The Singing of the Dead (12 page)

Matt made a sudden movement, and a long-barreled Colt appeared in the Greek's hand.

Once again silence descended. Men froze in the doorway, watching, ready to dive out of the line of fire.

Matt's face darkened. “You want to be careful with that pop gun of yours, Alex,” he said evenly. “Somebody could get hurt.”

Alex Papadopolous smiled. “Somebody sure could,” he agreed, and caused the Colt to disappear again. He stood back, looking at the Dawson Darling, still smiling.

The redhead raised her chin and swept past him into the saloon.

Matt was right, Nome was on its last legs as a stampeder town. The Poor Man's Gold Rush was almost over. The only thing that made for more business in a whorehouse than a boom was a bust. Men stood in line for their turn, and she was exhausted when morning came. Alex would have kept her working right around the clock—“Hell, the sun's still up, ain't it?”—and it was after five before she dispatched the last customer. Tired as she was, she made the time for a quick bath before tumbling into bed and falling instantly asleep.

It seemed only moments later when a faint scratching at the door woke her. She repressed a groan. “Whoever it is, go away,” she called. “Come back tonight.”

“It's Matt,” came the reply. “Open up.”

There was another sound, a faint mewling, that had her on her feet and at the door in an instant. She wrenched it open and Matt held out the child in his arms. “Percy!”

Percy was thin and pale and almost asleep. “Mama?” he said, and nuzzled his face into her shoulder.

“How did you get him? How did you know where he was?”

“Alex had to pay the woman he had looking after him. One day I followed him.” He smiled. “He's a cheap bastard, Alex is; she wasn't happy with what he was paying her. From the looks of that kid she didn't spend much of it feeding him, either.” He shrugged and cast a look behind him before he stepped inside and closed the door. In a low voice he said, “Get dressed. I've got you a ticket on the boat to Fairbanks.”

She stared at him, open-mouthed.

“He'll think you went to Seattle,” he said. “Anybody could scrape fifteen bucks together. He won't figure you went to Fairbanks, so that's where you should go.” When she didn't move, he put firm hands on her shoulders and turned her toward the wardrobe. “Hurry up now, before he gets back.”

She took a step, stopped. “Matt,” she said. “Why?”

He didn't pretend to misunderstand her. “Because you're not like the rest of them. You got yourself forced into something you don't want to do.” He paused. “I could have outbid Halvorsen, you know.”

She stared at him. “Is that what this is about? You feel guilty because you didn't win the bidding that night?”

“I know you want out,” he said, ignoring her words, “and I aim to get you out.” He handed her a small leather bag, and she knew what it was from the weight.

“Matt, I—” She swallowed, and tried again.

He shook his head, his smile a little twisted. “I'm not coming with you now. I've got a saloon to run. Maybe later, when the stampede's over, I'll catch up to you. But now, you've got to go. Speaking of which, pack your bag, woman, you've got a boat to catch.”

“The hell you say,” Alex Papadopolous said from the doorway, and fired from the hip. The gunshot echoed around the room and startled Percy, who began to cry.

Matt spun around, pulling his pistol and trying to aim. Papadopolous fired again, and Matt fell backward, his head at her feet. She stared down at him, and he raised his hand to her, the one holding the pistol. She took it, as if in a dream, and raised it with a trembling hand.

Alex laughed at her, the same laugh he had laughed at her when he stood in the door of the cabin Sam had built for her, the same laugh he had laughed when he took her to the bed she had warmed for Arthur.

She fired.

T he Ahtna police chief was a big, beefy, red-faced man with a five-o'clock shadow, a beer-belly gut, and a handlebar mustache. He could have come straight out of central casting to answer a call for “Cop, Small Town, Generic.” His eyes were cop's eyes, watchful, shrewd, wholly untrusting. He was every speeding driver's sinking heart coming up in the rearview mirror, every perp's terror when he came into the interrogation room, every watch commander's pet, every conservative's wet dream come true, every liberal's worst nightmare. A cop's cop.

“Hey, Kenny, ” Kate said.

