then Tyler Mack dead might have been more desirable to Jennifer than Tyler Mack alive.
“This shit has to stop,” she said, more to herself than to them. She looked up. “In the meantime, you two need to get down the trail. Do not be in a hurry. Down is always the most dangerous part of a hike.”
“Kate,” Ryan said.
“Get going,” she said.
Jennifer walked a few steps, and turned. “Can I at least call my dad? Someday?”
Kate took two giant strides forward and grabbed Jennifer by the straps on her pack. “And what happens when he knows you’re alive? If they’ve found your daypack and seen the marriage certificate, he already knows you’re married to Ryan, a Christianson from across the river, a Kuskulaner, a tribe he’s been raised to hate. And how long before he finds out what really happened on the beach that night, and what happens then?”
“It was an accident,” Ryan said.
“What happens when they find out what happened at Kuskulana?” Kate said. “When Roger and Carol find out their precious only child married one of those backward Macks from the wrong side of the river, the village where they won’t let the women hunt and fish and where they let the school die because they couldn’t keep their young people home?”
“But—”
“Open warfare,” Kate said. “The Kuskulanans will blame you for this elopement, Jennifer. The Kushtakers will blame Ryan. Don’t you think they already hate each other enough?”
Jennifer’s eyes were full of tears.
Kate released the girl and stepped back. “I told Anne to stop at Scott’s on her way back to Cordova. He’ll sink Ryan’s skiff with your belongings on board somewhere on the river it’s sure to be found. If you’re lucky, if everybody’s lucky, they’ll think you drowned.”
Jennifer leaned her head on Ryan’s shoulder, and, again, he rested his cheek on her hair.
“You’re gone,” Kate said. “You can’t call. You can’t write. You can’t e-mail, you can’t text, you can’t IM, you can’t post a comment on the Kushtaka homepage, always assuming they ever put one up. You can’t ever come back.”
She looked at Ryan. “Unless you want to come back with me now and surrender to Sergeant Chopin.”
Tears ran unchecked down Jennifer’s cheeks, and Ryan looked ten years older than he had the moment before.
“Running now means running forever,” Kate said.
“Decide.”
Twenty-three
SUNDAY, JULY 15
Kushtaka
Jim took Roger’s newly re-surfaced skiff downriver without asking, noting only that Roger had already bought a new outboard, a twin of the first. No money problems for the Christiansons, that was for sure.
Kushtaka looked as harmless as ever, a tumbledown little Alaskan village eroding quietly into its own past.
Appearances could be deceiving.
Jim thumped on the door of Pat Mack’s cabin. “Pat! It’s Jim Chopin.”
He felt the sensation of thirty pairs of eyes on his back.
“Pat, open up. I’ve got some questions that need answers.”
Dale Mack came out of his cabin and stood there, his hands on his hips, glaring at Jim. At least he wasn’t carrying a weapon.
The door creaked open and Jim turned to see Pat Mack standing there. He looked tired. “Got some questions, Pat,” Jim said. “You can let me in or I can take you to the trooper post in Niniltna. Your choice.”
It was a big gun to bring out on a village elder. Jim had worked hard to forge relationships with Park rats so that if they didn’t feel friendly toward him at least they were tolerant of his presence.
Today, he really didn’t give a shit.
Pat hesitated for what felt like a long time, before stepping back and allowing Jim to enter.
Inside, the cabin was divided by a wall. A door in the middle of it looked into a small bedroom with a bed consisting of a mattress and box springs on the floor and a dresser built of Blazo boxes, open ends out. The outer room was where Pat lived. It resembled Tyler Mack’s tar paper shack in nearly every detail, except Jim was pretty sure there was insulation in these walls. The woodstove was lit and the room was stiflingly hot. Jim removed his cap.
Pat sat down in the room’s only chair, an old wooden rocker pulled up close to the stove. He picked up a mug and used it to gesture to the dented old coffeepot on the stove. “Help yourself, if you’ve a mind to.”
“Thanks.” Jim looked around and found a step stool and hauled it over to sit down. One was not blunt with elders, unless one had a wish to be summarily and comprehensively ignored, but the last three days had rendered Jim beyond common Park politeness. “Tyler drowned in that fish basket, Pat,” he said, “but he went into it alive. Unconscious, but alive.”
He watched Pat’s face carefully. One of the rockers squeaked as Pat shifted in his chair, but that was all the reaction he got.
“His killer hit him first, in the back of the head, using a piece of rebar.”
Squeak.
“I saw that piece of rebar in Tyler’s skiff, Pat.”
Squeak.
“Was it the murder weapon?”
Squeak.
Jim could feel his temper fray at the edges. “Was the rebar what jammed the fish wheel so the basket Tyler was in would stay underwater? Did you wash it off and put it in the skiff? To wash away any evidence I might find? Like all those skiffs washed the beach clean where Rick Estes was killed?”
