The Singing of the Dead (23 page)

“He might, if he were still alive,” Kate said.

“So,” Kenny said, “we've got the perfect motive to kill Paula Pawlowski, only the guy with the perfect motive was killed before she was. Great.”

Kate had a flashback to being submersed in a dark, warm sea. Too warm, she was sweating, and the sea seemed to be clinging to her eyes, her nose, her mouth; she couldn't breathe. She clawed at it. It resisted, then gave, and she could breathe again, and she sank back down into the current and let it take her where it would.

“Kate?”

She blinked, and realized that that was the second time Jim had said her name.

“Are you all right?”

She shook herself. “Yeah. I just had a—yeah, I'm fine.”

Kenny reached for his jacket. “Everybody with Gordaoff still at the Ahtna Lodge?”

“Until tomorrow morning. We're supposed to drive to Klutina.”

“Both murders are about this campaign, Kate,” Kenny said.

“I know.”

He looked from her to Jim and back again. “Watch your back.”

“You said that already.”

“Somebody tried to kill you today.”

“I hadn't forgotten.”

Kenny was far from satisfied, but there wasn't much else he could do. “I want to talk to every member of the campaign before they go to Klutina in the morning.”

“Darlene'll bitch about throwing off the schedule.”

“I don't care if I ruin their whole day. I want statements from all of them about what they were doing yesterday afternoon, and I want to reinterview them concerning the night of Hosford's murder.”

“I'll tell her.”

“Get them down to the station at eight A . M .”

“All right.”

W hat did Anne Gordaoff say when you told her that her chief fund-raiser's day job was working for the enemy?”

“She said Ronald Reagan used to be a Democrat.”

Jim was surprised into a laugh. “She's pretty tolerant, for a politician.”

“She's not a politician, yet. What's the ME say about Pawlowski's time of death?” Kenny asked.

“Somewhere between midnight and four A . M ., but that from the temp we gave them from the trailer it could have been earlier.”

“Midnight would have been just after Boothe dropped her off, so he was either waiting for her or right behind her.”

“Or she .”

“Or she.”

“I told him she hadn't turned on the heat yet for the winter. Pretty chilly in that trailer.”

“She wasn't laying there that long.”

“What did you get from the statements?”

“Jack all,” Kenny said, not sounding happy about it. “The whole bunch of them were at the basketball game, but there were about five hundred people there, and no one can voice for any one of them being there the whole time.”

“Even Anne?”

“Everybody remembers seeing her all over the place. Nobody can put a time to when they did, though, other than sometime between the jump ball and the buzzer sounding to end the last period. People are always coming and going at a game, you know how it is, going to the john, buying popcorn, sneaking out for a drink, fathering a child. It's just damn near impossible to know where everyone is at any given time, especially after the fact. Hell, Kate's one of the best eyeballers around, and even she couldn't place any one of them at any one place at any one time the night Hosford died.”

“Turn up anything new when you asked them about that night again?”

“Not a goddamn thing. Unless you count the couple we turned up who'd been going at it in the front of his daddy's pickup. But they didn't see anything except his daddy coming and then they were too busy running in the other direction to pay attention to something like someone getting shot.”

Silence.

“You know, Kenny,” Jim said at last, “it occurs to me that the middle of a political campaign is a great time to commit a murder.”

“Only one you wanted to get away with.”

Jim said, on the phone from his office in Tok, “Where's Kate?”

On the phone from his office in Ahtna, Kenny said, “She's tracking down Peter Heiman.”

Jim hung up and swiveled his chair to stare out the window. The grin, when it came, was slow and sneaky.

He wouldn't be in Peter Heiman's shoes right now for any amount of money you could name.

“Don't give me that crap, you old smoothie,” Kate said furiously.

“Then don't interrogate me like I'm the suspect and you've got the rubber hose,” Pete snapped. “Jesus, Kate, it's just politics we're talking about here, not nuclear secrets.”

“So he was spying.”

Pete shrugged and gave an unrepentant grin. “Rat-fucking, I think Nixon's guys used to call it.”

“This time he fucked and fucked over the opposing candidate's daughter.”

The grin vanished. “What?”

“You didn't know? Erin Gordaoff thought she was engaged to your rat fucker. So did her mother and the rest of her family and friends.”

