A taint in the blood (29 page)

"He didn't," Victoria said. Her elegant shoulders were looking very tense.

"Charlotte and Oliver were both underage when you went inside," Kate said. "Who did they go to?"

Victoria stared at a point on the wall in back of Kate's head. "My brother Erland took them in. It wasn't for long. Charlotte was sixteen, Oliver was seventeen. They were in college and out of his house in a very short time."

Kate nodded. "I see." She folded her hands on the table in front of her and took a deep breath. "Ms. Muravieff—" She paused. "You kept the name," she said.

"What?"

"You kept your husband's name. Even after the divorce."

Victoria's eyes narrowed, as if she were really looking at Kate for the first time. "Why are you here, Ms. Shugak?" Despite her best efforts, something of what she was feeling must have crossed Kate's face, because Victoria sat up straight in her chair. "Tell me at once," she said, snapping it out like an order.

"I'm afraid I have bad news, Ms. Muravieff," Kate said. She took another breath and said steadily, "Your daughter, Charlotte, was killed going home yesterday evening by a hit-and-run driver."

Victoria sat very still, frozen in place. Kate couldn't even hear her breathing.

When she spoke, her voice was frail and thready. "Yesterday? Charlotte's been dead all day today?" "Yes. I'm so very sorry, Ms. Muravieff." Victoria spoke again through stiff lips. "Leave me." Kate got up at once and left the room.

14

Jim was waiting for her when she got back to the town house. "My trial was continued until tomorrow," he said the minute he saw her.

"Oh, save it," she snapped, and stamped upstairs to take another long hot shower. She was turning into a ritual bather. Lucky she had her own bathroom to go back to. She wished more than ever that she could go back to it right now.

She had her face turned into the spray when she heard the shower curtain being drawn back. She didn't move, and she didn't jump either when his hands slid around her waist to draw her against him. By unspoken agreement, they took their time, drawing it out to a point way past pleasure, something that was almost pain, and when they were done, she let her head fall back against the tiles and laughed out loud for the sheer joy of it.

He mumbled something into her neck.

"What?" she said.

He raised his head, and she was moved almost to pity by the look of despair on his face. "I don't understand how it can keep getting better."

She laughed again, low in her throat. "Don't you?" No one, not even Kate's best friends, had ever said she was a nice person, and she proved it now. She raised his hand to her face, nuzzled into his palm, and sank her teeth into the base of his thumb.

He swore, but he didn't pull his hand away. Instead, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, where he tossed her onto the bed and followed her down.

"I'm going to stay in town for a while," he said later.

"Okay," she said.

"Maybe I could hang out here."

"Sure."

"It's only until this case of yours is finished."

"Of course."

"I mean, somebody just took out your client."

Kate willed away the remembered fury, the images of Kurt on the floor and Eugene with the bullet hole in his head, the footage of Charlotte's crumpled car, the tears on Emily's face, Victoria's stricken expression. Not now, she told herself. Not now.

"Stands to reason whoever did it might think you know something you shouldn't."

"They might."

"Seems to me they might think twice about trying something if you had a trooper hanging around."

"You're probably right."

"And there's nothing really pressing back at the post, and Tok and Cordova have promised to cover for me if something happens."

"Good to know."

"And I might be recalled to the stand tomorrow."

"You might."

There was a brief silence. "Oh fuck," he said.

"Don't mind if I do," she said, and rolled over on top of him.

"I don't want to talk to anyone." Emily stood in the open doorway with a tear-blotched face, arms crossed, hugging herself tightly.

Every line in her brow looked deeper, her eyes seemed sunken, and her hair lay lank and lifeless upon her head.

"Is anyone else here?"

Emily shook her head miserably, and Kate shoved her way in, closing the door behind her, Jim barely making it inside. She took Emily in a firm, impersonal grip and steered her into the living room. Emily sat on the couch and stared in front on her with unseeing eyes. Kate found the kitchen and made hot, sweet tea. She took it into the living room and pressed the mug into Emily's hands. "Drink."

"I don't want it," Emily said.

"Drink," Kate said firmly.

It took half an hour, another cup of tea, and a box of Kleenex to get Emily to where she could speak in more or less coherent sentences. Kate was unfailingly kind and patient, never at a loss for what word was needed next. Jim, observing from a neutral corner, was reminded of a rock battered by waves of emotion and incipient hysteria, only to emerge each time from the sea spray with the same unshakable face. Kate Shugak was the only person he'd ever met able to combine the qualities of the irresistible force and the immovable object at once. It was only a matter of time.

Evidently, Emily came to realize that, too. Lying back against the couch, she closed her eyes and said in an exhausted voice, "What do you want?"

"Why weren't you in the car with her on the way home from the party?" Kate said.

A tear slid down Emily's cheek, but only one this time. "I drove to Erland's from work. Charlotte had to haul the food to Erland's house, and she had to be there early to set things up."

