A Taint in the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  She was also hearing voices.

  Was there pain in heaven? Certainly there were voices. Joan of Arc had heard them; it stood to reason Kate Shugak would hear them, too. Of course, Joan had been given directions. Maybe the Woman Who Keeps the Tides or Calm Waters’ Daughter would give Kate a sign.

  She moved again and her head fell off. She couldn’t stop a low, agonized groan.

  Maybe it was hell. Definitely pain in hell, according to the preachers, lots and lots, and Kate had sinned, big-time. She wished she was sinning right now, back at the town house, upstairs in that king-size bed with Jack.

  That wasn’t right. Jim, that was it, Jim in that enormous bed and her having her way with him.

  Was he one of the voices?

  “I only hit her once,” someone said.

  “You shouldn’t have hit her at all,” another voice said coldly and clearly.

  Nope. Not Jim, neither one of them. But the voice did sound familiar.

  She went away for a little while, hiding from the pain, and when she woke up again, the stifling cover had been removed from her face. She sucked in lungfuls of clean, cool air. They hadn’t gagged her, hallelujah, but of course that only meant there was no one within shouting distance. Still, she had to try.

  She gathered everything she had, took as deep a breath as she could, and produced a small croak. She waited a moment and tried again. “Help,” she said, gaining volume. “Can anybody hear me? Help! Help! HELP!”

  No one replied. She heard the rustle of wind in the trees, a flock of chickadees talking among themselves, and what might have been the heavy footstep of a moose. Nothing else.

  She looked around her, her restraints permitting her limited movement. The wood smoke had been a clue. She was in a cabin, a small one-room affair, studiedly rustic, filled with Adirondack furniture Kate recognized from a catalog she’d read once when she’d been stuck on a long flight with no books. There was a little woodstove and a counter with a Coleman stove and a pink plastic dish tub and a matching pink plastic dish drainer on it. There was a shelf beneath holding a variety of canned goods and a cardboard box with the top cut away to form a tray, holding bottles of water.

  Kate had a sudden raging thirst. She rolled toward the edge of the cot and discovered that, along with tying her hands and feet, they had tied her to the cot. She looked down and saw that she was still wearing Jim’s T-shirt, which had rucked up to her waist, and she was so enraged and so thirsty that she cursed at the top of her voice for a full minute.

  When she was done, she felt much better. Her head still hurt and her right eye was swollen almost shut. Her vision in that eye might even be a little foggy, but she could still see fine out of the other. She looked the room over again. She twisted around on the cot and saw that it had folding legs. She considered the possibilities.

  The ropes around her hands and feet were tight, tight enough to cause her hands and feet to swell. The rope around her body, the one tying her to the cot, was a little looser. One end of it was connected to her hands, the other tied off to itself in a slipknot.

  She smiled, showing all her teeth and displaying a distinct and unnerving resemblance to Mutt, had anyone been there to see it. She began rocking back and forth in the cot, back and forth, back and forth, until the cot began to rock up on its legs, an inch, two inches, three, six, twelve. It was a heavy sea and Kate was wallowing in the troughs, way up and way down, the rope cutting into her now-bare stomach as she flung her body weight at it, until finally, the cot flipped over at last and Kate splatted facefirst against the floor.

  It didn’t do the injury to her face any good, and she groaned again.

  It was a wood floor, poorly finished and dirty. In the end, that was what got her moving again. She pulled her knees to her chest and, using her shoulders and her head, began to inch her way toward the counter, the rope attaching her to the cot really cutting into her now, and the cot on her back weighing a lot more than it looked.

  She’d about given up hope of ever reaching the counter, stopped even looking up to see how far away it was, when the cot bumped into it. She looked up, and there on a shelf not a foot away loomed the bottles of water. Alaska Glacierblend. Virgin Water from the Eklutna Glacier. It might as well still be frozen in the Eklutna Glacier, for all the good it was doing her.

  Kate felt tears well into her eyes and forced them back by a massive effort of sheer will. She managed to get her knees beneath her again and tried to snag a bottle with her teeth, but the damn cot kept getting in the way. That gave her an idea, and she used one of the poles of the cot frame to knock one of the bottles down. It rolled beneath the shelf.

