Breakup

by Dana Stabenow

  “A little!”

  “Dan.” She said his name with enough force to shut him up, at least for the moment. “Okay, so Stewart ran off on his wife. He panicked. It happens. So he outran a grizzly. Grizzlies aren’t stupid, she probably stayed behind to feed on the wife.” Kate controlled a shiver. “So Stewart doesn’t look as frazzled as anyone else we’ve seen who survived a bear attack. Shock takes people different ways. None of it proves anything.”

  “He lied to me,” Dan said stubbornly. “I don’t like him.”

  “I don’t, either,” she surprised both of them by saying. “It still doesn’t prove anything.” She drained her mug. “If you want action, talk to the man. I’ve got my own problems.”

  The man chose that moment to open up the door and step outside. “Somebody call my name?”

  “Ranger O’Brian, aka Sherlock Holmes, will be happy to fill you in.” She waved a hand at Dan. “The game’s afoot. Have at it.”

  Too excited to take offense, Ranger O’Brian did, promptly and thoroughly. In a minute, Dan was going to find a way to work the Trilateral Commission into the scenario. Kate turned to go inside.

  Jim caught her elbow. “Kate.”

  “What?” Kate snapped, yanking free.

  “Wondered if you’d do me a favor?”

  “Et tu, Jim?” she snarled.

  He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  Kate took a deep breath and counted to ten. “What favor?”

  “Come up to the mine with Stewart and me.” He saw the answer in her face and said quickly, “You were first on the scene, you’ve spent a lot of time in the area and you know bears. I want you to listen to his story and pick all the holes you can. Dan’s right. It’s phony as hell.”

  “I didn’t find anything, Jim,” Kate said, with an awful patience she hoped neither he nor Dan would mistake. “And I told you, we saw the bear right after the attack. She’d been feeding, all right.” She remembered the red-stained fur, the shreds of flesh between the claws, and again suffered through a flashback of the moments by the creek. She never wanted to look down the snout of a grizzly bear at that close a range again. What must Carol Stewart have felt her last few seconds, knowing there was no escape? Had she been conscious enough to feel the rip of the claws, the bite of the teeth? Had she—Kate yanked herself away from that thought and said briskly, “Believe me, that grizzly had been feeding, and recently. And she did come barreling down the hill from the direction of the mine.”

  Dan O’Brian couldn’t resist. “And you took the All-White Enriched East Coast Couple up there anyway?”

  Kate’s eyes narrowed. “It was in the opposite direction from the way the bear was traveling at the time. It seemed like a good idea.” Dan started to speak and she held up both hands, palms out. “Look, guys. If Mark Stewart wanted to kill his wife, it would have been a whole hell of a lot easier and a lot less risk to himself just to shove her into the Kanuyaq River and let the glacier calve on her.”

  “Unless she was already dead and he needed the bear to cover up how she really got that way in case the body was recovered,” Dan hissed. “There’s bear attacks and there’s bear attacks, Shugak. That grizzly should have either run when she heard more than one voice, or taken both Stewarts out. At the very least, Stewart should have been wounded. And if he was an experienced hunter, he should have had a rifle with him.”

  “Even experienced hunters get brain cramps.”

  The door behind them opened and Bobby rolled out. “What’s going on?”

  With some asperity Kate demanded, “Is there anybody left in the house?”

  She was ignored. Ranger O’Brian was more than happy to fill Bobby in. Bobby, who had taken an instant dislike to the tall dark stranger making eyes over the coffee mugs at his soon-to-be wife, entered into the discussion with enthusiasm, endorsing Dan’s assessment of the situation without hesitation and heaping scorn on Kate for her steadfast dissent. The third time around, Dan O’Brian had Mark Stewart cutting up his wife with a hunting knife and feeding her to Ursus arctos horribilis one piece at a time.

  Kate snorted and set her mug down on the railing with a thump. “Yeah, right. The first thing that bear would have done is take Stewart’s knife away from him and jam it up his ass. Bobby, can I borrow your truck? I’ve got to make a supply run into Ahtna.”

