Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

“My grandmother.”

“I see.” A brief pause. “I knew her.”

“Everyone did,” Kate said. There was a sick feeling rising in the pit of her stomach. “Have you talked to your daughter lately?”

All trace of expression wiped itself from Victoria ’s face. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth settled into a thin line. “What’s Charlotte got to do with this?”

“She hired me,” Kate said.

Victoria folded her arms. “To do what?”

“To look into your case.”

“What case?”

The sick feeling intensified. “The case that put you in here, Ms. MuraviefF. The murder of your son.”

The tapping foot had stilled, but the older woman’s shoulders were so tight, Kate thought they might break off if someone tapped them. From the corner of her eye, Kate could see people turning to look at them, and she could hear conversations dropping off one by one into an expectant silence. Into it, Kate said, “Your daughter thinks you were wrongly convicted, Ms. MuraviefF, and she hired me to prove it. I’d like to ask you some questions, if I may. First, I’ll need-”

“You may not,” the other woman said in a taut voice.

Kate, thrown off her stride, said blankly, “I beg your pardon?”

“Tell Charlotte I fired you,” the other woman said. And with that, she marched off.

Kate watched her go, not a little mystified, and recollected herself only when one of the officers started to move toward her. She held up a hand and headed for the door.

She dropped the visitor badge off at the desk. As she was going out, another woman was coming in with a large box. Kate held the door for her, and as it closed behind her, she heard the fresh-faced young guard say, “Caroline, hey. I thought you weren’t coming. I thought you’d sent someone else today.”

Kate kept going. Mutt was sunbathing on the hood of the Forester. “Let’s go,” Kate told her. She started the engine and drove out of the parking lot. About a mile down the road, she pulled a U-turn and drove back up the hill and into the parking lot, this time pulling into a space about two rows down and ten spaces over.

Mutt gave her a quizzical look. “To confuse anyone inside who’s monitoring the cameras on the roof,” Kate said, pointing them out.

Mutt looked pointedly at the door. Kate leaned over to open it up and Mutt got back up on the hood.

The sun beat down. Kate rolled down first her window, then the one on the passenger side, then the two back windows. She kicked herself for not bringing a book, and cleaned out the glove compartment in lieu of reading. There was the car manual, a near-empty box of Wash ‘n Dries, a handful of lemon drops, a Reese’s Cup that was silver with age but which Kate ate anyway, and a comb with a few strands of short, dark, curly hair caught in its teeth. She touched them gently. How strange that something grown by a man dead for almost two years could feel so alive.

Kate had read in various places how scientists were mapping the human chromosome down to the last molecule, and how it might be possible in the future to reconstruct a human being from the DNA in a strand of hair. They wouldn’t have the same life experience, of course, the same memories. The all new and improved Jack Morgan wouldn’t necessarily like Jimmy Buffett, for example, and Jimmy Buffett had been responsible for bringing Jack and Kate together.

She became aware that she could no longer see the hair or the comb for the tears in her eyes. She blinked them away and put the comb back in the glove compartment.

The sun beat down some more. Mutt rolled onto her back, paws in the air in a disgusting display of abandon. Kate considered starting the engine just to see how high Mutt could jump from a prone position.

An hour passed. The woman Kate had passed in the doorway came out and went to her car, a beige Toyota Camry that looked, if possible, even more beige beneath an unregarded layer of mud and dust. Kate opened the door of the Subaru. Mutt jumped as if someone had given her a nudge with a cattle prod and then slid down from the hood in an ignominious heap. She leaped to her feet and pretended that she had meant to do that.

Kate approached the woman as she was about to get in her car. “Excuse me?”

The woman looked over her shoulder. “Yes? May I help you?”

“My name is Kate Shugak.”

The woman looked puzzled. “I’m sorry. Have we met?”

Twice in one day. If this kept up, Kate was going to get an inferiority complex. “No. I’ve been retained by Victoria Muravieff’s daughter to look into her case.”

The woman looked more puzzled. “What case?”

Kate sighed. “Listen, I’m fresh off a plane and I’m hot, and I’m hungry and I’m thirsty. Have you-what was your name?”

“Caroline Landry,” the woman said, and then looked as if she wished she hadn’t.

“So, Caroline, have you had lunch?”

Caroline Landry hesitated, clearly trying to decide if Kate was dangerous or not. “No.”

“Great. You like Mexican food?”

They found a table at Garcia’s in Eagle River. “I’ll buy,” Kate said, absorbed in the menu.

“I’ll buy my own, thanks,” Caroline Landry said.

“It’s an expense,” Kate said.

“For what job?”

“Charlotte Muravieff has retained me to look into her mother’s murder conviction,” Kate said.

Landry was still staring at Kate with her mouth slightly open when the waiter arrived. Kate ordered tostaditos to start and fajitas for the main course. Landry’s mouth relaxed into a smile. “You are hungry,” she said.

“Don’t get a lot of Mexican food in Niniltna,” Kate said. “I’m making up for lost time.”

“Tostada salad,” Landry told the waiter, “and something tells me I’m going to need a margarita.”

The waiter, a slim young man with a hopeful smile, looked at Kate. She shook her head. “Water’s fine. If you could bring me a couple of wedges of lime, that would be good.”

The margarita came and, surprise, so did the lime, and in her head Kate ratcheted up the tip. Landry took a long swallow of her drink. “Oh yeah,” she said, putting it down, “that hits the spot. Okay, what do you want to know?”

“Anything you can tell me, Ms. Landry.”

“Caroline.”

“Kate. You know Victoria Muravieff. She thought I’d come in your place today.”

“Yes,” Caroline said. “I work with her.”

“Work with her?”

Caroline raised an eyebrow. “Yes, work with her. Victoria runs the education department at Hiland.”

“A prisoner runs the education department?”

“Pretty much. The governor cut the budget a couple of years back, so the Department of Corrections had to cut fripperies like education. At this point, it’s pretty much up to the prisoners to drum up interest and funding from local groups and agencies if they want anything in the way of programming out there.”

“How’s that working?” Kate said.

“Pretty good, actually,” Caroline said. “A local computer supply store funded a course in Microsoft certification. A local cellist started a chamber orchestra with chairs underwritten by the Trial Lawyers Association.”

Kate laughed. “A natural.”

Caroline smiled. “It seems so. At any rate, there’s a waiting list to get in.”

“Do they perform?”

“Yes, in-house. They’re agitating to perform outside the facility, but the director hasn’t been beaten into submission quite yet. Another woman comes out every three weeks to teach classes in bead art, with supplies donated by the Bead Society, which puts on a show every year of inmate art. They call it Con Art.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. They got a write-up in the paper and a story on television, and now they’ve got so many submissions that they think they’re going to have to start jurying it.”