A Taint in the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  She sat. “What?” she said. She craned her neck to see Johnny hotfooting it down the float toward the harbormaster’s shack. Probably going to ask Gull what alien ships were moored in transient parking this week. Last time they were there, it had been Cetaceans. Or maybe a bureaucrat from the Council of Planets on a regular inspection, driving Gull nuts with demands for colder water to cool the drives. She kind of lost track of Gull’s hallucinations after a couple of trips into town.

  “You’ve got to get a grip, Katya,” Old Sam said.

  The lack of the usual bombast and profanity, plus the use of her family name, pulled her gaze back to the old man. Honestly bewildered, she said, “A grip on what, Uncle?”

  “You’re gonna mother us to death, whether we want you to or not,” he said. “And mostly we don’t.”

  “I—what?”

  “So we built you a house,” he told her. “Ain’t nothing we wouldn’t have done for any of us in the same situation, specially if there was a kid involved. I know, I know,” he said, holding up a hand to ward off her protestations, “you always pay your debts. It’s one of the qualities that make you a marginally acceptable human being.”

  Overwhelmed by this unaccustomed amount of praise heaped all at once upon her head, Kate remained silent.

  “The thing you don’t get,” he said, fixing her with a stern and piercing eye, “is that you don’t owe us squat. Shut up.”

  Kate closed her mouth.

  “One of our own lost her home. We, her family, friends, and neighbors, replaced it with a couple days’ labor and, when it comes down to it very little cost to ourselves.”

  “The house kit—the materials had to cost a lot,” she said immediately.

  “Most of it was donated,” he said. He paused, the wrinkles on his face creasing and uncreasing as he fought an internal struggle. “The fact is, for whatever misguided reasons of their own, a lotta people in the state think they owe you, and most of ’em were willing to kick in to get you under a roof again. Not to mention that it’s good politics for people who do business in the Bush to be nice to a Shugak from the Park.”

  There was a long, weighty silence. Everything he’d said was true, and, what was worse, Kate knew it. Still.

  “What?” he said.

  She couldn’t help herself, she actually squirmed. “I hate owing anyone, Uncle,” she blurted out. “I hate it. Especially those people who helped out because I’m Emaa’s granddaughter.”

  “Yeah, well, suck it up,” he said, unimpressed. “Stop trying to run everyone’s life and start taking care of your own, including that boy of yours.”

  She looked up quickly. “Is Johnny in trouble?”

  He said unblushingly, “What fourteen-going on fifteen-year-old isn’t in trouble? I’m telling you to start minding your own business instead of everyone else’s. Starting right now, with mine. I ain’t yet so goddamn decrepit I can’t pew my own goddamn fish.”

  Kate turned as red as Harvey Meganack. “I’m sorry, Uncle,” she said in a small voice.

  “You sure are,” he said, and cackled when her eyes narrowed. “Now I’m writing up my tender summary like I always do, and so far as I know, I ain’t yet lost the ability to perform long division. You got it?”

  “I got it, Uncle,” she said, and slunk aft to her stateroom, changed into clean clothes, and slipped down to the float to hotfoot it up to the harbormaster’s shack, where Gull was regaling Johnny with an account of the eating habits of the Magelleni. They liked their food still trying to get away, it appeared. Neither of them seemed exactly overjoyed to see her, and after a few moments, she went uptown, where the streets seemed to be markedly empty in every direction she turned.

  She looked down at Mutt, who looked back, ears up, tail waving slightly. Mutt didn’t look that intimidating. Well, as unintimidating as a 140-pound half husky, half wolf could look. Couldn’t be her clearing the streets.

  Kate was forced to admit, if only to herself, that Old Sam might have a point.

  She thought of the two-bedroom, two-bathroom home, now outfitted with electricity and running water, sitting where her cabin had been, before a murderer had set it on fire, hoping she was inside. The cedar prefab house was so new it made her teeth hurt, so clean she was afraid to let Mutt get hair on the rug, so large she imagined an echo when she spoke.

  Well, okay, maybe it didn’t echo. But it sure as hell was big compared to what she was used to, with all the room in the world for her newly adopted son, Johnny, an orphan of his father’s death and his mother’s neglect.

