Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

And you know he’s dead and can’t contradict you, Kate thought.

She wondered how much of Celia’s stonewalling had to do with Emaa and Mary’s relationship. She wondered if perhaps it had more to do with who had really set fire to Victoria’s house, and why.

As seemed to be this case’s increasingly annoying habit, she had no answers to either question.

It had all seemed so simple on Monday, Kate thought as she drove back to the town house. The facts were all right there in the police report and the trial transcript. Someone, with malice aforethought, had splashed gasoline around Victoria Bannister’s house and set it on fire. There, those were cold, hard facts that no one could deny.

The gasoline had come from the tank of Victoria’s car, as proven by an extensive chemical analysis by the police lab and again by an independent testing lab hired by the defendant. There was another fact.

There were no signs of forced entry to the house, and Oliver and Charlotte had both testified that their mother was very conscientious about keeping the doors and windows locked. A third fact.

The fire had resulted in the death of William Muravieff, seventeen, by smoke inhalation, and in the injury of Oliver Muravieff. Fourth and fifth facts.

Victoria Bannister Muravieff had taken out substantial life-insurance policies on all three of her children just weeks before. Another fact.

Victoria Bannister Muravieff had refused to take the stand.

That, in Kate’s opinion, was the most interesting fact of all. The peripheral stuff about Victoria’s marriage and divorce and Eugene’s whereabouts the night of the murder were just the defense trying to cast reasonable doubt. Cowell had been throwing up as much of a smoke screen as he could muster to deflect the jury’s attention from the facts.

Why hadn’t Victoria testified? Never mind the Fifth Amendment, juries always wanted to hear from those accused, wanted to hear them say they didn’t do it, wanted to test the veracity of their testimony in person. There were gigantic traps laid for those who did, of course, and it was every criminal attorney’s job to dissuade his defendant from getting up on that stand and falling into them, but with a case as weak as Cowell’s had been, there would have been nothing to lose and everything to gain, especially if Victoria’s testimony had been convincing.

Kate, thinking of her two interviews with Victoria Bannister Muravieff, that pillar of community rectitude, the good daughter, the good wife, the good mother (except for the little matter of filicide), and now the good inmate, thought that it would have been.

And then she thought, What if Victoria had stayed off the stand not because she didn’t want to testify against herself but because she was afraid she would be asked questions about something else, something that had nothing to do with the murder?

She got back to the town house at 9:15 P.M., to find Jim Chopin pacing up and down the sidewalk. He didn’t look happy. “Where the hell have you been, Shugak? I’ve been checking in since I got out of court. I nearly put out an APB! Get down, damn it!” This last to Mutt, who had greeted him in her usual exuberant fashion. After being addressed in this ungentlemanly fashion, she dropped to all fours and slunk past him, the picture of dejection.

“I’ve been chasing my tail all day,” she said. “Did you get him?”

“Jury was out for seven minutes, guilty on all counts, and who gives a shit? Chasing your tail how, and why the hell didn’t you call? And how the hell am I supposed to watch your back when I can’t find it anywhere!”

“Congratulations,” she said, leading the way into the kitchen. “Want a beer to wet the head of the newly convicted?”

“You have beer?”

“I stopped at the store on my way home.” She uncapped a bottle of Alaskan Amber and poured herself a glass of cranberry juice.

Mutt, careful to keep herself within Jim’s range of vision, sidled into the kitchen, her body language devoted to broadcasting how severely her heart had been broken by her idol.

Jim took the beer ungraciously and stamped into the living room, from whence the sound of the television soon followed, turned up probably a tad bit more than necessary. Mutt followed. After a few moments, Kate heard Jim’s voice say, “Oh for chrissake sake, dog, get your butt over here!” and there was a joyous bark, the scrabble of toenails on wood, a loud thump, and an even louder groan.

Kate’s stomach growled. She sliced a ring of Polish sausage into a jambalaya mix, brought it all to a boil, reduced the heat to low, and covered it to simmer for twenty-five minutes.

She walked into the living room, to find Jim barely visible behind a lapful of Mutt. The easy chair must have been straining in every joint, but Jim seemed a little calmer. They were both watching the end of Law and Order. Jim looked up. “Find out anything new today?”

She sat down on the couch and propped her feet on the coffee table. “I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, Jim. Maybe Brendan’s right. Maybe I should just walk away.”

“Brendan?” Jim said, shoving Mutt off his lap. Mutt gave him a look of burning reproach and padded over to sprawl out on the hearth. Made of dark green slate, it was the coolest surface in the house that Mutt could find to sleep on.

“He agrees there’s something bent about Victoria’s case, but he doesn’t think there’s any point in pursuing it. I haven’t unearthed any evidence about the actual case, now, have I?”

Jim was obviously torn between a reluctance to agree to anything said by a rival for Kate’s affections and his inclination that Brendan was right. After a brief inner struggle, he said, “Were you thinking there was something else you could do? Some line of inquiry you’ve missed?”

“Plus, although he’d never admit it, I think Brendan is a little intimidated by Erland Bannister being involved.”

“‘Involved’?” Jim said.

“Yeah, I was having coffee with Eugene Muravieff’s mistress and he saw us and came over to have a little chat.”

“A little chat”? You had a little chat with Erland Bannister?“

“What,” Kate said, amused, “big bad Erland scares you, too?”

“Kate,” Jim said, pushing the footrest of his chair down so he could address her from an upright position, “out of the blue Erland Bannister invites you to a party at his house, and then he just happens to run into you downtown, where the two of you have a little chat? Erland Bannister, also known as Alaska’s kingmaker and all around super-duper utility political angel slash fat cat. I’d say this time Brendan’s right on the money.”

Kate was grinning openly now. “You think I should get the hell out of Dodge, do you?”

But he wasn’t listening. “Did you say Eugene Muravieff’s mistress?”

But she heard a familiar name from the television and turned to look.

There was Bruce Abbott, the governor’s gopher, doing a stand-up behind a podium with the state of Alaska’s seal on it. On his right stood the attorney general of the state of Alaska, a large man overflowing his three-piece pinstripe, and on his left the state DA for Anchorage, a bleached blonde in a gray two-piece. Abbott wore a red tie, the attorney general a red handkerchief, and the DA a red scarf, indicating that they’d all graduated with honors from Television Spin 101.

“-due to the stellar work Ms. Muravieff has performed in achieving a level of quality education for the inmates at Hiland Mountain Correctional Facility, and because he feels she has contributed substantially to the lowest rate of recidivism for a corrections facility in the state and one of the lowest rates in the nation, because Victoria Bannister Muravieff has set a standard for community service under the most difficult of conditions, with a selfless disregard for her own situation and a commitment to the rehabilitation of people the rest of us have given up on long ago, the governor has decided to commute her sentence to time served. And now I will take just a few questions. Yes, Mike.”