A Taint in the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  It wasn’t like he couldn’t have walked out at any moment last night. There were a couple of times at least that he’d been pretty sure she was asleep. Plus, he was fourteen inches taller than she was and outweighed her by at least eighty pounds. She couldn’t have made him stay even if she’d been awake. He had stayed because he wanted to, and he had made love to her because he wanted it, but it was what it was, one night, and that’s all it was. Any attempt on her part to make more of it would be rebuffed, kindly, yes—he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings—but firmly. He was still his own man, he still had ownership of his own soul, and his heart was not now, nor ever had been, in danger.

  The rich aroma of fresh coffee drifted into the room. It was more than mortal man could resist. Groaning, he pulled himself to the edge of the bed and let his legs slip to the floor. Some help from the bedpost and he was vertical again. Something squished beneath his bare foot. It was a used condom.

  “Oh crap.” He peeled it off and limped into the bathroom. He checked his crotch again in the mirror just to be sure—one cock, two balls, yep, all present and accounted for. He even felt himself up to make sure they weren’t a mirage. He turned the shower on as hot as he could stand it and got in.

  He arrived in the kitchen damp but resolute.

  It was empty.

  “Kate?” he said. There was no answer. “Kate?” he said again, raising his voice.

  No answer, and no Mutt, either.

  He opened the door to the garage. The Subaru was gone.

  There was coffee in the automatic coffeemaker, a clean mug on the counter beside it. There was also a note on the table.

  He eyed it with foreboding. It was probably some mash note, saying how wonderful they’d been together and telling him that she’d gone out to buy the ingredients for an elaborate breakfast, which he would be expected to eat massively and praise effusively, and over which he would be required to hold her hand and make cow eyes.

  With reluctance, he reached for the note. It read:

  Half-and-half in the frige.

  I had a good time.

  Thanks,

  Kate

  7

  After a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs, Kate found the pay phone at the Hogg Brothers and called Charlotte. Charlotte didn’t want to talk on the phone—who knew why—so Kate got directions and hopped in the car. Mutt looked at her, tail wagging expectantly, and Kate unfolded the napkin holding the rest of her bacon. “Don’t tell me I never sacrifice for you,” she told her.

  Charlotte lived in a big house, of course, on Hillside, naturally, as high up as you could go and not be in Chugach State Park, it went without saying. Kate had been on Hillside before, and that she had not been carted back down in an ambulance wasn’t the fault of the person she had come to see. Her attitude increased with the altitude, and by the time she was knocking at Charlotte’s door, she had formulated an entire scenario about Charlotte Bannister Muravieff and her life and times.

  Charlotte destroyed the first stereotype by answering her own door, and the second by answering it dressed in ragged gray sweats, although she was as meticulously made up as she had been when she had come to see Kate in the Park. “Please come in,” she said, standing back and motioning to Kate.

  “Where did you stay?” Kate said. “I never thought to ask.”

  “Where did I stay where?” Charlotte asked.

  “In the Park. When you came to see me.”

  Charlotte’s brow cleared. “Oh, I didn’t stay. I drove on home.”

  It was sixty miles of pitted gravel just to Ahtna, and another three hundred highway miles to Anchorage, and Charlotte had left Kate’s homestead at sunset. “Did you drive there that day from Anchorage?”

  “Of course.”

  Kate never understood why anyone would choose to drive instead of fly, and Charlotte had to have enough money to charter her own plane. The rich really were different.

  She followed Charlotte into about the biggest living room she’d ever seen, filled with light from the bank of southwest-facing windows that filled one wall. The floors were wood, the walls invisible beneath a layer of paintings, not prints, all by local artists of the very first rank, and the furniture a rich teal leather that looked as comfortable as it did classy. There were a few sheepskin rugs tossed here and there, an entertainment center with a shelf full of CDs and DVDs, and a wall full of books. There went the third stereotype—that the rich don’t read. It annoyed Kate. She wanted Charlotte to be a part of the Great Washed, the ones with more money than brains, the ones who inherited and thus never had to scramble around for the rent, the ones who said. “Let them eat cake” without ever having been short of bread. In Kate’s mind, Charlotte belonged to that group of people who put twenty-four-karat-gold faucets in their bathrooms, who embraced prenuptial agreements and liposuction as sacrosanct and who regarded taxes as something someone else paid.

