Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

She grinned at the ceiling. “Shower?”

He groaned a little, getting to his feet, but he followed her upstairs.

She had an epiphany in the shower, and she told Jim.

“For God’s sake, I’m not a rabbit,” Jim said, but his body seemed willing to give it the old college try.

“Not that kind of epiphany,” she said, shoving him away and drawing back the curtain to reach for a towel. “Can you get me into the Cook Inlet Pretrial Facility?”

“Who do you want to talk to?”

“The hit-and-run driver who killed Charlotte.”

Jim had to make a phone call before she’d let him get his pants on, and they arrived at the facility damp but determined.

A stocky corrections officer with a round face and a dimpled smile was waiting for them. “Sam,” Jim said. Jim.

“Thanks for setting this up.”

“I was never here, I saw nothing, and I’m about to go off shift anyway.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Feel kind of sorry for the little bastard,” Sam said as he buzzed them inside and escorted them down the hall.

“Why is that?”

“His wife was just here. They’ve got a kid with cystic fibrosis. She’s a waitress, and he drives a cab. They don’t have any kind of insurance. She was bawling her eyes out when she left.”

Jim’s eyes met Kate’s for a significant moment. “Really,” was all Kate said.

The interrogation room at CIPTF had been more recently painted than the one at Hiland Mountain. Otherwise, it looked exactly the same. A man in prison blues was already seated at the table, with a corrections officer standing against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. Sam nodded at him. “Thanks, Al.”

“No problem.” Al left, Sam crossed his arms over his chest and leaned up against the wall, Jim began a slow pace around the room, which took him in back of the man in the blues, and Kate pulled out a chair opposite him. “Ralph Patton?”

“Who wants to know?” It was a pitiful attempt at pugnacity from a skinny white guy with bad teeth, lank hair, and a skimpy attempt at the unshaven look so popular nowadays with male Hollywood starlets. He was twenty-three but looked seventeen.

“I’m Kate Shugak, and this is Sergeant Jim Chopin of the Alaska State Troopers. We’re here to ask you a few questions about the hit-and-run.”

“I was drunk,” Patton said immediately, as if that was some kind of excuse.

Kate opened the file she had carried in. “So you said in your statement, but your blood-alcohol level was point-oh-four, well below the legal limit.”

He hunched his shoulders. “I have a low tolerance for booze.”

Kate looked back at the file. “Along with a low tolerance for booze, you’ve got a wife, as well as a year-old child diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.”

Patton started to get out of his chair, but Jim slammed him back into it.

“Who paid you to kill Charlotte Muravieff, Ralph?”

“I want you to leave now,” Ralph said, his face contorting.

“And who helped you do it?”

“I want to talk to my lawyer. You can’t talk to me without my lawyer present.”

“Because the thing is, we went up to O’Malley to look at the crash site, Ralph, and we found the driveway where you waited until your lookout told you Charlotte was coming up the road. You pulled out on the road and accelerated at just the right time, with just enough speed to cause maximum damage. That took some planning.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You got a bank account, Ralph? Because I’m guessing that when we take a look at it, we’re going to find a large and recent deposit.”

“That money is mine,” Patton said, his voice rising.

“Nobody’s saying it isn’t,” Kate said soothingly. “If it’s in your bank account, of course it’s your money. So long as you can explain where it came from, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“It’s mine,” Patton said, “it’s my money, and it’s going to pay the doctors for my little girl. You can’t touch it!”

“Of course I can’t. It’s your money, just like you said. So long as the Internal Revenue Service gets their share, they don’t really care. Have you reported this money as income yet, Ralph?”

“It’s my money!” Patton shouted, spraying Kate with spittle. “You can’t touch it. I earned that for our baby!”

Jim slammed him back into his seat again and Kate pounced. “Who paid you, Ralph? Who paid you to crash your pickup into Charlotte’s car as she was coming home Tuesday night?”

“What the hell is going on here?” a voice said from the doorway.

Kate and Jim looked up, to see a man in a three-piece suit that screamed attorney standing in the doorway.

“Mr. Dial,” Patton said, shoving his chair over in his hurry to get to his feet, “I didn’t say anything, sir, I promise!”

“You don’t have to talk to these people, Ralph,” Dial said. He looked first at Kate and then at Jim. “I’m Joseph Dial, Mr. Pat-ton’s attorney. And you are leaving. Now.” He looked at Sam. “I understand you’re responsible for this meeting. I’ll be lodging a complaint with the governor’s office in the morning.”

Five minutes later, they were outside the front door. “I’m sorry as hell, Sam,” Jim said.

Sam didn’t appear to be upset. “The worst they can do is force me into early retirement, and I’ve already got my thirty in. Don’t sweat it, Jim. I owed you more than one.”

“Thanks,” Jim said, and they shook hands.

“Where now?” Jim said as he and Kate got into the Subaru.

“Max,” Kate said, and started the engine.

“Tell me about William,” Kate said to Max.

Max looked at Jim, standing at Kate’s shoulder. “You the boyfriend?”

“No,” Jim said.

Max surveyed him with palpable contempt. “If you’d said yes, I’d‘ve called you a lucky bastard. Now I’m just gonna call you a stupid one.” He looked back at Kate. “You want to know about William Muravieff.”

“Yes,” Kate said.

“He was only seventeen, Kate.”

“I know. Tell me anyway. Everything you can remember.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re done.”

Max made a production out of looking at his watch. “About lunchtime, I’m thinking.”

“Your nothing but a serial opportunist,” Kate said, and that was how Jim Chopin found himself seated at a table at Simon & Seaport’s, in the middle of a gaggle of tourists in purple polyester and straw hats, with a few shysters in three-piecers mixed in and reminding him uncomfortably of Dial. The chatter was deafening, but the food was great, and the view went south all the way to Redoubt.

Max gave the drinks menu prolonged, concentrated study and then ordered a Lemon Drop. “No martini?” Kate said, and with an airy wave, Max said, “I like to broaden my experience from time to time,” and then he ruined the comment with his nasty old man’s grin. Kate laughed, and Jim, so help him, resented the laugh-or rather, the fact that Max had elicited the laugh and not him. The man had to be ninety-three, for crissake.

Besides which, Jim knew he had no serious relationship with Kate Shugak. They were acquaintances merely. Acquaintances who were at present having most excellent sex, but that was simply a matter of propinquity, born out of the circumstances of her life being in danger because of the case she was working on. Didn’t matter a damn to him who made her laugh.

He’d like to see Morris “Max” Maxwell, Sergeant, Alaska State Troopers (Retired), protect Kate from a crazed killer.

Mercifully, at that moment his steak sandwich arrived and he used it to keep his mouth full.

Max’s second drink appeared as he was draining his first. “How do you do that?” Kate said.