  She climbed the hill past the old high school and found a spot to sit and look at the view, narrow Orca Inlet, Hawkins Island, Hinchinbrook Island, outlined in orange and red and hot pink by the setting sun. To the east, tiny Mummy Island stood out in bold relief; to the west, the passage to Prince William Sound. It was beautiful, but suddenly she longed for her own place in the world, the clearing filled with a semicircle of buildings surrounded by wildflowers and diamond willow and spruce and alder and birch. Mutt sat next to her, leaning against her side, a warm, solid, reassuring weight. Kate knotted a hand in Mutt’s ruff and felt three months of tension begin to gear down, one ratchet at a time.

  Three notes sounded in the still evening air, a pure descending scale. She cocked her head to hear them better when they repeated.

  “Okay, Emaa,” she said softly in reply. “Time to go home.”

  She’d see out the red season, but after that, it was back to the homestead. If it was an unfamiliar roof, a roof lacking in any family history whatsoever, at least it was hers.

  Besides, she thought, getting to her feet, it was more than time to continue her bedevilment of Sgt. Jim Chopin.

  She smiled. It was more a baring of teeth than an expression of amusement, and if Jim had seen it, the marrow would have chilled in his bones.

  Oh yes. Kate Shugak had plans for Jim.

  The red run petered out the third week of August and George Perry flew into Mudhole Smith Airport to fly Kate and Johnny back to the Park. He was very businesslike, cutting short Kate’s attempts at conversation on the ground and becoming totally absorbed in the controls of the Cessna once they were in the air. He’d even been perfunctory with Mutt, who seldom met a man she didn’t like. Finally, Kate said, “It’s okay, George. You can relax.”

  She was riding shotgun, and she could feel him stiffen next to her. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Sure you do,” she said. “I’m done trying to reorganize Chugach Air Taxi. Although I do think you should call Jake Baird over to Bethel. He’s got some ideas he could pass along. But”—this as he began to stiffen again—“I’m done trying to do it for you. I promise. It’s your business, hands off.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.” She took a deep breath. It was never easy for Kate Shugak to admit she’d been in the wrong, especially when she wasn’t absolutely sure she had been. “I got a little off there for a while. It freaked me out, you guys building that house for me and all. I felt like I had to pay you back.”

  “All of us, all at once,” he said. He glanced at her. “Is it true you went to one of Marge Moonin’s Tupperware parties?”

  “Oh hell,” she said, and had to laugh. “I hosted one in my new house.”

  When he stopped laughing he said, “I would have paid good money to have seen that.”

  “If I’d known that, I would have charged admission,” she said, and the rest of the flight went much more smoothly, both in the air and inside the cabin.

  On the ground in Niniltna, she endorsed her paycheck from Old Sam and handed it to George, who would take it to the bank in Ahtna. “Half in savings, half in cash,” she said.

  He stuffed the check into a random pocket. “Okay. You going to be back in town anytime soon?”

  She shook her head. “Just to get the rug rat registered for school and that’s not until next week. If you see Auntie Vi, give her the cash. If not, just hang on to it.”

>   “Okay.” He took a chance. “Good to have you back in your body, Shugak.”

  She laughed. “Good to be back in it, Perry. Later.”

  The red Chevy pickup was parked next to George’s hangar. She and Johnny tossed their duffels into the back. Mutt jumped in next to them with a joyous bark, tail wagging furiously. The engine started on the first try.

  Kate grinned at Johnny. “It’s good to be home.”

  He grinned back. “Yeah. I like Cordova, but…”

  She nodded. “It’s a city.”

  He nodded. “Too many people.”

  “Two thousand and more,” she said, nodding.

  They both shuddered. Mutt barked encouragement from the back, and Kate put the truck in gear and they started the last leg home.

  The gravel road from Niniltna was rough, the remnants of an old railroad bed graded every spring by the state and then left to fend for itself until the following year. Every now and then a remnant of its former life surfaced as a railroad spike in someone’s tire. The tracks the spikes had held together had been pulled up by the owners of the Kanuyag Copper Mine, the rapidly decaying ruins of which lay four miles beyond Niniltna. The ties had long since been scavenged by Park rats and used to surface access roads, fence gardens, and serve as the foundation for more than one house.