  “FUCK!” she yelled. “Mutt! Where are you, damn it! There’s never a goddamn wolf around when you need one!”

  Which was patently unfair, considering how many times Mutt had galloped to her rescue, but Kate wasn’t in a fair frame of mind. She used the cot pole to knock another bottle to the floor and this time managed to pounce on it before it got away. She finally got the bottle in between her chin and her chest and wriggled it down to her hands, which were bound wrist to wrist. She could open them just far enough to grasp the bottle near the cap, although—sweet Jesus!—the flexing of her fingers hurt like a bastard. Her breath hissed through her teeth as her hands fumbled at the cap.

  She was ready to bite it off with her teeth, but the seal broke and the cap unscrewed easily enough. She slid the bottle carefully upward through her hands and took the neck in her teeth and tilted the bottle upward. Cool, clean water flooded down her throat. She choked on it, and some got up her nose, but she drank the rest of it down, every single wonderful drop.

  She let the empty bottle fall and watched it roll beneath the counter. The floor seemed to slant that way. She hoped the contractor had charged Erland Bannister an arm and a leg for extremely shoddy workmanship.

  For she had no doubt as to the identity of her kidnapper. Charlotte Bannister had hired Kate Shugak to get Victoria Muravieff out of jail, and in so doing, Kate had stumbled into a can of worms, which had turned out to be a nest of vipers. Of them all, Erland’s bite would be the most poisonous.

  Really her only question at this point was why he hadn’t killed her outright. What did she know that he needed to know before he did?

  She put those thoughts behind her. Her thirst satisfied for the moment, now she had to get free.

  She knelt on the floor in a sort of crouch beneath the cot, which was roped to her like an overaffectionate dog.

  Mutt, Jim, wherever you are, please be on your way here. Please have seen me get tossed into the back of that vehicle; please be on the trail of that vehicle right now.

  She pushed those thoughts away, too.

  The cot’s poles ran through two sleeves, one at either edge of the canvas that formed the bed. She couldn’t look around behind her to see how the legs were attached. She tried to stand up, but the poles were longer than she was tall. She bent over, as far over as she could, and tried to stand again.

  This time, she made it, although her blood pounded through to her bound feet. The aft portion of the cot’s legs dragged behind her on the floor, and she could only manage the smallest hop, the poles scraping behind her. She hopped and scraped, nevertheless, until the upright ends of the poles bumped into the wall of the cabin. She hopped up and down, knocking the ends of the poles against the wall. Slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, the poles began to slide into their canvas sleeves, until the sleeves extended beyond the poles and the canvas was flopping down in her face. Still Kate hopped, bent over, her back beginning to ache, the side of her face one enormous hammering pain, thumping the ends of the poles into the wall.

  Eventually, she noticed that the rope had slid up the cot a little, too—not much, but maybe just enough. About that time, the rope around her must have caught on the cot legs, or maybe the legs had caught on the canvas, or maybe both, so it was now or never. She had one thing in her favor: The rope that bound her was half-inch polyp
ro, plastic rope, which if improperly knotted had a tendency to lose tension and slip. These knots were at best granny knots and they were already loose. She crouched down, nose to knees, and began to wriggle.

  After that, it was almost easy. She dragged the cot back to the counter, managing to collapse its legs and fold the poles together. The canvas hung down, making a nuisance of itself, but Kate managed to reach the Coleman stove with her bound hands. Heart knocking against her ribs, she turned the right knob in front of the right burner. Nothing, not a damn thing, not even so much as a hiss of fuel.

  “Shit,” she said, and tried for the other knob.

  This time she heard the clicking of an automatic ignition and could have shouted for joy. The burner lighted with what looked to Kate like a positively joyous flame. Without a moment of hesitation, she held her bound hands over the burner, as close as she could get. The rope began to sizzle. She lowered her hands more, careless of the heat on her wrists, and the rope began to melt. She strained with all her muscles, pulling the rope against itself, and it separated suddenly without any warning. Her left hand hit the cot and toppled it to the floor, and her right hand hit the plastic tub and sent it flying across the cabin.