“Hey, Kate, ” Kenny said. His grip was warm and solid, and he didn't say anything about Jack, for which that alone she could have kissed him. He was dressed in full uniform, black shirt tucked into black pants cuffed over shined black half-boots that Kate would bet all of her campaign paycheck had steel toes. His badge was gold and shone brightly from the pocket over his left breast: his tie matched the color of his pants and was neatly knotted with the tail tucked between the buttons of his shirt, marine-fashion. Everything had been recently cleaned and fit very well. Kenny knew the value of appearance, and he looked every inch the part.

“So, I'm not liking the hell out of this,” Kenny said, indicating the report on his desk. He settled in his chair. It was large and comfortable, with arms and a headrest, and sat in front of a large and comfortable desk in a large, comfortable, and well-appointed room. Diplomas, neatly framed, were hung with military precision on the wall, the filing cabinets were dust-free, the carpet freshly cleaned, and the walls newly painted. Kenny had somebody out front to answer phones and mind the prisoners, if any, in the four-cell jail down the hall. The sour smell of vomit, common to so many cop shops, in the Ahtna Police Department made itself conspicuous by its absence.

Kenny Hazen was the chief of police for Ahtna, which had remained defiantly unincorporated from its founding in 1892, through all of the following century, and entered the next the same way. Local taxes were confined to an eight percent sales tax on everything except food and drugs, which was one reason it attracted businesses from all over the state and why big-box chains like Wal-Mart had been heard to have been investigating into the possibility of locating there.

From that eight percent sales tax, which everybody paid, local and tourist and the weekend fisherman from Anchorage alike, came the funds to run the city. Which was why Ahtna had a one-man police force, but then that was the way Ahtna residents liked it. Ahtnans preferred to handle their own domestic problems, so that by the time Kenny, retired from the Anchorage Police Department after he got in his twenty to take up the job of Ahtna's chief of police, arrived on the scene, all the guns had been hidden, all the blood had been mopped up, and everybody had the same story to tell. The chief had no Indians, but then neither did he have much to do, and he did it at a handsome salary that kept him middling honest. Ahtna could assure prospective businesses thinking of opening a branch office on the Kanuyaq that the local police force was efficient and reliable and fully supported by the local community.

“I'm not liking it much, either, Kenny, ” Kate said. “It happened on my watch.”

A voice said from the doorway,“No shit, Shugak.”

She looked up to see Jim Chopin towering over her. Mutt gave a joyous bark and bounced to her feet, nudging at his hand with her head.

“What are you doing here?” Kate said.

Jim grinned his grin at Kate, the one that should have been posted next to a photo of a great white shark over the caption, “Separated at birth? You be the judge.”

“Anybody'd think you weren't happy to see me. I'm hurt.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right, that'll happen.”

“You don't always know everything there is to know about everyone, Shugak, ” he said. The fine edge underlying his words was a surprise. He saw the odd look on Kenny's face as he sat listening to them, and got himself back under control. “I'm here because Darlene came to me first about the letters, and now because somebody who's working on her campaign has been murdered. Kenny called me last night. I flew in this morning. Not that I'm answerable to you for my actions.”

“Nobody said you were,” she said, taken back.

He looked at Kenny. “What have you got?”

“A GSW to the chest, straight into the heart. Powder burns on his jacket. Small caliber, probably a twenty-two.”

“I don't suppose the killer was kind enough to leave the weapon at the scene, say, oh, laying under the dash, with a perfect set of fingerprints on the grip?”

“Nope.”

“Hell.” Jim thought. “Killer was close.”

“Real close. Semen on the vic's underwear and on the seat of the car, and whoever zipped him up after caught a piece of his pecker in the zipper.”

“Ouch.” Jim winced.

Kenny shrugged. “He didn't feel it. He was dead by then. Anyway, that's why I figure a pistol. Wouldn't be room to maneuver a rifle, even with Hosford otherwise engaged.”

“Hard to carry a rifle concealed, too, ” Jim said.

“There is that.”

“So you're figuring a woman met him at the truck, rode him on the seat, and just when he was distracted, lights out.” Kenny nodded. “Got a suspect?”

Kenny nodded again. “About three hundred. That's how many women there were in the gym last night.”

“Any witnesses?”

“About eight hundred. That's how many were in the gym total. None of them saw anything.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.” Kenny nodded toward Kate. “She got the scene isolated, and we got the body on a plane for the crime lab in Anchorage this morning.”