Squeak.
“Goddammit, Pat!” Jim said. He could hear his voice rising and fought to bring himself under control. “I know all you Kushtakers think you’re living out the moral precepts as set forth by Don Corleone, but this shit has to stop. Three men are dead. You and I both know more will die if we don’t stop this now.”
The door opened behind them. “That’s enough,” Dale Mack’s voice said. “You come on outta there, Sergeant Chopin.”
Not Chopper Jim, not Jim, not even the more casual Trooper, but Sergeant Chopin. Jim looked down at the mug turning between his hands and resisted the impulse to look around to see if Dale Mack had gone for his rifle. “Why don’t you come in here instead, Dale,” he said to his mug.
There was a long silence, broken only by the squeak of Pat Mack’s ro
cking chair.
But Dale Mack did come in. He stood next to Pat Mack, arms folded, face set. “Got nothing to say to you.”
“Got something to say to you, however,” Jim said, setting the mug on the floor and rising to his feet. “I’ve just been up to Kuskulana. I know the Halvorsens were bootlegging booze and dope out of Mitch’s crawl space. I’ve talked to Boris Balluta and I know he and Tyler were going into competition with them, and that Mitch caught them thieving his stock and that he got killed in the fight that followed. For whatever reason, Kenny didn’t find his body for two months. My guess is when he did, he came across the river and killed Tyler in revenge.”
The round black-and-white clock on the wall had a minute hand with a hushed click as it moved from second to second. In the silence of the room that followed, each click sounded like a rifle shot.
The sectarian nature of life along this part of the river had hardened its inhabitants into a silence that would not be broken. Boris had talked only because he was from Niniltna, where family feuds were settled by the aunties before they ever really got started. There were advantages on occasion to having the might and majesty of the law seconded by four tough old birds who knew where all the bodies in the Park were buried, and who weren’t afraid to remember the burial locations when it was necessary.
Kushtaka and Kuskulana had no such human brake pedals, unfortunately, and worse, they had raised their children to believe that vengeance was theirs.
“Okay,” Jim said heavily. “I didn’t expect to get any answers by coming here, and I wasn’t disappointed. What the hell, maybe I just wanted you to know I’m not so stupid as to not notice all the non-clues you were so determined to leave behind.”
He went to the door and paused with his hand on the latch. “Was Rick Estes in on it with Boris and Tyler? Is that why he was killed, too?”
“No!” Dale Mack said, exploding. “Rick was a good man! He didn’t have anything to do with that shit!”
Pat put his hand on Dale’s arm. Jim watched him do it. Carol had put her hand on Roger’s arm in that same restraining way. And Jim watched Dale master his anger in a way that, had he but known it, mirrored the same emotions and actions as the chief’s husband across the river.
“You go on now, Jim,” Pat said, looking suddenly weary, as Roger and Carol had looked weary. “You just go.”
He went.
Dale Mack’s wife was standing in the door of her cabin, watching, expressionless. He didn’t see the beautiful daughter or anyone else in the village on his way down to the landing.
He untied the bowline and pushed the skiff back into the river.
“Sergeant Jim! Sergeant!”
He looked around, the rancor at Pat Mack’s cabin still with him enough that he dropped his hand to his weapon. When he saw who it was, he relaxed. “Auntie Nan,” he said, perking up. Was here a Kushtakan who would talk to him?
But no. “You give me a ride?” she said. She was carrying plastic grocery bags in both hands, both of which looked full of clothing.
“To Kuskulana?” he said, surprised.
“To Niniltna,” she said.
The Cessna was a state-owned aircraft, with its fuel paid for by the Department of Public Safety, and as such not to be used to give joyrides at the state-paid pilot’s whim.
On the other hand, Auntie Nan had been a witness to all the goings-on in Kuskulana for longer than he’d been the Park rats’ personal trooper. Simple though she might be, she was bound to know things he didn’t.
“I’d be happy to, Auntie Nan,” he said, and handed her into the skiff.
Twenty-four
SUNDAY, JULY 15, CANYON HOT SPRINGS
Monday, July 16, Kate’s homestead
Kate came down from the pass fully intending to pack up and head back to the homestead that afternoon. Instead, she spent the rest of the day and that night at Old Sam’s cabin. If there were questions you didn’t want to answer, you couldn’t do better than stay out of cell phone range, and Canyon Hot Springs was as far out of cell phone range as she could get.
She unpacked and set up camp in the cabin and then stripped down to bare skin and jumped into the largest pool feetfirst. Mutt climbed to a small ledge halfway up the side of the canyon. Kate watched her curl up in a fugitive ray of sunshine. Canyon Hot Springs was where she and Kate had had their come-to-Jesus meeting last October, when Mutt had stated in no uncertain terms that she was either a full partner in the firm, entitled to all the same benefits and especially risks that Kate was, or she wasn’t. And if Kate had decided that Mutt wasn’t, Kate was pretty sure Mutt would have vanished out of her life for good.
