Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

She looked at the second photo, the formal portrait of the girl. No clue as to her identity. She removed the back of the frame. The photographer’s name was stamped on the back of the photo, Gebhart Studio. She looked in the phone book again. There were half a dozen Gebharts, but no Gebhart Studio.

Mutt had moved to the floor next to the chair the first time Kate had gotten up for the phone book, and she watched Kate’s every move with alert yellow eyes.

“If Victoria didn’t kill William, who did?” Kate asked her.

Mutt didn’t know.

“They’re still around.”

Mutt barked, a single, sharp, thoroughly pissed-off agreement. Mutt didn’t care for people shooting at her human.

Quick footsteps came up the walk, a fist beat a rapid tattoo against the door, and the doorbell chimed several times. “Kate? Kate, I saw the car through the garage windows. I know you’re in there. Open up, goddamn it!”

Kate sighed. She looked at Mutt, who was on her feet, tail wagging furiously. “Shall we let him in?”

The bark was still short and sharp, but this time it was joyous. Kate got up and opened the door.

“Are you all right?” Jim demanded. He walked in without invitation. “I ran into somebody at the courthouse who said you’d been involved in a shooting.”

Of course. The Bush telegraph might be a shade faster than a courthouse when it came to spreading the news, but not much.

He stood her against the wall and more or less frisked her. “You’re okay? You’re not hurt? Nobody shot you?”

“I’m fine,” she said, and fended him off when he showed signs of stripping her down right there to check for wounds. At least that was what she thought he was doing. “Really. I didn’t get hit.”

“Who did? They said somebody got shot.”

“Kurt.”

He stared at her. “Kurt Pletnikoff?”

“Yes. He’s working for me, helping track down some of the people connected to Victoria Muravieff’s case.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jim said. “Kurt Pletnikoff?”

“Yes.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“Yes. The guy he found isn’t.”

“What guy?”

“The guy lying dead in the bedroom with a bullet hole in his head.”

Jim stared at her for another minute and then shook his head. “Okay. I want you to start over, at the beginning.”

“I told you most of it last night.”

“Tell me again.”

It couldn’t hurt to talk it through again, especially since she was now hovering on the side of believing Victoria to be innocent. She knew how Jim, who was after all a practicing law-enforcement professional, would react to that notion, but maybe she needed a devil’s advocate right about now. Getting shot at always had a tendency to screw with her head. “Okay, but-what time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “A little after five.”

“God, is that all? It feels like a year since this morning.” Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t been able to finish her lunch. “Want some dinner?”

He followed her into the kitchen, where the pork ribs were stewing. She checked the rice, and pulled a package of frozen snow peas from the freezer and set it on the drain board to thaw.

Jim sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and listened to her story. When she finished, he stirred and said, “What took Kurt to that cabin?”

“I don’t know. He’s unconscious and his notes don’t say.”

“What did he say when he called you?”

“He said, ”I’ve got some news for you.“ And when I asked him what, he said, ”I want to show you.“”

“Did he call you from the cabin?”

She thought. “No. He said it would take him thirty minutes to get there because he was going to pick up some lunch on the way.”

“There’re damn few places in Anchorage that are thirty minutes away from anywhere, even when you’re stopping for lunch on the way,” Jim said.

“I know. Which leads me to believe he was in Muldoon, or South Anchorage, or…”

“What?”

“Or maybe up on Hillside,” she said.

“Who lives on Hillside?”

“Charlotte Muravieff.” Kate went into the living room and picked up the phone. It rang four times before the machine picked up. “Charlotte, this is Kate Shugak. I need to speak to you or Emily immediately. Call me at this number.”

She hung up and went back into the kitchen.

“You think your client sent Kurt to that cabin?” Jim said.

“If she did, I’ll rip her a new bodily orifice,” Kate said.

There followed a brief silence. No one who knew Kate Shugak would take such a threat lightly. Jim waited long enough for the sizzle to die out of the air before he said, “Do you suppose he found the body and wanted to show it to you before he called the cops?”

She took a deep breath and blew it out. “No. He sounded happy, like he knew he’d found something I needed. Kurt’s a lot of things, but morbid isn’t one of them. And I found him in the living room, so I’m not even sure he made it to the bedroom before they shot him.” She drained the ribs of all the broth but for half a cup and put the pot back on the stove. She opened a can of cream of mushroom soup and added it to the meat. Seeing Jim watching her, she said, “Secret Filipino ingredient.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A friend in college was Filipino. This was a dish her father taught her to make. He told her never to tell what the secret Filipino ingredient was.”

He laughed, but not for long. “Kate. Who do you think the dead man is?”

She sighed. “Eugene Muravieff.”

He digested this in silence for a moment. “Really.”

“I can’t be sure. I haven’t seen any pictures of him. But the dead man had a picture of the three Muravieff kids on a boat in what I think is Kachemak Bay. And he’s the right age.”

“Did he have any ID?”

She nodded, breaking open the pea pods and tossing them in with the ribs. “O’Leary said his name was Gene Salamantoff.”

“So, probably Aleut. And Eugene Muravieff was Aleut.” Jim frowned. “I don’t get it. Why’d he change his name?”

“Somebody shot him today, Jim. Who knows how long they’d been looking for him?”

The rice cooker clicked off and she found two trivets and set them on the table and the pots on the trivets. He found plates and silverware while she got the soy sauce out of the refrigerator. “I’ve got some phony lemonade,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, and they sat down and dished up their dinner. “Yum,” he said after the first bite.

“Yeah,” she said, and dug in.

He cleaned his plate twice before putting down his fork. “Had rigor subsided?”

“No. He was cold and stiff. Lividity was pronounced. They shot him while he was sleeping.”

“Sometime last night or this morning, then.” Jim thought about that. “If they shot-we’ll call him Muravieff for the duration, okay?-if they shot Muravieff hours before, what were they doing hanging around till this afternoon?”

“Waiting for Kurt,” Kate said.

“Which means they felt that Kurt was as dangerous to them as the dead man was.”

“And me,” Kate said, and got up to clear the table. She put the leftovers in a Tupperware container to take to Kurt the following day.

His mouth tightened. “And you,” he said evenly, and went into the living room to turn on the television news.

She was putting her clothes in the dryer when she heard him call her name. She went to the living room and poked her head in the door. “What?”

He turned up the sound on the television with the remote.

“Charlotte Bannister Muravieff, well-known local caterer, was killed by a hit-and-run driver late last night as her car was struck by a large pickup truck on O’Malley Road. A witness told Channel Two News that-”