Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

Jim looked at Kate, whose eyes were fixed on the screen. “That’s your client, right?”

She nodded dumbly.

The witness, a woman walking her Scottish terrier on the bike trail leading to the zoo before they both turned in for the night, had little to say beyond describing the hit-and-run vehicle as a pickup, dark in color. She thought it was a man at the wheel but she couldn’t be sure-“It’s hard to tell the difference nowadays, you know?” The terrier, held in her arms, yipped accompaniment until the woman took firm hold of its muzzle.

Mutt, sitting next to Jim on the couch, got down and padded over to Kate to shove her head under Kate’s hand.

Charlotte had been pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. There was a brief shot of the Cadillac Escalade, crushed like an accordion from the driver’s side door over, another of Emily, described as Charlotte’s good friend, weeping on her way into their house, and then Erland Bannister’s face flashed on the screen, looking tight and angry. The newscaster’s voice did a voice-over that said Erland Bannister was offering a $100,000 cash reward for the arrest and conviction of the driver of the vehicle that had killed his niece.

This time, the guard at the Hiland Mountain front desk welcomed Kate with a smile. “Brendan McCord says hey.” The guard was a willowy blonde, and from the inquisitive blue eyes busily inspecting Kate for flaws, she was evidently somewhere on Brendan’s list.

Kate smiled. “Tell him hey back next time you talk to him,” she said, insinuating that the guard would be talking to Brendan long before she would.

It was the right tack. The blonde relaxed, beamed, and waved her through.

Victoria was waiting in an interview room. She wasn’t happy. “Evidently I didn’t make myself clear the last time you were here,” she told Kate as Kate came through the door. “I have nothing to say to you.”

It wasn’t visiting hours, and only Brendan’s prior relationship with the willowy blonde had gotten Kate in the door and Victoria into the interview room.

Victoria was just as militant as she had been the first time Kate had seen her, and Kate realized with a sinking heart that no one had told Victoria that her daughter was dead. She wanted to turn and run from the room and keep running until she got all the way home. She wanted to hunt up Erland Bannister and kick him in the balls.

“May I?” she said instead, indicating the chair opposite Victoria.

Victoria snorted. “You don’t need my permission to sit in this place.” Nevertheless, the request softened her attitude a little.

Kate pulled out a chair and sat down, slumping against the chair back, hooking a foot over the edge of the table, trying to present as relaxed an attitude as possible.

Her problem was, she liked Victoria. She liked a woman in jail for life who refused to be coerced or intimidated. “Did they threaten you to get you in the same room with me?”

Victoria snorted again. “Like you didn’t know.”

“Humor me,” Kate said.

Victoria put both hands on the table and leaned in. “They told me they’d cancel my class for a week.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said, and she meant it.

“Sure you are. You’re so sorry, you’ll walk out of this interview under protest because I was brought into it under duress.”

Kate thought about it, shook her head ruefully. “Not that sorry,” she said.

It surprised a laugh out of Victoria. She suppressed it immediately, looking annoyed. “What do you want?” she snapped.

“Your daughter hired me to look into your case because you have been diagnosed with uterine cancer and she doesn’t want you to die in jail,” Kate said.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Victoria tossed up her hands and rolled her eyes. Before she could throw Kate out again, Kate said quickly, “You said you knew my grandmother.”

Victoria gave Kate an assessing look. She knew she was being distracted, but then she took the bait anyway. “She died recently, didn’t she?”

“Going on three years ago.”

Victoria nodded. “She was a fine woman, and a great leader.” She frowned, and then she said abruptly, “She visited me here.”

“You were friends?”

Victoria thought about it. “Acquaintances,” she said at last. “We met through my mother-in-law, Mary Muravieff. Mary worked on the land claims act with Ekaterina. When I started the school here, Ekaterina heard of it and came to offer help. There are a disproportionately higher number of Alaska Natives in jail, as you know.”

“I know,” Kate said.

“That’s right, you put some of them in here.”

“I did,” Kate said without apology.

“She was proud of you,” Victoria said. “Proud of what you have accomplished. Which reminds me. What does the Anchorage DA have to do with reopening a thirty-year-old case?”

“Nothing,” Kate said, “I don’t work for them anymore.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a private investigator,” Kate said, “which is where I came in. Your daughter hired me to look into your case. She doesn’t think you’re guilty of the crime for which you have been imprisoned. She wants me to reopen the investigation and find out who did it.”

“I did do it,” Victoria said. She met Kate’s eyes squarely.

“Did you?” Kate said, hiding her surprise.

“I did,” Victoria said firmly. “I won’t say I’m innocent, because I’m not. I won’t thank you for trying to get me out of here, because the judge was right to sentence me to life. I deserved it. I siphoned the gas out of my car, I splashed it all over the living room, and I set it to go off after Charlotte and I were safely at the fund-raiser at my brother’s house in town.”

“Hmmm,” Kate said. “How did you set it to go off?”

“A delayed fuse attached to a timer,” Victoria said promptly.

Exactly as had been presented by the district attorney at Victoria’s trial. “How did you learn to do that?”

“From a book,” Victoria said.

Kate gave a thoughtful nod. “You can find anything in the library, can’t you?”

Victoria blinked. “Well, yes, I suppose you can. That’s what it’s for.”

“It is indeed,” Kate said. “Why did you do it?”

“Money,” Victoria said. “I was broke.”

Kate winced and shook her head. “You had me going there, Victoria, I admit. But money as a motive?” She leaned forward, hands flat on the table. “To burn your sons alive?”

For the first time, she saw Victoria flinch. She recovered immediately, though, and met Kate’s eyes with a stony gaze.

Kate sat back. “Do you ever hear from your attorney?”

Victoria’s browed furrowed at this change of subject. “Henry?”

“Yes. Do you ever hear from him?”

Victoria was wary, but she couldn’t come up with a reason not to answer. “No.”

“When was the last time you talked to him?”

“At my sentencing.”

“No further contact after that?”

Victoria shook her head.

“How about your ex-husband?”

Victoria became very still. “Gene?”

“Yes,” Kate said, watching Victoria from beneath her eyelashes.

“I haven’t heard from Gene since our divorce.”

“Didn’t he try to see the children?”

“He had no visitation rights under the divorce decree. I had sole custody.”

That wasn’t what I asked you, Kate thought. “He was their father,” she said. “Seems odd that he wouldn’t try to work something out with you so he could spend at least some time with his children.”

“He didn’t,” Victoria said. Her elegant shoulders were looking very tense.

“Charlotte and Oliver were both underage when you went inside,” Kate said. “Who did they go to?”