The Singing of the Dead (17 page)

“Me?”

“Yeah, where were you this evening?”Kate had to hold back a grin when Darlene's mouth fell open.

“Why, I was—I didn't—what do you mean, where was I? I was right here in my room, just like—”She halted.

“Just like everybody else,”Kate finished for her, “one door away from where a ransom note was delivered to Anne Gordaoff.”

A thundercloud descended over Darlene's face. “I—you— what are you—do you really think that I've worked this hard to get Anne elected that—”

“I'm merely saying that you had as much opportunity as anyone else to slip the letter under her door.”

“I was in my room,”Darlene snapped, “until Anne came to tell me about the letter.”

“Okay,”Kate said.

They knocked on the rest of the doors, and got a lot of badtempered people out of bed to no purpose that Kate could see. “Well, that was a big help,”she said to Kenny as the last door slammed in their faces.

“We had to check,”Kenny said. “Getting the door slammed in our face comes with the territory. I say we pack it in for now.”

But Kate remembered someone else they had to talk to. “What about the researcher you were talking about?”she said to Darlene. “She's working on the campaign, where is she?”

“She's got her own place,”Darlene said. “I told you, she doesn't stay at the hotel.”

“You know where she lives?”

“Yeah. I had to find it when I wanted to hire her.”

Kate looked at Kenny. “In the morning,”he said.

“We're up,”she said.

“In the morning,”he repeated. “It's at least got to be light out. I'll be back around nine; we'll drive out in my rig. You'll go with us,”he told Darlene.

“Oh, but I can't,”she said, “Anne's got a breakfast with the local Guns-and-Ammo group, I have to . . .”

Her voice trailed away beneath Kenny's steady stare. Cops have their uses, Kate thought.

“I guess I could take an hour,”Darlene said.

“Good,”Kenny said. “See you both in the parking lot at nine.”

Darlene vanished into her room with a flounce.

Kate, groggy now with fatigue, fumbled with the key to her door. It opened at last, but she stood for a moment on the threshold, glancing down the hall.

The sheet-beating they had heard earlier had been coming from Anne and Doug's room, she was almost sure of it. Darlene hadn't so much as turned a hair that fresh out of his lover's bed, he was giving it to his wife. Kate had to give him points for stamina, but if she'd been his wife, she would have been more careful. Who knew where that penis had been?

The covers were up to her chin when she thought, And why did Doug feel it so necessary to mark his territory so publicly?

K enny Hazen didn't show up until ten. He had Jim Chopin with him.

Kate bristled, but Darlene walked around her and got in Kenny's pristine white Suburban with the discreet gold shield on the side. Jim looked at Kate with a raised eyebrow, and she motioned Mutt into the back, and got in behind Kenny.

“Good morning, everyone,” Kenny said, sounding as cheerful as the recreational director on a cruise ship, and they were off.

Darlene's researcher lived five miles out of town in a little Airstream trailer that gleamed like a silver hot dog–shaped UFO. The trailer was parked by itself on a riverside acre of ground overgrown with white spruce and birch and alder and cottonwood and diamond willow and salmonberry and raspberry and blueberry bushes and pretty much any plant that produced leaves at that latitude. It looked as if the only thing that was holding it up out of the water rushing past was sheer force of will. A wooden rack of fifty-five gallon drums, much like the one in back of Kate's cabin, leaned against the wall near the door. A picnic table stood between the trailer and the river, in the only clear space in the tangled undergrowth other than the trail in. A wire leading from a pole on the road indicated that the trailer had electricity, but there were no lights on inside.

“Paula?” Darlene said, knocking.

There was no answer. Darlene knocked again, more firmly this time. The door's loose latch gave and it swung open. Mutt's ears went back about the same time it hit Kate's nose.

“What's that smell?” Darlene said, peering inside. “Paula?”

Kate pushed her back with no apology.

“Hey,” Darlene started to say, sounding indignant, and then Kate was no longer there. Instead, Kenny said from behind her, “Don't touch the wall switch.”

Kate found it and elbowed it on. For some reason the light made the smell stronger.

“Miss Pawlowski?” Kenny said, sidearm out, sliding inside with his back to the door. Jim was right behind him, also with his sidearm out. “Paula Pawlowski?”

