Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

Kate looked at her, brow raised.

Emily rolled her eyes. “My law partner,” she said.

“He’s an attorney?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said.

“A criminal attorney?” Kate said.

“Yes.”

Kate climbed into the Subaru and thought for a moment. It was a little past 10:00 a.m. Emily had promised to make an appointment for Kate to speak to Oliver, but that probably wouldn’t pan out today. Emily had wanted Kate’s cell phone number, and Kate had to admit that it would have been handy to have had one.

She could go home and make a start on the list of names and phone numbers Brendan had given her.

Instead, she drove to Bean’s Cafe, a warehouse on Third Avenue that had been converted into a soup kitchen, and inquired after Luba Hardt. A slender dark-haired woman with a calm, pretty face knew the name and told her that Luba had been in the previous Monday for lunch. The bad news was Luba looked like she was living on the street. The good news was Luba didn’t look like she’d been strung out on anything. “She mention a location?”

“Who are you?” the woman said.

“I’m from Niniltna, Luba’s village,” Kate said. “Her family heard I was coming to Anchorage and asked me to look around for her.”

“What family?”

“Billy Mike.”

The woman’s face cleared. “Sure, I know Billy. Heap big chief.”

Kate smiled. “You know him, all right. But about Luba?”

The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry. If they find a safe place to stay, they don’t usually talk about it, for fear someone is going to hear and move in on them.”

On the way out, Kate examined the faces of the people standing around, smoking and talking, all waiting for the doors to open for lunch. More than half of them were Alaska Native, mostly Aleut and Athabascan and Yupiq, from the looks of them, with maybe a few Inupiaq thrown in. Kate had an urge to cram them all into the back of the car and truck them out to Merrill and put them on planes back to their villages.

One familiar face popped out at her and she halted. “Kurt?” she said, disbelieving.

After some argument, she bundled him into the car and took him to the Bone. A redheaded waitress in a crisp white apron with a name tag that read heidi pinned to it bustled up and gave them their pick of booths.

“My treat,” Kate said, and Kurt ordered as much deep-fried chicken as you could fit in one basket. She drank coffee while he ate. He sat back when he was done and looked around like it hadn’t quite registered where he was until then. Heidi brought him coffee and smiled blindingly down at him, and he watched her walk away with appreciation, although Kate couldn’t be sure whether it was Heidi or the fried chicken that inspired it.

Kate looked out the window. The Subaru was parked right in front. Mutt was nowhere to be seen. Probably draped over the backseat, snoozing. Kate owed her a good run.

Mutt had greeted Kurt with enthusiasm, which gave Kate pause. Mutt’s built-in bullshit detector was second only to her own. Kate might have to readjust her ideas about Kurt. “So,” she said. “Kurt.”

He braced himself, both hands curled around his cup of coffee. “Kate.”

“What are you doing in town?”

He shrugged. “What you told me to do.” She looked blank, and he said, “Look for a legitimate job in Anchorage if I couldn’t find one in Niniltna.”

“That was only two days ago,” she said. “I didn’t mean you had to do something immediately.”

He shrugged again. “You confiscated my bank account.” He didn’t sound accusatory, merely factual. “Fishing’s over, and I never was much of a trapper, and anyway, Dan O’Brien’s got the Park pretty much locked up for trapping, at least for this year. Didn’t have a dime to get me through a winter in the Bush. Figured I’d give Anchorage a try.” His smile was wan. “Bigger selection of women in town anyway.”

“And first thing you wind up at Bean’s?”

He nodded. “For lunch. Sometimes people come down there looking for day labor. I figured it was worth a shot. Plus, I really don’t have any money.”

“Have you signed up at Job Service?”

He nodded. “I went straight there from Merrill.”

“And?”

“They’re not hopeful. The seasonal work’s just about over for the year, and I don’t know Microsoft Word, whatever the hell that is.” He drank coffee. “I’ll check with contractors, see if anyone’s got anything going. I hammer a pretty straight nail.”

She felt guilty, although she shouldn’t have, and she knew it. He’d been poaching bears, and endangering a species while he was at it. He’d been violating the wanton-waste law by taking only the bladders, leaving the meat and the pelt for carrion, a Class A misdemeanor. By statute, he could have been fined $2,500 and jailed for a week, no suspension or reduction in sentence allowed. Not to mention the thirteen hundred dollars he’d be ordered to pay as restitution to the state for the unlawful taking of a grizzly bear. Some people were just too dumb to live.

The question was, Was Kurt one of them? She regarded him over the rim of her coffee cup, thinking about Mutt’s greeting. “Have you got a place to stay?”

“Yeah. Buddy of mine’s got a house in Spenard. He’s letting me sleep on his floor until I get on my feet.”

Spoke well for a man that he had friends, especially solvent friends. She made up her mind and put down the cup. “I’ve got a job for you,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m on another job myself, but while I’m here, Billy Mike wants me to look for Luba Hardt. That’s what I was doing down at Bean’s.”

He reddened. She pretended not to notice. “Take a day or two, find her for me. I’ll pay you, what, eight bucks an hour, plus those expenses incurred on the job for which you provide a receipt.”

“Why eight bucks?”

Her turn to shrug. “Rounded up from minimum wage. You want the job?”

“Ten bucks an hour.”

She thought of the check she’d deposited in her account the day before. “Nine,” she said. She was willing to go to ten, but she wasn’t going to say so. Kurt had taken the easy way out from high school on. Kate wasn’t going to help perpetuate his stereotype if she could help it. Let him work for his pay, starting with bargaining for an hourly wage. And she could always give him a bonus if he did good.

He looked irresolute. “How do I find her?”

“Beats the hell out of me. She was a drinking buddy of yours in Niniltna, so chances are you’ll know better than I do where to find her in Anchorage.” He reddened again, and Kate relented enough to say, “Bean’s told me she was there for lunch on Monday.”

“So I should hang out there and wait for her to show up again?”

“I was thinking you could be a little more proactive than that, Kurt,” Kate said dryly. “Ask around. I know she has friends in town, and I know you do, too.”

“Nine dollars an hour,” he said.

She scribbled the phone number of the town house on a napkin. “Call me when you find her. Remember to keep track of your hours as well as your receipts.” She pulled out a wad of cash, counted out five hundred dollars, shoved it and the check in his direction, and stood up. “You can start with this one.”

She’d called Axenia before she left the house that morning and left a message on her cousin’s answering machine. She checked Jack’s answering machine from a pay phone and found no response.

Fine, she’d earned some personal time. She drove out to Costco and spent an hour loading up two carts with dry and canned goods, and made arrangements to have them palleted and sent to a warehouse in Ahtna that shipped into the Park. There was a woman at a kiosk selling cell phones, and Kate lingered in front of it, reading the literature and asking questions long enough for the woman to become a little impatient. In the end, the two rebates tipped the balance (she would actually make fifty dollars on the purchase) and Kate walked back to the car with a brand-new phone, which probably wouldn’t work from the Park. “Money corrupts,” she told Mutt severely, “and too much money corrupts absolutely.”