  The ropes binding her feet were quickly untied. She rummaged through the items on the counter and the shelves, looking for a weapon. There was a box of silverware, including a few bread knives with serrated edges. She set them aside.

  She remembered the water bottles rolling beneath the counter, and dropped down to peer into the narrow space. It was dark and she couldn’t see anything. She reached beneath with one hand, feeling around in the darkness, hoping a big rat wasn’t waiting there to bite her. Were there rats in Alaska? She couldn’t remember ever seeing one.

  She shook her head angrily, concentrating. The sleeve was shoved back from her shoulder and it scraped the bottom of the shelf, picking up a splinter. She pulled out the empty water bottle, the full bottle, a church key, three metal beer caps, seven kernels of popcorn, a couple of blue plastic poker chips, a thick rubber band, a steak knife, and a handful of .22 shell casings.

  The steak knife was a welcome sight. The shell casings were not.

  She didn’t make the mistake of running for it, not yet. She walked back and forth across the cabin, stepping carefully and opening and closing her hands. God, they hurt, like her feet, and her head. She was so tired. She wanted to set the cot back up and take a nap. She was certainly dressed for it.

  That brought her back to her senses in a hurry, and she rifled through the cabin’s one closet, formed by hanging a wire across a corner, where she found a pair of women’s slacks cropped above the ankles. They were too tight in the hips and too loose in the waist, but she put them on and fashioned a belt from the polypro and knotted Jim’s T-shirt at her waist. There was nothing in the way of shoes, which was a damned shame.

  The cabin had four windows, one in every wall. Each looked out on trees standing in what looked like late-afternoon sun. Five o’clock, maybe. This time of year, maybe six. Kate went to the door and found it locked from the outside. She picked up a chair and sent it through the nearest window. The glass cracked and prismed but didn’t fall.

  “Safety glass?” Kate said out loud. “I don’t think so, you son of a bitch.” She took the chair to the little woodstove and used it to knock the chimney down. There was a small poof of soot, no more, someone had been burning Red Devil regularly in the little stove. Little, but heavy, it was made of cast iron. Kate stooped and got both arms around it and lifted, grunting. Later, when the adrenaline rush abated, causing her muscles to feel the strain, she would realize just how angry she had been, because she now raised that stove up off the floor, staggered over to the window, and reared back to send the stove into the window.

  This time, the window gave up the ghost and the stove crashed through and fell on the ground outside. The fresh air coming in through that open window was the sweetest odor Kate had ever smelled. She fetched the chair again and used the legs to clear the window frame of glass, and then she was out and on the ground.

  One single-lane road that was more of a game trail led up to the front door, which was locked with a padlock. Kate went back inside for a bread knife. The cabin had never been painted and the screws securing the hasp to the doorjamb came out easily with a small application of muscle. She threw the hasp and the padlock deep into the woods, then took a long, luxurious, and much-needed pee in the outhouse out back, which came equipped with toilet paper. Ritzy.

  She walked ten minutes down the road before her feet began to feel it. She heard a jet high over head. It seemed to be descending. She didn’t hear any street sounds that might indicate a road. The trees never thinned out enough to give her a view, something to tell her where she was.

  She padded back up the road, went to the window of the cabin, and climbed up on the sill. She stood up, reaching for the eave of the roof. She caught it with both hands and gained the roof in a sort of scrabbling kick. It was made of corrugated metal and was warm from the day. She stood up.

  There were mountains in front and behind and all around, sharp peaks, some with snow, some without. They looked slightly familiar. Soft in the distance she thought she heard the sound of running water. A creek perhaps.

  The setting sun slanted on the mountains with no snow, another jet appeared over the eastern horizon, and Kate knew where she was. The cabin was located in the Chugach Mountains, somewhere between the front and back ranges. Crow Creek Valley, maybe, reasonably accessible if you knew your way around the Anchorage bowl area. The cabin probably sat on a chunk of land subdivided from some old homesteader’s claim.