“Kate, what's going on?”

“Wait out here, Darlene,” Kate said, trying unsuccessfully to see around the not inconsiderable bulk of two Alaskan law enforcement officers. She heard the sound of a footstep squishing into a wet carpet.

“Goddamn it,” Kenny said.

“Oh hell,” Jim said.

Kate wormed her way past him to see.

“Kate? What's going on?” Darlene shoved in next to Kate. “Oh my god. Paula. Paula? Paula!”

In the awkward sprawl of the dead lay the woman with whom Kate had shared her dinner table at the Ahtna Lodge restaurant the night before.

“I got the body off to the ME in Anchorage on the noon plane,” Kenny said, settling himself in his chair. “It's getting to be a habit.”

It was about one o'clock. Anne and her entourage had been questioned, had denied seeing Paula the night before, except for Darlene, who said she had spent half an hour with the researcher before going to the VFW dinner with Anne and Co. None of them knew Paula other than professionally, and as she had spent most of her time working for them in one library or another around the state, even Anne had difficulty remembering what she looked like. No, they couldn't say if she had any enemies. No, they hadn't seen anyone suspicious lurking around. Hadn't they all been asked that question before? they wanted to know. Like about six hours before? In the middle of the friggin' night?

It wasn't long before Kenny ran out of questions to ask them, and Darlene was quick to pounce on the opportunity. Was that all? she wanted to know, and when Kenny said that was all, she shepherded everyone to Anne's next appearance, a performance of The Mikado by the Ahtna Junior High Dramatic Society.

Kate stayed with Kenny and Jim. Also, as Darlene pointed out, the campaign had lost its researcher, and she wanted Kate to get hold of Paula's notes and laptop, always assuming Kenny could be convinced to give them up, something Kate pointed out to Darlene and something Darlene of course blew off. “At least get him to let you take a look at them,” she said, her voice impatient. “Do I have to do everything?”

“Whoever it was got close enough for her to grab the gun,” Kenny said now, looking at Jim, “or it looks like it from the tears on the palms of her hands. Be a while before we get results from ballistics, but it looks like a twenty-two caliber pistol.”

“Another twenty-two,” Jim said. “What a coincidence.”

“This one also firing at close range, another amazing coincidence. The bullet went into her chest, and there's no exit wound, so ballistics should tell us something if we ever find the weapon.” His glum voice told them how likely an event he thought that. Kate thought of the river running past the Airstream and felt a little glum herself.

“Tears on her hands,” Jim said. “You're thinking this one maybe wasn't meant to be murder?”

Without answering, Kenny brought out two clear plastic bags. In one, there was a box of Expert brand typing/copy paper, letter size, not quite full. In the other, there were two Sharpie Fine Point Permanent Markers, one still half in the shrink wrap it had been sold in. “It's the same paper as the other letters, all right, same watermark, twenty-five percent cotton bond, eight and a half by eleven.”

“Did the letter Anne got last night come from the paper in that box?” Kate said.

“I haven't seen it yet, by the way,” Jim said.

Kenny tossed him the letter, encased in a clear plastic document protector. Jim read it. His eyebrows went up. “Hello. This one reads like blackmail.”

Kate looked at Kenny. “So? Same paper?”

He shrugged. “I counted the pages left. There are four hundred and ninety-two. Eight letters sent. Eight pages missing.”

“Envelopes?”

Kenny produced a third bag, filled with white envelopes. “No window, lined on the inside for security, gummed flap, you can buy them a hundred at a time. I've only seen copies of the previous letters.” He tossed the bag to Jim.

Jim caught it. “Hell, I don't know, envelopes look pretty much the same to me. Doesn't look any different than the ones the other letters came in. Kate?”

She took the bag from him. “Yeah. Look the same. How about the handwriting?”

“Block printing. Pen strokes seem a little longer on the previous letters, but that may be the copy effect. I'll send the new one off to the lab today. Were there fingerprints on any of the others?”

Jim shook his head.

“Hell.”

Jim grinned. “If it was easy, everybody'd be doing it.”

“I had dinner with her last night,” Kate said.

Both men looked at her. She fixed her eyes on Kenny. “At the hotel. It was crowded; she had a seat at her table she didn't mind sharing.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before?” Kenny said. He was every inch the cop now, unbullshitable eyes trained on Kate's face.

