A Taint in the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  “Aunt Alice, I’d like you to meet Kate Shugak.”

  Aunt Alice extended a hand, the back of which was mottled with age spots. “How do you do, Ms. Shugak.”

  Kate accepted the hand and wondered if she was expected to kiss it. “Kate, please,” she said.

  Alice gave a perfunctory smile and said to the bored-looking man, “Alvin, meet Kate Shugak.”

  Alvin took Kate’s hand. “How nice to meet you.” His eyes traveled down her throat. “Hmm.” He raised one hand and, before she could step out of reach, traced her scar with impersonal fingers. “Who’s your surgeon?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your plastic surgeon, who is he? Never mind. Whoever he is, he ought to be shot. Here.” Alvin produced a business card. “Give me a call. We’ll set up an appointment.” He took her chin in cool, impersonal hands and turned her face from side to side, and Kate was so dumbfounded at the uninvited familiarity that she let him. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-five,” Kate said.

  “Hmm,” he said again. “Not much else to be done there, at least not yet. In another twenty years, we’ll probably have to do some work on those eyes.”

  “What’s wrong with my eyes?” Kate said, and then she pulled herself together. “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. Who the hell are you anyway?”

  Alvin produced a wide smile of practiced charm. “I’m sorry. I’m Alvin Bishop. I’m a plastic surgeon.” The mirthless smile widened. “Beautiful faces are us.”

  “I’ve already got one, thanks,” Kate said smartly, and looked down at Alice. She understood the face now, although she would never understand the impetus behind the edifice. She had to work at keeping the pity out of her own (already beautiful) face.

  “And how do you know my niece?” Alice said brightly.

  Before Kate could reply, a booming male voice said, “And who do we have here?”

  Kate peered up through the steadily thickening haze at what appeared to be quite the tallest man she’d ever met in her life.

  The man stooped to kiss the cheek Alice presented. “Have I told you tonight how lovely you look, dear?” He dismissed the plastic surgeon with a look that stopped just short of insult. Dr. Alvin Bishop faded into the crowd, Kate catching a look of relief on his face as he went.

  “Just fine, dear,” she replied. “This is Kate Shugak, a friend of Charlotte’s.”

  He straightened. “Is it. Well now.” His eyes ran over Kate assessingly, and Kate got that instant vibe that every woman gets when a man is interested. Her own eyes narrowed a little.

  He was a big man, long-limbed, rangy. She knew him to be in his late sixties or early seventies, but he looked twenty years younger. His face was long, the nose and chin very strong, his eyes blue and intent. His smile was more charming than Alvin’s, but there was power in it, and the arrogance that comes with power. Erland Bannister would be a man whose every move, from the wink and the slap on the back to the unfriendly takeover of a rival corporation, would be calculated for a specific effect. He looked like a man who got what he wanted when he wanted it and not a second later.

  He was dressed more casually than anyone in the room, in slacks and a well-worn gray tweed sport jacket over an oxford shirt open at the neck. Kate was reminded of a story about Napoleon’s coronation, when he made all his generals wear gold braid while he wore a simple soldier’s uniform. Make everyone dress up and then dress down yourself. Yet another example of his power, a small one, but telling.

  An arm snaked through Erland’s and a voice purred, “Erland, darling, who’s your little friend?”

  The blonde in the green-stained leggings was back, looking at Kate as if she’d crawled out from under a rock. Next to Kate, Charlotte stiffened. Alice’s smile looked even more rigid, and it wasn’t just her latest face-lift. Suddenly, Kate understood the subtext of the little scene a few minutes before. She looked at Alice. Fitzgerald was right: The rich really were different. But Hemingway was righter; the only difference was they had more money, which they could spend on more dumb things. It occurred to Kate for the first time that there were advantages to being broke for most of your life.

  She looked back at the blonde and examined her face with interest. “You must be a patient of Alvin’s, too,” she said, putting as much innocence into her wide eyes as she could muster.

  The blonde went a dull red. She opened her mouth, but whatever bile had been about to spew out was forestalled when Erland patted her hand. “Why, you’ve met.”

  “Not formally,” Kate said with her biggest smile.