  Her spirits lifted. Kate liked being lost about as much as she liked getting her feet wet. She went back inside the cabin and found a can of cream of tomato soup and a can of evaporated milk. She stirred both into a pan over the working burner of the Coleman stove and had a dinner of soup and saltines spread with peanut butter, chased with another bottle of water.

  They wouldn’t come until dark. They were off busily establishing their alibis, but they’d waited until the wee hours to take her, and they’d wait until the wee hours to kill her, too. But they’d come earlier tonight, because she had something Erland wanted, and they would need time to question her before they killed her. Maybe he thought she knew who had really killed William. Maybe he thought she had proof that he’d had Eugene and Charlotte killed. At any rate, no plan of his would include her leaving this place alive.

  She remembered again Max’s story of Jasper Bannister and Richie Constantine and Calvin Esterhaus. How like his father was Erland Bannister?

  The .22 casings showed that a gun had been fired in this cabin before. She wondered where the bullets from them had lodged, and in whom.

  Erland might come armed tonight, too, but maybe not. He had left her pretty well trussed up. He wouldn’t be expecting to find her free. But then he’d locked the door, as if guaranteeing that if she did get loose, she wouldn’t get anywhere. Which she had done. But maybe he’d locked the door to keep stray hikers out. And the windows were high enough that no one smaller than a giant could look in, so he must have thought she was pretty safely shut in for the day.

  She remembered the voices she’d heard the first time she’d come around. He probably wouldn’t come alone, he’d need someone to clean up after him, because guys like Erland Bannister never dirtied their hands with the cleanup work. Probably he’d bring the same someone who had kidnapped her, because using the same crew meant fewer witnesses.

  All she had to defend herself was a steak knife. She knew she should walk away, right now. That was the smart thing to do. Start walking, right now, start eating up some of the mileage between her and 911.

  Where was her cell phone when she needed it? Back in the town house, in her day pack. Oh yeah, some of the smarter money she’d spent this year.

  On the other hand, there was no guarantee that anyone would come if she called. There were damn few Alaskans who we
re going to believe some wild tale about Erland Bannister murdering his nephew and contracting to murder his brother-in-law and his niece over thirty years later. Kate had some street cred, but nobody had enough to put that story over.

  Although Kate was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that she’d been wrong about who’d killed William Muravieff, and if she ran, she’d never know.

  And she really, really wanted to know.

  Using the steak knife, she cut rough pieces out of the canvas cot, shaped them into soles, and bored holes through which she laced the rope. The canvas was stiff and the rope was harsh against her skin. She found a man’s flannel shirt in the closet and cut up the sleeves for socks. She cut off every single hanging thread, every dangling bit of rope, because when it came time to run, she didn’t want anything tripping her up.

  She tucked the steak knife into the rope around her waist. She situated the table to the left of the open door and placed the chair so that it was just out of eyesight of the doorway. She went outside to look over the forty-foot spruce tree that stood at just the right spot to give her a good view of what would come up the road later this evening. She broke a few dead branches, bent a few living ones, and made a reasonably comfortable seat, padded with the canvas left over from the cot and the remaining bits of rope, about twenty feet up. It was clearly visible from the cabin, but in her experience, people seldom looked up. She cleared what she hoped was a fairly unobvious path to the ground, then went from ground to seat and back again a couple of times to familiarize herself with hand and footholds. She wanted to be able to ascend and descend as quietly as possible.

  Her hands were sticky with sap when she was done. She went back to the cabin and gathered up half a dozen bottles of water. She took three of them up the tree. The other three she secreted in a hollow beneath a fallen spruce about a hundred feet off the road. If she needed them, they’d be there. She hoped she wouldn’t.

  She went back to the cabin and cleaned up the broken glass in front of the window and hauled the stove back inside. It felt a lot heavier on the way in than it had on the way out. If she was right and they came late, chances were that with no ambient light to reflect off the glass, they’d never see that it was missing. If she was lucky, they wouldn’t notice the broken stovepipe. It was amazing what people missed seeing just because they had preconceived notions of what was supposed to be in front of them.