“Things started happening kind of fast after we found the body. I figured it would keep. I didn't know it was her,” she said, before Kenny could say anything. “I mean, I didn't know I was having dinner with the researcher Darlene hired.”

“You didn't talk?”

“Oh no, we talked. We talked until after ten.” She saw the look the two men exchanged, and sighed. “She told me she was a writer. She told me about the book she was writing, some tale about a dance-hall queen during the gold rush and her daughter and granddaughter. Or that's what it was turning into. She'd been doing a lot of research, she said, but she never mentioned the campaign. Although Darlene did say later that Paula had just gotten off a plane from Fairbanks, where she'd been doing some research at the library. We only exchanged first names.”

“Yeah, right,” Jim said, with a quick, dismissive laugh. “Two women sit down at a table, five minutes later they know each other's favorite floors at Nordie's, their book club's most recent book selection, and how dumb their men are.”

“No,” Kate retorted, “that's only what we want you to think, Jim. Actually we're trading notes on how bad you are in the sack.”

“If we could get back to the case?” Kenny said.

“Certainly,” Kate said.

Jim jerked his head. The gesture caught Kate's eye and when she glanced over involuntarily she saw that his skin had reddened beneath its tan. The traitor Mutt, sitting between them, bumped his hand and he scratched behind her ears.

“Did you walk back to the trailer with her?”

Kate shook her head. “She said she wanted to stay on a while and watch what happened at the bar. Said she was going to have some bar scenes in her book and since she doesn't—didn't drink, she needed to put in some research.”

“Any guys around?”

“Yeah. Couple of them asked us to dance, but we turned 'em down.”

Kenny glared at Jim before he could say anything.

“Anybody making a pest of himself?”

“No. Pretty mellow crowd. I saw Tom Gordaoff in there just before I left, putting the moves on a girl.”

“Recognize her?”

“No.”

“Would you know her again?”

“Kenny.”

He waved a hand. “All right, all right, dumb question.”

“Where are Pawlowski's personal effects?” Jim said.

“Jeannie's sitting on them outside.” They followed him into the outer office.

Paula Pawlowski's possessions, or what they had found in her trailer, were pitifully few and carefully spaced out across a work table. There was a laptop computer, a black three-ring binder, half a dozen notebooks, and a Ziploc bag full of pens and pencils. There was a cheap carry-on stuffed with one change of clothes, worn, and a ditty bag, probably the bag she'd taken to Fairbanks with her. Kate pulled on the surgical gloves Kenny gave her and opened it up. “Shampoo, conditioner, toothbrush, toothpaste. No perfume, no eyeliner, no mascara.”

“Like you would know a mascara wand if you saw one,” Jim said.

She gave him her most dazzling smile, at the sight of which Mutt's ears went straight up. “Like you would have any idea what I would know or not know.”

“Yeah, okay,” Kenny said. “Jesus, you two, you just get worse and worse. Anybody'd think you were shacking up.”

There was a split second of silence. “No jewelry,” Kate said. “Was she wearing a watch when we found her?”

“No.”

“She wasn't wearing one at dinner, either.”

Kate looked at the laptop. “Can we turn on the computer?”

“Why not?”

Kate pulled over a chair and opened the computer.

“Kenny,” the woman at the desk behind them said, “Andy Anderson's calling, wants to know if you've seen Jerry Dial in town.”

Kenny went to the phone.

A Windows 95 desktop popped up on the computer, no password necessary. One of the icons was Word for Windows. She clicked on it on the assumption that a researcher would use a text and not a graphics file, and she was right. Paula had organized her professional life into folders containing files. One file was labeled NOVEL and contained seven separate files labeled DRAFT 1 through DRAFT 7. Every one of them had a different title, as if Paula had been unable to decide between the relative merits of “Pointing North,” which brought an involuntary grin to Kate's face, and “Years of Gold,” which made her want to gag. She was more interested in the folder marked DIRT , however. She clicked on it. There was one file called HEIMAN and another called GORDAOFF .

“Click on Gordaoff first,” Jim said, leaning over her shoulder.

“Uh-huh.” Kate looked around. “Grab me one of those floppies, would you?” she said.

“Why?”

“Just do it, Chopin.”