  “But, Kate—”

  “Dammit!” Kate turned on Dan so ferociously that he actually backed up a step. “Dan, there’s the cop on this porch.” She pointed at Chopper Jim, who had perched on the railing and was listening with a faint smile creasing his face. “You got a problem, take it up with him. Like I said, I’ve got my own to deal with. Bobby?” She held out her hand.

  Meekly for him, Bobby fished keys out of his pocket. Kate fairly snatched them up and stamped down the stairs. Chopper Jim made no attempt to stop her. The trio of men watched as she backed the pickup around and thundered over the little bridge and down the road.

  When the truck was safely out of earshot Chopper Jim remarked, “She’s awful goddam cranky today. What’s her problem?”

  “Jack’s in Anchorage and she’s here,” Dan said, the wisdom of the ages sitting on his leprechaun face.

  Bobby, who knew her better than either of the other men, frowned and said nothing at all.

  *

  The old railroad roadbed was, if anything, in worse shape than it had been the day before. Driving Bobby’s Chevy required relearning all the hand controls he’d had installed. Kate had them more or less mastered by the time she reached her own turnout, pausing just long enough to check on the cabin and fetch Mutt. The jet engine was still in the yard, unchaperoned; the go team was sleeping in this morning. This lack of attention didn’t augur well for a quick reimbursement of funds, and Kate continued her journey in a gloomy frame of mind. Mutt, annoyed at having been left to her own devices the night before, rode shotgun in unforgiving silence.

  They were home by one o’clock in the afternoon with a truck full of groceries and a receipt bearing testimony to Kate’s good credit with the Alaska Commercial Company, only to find the NTSB once more in possession of the clearing. Or so she assumed when she had to park fifty feet up the road because her turnout was full of vehicles. She recognized most of them, from which she deduced the population of Niniltna was exercising their right to a free market by renting their personal vehicles out to the go team at undoubtedly exorbitant hourly rates. Auntie Vi’s Toyota Land Cruiser was first in line, which only confirmed her hypothesis.

  Nor was the NTSB crew destined to be her last visitors of the day, more’s the pity. She was lifting the first box of groceries out of the back of the pickup when the sound of an approaching engine filled her with foreboding. She raised her head to see her worst fears fulfilled: Mandy behind the wheel of her brand-new, newly battered Ford, its cockeyed front bumper making it look slightly tipsy. Mr. and Mrs. Baker were sitting next to her, erect and composed and looking as if they had suffered no ill effects from the previous day’s strenuous activities.

  Mandy didn’t look happy. Kate had to resist the temptation to cross herself and she wasn’t even Catholic. At least Chick wasn’t along to titter in the background.

  Mandy got out. The driver’s side. She must have fixed the door. From the looks of it, probably with a crowbar. Whatever worked.

  “Hi,” Kate said warily, holding the box of groceries like a shield. It covered most of her major organs.

  “Kate,” Mandy said, voice curt. Great, she’d probably heard about the shoot-out at the Roadhouse.

  “Ms. Shugak,” Mr. Baker said, handing his wife out. “How nice to see you again.”

  “Indeed,” Mrs. Baker added, unusually warm for her.

  “Kate—” Mandy said.

  “Mandy,” Kate said, beating her to it, “I’m sorry about your truck but it wasn’t my fault. That bear charged us, there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. George ground-looped 50 Papa practically right on top of us, and there was no chance t
o get out of the way. And as for the bullet holes—you know what Cindy Bingley’s like when she goes after Ben. There was nothing I could do, and nobody got hurt, not even Ben. At least the last I saw he was okay. And as for the Jeppsens and the Kreugers, hell, there’s no way I could have—”

  Without doing anything so vulgar as making a face, Mr. Baker wore an expression that nevertheless conveyed a distinct message.

  “—no way I could have foreseen that, uh, Cheryl and Kay were going to have such a nasty argument,” Kate finished weakly. So Mandy hadn’t heard about the shoot-out. Yet. Kate thrust away the thought of what she might say when she did.

  “Truck?” Mandy said, fastening on the one word in the flood that meant something to her. “Oh. Kate, don’t worry about the truck. Besides, I told you. She’s yours.”

  Kate blinked at her. “What?”

  “You know.” Mandy gave her head a tiny jerk in the direction of her parents, and winked reassuringly. “For what you did.”

