Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 09 - Hunter's Moon

by Hunter's Moon(lit)

  "Where's Senta?"

  His smile was rueful, his shrug self-deprecating. "Senta does not camp.

  She says such things are not good for the complexion. So she gives me her blessing, in a manner of speaking, and sees me off." He eyed her slyly. "She has taken a dislike to that man of yours. I pity him."

  Kate couldn't stop flinching at the words, but she was shivering so hard it was undetectable.

  "What have you done to your hair?" He looked at her critically. "I liked that braid. I shall have to punish you for cutting it off without my permission." He gestured with the rifle. "Now come here.

  We have some unfinished business." "What happened here?" Kate said, trying not to let her teeth chatter.

  "Yesterday? What happened?" "An accident," he said piously. "One of the four-wheelers drove too close to the edge of the cliff. And poof!" He demonstrated, one hand arcing a graceful, swooping swan dive that ended with a flat smack of palm on palm. "That Dieter, he was always a little--what is the word for the temperature? Mercurial, yes. The legal problems were increasing, and the stress was beginning to show. He has been very depressed. And then poor Fedor, and Hendrik. They were so young, such valued employees, so close to him. For them to die in such horrible accidents. I blame myself. I should have been watching him more closely."

  He shook his head sadly, a gesture belied by his unrepentant grin. "But now Senta, as the nearest blood relative, will inherit control of the company, until his sons come of age." The grin widened. "Somehow I feel neither one of them will make it that far."

  Kate felt sick, and knew she looked it. Good. The last thing she wanted was for Eberhard to think she had heard this before, and to go looking for who had told her. "All of the party went over?

  Everyone?"

  Eberhard nodded cheerfully. "Everyone." He grinned again.

  "Eventually."

  "What about us? What about the guides? Why kill us, too?" Eberhard shrugged. "Like I said, Dieter was depressed. I am sure we can find a doctor to say that he was verging on the insane. Who knows what goes on in the mind of a man like that?" He motioned with the rifle again.

  "Enough talk. Come here."

  Instead she threw the barrel lid, slicing through the air like a discus to catch him squarely in the chest with a solid thunk.

  It was hard to tell who was more surprised, him or her, but he dropped his rifle and it gave her time to run and she did, and that wonderful fog closed in behind her as if someone had drawn a curtain, thick and enfolding, like a lover's arms.

  The edge of the bluff was reached in a dozen giant steps and she launched herself into the air blindly, going into a tuck and praying for a nice thick stand of brush wherever she came down. As she dropped the rifle boomed and a bullet passed close enough for her to feel a hot rush of air against her cheek. A lucky shot; he couldn't see her, he could only hear her, and he was running, too.

  The ground came up and hit her in the knees. She ducked head and shoulder and continued to roll until she came up hard against a sharp-edged, lichen-covered boulder. The breath was knocked out of her, and she lay where she was just long enough to get it back and no more.

  She heard footsteps above, along with some swearing in German. They halted abruptly, and in the resulting silence Kate couldn't understand why Eberhard didn't hear her heartbeat and zero in.

  In the few brief seconds that followed, Kate realized two things: one, that Eberhard must not be allowed to learn that Old Sam had survived, and, two, that he must therefore be led away from the ridge. There was also three, she'd better do it quick before Old Sam decided to take a hand.

  She stood up and kicked the rock deliberately. "Ouch!" she said, raising her voice, and began to run straight down the hill. The fog parted before her and swirled together again behind her.

  Behind her, she heard the footsteps again, hurried, crashing through brush, stumbling over rock, but always, always in pursuit.

  She eschewed the switchbacks and ran straight down the steep side of the ridge, taking great leaps and horrible risks in the enclosing mist, barking her shins on boulder and branch, catching her shoulders and arms against the limbs of trees. She let the angle of the slope guide her. He was bigger and stronger and probably faster than she was, and he had undoubtedly eaten and drunk well both the evening before and that morning.

  Kate was smaller, dizzy with pain from her throbbing head and faint from hunger, but she was lighter on her feet, she knew where she was and she had a plan. It depended on him following her, so she made as much noise as she could and when she couldn't, deliberately made more by breaking branches and kicking rocks loose as she ran. He started a dozen mini-avalanches of his own, dirt and rock tumbling down with him.

  As the ground began to level out, the fog began to thin, so that she could see maybe twenty feet in front of her. A regular line of brush indicated that she had stumbled on the last of the switchbacks and without pause she jumped a rock, yanked her sleeve free when it was snagged on a branch of white spruce and pounded down the road.

  There was a crash and a curse behind her and she paused at the turn, gasping for some much needed air while he disentangled himself and got back on his feet. It wouldn't do to get too far ahead of him. By now he knew he had no choice but to follow, that he would never find his way back up the ridge until the mist cleared. And Kate was headed toward the lodge, and Senta was at the lodge. He had to come after her.

  The second after his first footfall sounded she was off again, running flat out, as fast as she could go, straight down the middle of the trail, taking her chances that Senta wasn't coming up it from the other direction. She didn't think so; Senta didn't seem the type to head out after a lover co-conspirator, but it was still a risk. Kate took it.