“Of all the homesteads in all the Parks in all the world,” Kate said, “you had to walk into mine.”
Mutt’s ear twitched, but she didn’t bother opening her eyes. So far as she was concerned, their argument had ended when she demanded and got an unconditional surrender.
When Kate had soaked all the weariness out of her bones, she left the pool and dressed. She spent the rest of the day making a leisurely survey of the cabin and its surroundings. Astonishingly, the outhouse was still upright. The cabin needed a few nails here and there, a few holes made by inquisitive mammalian and avian creatures needed plugging, and she gave it a thorough cleaning while she was at it.
She’d sent all the food and cookware over the mountain, and that night dined sumptuously on an overlooked package of Top Ramen noodles cooked in an empty tin can she had found and boiled clean.
She slept outside. For the slice of open sky over her head, for the sound of the wind in the spruce trees, for the smell of their sap in her nostrils, it was a risk she was willing to take. With Mutt beside her as her own personal hostile wildlife DEW Line, it wasn’t all that risky.
Nothing disturbed them. Not bear, not wolf, not moose, not ghosts, not dreams.
The next morning she rose early and breakfasted on dried mango slices and tamari almonds, topped off with one of the new Starbucks instant coffees, which weren’t bad after you added three packets of Coffee-mate and a couple of cane sugars.
Fortified for whatever the day might throw at her, she packed up and scoured the area for any trash. She spent some quality time in the outhouse and left behind a liberal layer of lime.
She left Johnny’s ATV behind at the cabin, tarped and roped like a mummy in the vain hope it would keep the porcupines from getting into the engine and eating the belts. When Johnny got back from Suulutaq, she’d bring him up here and they could drive out together. Be a nice sendoff before he went to college, a trip for just the two of them.
Three of them. No way would Mutt allow herself to be left behind.
The trailer she left hitched to hers. She had a full tank and a full jerry can, which should more than see her home.
The doglegs were a little more exhilarating on the way down, especially since she geared down instead of using the brakes. Mutt galloped alongside, her tongue flopping out of one side of her mouth. The need for stealth gone, she turned onto the Step Road just down the bluff from Park HQ. The only people she saw were Keith and Oscar, stooped over in their extensive commercial herb gardens. They stood to wave as she and Mutt went by.
She was in Niniltna by eight o’clock that evening and passed through without stopping, taking the Park road home and not sparing the horses. At a little after nine she rolled into the clearing and dismounted, weary but calm.
That calmness evaporated when she looked up and saw the expression on Jim’s face.
“Hey,” she said warily.
“Where have you been?” It was very much the trooper speaking.
In every good lie, it was always best to include as much of the truth as possible. “Up to the springs.”
He nodded, and came down the stairs. “You go up there alone?”
She stared at him. “You know I didn’t. How?”
“Mandy.”
“Of course.” More and more crowded every day.
“She thought yo
u had Johnny and Van with you.”
“Oh,” she said.
“But I called Johnny, and he and Van were still at the mine.”
“Oh,” she said again.
“So who was with you?”
His tone was inflexible. He wasn’t going to let this go.
She looked past him, at the house the Park had built, the house he had moved into with her, one clean shirt at a time. It had taken two years of both of them ignoring the fact that his toothbrush had taken up permanent residence next to hers in the bathroom, that he had an equal share of drawers and closet space, that he’d forged a relationship with her adopted son that looked a lot like foster father.
So, if she wanted this to continue, lying was probably not her best option. “Jennifer Mack and Ryan Christianson.”
His brows snapped together. “You took Jennifer Mack and Ryan Christianson up to the springs?”
She nodded.
He was groping to make some sense of her revelation. “You’re going to leave them up there for the summer?”
Mutt hopped down from the back of the ATV and stood looking from Kate to Jim, scenting the tension in the air.
Kate unstrapped her backpack from the rack behind the four-wheeler’s seat. “No,” she said. “They’re not there anymore.”
“Where are they?”
She fiddled with the backpack, killing time, and then looked up to meet his eyes. “I took them up to the pass.”
“What pass?”
She looked away. “Something I didn’t tell you about Canyon Hot Springs.”
“Yes?” he said, his voice dangerous.
She almost squirmed, and caught herself in time. “The canyon takes a right turn, way back up, past all the mines Old Sam’s dad dug into the cliffs. You remember?”
He nodded, grim-faced.
“I didn’t take you all the way up when we went to get the Cross of Gold.”
“What did I miss?” he said in a tone that would brook no evasion. If she but knew it, she was paying for all the hours he’d spent being lied to in Kushtaka and Kuskulana this week.
“When you get to the top, there’s a pass through the Quilaks. About one person wide. Goes down the other side.”
Bad Blood Page 21