  “Well, then, allow me to introduce you. Sondra Blair, this is Kate Shugak. Sondra, you know my wife, Alice, and my niece, Charlotte, already.”

  There was something in Erland’s voice that alerted Sondra. Her hostility vanished, to be replaced by an oozing enchantment, which fooled no one it was aimed at. “Of course. How do you do? Alice, Charlotte, lovely to see you again.”

  “And Emily,” Charlotte said in a tight voice.

  “And Emily, of course,” Erland said with no less charm.

  “So nice to meet you, Emily,” Sondra said, stifling a yawn. “And you, too, uh, Kaley, wasn’t it?”

  Kate laughed in her face.

  There was a startled silence. Charlotte couldn’t repress a smile. Emily chuckled. Alice woke up from cryosleep and looked at Kate as if Kate were her last hope of heaven.

  Erland grinned down at Kate. “Feisty little thing, aren’t you? Let me buy you a drink.” He let Sondra’s arm fall and slipped a firm hand beneath Kate’s elbow.

  Sondra looked livid.

  “Uncle Erland—” Charlotte said.

  “Now, Charlotte, you just relax. I won’t eat her.” He smiled down at Kate. “Unless she asks me to. Nicely.”

  Again, Kate felt that jolt. She didn’t think any woman under the age of eighty wouldn’t have. It put her even more on her guard. Men like Erland Bannister didn’t come on to a woman without an ulterior motive, and it wasn’t just because he was bowled over by her manifest charms.

  The dull look was back on Alice’s face as they left. Charlotte opened her mouth as if to say something, then shut it again, worried eyes meeting Kate’s, as if trying to impart a message of some urgency. Whatever it was, Kate didn’t get it.

  The crowd parted for Erland as it never would for Pete, and if people had been curious about Kate on Pete’s arm, they were doubly interested to see her on Erland’s. A brief electric silence would fall at their approach, succeeded by a buzz of comment and speculation after they had passed. “It’s like a fishbowl in here,” Kate said.

  Erland smiled down at her. “I know. People will gossip about their superiors.”

  “Why are they here, if you hold them in such contempt?”

  He didn’t bother denying it. “I find them useful.”

  “All of them?”

  He shrugged. “Most of them. Some come with their very own Kato Kaelins, and they have to be fed and watered along with the rest of the cattle, but it’s the price I pay to get their masters in the door.” He didn’t bother lowering his voice, she noticed. He paused next to the bar and smiled down at her. “What can I get you?”

  “Club soda, with a twist of lime.”

  He didn’t try to talk her into anything stronger, which she appreciated. He got a scotch and water for himself and led her to a plush love seat tucked into a bow window. A couple seated there were dismissed with the same ease and finesse with which Erland had dismissed Alvin, had cut through the crowd, and had gone to the head of the line at the bar. Kate took the corner with the view; Erland took the corner with the view of Kate and crossed his legs so that a richly polished loafer touched one of hers. She let it stay there, for the moment.

  “You’re not quite what I expected,” he said, watching her over the rim of his glass.

  “What did you expect?” she said, sipping her club soda.

  He smiled. “A little less city, a little more Bush?”
/>   She smiled back. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “I’m not disappointed.” He let his eyes wander over her. “No, indeed.”

  “Why am I here?” she said. Kate didn’t do subtle.

  “I knew your grandmother,” Erland said.

  “Everyone did,” Kate said. “How did you know I was in town?”

  He swallowed scotch. “Word gets around.”

  “What word?”

  He smiled again. It came easily to him, and it lent him charisma. He would have found that out early on. He would have put it to work for him, the way he was putting it to work for him now. “A friend called. Said you’d been making inquiries about my sister’s case.”

  The man she had called from Brendan’s list who had refused to talk to her. “Charlotte didn’t tell you,” Kate said in a neutral voice.

  His smile faded. “No,” he said, a hint of sadness in his voice. “We’re not as close as I’d like.”

  “Have you talked to Victoria?”

  He shook his head. “Not in thirty years.”

  “Not since she went inside?”

  “No.”

  “Why?” Kate said baldly. “She’s right up the road, twenty minutes door-to-door.”

  He shrugged helplessly, which Kate didn’t buy for a New York minute. “She refuses to speak to any of us.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Guilt, I suppose.”