  “Mandy—”

  “That’s why I’m here, actually,” Mandy said, holding out the keys. “I already signed over the registration. It’s in the glove compartment. And Mother and Dad wanted to say thanks for the tour.” A faint grin crossed her face. “They enjoyed it, even if it did take them till this morning to dry out. Internally as well as externally.”

  She stood there holding the keys out, and was evidently prepared to stand there holding them out until Doomsday, so Kate awkwardly shifted the box in her arms and took them. “Well,” she said. “Thanks.” The one word didn’t seem like enough somehow, and she added, “Come on down. I’ll make you some coffee. Now that I have some.”

  Mandy looked at the boxes stacked in the back of the truck.

  “Grocery run to Ahtna,” Kate said.

  “And you had to borrow Bobby’s truck?”

  “Well.” Kate tried not to squirm.

  Mandy looked at her, one eyebrow ever so slightly raised, and for just a moment the resemblance to her father was very pronounced. “You didn’t believe me about the truck, did you?”

  “Well,” Kate said again, shifting from foot to foot. “I guess I just didn’t know how right Fitzgerald was.”

  “How so?”

  “The rich really are different.”

  Mandy’s mouth turned up at the corners. “Yeah, and you know what Hemingway said in reply?”

  “What?”

  “‘Yes, they have more money than you and me.’”

  “Glad to hear it,” Kate said, regaining some of her composure. “If that’s all the difference there is, you can help me hump these boxes down to the cabin.”

  They loaded up, even Mrs. Baker, and Mutt led her train of native bearers single file down the trail with her tail cocked at a lordly angle. “What’s with all the traffic?” Mandy said behind her.

  “I just got here, I’m guessing the go team is back.”

  At that moment a Sikorsky helicopter with a sling attached hove into view over the trees. “Great,” Kate said, hastening her pace. “Now maybe they’ll get that hunk of junk out of my front yard.”

  It was unfortunate that just before reaching the clearing Mandy tripped over a tree root and into a clump of alders, dumping her box of canned goods and making enough noise for three bears, two moose and a hoary marmot. Her subsequent crash and burn was loud enough to be heard even over the Sikorsky’s engine, because it became immediately obvious that the Park Uninvitational Four-Footed Grand Prix across the homestead the previous morning had had a strong and lasting effect.

  A shot rang out and a bullet thudded into a tree trunk a foot above Kate’s head.

  Mutt let loose with a ferocious bark.

  Kate yelled, “Stay!” In a move that seemed almost routine by now, she dropped her groceries and dove for the ground, grabbing for Mr. and Mrs. Baker’s ankles along the way, and none too soon, because in the next moment there was a Whoosh! and a cloud of spray hit the bushes directly in front of them.

  Kate’s eyes began to water and she pulled the neck of her T-shirt up over her face. Mutt whined and dropped flat, rubbing her face in her paws. Mandy sneezed violently. The whites of her parents’ eyes turned a bright red and their noses began to run. Mrs. Baker began to cough.

  Another bullet thunked into the tree trunk.

  The pilot of the Sikorsky must have thought he was back in Da Nang and raised ship high and fast.

  Eleven

  THE NOISE OF THE ENGINE FADED.

  Kate pushed herself up to her knees and yelled, “Hey! Whoever’s in the clearing! Cease fire, dammit!” punctuating her appeal with a tremendous sneeze.

  “I hate breakup,” Mandy said, choking and coughing.

  “Amanda dear, don’t you think we should—”

  There was another shot and another spray and, incensed, Kate yelled again, “Cut it out, you guys! It’s Kate Shugak, and you sonsabitches had better either shoot me on sight or have an awful goddam good excuse for shooting and spraying at me before!”

  The shots and spray ceased. “Kate?” A voice she recognized as John Stewman’s spoke hesitantly. “Kate, is that you?”

  Kate’s reply was almost muffled by another tremendous sneeze. “No, asshole, it’s the tooth fairy!”

  She saw Mrs. Baker reach as if to rub her eyes and snatched at her hand. “No, don’t rub it, that’ll only make it worse.” She stood, wet and muddy and furious. “Stewman, you disarm those people of yours or my dog and I will disarm them for you! And we won’t care how gentle we do it, either!”