  However, she, Kate Shugak, had an unimpeachable work ethic, and she, Kate Shugak, would fulfill her contract, thereby separating an exemplar of the Great Washed from some of that lovely, filthy lucre by that most legitimate of means, work for hire, a concept of which the Great Washed had no working—pardon the expression—knowledge.

  Suffused with a righteous sense of superiority, she sat down on the indicated chair and said without preamble, “Your mother fired me.”

  Charlotte looked a little startled, but she rallied. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Thank you,” Kate said, inclining her head a regal inch or thereabouts, “no. I went to see your mother yesterday, and she was not enthusiastic about you reopening her case. Let me repeat: She fired me.”

  “She can’t fire you,” Charlotte said, “she didn’t hire you.”

  “Yeah, well, as I told you from the outset, this whole endeavor is a long shot at best. Victoria not talking to me is not shortening the odds.”

  “I told you she wouldn’t,” a voice said.

  Kate looked around and saw another woman standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs. She was pudgy in form and pugnacious in manner, with a short mop of tight gray curls and a jaw like a bulldog. She wore an elegant three-piece suit, charcoal with a faint pinstripe, the hem of the skirt hitting directly at midknee. The cream-colored blouse was tied beneath her chin in a soft bow. Her eyes were brown, and they narrowed as they stared at Kate.

  “Kate Shugak, allow me to introduce to you to Emily Gessner.”

  Emily strode forward, the very high heels of her very narrow Italian shoes making a strong staccato statement against the wood floor. Kate saw Charlotte wince.

  “Kate,” Emily said, and went to stand in back of Charlotte, placing one hand on her shoulder.

  “Emily,” Kate said.

  “Emily’s my attorney,” Charlotte said.

  Emily rolled her eyes. “And her partner,” she said.

  “You’re an attorney, too?” Kate said to Charlotte.

  Emily huffed out an impatient sigh. “That’s life partner.”

  She didn’t add “you moron,” but Kate could tell the temptation was almost too great to resist. “Congratulations,” Kate said.

  Emily, prepared for shock and disgust, blinked a little. Pressing her advantage, Kate said, “What did you tell Charlotte?”

  Emily rallied. “I told her Victoria wouldn’t talk to you.”

  “You know her?”

  Emily shrugged. “We’ve never met, but Charlotte’s told me a lot.”

  “What kind of law do you practice?” Kate said.

  “Criminal.”

  “Are you a litigator?”

  Emily’s smile showed all her teeth. For a moment she looked like Mutt in a bad mood.

  “And in your professional opinion, do I have a hope in hell of getting Victoria a get-out-of-jail-free card?”

  Emily opened her mouth to reply, but Charlotte beat her to it. “It doesn’t matter what Emily thinks. It’s what I want that matters.”

  Kate sighed. “Look, Ch
arlotte—”

  “You don’t have to talk to my mother,” Charlotte said. “What about the witnesses who testified at the trial?”

  “Most of them testified for the prosecution,” Kate said.

  “Then most of them were lying,” Charlotte said.

  Kate thought over the list of witnesses she had compiled from the trial transcript. “You realize who some of these people are?”

  “What,” Emily said, “you afraid of rocking the establishment boat?”

  “No,” Kate said, “I’m making sure Charlotte isn’t.”

  “I want my mother out of jail,” Charlotte said flatly. “There is no way she’d try to kill my brothers. She didn’t do it, and now she’s dying, and I won’t let her die in there.”