  It was going on sunset when they turned onto the game trail that led to Kate’s homestead. It was a little wider and less rough than it had once been, due to all the traffic down it the previous May, but the indefatigable alders were coming back fast and now whispered at the windows of the truck as it went by. Kate saw the steep, neatly shingled roof of the new house first, and the late-evening sunshine made the river of windows down the front gleam a bright gold, repeating the warm blond surface of the shaped cedar logs and glinting off the railing surrounding the deck that ran all the way around the house. The sight of it seemed to soften the jagged peaks of the Quilak Mountains rearing up behind it.

  Kate was so mesmerized by the sight that she nearly rear-ended the royal purple Cadillac Escalade parked square in the middle of the clearing, equidistant from the half dozen buildings that formed a semicircle around the edge. She slammed on the brakes and she, Mutt, and Johnny all pitched forward.

  The view was not further improved by the sight of the woman sitting on the deck.

  Johnny swore beneath his breath.

  Kate swore out loud.

  “Who is she?” Johnny said, sounding as surly as Kate felt.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and slammed out of the truck.

  “Kate Shugak?” the woman said, rising to her feet as Kate all but stamped up the stairs.

  “Who’s asking?” Kate said, not caring how unfriendly she sounded.

  “Charlotte Muravieff,” the woman said without a blink. “It’s nice to meet you, finally. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  She was a woman in her mid-forties and her face had that carefully tended look that only the rich can achieve. Her hair was as bright a gold as the sun setting on the windows behind her, and her eyebrows had been dyed to match. She was elegantly, almost painfully thin, and she wore what Nordstrom probably considered proper for one of the few outings that wouldn’t include a trip to the spa—khakis tailored to fit well, but not so tight as to be called vulgar, a hand-knit sweater of 100 percent cotton over a button-down shirt of the softest linen, the shirt one exquisite shade of blue darker than the sweater, and perfectly knotted brown leather half boots, polished until they reflected the setting sun as well as the house’s windows. The bootlaces might even have been ironed. Kate didn’t recognize the couturier, but the whole ensemble reeked of a platinum card with no credit limit and no expiration date.

  Kate took the hand automatically. The nails were well-shaped ovals, gleaming beneath a coating of pearlized polish. Kate was made aware of the rough calluses and ragged hangnails on her own hands, which accounted for at least some of the pugnacity displayed in the jut of her chin. “Charlotte Bannister Muravieff?”

  The woman nodded, and looked at Johnny over Kate’s shoulder and gave him a dazzling smile. “You must be Johnny Morgan.”

  Both Kate and Johnny bristled at this unearned assumption of familiarity. Muravieff saw it and, in an obvious attempt to forestall an immediate eviction, said to Kate, “Could I speak to you privately?”

  Kate had had a very long summer, most of which, yes, had been of her own making, but still. She wanted a long, hot shower in her brand-new bathroom. She wanted to make moose stew in her brand-new kitchen. She wanted to curl up with a good book in her brand-new armchair, and she wanted to turn in early for a long, uninterrupted night’s sleep on her brand-new bed in her brand-new loft. She had determined to have all these things, while at the same time quelling the uneasy conscience that told her she hadn’t earned them, didn’t deserve them, and didn’t really own them, and that was, in fact, the root of most of her actions over the past three months.

  In consequence, her voice might have been a trifle brusque. “For what purpose?”

  Muravieff looked at Johnny. He folded his arms and met her gaze with a hard stare. Muravieff looked back at Kate and found no softening there.

  She took a deep breath, and let it out with a long, defeated sigh. The “to the manor born” pose vanished, leaving behind a middle-aged woman whose expensive clothes, authentic jewelry, and makeup by Clinique could not disguise an exhaustion that seemed as if it had been accumulating not just over the day but over decades. Though the wounds were not visible, she looked beaten, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

  “I want you to get my mother out of jail,” she said.