“Maybe some fluids?”

“I'd say almost certainly, but we'll need a suspect to match to them before we get anywhere.”

“What about the other members of the campaign? That's who you're going to look at first, right?”

Kenny looked at Kate. Kate said,“I was standing on a chair in the back of the crowd for the whole debate. At any one time I saw the entire entourage sitting in the front row right in front of the stage. I saw Tom, the son, everywhere, usually in company with one pretty girl or another. I saw Doug walk by at least once. I saw Darlene get up and confer with Tracy. I saw Tracy leave the room. Later I looked for Darlene and couldn't find her. Erin, the daughter, went to the bathroom at least once. Hosford I never even saw leave, by himself or with anyone. There were just too many people there.” She looked at Kenny. “Can I make a call to Anchorage? I want to check something out.”

“Sure. Use the one at the empty desk in the outer office. The door closed behind her and Kenny looked at Jim.

“Don't say it, Hazen, ” Jim said. “Just don't fucking say it.”

“Brendan? It's Kate Shugak.”

There followed another of those silences that she was starting to get used to whenever she greeted someone she hadn't seen in a while. You'd think I'd come back from the dead, she thought, annoyed. “Brendan?” she said again.

There was a feminine murmur in the background, and the receiver was muffled when he replied to it. “Yeah, I'm here, Kate. Long time no talk. Just a minute, honey, ” he added, presumably not to her.

“Yeah, I know. I'm sorry to call so early, and on a Saturday morning, too.” Brendan McCord was an assistant district attorney in Anchorage, with whom Kate had worked during her five and a half years on the investigator's staff. “You didn't get married, Brendan, did you?”

“Jesus, no!” Brendan's voice was truly horrified. “Don't say things like that, Shugak. My heart's not as strong as it used to be. Besides, you know I've been waiting for you.”

Kate grinned into the receiver as she heard another murmur, less languorous and more annoyed this time. “Sure you have.” Enough with the pleasantries. “Do you know Anne Gordaoff?”

“I know of her. She's running for state senator from District 41,isn't she?”

“Yes. I'm working security for her.” She told him about the threatening letters.

“Kind of comes with the territory, doesn't it?”

“That's what I said, but then they waved a bunch of money at me.”

“Were you cheap?”

“No, but I was easy,” she said, and they both laughed. She sobered. “Things just got worse, Brendan. Someone's been killed, someone working on the campaign.”

He was instantly on the alert. “Who?”

She told him.

“Kenny Hazen's a good man,” he said thoughtfully. “The body on its way to town?”

“Yeah, and Jim Chopin flew in this morning.” She left out the activities of the early evening because she'd had enough men yelling at her for one day.

“Ah, the Man in Blue. Yeah, and?”

“You know this Jeff Hosford?”

A moment passed. “Attorney?” Brandon said.

“In his former life, yes.”

“Dischner, Seese, Christensen, and Kim.”

Unconsciously Kate straightened in her chair. The dispatcher's voice behind her faded away. “Dischner? As in Eddie P.?” As in whose offices she had burgled in company with Mutt, Jack Morgan, and the FBI less than two years before?

“Yup. He's a gopher. Go for this, go for that. Or he was.”

“You sure? He's Gordaoff's fund-raiser. He was flashing a lot of money around for a gopher.”

“I wouldn't know about that. In town he runs—ran—in and out of the courtroom with notes. Like that. A newbie they are breaking in. Or they were. I haven't seen him around for a while. Explains it if he was working for Gordaoff.”

“He was a little old for a newbie.”

“Took him seven tries to pass the bar.”

“You're kidding.”

“I never kid about the bar exam.”

“My mistake,” she said. “Can you check him out for me?”

There was the rustle of paper, the scratch of pencil. “Okay, Jeff Hosford, I'll make a few calls. Can you call me back this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“I should have something by then.”

“Great. Thanks, Brandon.”

He hesitated, and she said, “What?”

“Good to hear your voice, Kate, that's all.” He hesitated again, before adding,“I miss the hell out of Jack.”

“Me, too, ” Kate said, and slowly took a breath, in, out, managing the pain. “Me, too, ” she repeated, and hung up before they were both in tears.

She went back into Kenny's office. “Guess who Jeff Hosford used to work for?”