Kate suffered a slight feeling of deja vu, remembering where Victoria and Charlotte had been the night William had been killed. Bad things had a habit of happening when the Bannister women were away from home, and in particular when they were helping host parties at their male relative's house.

Still, two similar occurrences thirty-one years apart didn't necessarily constitute a pattern. "Were you behind her on the road?" Kate said.

Emily shook her head miserably. "Ahead. I left right after you did. There's only so much of that crap I can take."

"Then why do you go?"

"Because Charlotte wants me there. Wanted." Another tear. "She hates all that glad-handing stuff. She isn't a public person. Wasn't."

"Were you home yesterday?"

"What?"

"Did you stay home yesterday, or did you go into work?"

Emily, uncomprehending, said, "I stayed home, I—I couldn't go to work."

"Did a man come to see you?"

Emily gave a convulsive sniff. "All kinds of men. Policemen, mostly. Knocking, knocking at the door, they wouldn't leave me alone. They kept asking questions about Charlotte, and her mother, and her father, and I just didn't see what that had to do with anything, I just couldn't, I—oh God, oh God, I can't believe she's dead." Emily buried her face in her hands and began to rock back and forth. "Charlotte, oh God, Charlotte."

"Emily." Kate grasped her hands and pulled them from her face. "Is there someone I can call? Someone who can come and stay with you?"

Kate couldn't stand the thought of leaving her there all alone. Emily kept shaking her head—at the thought of her loss or the thought of enduring companionship, Kate couldn't tell. She looked for and found a desk, located an address book inside the top drawer, and started calling numbers. Twenty minutes later, two women showed up, so alike they were almost twins, stocky, short, cropped gray hair and piercing blue eyes.

"You Shugak?" the first one said, and walked inside without waiting for an answer. "I'm Becky. This is Lael."

"Hi," Kate said.

"Where is she?"

"In the living room. She's pretty shook."

"I don't blame her," Becky said gruffly. "I’d hate to think how I'd react if Lael—" And here the two women exchanged such an unexpected and naked look of emotion that Kate felt like she was intruding on something very private, and she averted her eyes.

"I tried calling her aunt and uncle," Kate said, "but they aren't picking up."

"Hah!" Becky said.

"I left a message," Kate said.

"Hah!" Becky said again.

"Oh, Becky!" Emily said from behind Kate, and rushed forward to be enfolded in an all-encompassing embrace. "Charlotte's gone! Charlotte, oh my God, Charlotte!"

"It's okay," Becky said, patting Emily's back soothingly. "If s okay, Emily, Lael and I are here now. We'll take care of you."

Lael was already producing a bottle of pills from the day pack she was carrying. "A sedative," she explained to Kate in a soft voice.

"You a doctor?" Kate said.

Lael nodded.

"Did you hear how Charlotte died?"

Lael's lips tightened. "Charlotte Bannister was a good friend of mine, Ms. Shugak."

"And she was my client, and she's just been killed in what could be considered suspicious circumstances."

Lael's eyes widened. "I thought it was a hit-and-run."

"It was." Kate glanced over her shoulder at Becky and Emily and lowered her voice. "Look, I can't say anymore right now, but just keep the doors and windows locked, okay? And here's my number, if you need me for anything."

"What are you doing here anyway?"

"Charlotte hired me to get her mother out of jail," Kate said baldly.

Jim, still sequestered in his neutral corner, noticed that discretion had just suffered a hit. Kate's favorite weapon had always been the bludgeon, and she would regard Charlotte's death as a personal affront that had to be avenged. He felt a spark of sympathy, albeit a very tiny spark, for the perp. Like Kate, like any cop worthy of the name, he didn't think much of coincidences. He was still pretty sure Victoria had committed the crime of which she had been found guilty, but he was equally certain that Kate, in ferreting around after the circumstances of that crime, had stirred up something nasty associated with that crime that had lain dormant for thirty-one years. There was nothing worse than that kind of nasty. Old nasty had a tendency to ripen. Left alone, it would eventually rot away. Exposed to the bright light of day before that happened, the stench rolled out and over everyone in sight. Considering the wealth and power connected with this case, the smell could reach all the way to Juneau and maybe even Washington, D.C.

Lael was quick. "And you think that might have something to do with Charlotte being killed?" she asked Kate.

"I don't know. But I think if s interesting that she was killed right after she hired me to start investigating a thirty-one-year-old murder case."

In the car on the way down O'Malley, Jim said, "You're taking the gloves off."

She spared him a brief glance. "One. I hire Kurt Pletnikoff to do some legwork for me. Two, he finds a dead man—I'm guessing someone connected to this case. Three, he is shot and left for dead himself. Four, somebody tries to take me out. Five, my employer is killed." She pulled to the side of the road, provoking an indignant honk from the Chevy Suburban that had been riding their bumper all the way down the mountain. "And notice I'm not even mentioning the attempt to buy me off with the Niniltna VPSO job."