  2

  Johnny was in the shower in the three-quarter bathroom downstairs, and from the sound of things he wasn’t coming out anytime soon. Proscribed by the unwritten law of Park hospitality from booting out even an uninvited guest without offering them refreshment first, Kate had made a pot of coffee and unearthed a package of very stale Oreo cookies. She punched holes in her last can of evaporated milk, filled the sugar bowl with the last grains from the bag, and added both items to the growing list stuck to the refrigerator door.

  The refrigerator door. It was still hard to believe that those three words had any real meaning to her life. She would still order groceries twice a year, spring and fall, but now she could get a half-gallon container of half-and-half, and if it didn’t last a month, at least it wouldn’t go sour before she used it up.

  She paused in the act of pouring Muravieff’s coffee. Maybe she should get a freezer. She had a back porch with an overhang now, not to mention an exterior plug-in. No more climbing the ice-encrusted pole ladder to the cache in the dead of winter when she wanted roast moose for dinner. Wow. She sat down quickly, before her legs gave out, and poured her own coffee.

  It took both of Charlotte Bannister Muravieff’s frail wrists to lift the heavy porcelain mug, which looked like it had been hacked out of the side of a bathtub. She took a cautious sip and, it appeared to Kate, by force of will refrained from wincing. Kate liked her coffee strong enough to smelt iron. She took Muravieff’s mug and emptied half of it into the sink. She’d had a sink before, so that wasn’t as big a thrill as opening her refrigerator door or listening to the shower. She wondered if the propane tanks would hold out, and if there was some way she could cut off fuel to the hot-water heater before that happened. Preferably while Johnny was still in the shower with the water on full.

  Meanwhile, the silence around the table began to grow heavy. Kate shoved the half-full mug toward Muravieff again. “Try it with some milk.”

  “Thank you,” Muravieff said in a faint voice, and stirred in three spoons full of sugar, as well. Her impeccably plucked brow smoothed out after the next sip, and she even went so far as to pick up a cookie. When Kate cleared the table after Muravieff left, the cookie was still there, nibbled around the edges to the frosting and no further. You can never be too rich or too thin, some divorcée had once said, and Muravieff seemed to
be taking the dictum to heart. The rich only listened to the other rich.

  Kate hooked a toe beneath one of the four matching dining chairs that surrounded her table like the advance troops for an upscale interior decorator and crossed her feet on the seat. She had her shoes off, she told herself, and it was her damn house. “Ms. Muravieff—”

  “Charlotte, please.”

  “Okay, Charlotte, and I’m Kate. You want me to get your mother out of jail. I’m guessing she’s been convicted of a crime, as opposed to just having been arrested?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was she convicted of?”

  Charlotte hesitated, licked suddenly dry lips, and said in a low voice, “Murder.”

  With difficulty, Kate refrained from rolling her eyes. “Who did she kill?”

  “She didn’t kill anyone.”

  Kate realized that she was dealing with someone who actually believed in the benefit of the doubt. “Okay, who didn’t she kill?”

  Again, Charlotte hesitated. She dropped her eyes to the mug clamped between her thin fingers. This time when she spoke, her voice was so low that Kate couldn’t hear her. “I beg your pardon?”

  Charlotte raised her eyes. They were her best feature, large, gray-green, and thickly lashed. The gold of her hair made a nice frame for them. Probably Charlotte’s stylist had already pointed this out to her, so Kate didn’t. “My brother,” Charlotte said finally.

  Kate stared. “I beg your pardon?”

  “My mother was convicted of killing my brother.”

  Kate absorbed this in silence for a moment. Okay, even she had to admit that this was a bit out of the ordinary. If anything, it made her even less inclined to listen to Charlotte’s sob story, but the other woman was still drinking Kate’s coffee, so she said, “How?”

  “They said she burned down the house with him in it.”

  Arson, Kate thought. One of the easiest crimes to detect, given the current state of forensic technology. It was next to impossible to hide even the most minuscule remnants of a timer, no matter how unsophisticated, from an experienced arson detective with a good lab tech behind him, to say nothing of the dogs trained to sniff out accelerants. “How did they decide it was her?”