“That wasn't part of the plan,” Pete said, frowning. “If that's true, I'm sorry for it, and for her. He was an opportunistic bastard, I'll give him that, but I didn't know he'd go that far.”

They were sitting on stools in the Alaskan Bar in Cordova, coffee in front of Kate and a Bloody Mary in front of Pete. It was ten-thirty on Monday morning, two weeks before the election. So far, all the media had hold of was Paula Pawlowski's death, and it was of more interest to them at present that she was a frequent contributor of articles to newspapers around the state than that she had been doing research for Anne Gordaoff's campaign. Kenny Hazen and Jim Chopin were stonewalling on the issue of suspects.

“Hey, Pete,” someone said, and Kate looked around to see Kell Van Brocklin give Pete a hearty slap on the back. “Good to see you. How's it hanging?”

“All the way down to my knees,” Pete said. “You know Kate Shugak?”

Kell nodded. “Kate.”

“Kell,” Kate said, and recalled that the last time she'd seen him it had been the Fourth of July and he'd been drunkenly trying to mate the Joanna C . with Tracy Steen's Dawn on Alaganik Bay. He looked sober today, but as he ordered a beer and a refill for Pete, odds were good he wouldn't be for long.

“How's the election looking?” Kell said, taking a long pull at his beer.

Pete took a token sip of his new drink. “It's in the bag, so long as you vote.”

“No problem there,” Kell said with a wink, and ordered another beer. “Although that little gal running against you has got a way with her. If she wasn't married, you might be in trouble.”

Pete grinned. “When did that ever stop you?”

Both men laughed, big-chested, hearty, good-old-boy laughs.

When Kate had left Anne that morning, she had asked, “ Anything you'd like me to pass on to Pete Heiman?”

The two women stared at each other, until Anne said, speaking with slow deliberation, “Tell the old son of a bitch that I said thanks for the compliment.”

Kate didn't work it out until she was in the air. Anne Gordaoff, challenger, was telling Peter Heiman, incumbent, that she knew that he regarded her challenge to his office with such alarm that he had gone to the length of planting a spy in her campaign.

It was the first time Kate had heard Anne say anything less than circumspect in speaking of her opponent, and she liked her the better for it, although she still wasn't sure it came from the love she bore her daughter or the anger she felt at having been so screwed over herself. Now, her daughter's heart was broken, her campaign was out a fund-raiser, and murder had been done.

Kate finished her coffee and stood up. “Hold on, I'll walk you out,” Pete said and took his leave of Kell.

Outside the rain came down in a fine drizzle, as it almost always did in Cordova, when it wasn't hammering down like roofing nails. They both donned ball caps. Mutt got to her feet and shook all over them.

“Where you headed?” Pete said.

“Back to Niniltna.”

“Need a ride?”

She shook her head. “George is waiting for me out at the airport. Oh, by the way—”

“What?”

“Anne says thanks.”

She left him to figure it out.

Back in Niniltna, Kate checked her copy of the typewritten schedule. Anne was scheduled to be beat up on that afternoon by the Rude River chapter of the NRA for daring to suggest that you don't need an Uzzi to shoot a moose. The campaign was flying back into Niniltna the following day, to attend a cheerleader exhibition and basketball game at the high school, as well as consult with Billy Mike on a new fund-raiser.

Until then, Kate had the day off. When she started heading for the red Ford Ranger longbed parked at the side of the airstrip, Mutt let out a joyous bark and raced ahead to leap into the back. They had left the rain behind in Cordova and here in the Park the sun glinted off the thin layer of snow that began on the peaks of the Quilaks and ended in the crunch beneath her feet. A light breeze, crisp and cold, ruffled the hair at the nape of her neck, and when she started the truck, she turned the heater on for the first time that year.

The first freeze followed by the first snow turned the twenty-five miles of gravel between Niniltna and her homestead into the Park equivalent of a superhighway, and she was home in less than an hour, which had to be some kind of record. She parked the truck in the pulloff at the head of the trail and shouldered her duffel. Beneath the trees the snow was a fine layer of powder, leaving clear imprints of her shoes as well as the tracks of all the most recent visitors to the homestead, which included several rabbits, a porcupine, a bunch of ptarmigan which Mutt immediately went chasing after, a moose cow and a calf, and a pair of grizzly cubs, probably the two whose mother had charged Kate at the creek breakup before last. The cubs would only be two years old, kind of early for them to be on their own. Kate wondered if anything had happened to the sow, and hoped the cubs would not become a nuisance.