  The switchbacks ended suddenly. It was astonishing how much faster it had been going down than going up. It wasn't far now, half a mile or so to where the peeling hole of the birch leaned precariously over the trail. Kate took the track at a steady trot, head down, arms pumping, lungs burning, ignoring everything but the need to cover distance and cover it fast. She was no longer cold and the mist was her ally now, refreshing her, encouraging her, urging heron.

  She felt rather than heard his footsteps pounding behind her and she put on speed, the last she had in her. If she'd still had it, he was near enough to have caught her braid and brought her down.

  He still might. Had she run too slowly? Had she allowed him to catch up too soon?

  Would she make it?

  There! There was the leaning birch. She scrambled up the bank and plunged in, leaving him cursing and clawing the foliage behind her.

  The trail she had left behind that morning was faint, he wouldn't have been able to see it but she could, oh, she could. A broken branch here, a footprint left in a pile of leaves there, a crushed clump of horsetail. She ran, knocking her shoulders against tree trunks that seemed to jump into her path, tripping over roots, tangling her feet in devil's club.

  Behind her there was a loud thump and more cursing. Pursuit ceased.

  Eberhard must have run into a tree.

  Kate skidded to a halt, waiting, listening. Moments passed, while her heartbeat slowed and she caught her breath. Had he knocked himself out?

  A groan answered that question.

  Perhaps he needed encouragement. She fished out a quarter and a penny and tapped them together, clink, clink, clink. Nothing. Clink, clink, clink-clink, arrhythmic but continuous. A muffled curse came wetly to her through the mist and she pulled out a rubber band. One end around her left thumb, the other stretched around the quarter. She waited until he was almost on her, a dark figure looming up out of the mist, and let fly at where she hoped his face might be. The quarter hit some part of him with a satisfying fleshy chunk. He cursed and broke into a stumbling run, arms reaching blindly. It looked like he'd lost the rifle.

  She turned and ran flat out through the trees, taking the most dangerous risk of all, and burst into the clearing with the brush pile
.

  She paused long enough to register the outraged expression on the face of the grizzly as he reared up on his hind feet, muzzle bloody from his latest feeding, front claws extended to defend the kill he had returned to, as grizzlies always have and always will, until the last bit of meat was gone, until the last bone was cracked and sucked dry of marrow, until all those delicious brains had been licked from the inside of the skull.

  Kate took the brush pile and his putrefying kill in one colossal leap, clearing his outstretched claws by inches-she couldn't have done it again if she tried for a hundred years--and crashed into the trees on the opposite side of the clearing.

  Eberhard stumbled out of the trees. Kate had startled the grizzly, had alerted him to trespassers, but she had been too quick for him, and now here was another trespasser blundering onto his private cache of meat.

  It was bear season, all right, but this time the bear was doing the hunting. He was ready and waiting when Eberhard ran straight into his arms.

  Eberhard's screams were louder than the bear's.

  Smoke curled up from the chimney of the lodge, but it could have been a trap, set to lure her in.

  Eberhard had been gone a long time, however, and Senta must be getting worried about him.

  It had taken Kate three hours to make her way back to the lodge, inching her way to avoid a possible ambush, and another thirty minutes to crawl in close enough to survey the situation. Senta probably thought he couldn't live without her that long, and if his story was to be believed, he'd been gone since the previous night. Senta must be getting a little antsy.

  There was only one of her.

  But she had a rifle.

  Rifle. Rifles. There were a bunch of rifles in the garage. But to get to the garage Kate would have to circle around behind the lodge, and there were windows on every side of that building except the one facing the garage. And they'd left the ammunition in the lodge.

  Kate lay in the thick brush at the edge of the clearing and considered.

  With the splint, Old Sam was marginally mobile. He could make it up to the spike camp, and maybe even look for other survivors. But he'd need some help, soon.

  She considered for an hour, waiting, watching. She listened for the sound of voices, anything to indicate that Senta wasn't alone, but there was nothing.

  One of the four-wheelers had gone over the edge, again according to Eberhard. That left one more, and that had been left at the top of the ridge that morning. So Senta was on foot.

  Kate eyed the smoke again. Senta was also warm and dry and fed.

  Bitch.

  Kate was still cold and still hungry and still exhausted. The sky was gray overhead, the ground sodden beneath. A flash of red caught her eye, and she turned her head to see a troop of ptarmigan parade past. She had been lying so still for so long they had mistaken her for part of the landscape.

  They looked to her hungry eyes like a bunch of drumsticks marching in step. Her mouth watered.

  This was ridiculous. Senta couldn't be in six places at once. Seven of the eight shelters had to be empty, and empty long enough for her to sneak in and grab some dry clothes and maybe one of Berg's Hershey bars before her stomach crawled right up her throat and out of her mouth.