  “So you think she’s guilty.”

  His eyes were very blue and very intent. “She didn’t deny it. She didn’t even take the stand in her own defense.”

  Kate nodded. “I know. I’ve read the trial transcript.”

  Someone approached the couch. Kate looked up to see Oliver Muravieff leaning on his cane.

  “Oliver,” Erland said, getting to his feet and extending a hand.

  It was grasped warmly. “Uncle Erland,” Oliver Muravieff said. He looked down at Kate. “Ms. Shugak.”

  “You’re late, boy.” Erland clapped him on the shoulder. “Let me get you a drink.”

  Kate watched him go thoughtfully. She didn’t expect Erland Bannister fetched drinks for just anybody. She looked at Oliver. What did Erland want from his nephew that he would wait on him?

  He took his uncle’s place. “What do you think of the party?”

  “Interesting,” Kate said.

  Oliver gave a short laugh. “That’s what you say when you see a painting you hate. ‘Interesting.’”

  She didn’t contradict him. “Why are you here?”

  He shrugged. “Uncle Erland asked me.”

  “And you come when he calls.”

  She was being deliberately offensive, but he smiled. It was an oddly grim expression, having little to do with amusement. “Yes,” he said, “I do, and so does everyone else here.”

  “Oliver,” a voice said, and Kate looked up, to behold a man with more and bigger teeth than JFK, all of them switched on. Looking into that smile was like staring through a dark night into headlights turned on bright.

  “How the hell are you?” Smiley Face said, beaming down at both of them, and without waiting for a reply, he added “Who’s your friend?”

  Oliver’s face took on an even more dour cast. “Kate Shugak, Bruce Abbott.”

  “Ah,” Bruce Abbott said, nodding wisely. “Ekaterina Shugak’s granddaughter. I heard your speech at AFN a couple of years back. Rousing, I thought.”

  “You didn’t think I went over the top on the fish farming,” Kate said, sitting up and looking anxious.

  He extended a hand and she put hers into it, which allowed him to pat it reassuringly. “Certainly not. We must protect our wild stock at all cost if we are to maintain the reputation for quality Alaska salmon enjoys. Not to mention a healthful subsistence lifestyle for the Native peoples.” He affected a shudder. “Nasty stuff anyway, farmed salmon. Dry, they have to dye it pink, diseased, tasteless. Your points were well taken.”

  Interesting, Kate thought, especially since her impromptu speech had begun with a story about a moose kill and she hadn’t said a word about farmed fish. She beamed a smile at him that rivaled the brilliance of his own. Oliver made a sound in the back of his throat and stood up. “Take my seat, Bruce. I need a drink.”

  He walked away before Bruce could answer. “May I?” Bruce said.

  “Certainly,” Kate said, patting her hair and maybe fluttering her eyelashes a little. What the hell, give ol’ Bruce a thrill while she figured out what the hell the governor’s chief of staff had to say to little old Kate Shugak from the Park. “We’ve met before, you know,” she said in breathless, confiding accents. She leaned forward and looked at him with wide, admiring eyes, or what she was hoping might be a close approximation thereof.

  He looked astounded. “No,” he said in a tone of flattering disbelief. He gave her the once-over and flashed his teeth again. “I’m sure I would remember if we had.”

  He’d been in some kind of supervisory position with the Department of Corrections at the Cook Inlet Pretrial Facility, back in the days when Kate used to be an investigator for the Anchorage district attorney. She had never liked the glad-handing, brownnosing little prick from the first time she’d watched him oil his way out of responsibility for the prisoner suicide that had happened on his watch. It had never been made officially known, but the employee grapevine said that he’d had his feet up on his desk, reading the newspaper instead of watching the monitors in the mods, one of which was trained on the suicide’s cell. The dead guy had been put on a suicide watch, too, so it wasn’t like Bruce Abbott wouldn’t have known the guy was at risk.

  Kate decided that now was not the time to remind Bruce Abbott of past misdeeds. She smiled instead.