  There was a brief pause, a rustle of movement. “All right, Kate. You can come out now.”

  They staggered down the path into the clearing to come face-to-face with Selina and Bickford, white-faced and trembling. Bickford was holding a rifle. Selina had acquired a bright orange can of bear repellent, still held at the ready. The rest of the team were clustered protectively together behind them. Kate couldn’t imagine why, if the idiots had thought they were about to be charged by a bear, they hadn’t at least run for the cabin.

  A stray wisp of the pepper spray caught at her throat. “Put that down,” she said, coughing. Neither Bickford nor Selina moved. Kate stepped forward and reached for the rifle. Bickford seemed disinclined to give it to her.

  Kate looked at him and said very carefully, “Give me that rifle before I take it away from you and shoot you with it.”

  Bickford was not the stuff of which heroes were made. He surrendered.

  She cleared the chamber and clicked on the safety. It was the .30-06 from the gun rack over her door. Now, that would have been downright embarrassing, getting shot on her own doorstep with her own gun. Another time Kate might have found the prospect mildly amusing, but considering the accumulation of events during the past two days, too many of which had offered bodily harm to her person, she was fresh out of a sense of humor.

  All Selina’s attention was occupied in trying to clip the can of bear repellent to her belt. Her hands were shaking so badly she wasn’t having much success, and irritated as always at a simple job poorly done, Kate slung her rifle, snatched the can, yanked Selina’s waistband away from her waist until she could see all the way down to her boots and jammed the clip over the belt. The elastic of the waistband snapped back and the can smacked into her belly. The other woman gave an inarticulate protest.

  “Shut up,” Kate said.

  Selina shut up.

  “The only reason you’re still living,” Kate told her, “is because you didn’t score any direct hits.” It wasn’t easy to glare with watery eyes, but Kate managed it. “Now just what the hell is going on here?”

  There was some shuffling of feet, a few inaudible mumbles and a great deal of staring up at the sky or down at the ground or off into space. After a moment John Stewman stepped manfully forward. “Well, Kate, some of us got a little nervous after the bear incident yesterday. And then we heard about what happened to that woman up to the mine—”

  “That was thirty miles from here,
” Kate said. Nobody looked convinced. She shook her head and swore tiredly. “I didn’t used to feel this old,” she said, mostly to herself. To Bickford she said pointedly, “I assume that sky crane was to get that hunk of junk out of here once and for all?”

  He nodded mutely.

  “Good. Call it back. The sooner I see your backsides heading up that trail, the safer I’m going to feel. Mutt!”

  There was a rustle at the opposite end of the clearing, and Kate looked around to find an extremely wary Mutt, yellow eyes turned an original shade of magenta, standing at the edge of the clearing in what could only be described as a tentative manner. Generally instinct and training compelled her to protect, but after the last two days Kate didn’t know that she blamed Mutt if her first reflex was to run as far from the homestead as she could get. “It’s okay, girl, it’s safe to come out now.”

  Mutt wasn’t entirely convinced, but she did come out of the bushes. Mandy, who had borne the brunt of the pepper spray, she gave a wide berth. “Thanks a lot,” Mandy told her, and gave a convulsive sneeze, which was the signal for first her mother and then her father to follow suit.

  “Come on,” Kate said, and led the way into the cabin, where she pumped up a bucket of water into which Mandy immediately immersed her entire head, and emerged snorting and trumpeting like an elephant down at the local mud hole. Kate pumped up another bucket of water and Mandy’s parents made do with a more refined rinse. Kate simply stood at the sink, head beneath the spout, and pumped. She wrung out her hair and groped for a towel. Head wrapped in a turban, she blinked at the room. Mandy had replaced the rifle in its rack over the door. The rest of the cabin looked much as she had left it. Lucky for the NTSB.

  Mr. Baker had dried off and gone back outside, and through the kitchen window Kate could see him standing next to Kevin Bickford, who had his Earlybird cap pulled low over eyes that were darting nervously back and forth. The Sikorsky was back, and they were watching the sling being maneuvered around the engine. Kate just hoped the corpse didn’t disintegrate when they tried to lift it into the air.