  “I have to say that Victoria didn’t look all that ill to me,” Kate said.

  With jerky movements, Charlotte rose and walked over to a desk to extract a file. She almost threw it at Kate.

  Kate opened it up. It was a medical report confirming Victoria’s cancer.

  “They’ll let me take her out for the operation, but she’s going to have to go through chemo and radiation and she’s going to require some long-term care, and even then those toadies down at the hospital don’t think she has much of a chance. I don’t care how much it costs or whose toes you step on, I want her out of that place as soon as possible. Are you out of money yet? I can get my checkbook.” She half-rose.

  “I’ve barely cashed the first check, Charlotte.”

  Charlotte settled back onto the couch, sitting at its extreme edge, her back rigidly straight. Emily suddenly looked less pugnacious and more worried. “Charlotte—” Emily said.

  “I want her out,” Charlotte said without looking around at her partner.

  Emily met Kate’s eyes. “All right, Charlotte, we’ll get her out. Won’t we, Kate?”

  “Based on the trial transcript and the police report, I don’t think we’re going to be able to prove that she didn’t do it,” Kate said, “So, Charlotte, if your mom didn’t do it, who did?”

  Charlotte slumped, her face dropping into her hands. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice muffled. “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that question over and over again? Who sets out to murder two teenage boys? And why only the boys? Why not me, too?”

  “Were you always supposed to go with your mother that day?”

  “Yes, it was a fund-raiser for Mr. Stafford, and Mom always helped Uncle Erland when he put one of those on.”

  “Too cheap to pay for catering,” Emily said to Kate.

  Charlotte reddened but didn’t deny it. “It had been planned for a month.”

  “And everyone knew you’d be there.”

  “Yes. Mom paid me. It was part of my allowance to do stuff like that.” She paused. “And I liked doing it. It’s what I do now.”

  Kate looked at Emily. “Cater,” Emily said. “At least now her uncle has to pay her for it.”

  “Where is your surviving brother?”

  “Oliver? He lives here in town.”

  “Is he in the book?”

  “He’s my partner,” Emily said.

  Kate looked at her, brow raised.

  Emily rolled her eyes. “My law partner,” she said.

  “He’s an attorney?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte said.

  “A criminal attorney?” Kate said.

  “Yes.”

  Kate climbed into the Subaru and thought for a moment. It was a little past 10:00 A.M. Emily had promised to make an appointment for Kate to speak to Oliver, but that probably wouldn’t pan out today. Emily had wanted Kate’s cell phone number, and Kate had to admit that it would have been handy to have had one.

  She could go home and make a start on the list of names and phone numbers Brendan had given her.

  Instead, she drove to Bean’s Café, a warehouse on Third Avenue that had been converted into a soup kitchen, and inquired after Luba Hardt. A slender dark-haired woman with a calm, pretty face knew the name and told her that Luba had been in the previous Monday for lunch. The bad news was Luba looked like she was living on the street. The good news was Luba didn’t look like she’d been strung out on anything. “She mention a location?”

  “Who are you?” the woman said.

  “I’m from Niniltna, Luba’s village,” Kate said. “Her family heard I was coming to Anchorage and asked me to look around for her.”

  “What family?”

  “Billy Mike.”

  The woman’s face cleared. “Sure, I know Billy. Heap big chief.”

  Kate smiled. “You know him, all right. But about Luba?”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry. If they find a safe place to stay, they don’t usually talk about it, for fear someone is going to hear and move in on them.”

  On the way out, Kate examined the faces of the people standing around, smoking and talking, all waiting for the doors to open for lunch. More than half of them were Alaska Native, mostly Aleut and Athabascan and Yupiq, from the looks of them, with maybe a few Inupiaq thrown in. Kate had an urge to cram them all into the back of the car and truck them out to Merrill and put them on planes back to their villages.

  One familiar face popped out at her and she halted. “Kurt?” she said, disbelieving.