When she came into the clearing, smoke was coming from the chimney of the cabin. She knew who was there; she had followed his footprints down from the road. She trod up the steps and opened the door.

Johnny looked up from pouring hot water into a mug of cocoa mix and jumped, spilling hot water from the kettle all over his shoes. “Damn it!” The kettle thumped down on the stove. Kate dumped the duffel on the floor and grabbed a dishcloth.

“I've got it,” he said, snatching the dishcloth from her. “I made the mess; I'll clean it up.”

She stood for a moment, looking down at the bent head, and then Mutt hit the door and bowled him over with that exuberant and unreserved reception she reserved for people she liked. There weren't that many of them. Kate had an uncomfortable flash of the way Mutt greeted Jim Chopin.

Johnny's face was flushed, and he was laughing as he tried to squirm out of reach. “Come on, Mutt, cut it out, stop it, that tickles!”

Kate smiled. Johnny saw it, and stopped laughing. He gave Mutt's head a final pat and got to his feet. “I didn't hear the truck.”

“I left it at the pulloff. I have to go back into Niniltna tomorrow. What are you doing here?”

She tried to make the question mild, but it was a wasted effort; he bristled anyway. “It snowed last night. I came over to light a fire and take the chill off the cabin.”

“It's Monday. Why aren't you in school?”

“School gets out at three o'clock. I came here first.”

Kate nodded. “The heat feels good. Thanks.” She nodded at the cocoa. “Is there more of that?”

“What? Oh, yeah.”

“I'll start some bread.”

He watched her put flour, water, salt, and oil in a bowl. “How do you know how much of everything to put in?”

It was the first civil question she'd had out of him since he'd showed up in the Park. She answered it in kind. “At first you use a recipe, you measure. When you've been doing it long enough, you just know.” She kneaded the dough a few times, draped the damp dishcloth over the top, and set the bowl on the shelf over the oil stove. Johnny had lit the wood stove; now she lit the oil stove and set the temperature on high. She removed the cast-iron skillet and cast-iron Dutch oven from the oven and hung the thermometer in front, where she could read it without opening the oven door all the way. The Pyrex bread pans had also been in the oven, and she greased them and set them on the counter.

Johnny warmed up his cocoa and retired to the couch, Kate's copy of Have Spacesuit, Will Travel in his hands and Mutt's head on his feet. Kate looked through the mail she had picked up on the way home. There was a letter from Cindy Sovalik in Barrow, another from Olga Shapsnikoff in Unalaska. Cindy's was short and to the point, “Come when you want.” Olga's was a little more subtle but not much: She began by telling Kate that Sasha was drawing stories on the beach sand with her storyknife, stories that imagined various and wonderful adventures Sasha and Kate had together. Both letters made her smile.

The third letter was also an invitation, from her cousin Axenia in Anchorage. Actually the invitation was from a friend of Axenia's whom Kate had never met, to a baby shower. Axenia was pregnant.

Kate put the letter down and stared at the bookshelf above Johnny's head. Axenia and Lew Mathisen were having a baby.

“What?” Johnny said, and she lowered her eyes to see him staring at her? “Is something wrong?”

She stuffed the little yellow card, decorated with colorful birds carrying flowers tied with pink and blue ribbons in their beaks, back into its envelope. “No, nothing. My cousin's having a baby is all.”

“Oh.”

She looked out the window, where night was creeping down into the Park from between the cracks and crevices of the Quilaks. “Will Ethan be worried about where you are?”

Johnny's face closed up. “Why, don't you want me here?”

She looked at him. “Does Ethan know where you are?”

He ducked his head. “He knows I come over here,” he muttered.

“Mmm.” She got up and raised the dishcloth to poke the dough. The imprint of her finger smoothed out almost immediately. Nice to know she hadn't completely lost her touch. She divided the dough into two loaves and set them back on the shelf beneath the dishcloth to rise. “We'll take him a loaf when it's done.”