  She made up her mind and backed soundlessly into the brush again, wriggling backward on her stomach. It didn't take any particular skill to move soundlessly in the forest, no matter what Zane Grey said. All you had to do was take your time. Take it slowly and carefully and be aware of where every part of your body was and what it was doing. Kate was very slow and very, very careful. One leg stretched straight out in back of her, toe down, both hands raised her torso and pushed up and back, her toe took the weight and she was six inches backward from where she had been. She had to feel carefully for purchase and for anything that might make a noise before she put her weight on it, but so long as she didn't get in a hurry, it was possible.

  It took her twenty minutes to thread her way back to the creek. She crept down the bank path, worn smooth so close to the lodge.

  Exposure and exhaustion must have taken their toll, because she never did figure out how what happened next happened.

  What happened next was that a bucket came crashing down on her head, a water bucket wielded by the man filling it at the water pump. He brought it down hard, too, and only the fact that it was half full of water and unwieldy saved her. She ducked out of the way of the bucket but not of the water, and it was very cold water.

  "You son of a bitch," Kate said. She came to her feet with a surge of anger and kicked him as hard as she could right square in the balls.

  He folded up like a collapsed balloon, his rosebud of a mouth an "O" of surprised agony, his hands going protectively to his crotch, his ass hitting the ground with a solid squelch. Glasses, thick and unwieldy, slid down his nose.

  It was Berg. Kate blinked the rain out of her eyes and looked again.

  Yes, it was Berg. But Berg was just a fool, a buffoon, a nonentity, a nonstarter so inept he took naps under bear bait. What the hell was he doing here? "What the hell are you doing here?" Kate said out loud.

  "I thought you went over the cliff with the rest of them." "No," a new voice said. Senta emerged from the trees, Eberhard's Weatherby in her hands. "No, Berg works for me." "Son of a bitch," Kate said again. She was more angry than afraid. She glared at Senta and said furiously, "Is there anyone at DRG you weren't fucking?" Senta smiled, the familiar predatory smile, full lips carefully outlined in carmine. "No," she said simply. "Except for Dieter. He wouldn't. We were cousins. He said we shouldn't."

  "Why, Senta?" Kate said. "Why come here? Why involve us? You wanted DRG, fine. You couldn't find an easier way to get it than stage a mass murder in the Alaskan Bush?"

  "But it was the perfect solution," Senta said proudly. "Far, far away from home, isolated in the wilderness, no one left to say what really happened. I could do anything I wanted." Keep talking, Kate said, just keep talking. She let her eyelids droop in a half-bored way that said, Impress me, I dare you. It had impelled the truth out of more perps than Senta had shades of lipstick. She shifted her weight unobtrusively from one foot to the other, keeping herbal ance, staying ready. Tell me all about it, Senta, about how clever you are, how brilliant your plan was, how everything would have worked if only you'd had smarter people working for you.

  Senta obliged. "You see, Dieter has family. Two sons." She smiled again, this time at a fond memory. "They are both in love with me, and they are both underage." Johnny, Kate thought with a pang. How was she going to tell Johnny?

  "They can be managed," Senta said. "His wife--" She shrugged. "She is nothing, she could be managed, too. They would all lean on me if Dieter was gone, and then I would have all that lovely money to play with. So Dieter had to go."

  "At first all you were going to do was discredit him, right?" Kate said.

  "You were the source for the investigation, weren't you?" With a sudden inspiration, she added, "And I'll bet you were framing Fedor to take the fall."

  Berg groaned at their feet, his hands cupped against his crotch. Both women ignored him.

  "That little fag." Senta's lip curled again. "Always poking his nose in where it didn't belong, wanting to know where every penny went." "Ah,"

  Kate said with a thin smile. "You've been embezzling, too, have you, Senta?"

  Senta shot her an angry glance. "He was a deviant, who could believe anything he said?" "What's the matter, Senta?" Kate said. "Did Fedor turn you down?" She thought for a moment she'd gone too far; Senta half-raised the rifle.

  "What made you change your mind?" Kate said quickly. Why take us with you down this road to hell, you homicidal bitch? "Why did you decide to kill Dieter? Why kill the rest of them, too? And if you'd decided to kill him, why plant that cartridge in the creek next to Hendrik's body?"

  "What is this about planting a bullet?" Senta said with some surprise.

  The rifle lowered again, as she was reminded that Kate was o
f an inferior species, less quick than herself, less intelligent, less swift of perception, less of everything all the way around. Senta forgave Kate's obtuseness with a generous smile. "Dieter was always mad for the hunting. Shoot, shoot, shoot, elephants in Africa, tigers in India, jaguars in South America." She gave an elaborate shudder. "You should see his office, full of the heads of dead animals. He was going to come to Alaska anyway, he had always wanted to."

  It didn't matter now how many guides Dieter had pissed off on how many continents. "Who suggested that he make it a corporate retreat?"

  "You know men." Senta tossed her head. "A word here, a word there, and he thought of it all by himself."

  "And then Fedor died." "Opportunity knocking," Senta said lightly, smiling.

  So it was an accident after all, Kate thought. Poor Kle mens. "What happened to Hendrik?"

  Senta sneered. "Another deviant. He heard us talking."

  "You and Eberhard?"