  After some argument, she bundled him into the car and took him to the Bone. A redheaded waitress in a crisp white apron with a name tag that read HEIDI pinned to it bustled up and gave them their pick of booths.

  “My treat,” Kate said, and Kurt ordered as much deep-fried chicken as you could fit in one basket. She drank coffee while he ate. He sat back when he was done and looked around like it hadn’t quite registered where he was until then. Heidi brought him coffee and smiled blindingly down at him, and he watched her walk away with appreciation, although Kate couldn’t be sure whether it was Heidi or the fried chicken that inspired it.

  Kate looked out the window. The Subaru was parked right in front. Mutt was nowhere to be seen. Probably draped over the backseat, snoozing. Kate owed her a good run.

  Mutt had greeted Kurt with enthusiasm, which gave Kate pause. Mutt’s built-in bullshit detector was second only to her own. Kate might have to readjust her ideas about Kurt. “So,” she said. “Kurt.”

  He braced himself, both hands curled around his cup of coffee. “Kate.”

  “What are you doing in town?”

  He shrugged. “What you told me to do.” She looked blank, and he said, “Look for a legitimate job in Anchorage if I couldn’t find one in Niniltna.”

  “That was only two days ago,” she said. “I didn’t mean you had to do something immediately.”

  He shrugged again. “You confiscated my bank account.” He didn’t sound accusatory, merely factual. “Fishing’s over, and I never was much of a trapper, and anyway, Dan O’Brien’s got the Park pretty much locked up for trapping, at least for this year. Didn’t have a dime to get me through a winter in the Bush. Figured I’d give Anchorage a try.” His smile was wan. “Bigger selection of women in town anyway.”

  “And first thing you wind up at Bean’s?”

  He nodded. “For lunch. Sometimes people come down there looking for day labor. I figured it was worth a shot. Plus, I really don’t have any money.”

  “Have you signed up at Job Service?”

  He nodded. “I went straight there from Merrill.”

  “And?”

  “They’re not hopeful. The seasonal work’s just about over for the year, and I don’t know Microsoft Word, whatever the hell that is.” He drank coffee. “I’ll check with contractors, see if anyone’s got anything going. I hammer a pretty straight nail.”

  She felt guilty, although she shouldn’t have, and she knew it. He’d been poaching bears, and endangering a species while he was at it. He’d been violating the wanton-waste law by taking only the bladders, leaving the meat and the pelt for carrion, a Class A misdemeanor. By statute, he could have been fined $2,500 and jailed for a week,
no suspension or reduction in sentence allowed. Not to mention the thirteen hundred dollars he’d be ordered to pay as restitution to the state for the unlawful taking of a grizzly bear. Some people were just too dumb to live.

  The question was, Was Kurt one of them? She regarded him over the rim of her coffee cup, thinking about Mutt’s greeting. “Have you got a place to stay?”

  “Yeah. Buddy of mine’s got a house in Spenard. He’s letting me sleep on his floor until I get on my feet.”

  Spoke well for a man that he had friends, especially solvent friends. She made up her mind and put down the cup. “I’ve got a job for you,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m on another job myself, but while I’m here, Billy Mike wants me to look for Luba Hardt. That’s what I was doing down at Bean’s.”

  He reddened. She pretended not to notice. “Take a day or two, find her for me. I’ll pay you, what, eight bucks an hour, plus those expenses incurred on the job for which you provide a receipt.”

  “Why eight bucks?”

  Her turn to shrug. “Rounded up from minimum wage. You want the job?”

  “Ten bucks an hour.”

  She thought of the check she’d deposited in her account the day before. “Nine,” she said. She was willing to go to ten, but she wasn’t going to say so. Kurt had taken the easy way out from high school on. Kate wasn’t going to help perpetuate his stereotype if she could help it. Let him work for his pay, starting with bargaining for an hourly wage. And she could always give him a bonus if he did good.