  Under the influence of those admiring eyes, Bruce puffed out his chest and started dropping names. Every sentence began “The governor said to me” or “And then I said to the governor” and all of their conversations were liberally sprinkled with references to the political high and mighty, both state and federal. Any local contacts, it went without saying, were dismissed as being too paltry even to mention.

  Kate threw in a couple of bright-eyed “Reallys!” and one “Fascinating!” and stifled a yawn, but his acute political instincts told Bruce he was losing his audience. He switched on his smile again. “You’re being spoken of in high places, Kate. I may call you Kate?”

  Something told her that what Bruce Abbott said next would turn out to be why she had been invited to this party. “Really,” she said. “I can’t imagine what anyone in the governor’s office might have to say about little old me.”

  His eyes narrowed fractionally, and for a moment she thought she might have overdone it. But his smile switched on again, brighter than ever, accompanied this time by a fruity chuckle. “Oh, I didn’t mean to mislead you, Kate. Not necessarily the governor’s office, but certainly at high levels.”

  “Really,” she said for what felt like the seventeenth time. The secret to a successful interrogation was to make the suspect do all of the talking. She would not ask what “they” had been saying about her. Besides, Bruce was dying to tell her, and why should she thwart him, poor man?

  Realizing she was about to doze off with her eyes wide open, she pulled herself together.

  “Yes, you have been mentioned as quite the little up-and-comer,” Bruce said.

  “Have I?” Kate said. “Really, I can’t imagine why. As you know, Bruce, I’m not in politics myself.”

  “Not everyone can be,” he said earnestly, “some just don’t have the gift for it. But we need you out here, too.” A gesture encompassed the greater part of the Great Unwashed, of which Kate presumed he meant she was a voting member. Not that she’d voted for his boss, but she didn’t find it necessary to say so at this very moment. She batted her eyelids again. Her eyes were drying out from trying to keep them open.

  Bruce smiled and patted her hand again. “Yes, being Ekaterina Shugak’s granddaughter, well, that certainly puts you first
on any list.”

  “I’m on a list?” Kate said, suddenly wide awake.

  He beamed his teeth at her. “Of course you are,” he said warmly, “and first on it, like I said.”

  “For what?” Kate said, and kicked herself for asking.

  He smoothed the lapel of his jacket. “As I’m sure you know, the Alaska state troopers are opening a new post in Niniltna. You live there, I believe?”

  “I do,” Kate said.

  “And of course you used to be an investigator for the Anchorage district attorney.”

  “I did,” she said.

  He smiled some more. “The Department of Public Safety is thinking of assigning a VPSO to Niniltna.”

  She stiffened, enough so that he noticed. “Are they?” she said. The words were bitten off more than spoken.

  “Indeed, yes,” he said, looking a bit bewildered, clearly not expecting hostility as a reaction to his good news.

  He was easy to read. Jobs of any kind were scarce in the Alaskan Bush. Surely she knew what this meant? A monthly salary, in a village with only two others, the trooper and the postmaster. Medical insurance, workman’s comp, a retirement plan. He couldn’t understand her lack of enthusiasm, or for that matter the complete absence of overwhelming gratitude that he had come to expect from these little chats. The current governor of Alaska was a past master at the art of patronage, and Bruce Abbott the designated dispenser thereof. It was a job he clearly enjoyed, and now Kate was ruining it for him.

  She took pity on him, in spite of the anger building beneath her breastbone. He was just a go-fer, after all, a yes-man, a beck-and-call boy who only implemented the decisions made by the people in authority. He would never wield that authority himself, but credit where credit was due, he would never want to. He was a round peg in a thoroughly round hole, he’d found his niche, and he knew it. “I appreciate the thought, Bruce, but I really wouldn’t be the right person for the job.”

  Bruce didn’t just look disappointed, he looked aghast. It might have been the first time anyone had ever turned down the governor’s offer of a job. “But—but the salary. The—the benefits,” he said, actually stuttering. “Oh, if you’re worried about the time it would take you to go through the academy in Sitka to qualify, I’ve been instructed to tell you that in your case, because of your training—we’ve been told you did a year at Quantico right after taking your degree in social justice from UAF—and your experience on the job—your record is, hell, it’s flawless—well, after all that, the state would be willing to waive the academy requirement. We don’t have that many people of your caliber available, Kate.”