Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

“It looked pretty damn good,” Fred Gamble said. “It certainly fooled an entire police force. Not to mention a jury.”

They were in Brendan’s office. Kate had been giving statements continuously since nine o’clock in the morning. It was now one o’clock in the afternoon. She was sticky with tree sap, grimy with sweat and dirt, and very, very tired. Her one consolation was the shaggy gray head pressed to her knee. She knotted her fingers in Mutt’s ruff and Mutt gave a comforting whine and leaned harder. She been glued to Kate’s side since they’d found Kate that morning. Sooner or later, such devotion was going to make it difficult to go to the bathroom, but right now it was equal parts relief and reassurance.

“And Victoria refused to speak to Charlotte because…”

“I’m guessing, to protect her,” Kate said. “ Victoria never told Charlotte that Oliver had killed William. Erland wouldn’t tell her, either, if Victoria would refuse to talk to her. He wanted a complete rift. So long as Victoria was in jail for William’s murder, no one would think to look at Oliver as a suspect. And Erland would have the heir he couldn’t provide for himself.”

“And it worked,” Jim said. “For thirty years.”

Kate nodded. “Okay, your turn. You guys have been pumping me dry for four hours. What happened here?”

“I woke up, you were gone, the boys saw you get taken, they caught the tags, Brendan found that they were registered to a buddy of Ralph Patton’s.”

“Was Ralph one of the men who took me?”

Brendan shook his head. “I had a prowl car go out to his place. He was home with his wife and kid.”

Kate looked at Gamble. “Not that I wasn’t happy to see you, Fred, but how the hell did you get involved in this?”

Gamble looked at Brendan. Brendan brushed fruitlessly at a speck of something disgusting on his tie and said to it, “I had reason to believe the FBI might have an interest in PME and all those who sail in her.”

Kate’s eyes narrowed.

“We were watching Oliver. We followed him to the cabin,” Gamble said primly. “And that’s really all we’re prepared to tell you.”

Racketeering? Money laundering? Kate wondered just what it was that had pulled PME back from the brink of bankruptcy all those years ago, and just how legal it had been.

She noticed Jim looked uncomfortable, and wondered what that was about. An enormous yawn split her face, and she decided to leave it for another day.

The phone rang. Brendan answered it, listened for a moment, said “Thanks,” and hung up. “Well, that was the crime-scene guys. They’ve been going over the cabin. Seems they found a grave.”

“What’s in it?”

“What’s left of what they think was a man.”

“Henry Cowell,” Kate said.

Brendan nodded at her. “We’ll have the lab put a rush on it, but that’s what I’m thinking.”

“He wouldn’t stay bought.”

Brendan said, “You think Erland paid him to throw the case?”

“Maybe not throw it,” Kate said, standing up and stretching. “Even old hanging Judge Kiddle might have noticed that. But Henry Cowell sure didn’t try very hard to get Victoria off.”

Back at the town house, she showered and changed into clean clothes and started to pack. Mutt knew what that meant and she was tiresomely happy about it.

Kate left her duffel by the door and called the cleaning service. They promised to come by the following morning. “Oh,” Kate said, “and there’s some fresh stuff-fruit, vegetables, some meat-in the refrigerator. Tell your people to take it all.”

She drove everything she’d bought to a shipping firm that specialized in palletizing goods and shipping them into the Bush. On the way home, she detoured over to Kevin and Jordan’s house.

Their mother opened the door. She looked sober, for the moment. Kate introduced herself in case the woman had been too drunk last time to remember her, and said, “Your boys have been eating and sleeping at my house off and on for the last couple of days. I’m leaving now, so I won’t be there for them. You’ve got two choices, ma’am. You can sober up and shape up and start taking care of them, or I can call the Division of Family and Youth Services and report you for child neglect and endangerment.”

She took Max to a late lunch to wash the taste of that out of her mouth.

“Goddamn it,” Max said with a bitterness that not even the best mixed martini would soothe.

“Not your fault,” Kate said. “It was a family conspiracy. There’s nothing harder to crack.”

“Bullshit,” Max said. He looked like a very old and very irritated eagle, with his fierce blue eyes and his hawklike nose.

Yes, he was very like Abel. Abel Int-hout, another quintessential Alaskan old fart with an independent streak as wide as the Yukon and an attitude as convivial as a wolverine’s.

“We should have figured it out,” Max said. “It’s what we’re paid to do. Instead, we imprisoned the wrong perp for thirty years.”

“Well, she’s out now, and pardoned. Plus, after all the hoo-ha dies down, there will be no stain on her character,” Kate said. “She’s going to take over PME, they say.”

“What about her cancer?”

“It’s operable, about an eighty percent survival rate. She got a second opinion. She’s going in for the operation this week.” Kate cocked an eye at him. “I gave her your number.”

“Me?” Max didn’t look so much surprised as outraged. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“She’s walking into the lion’s den, Max,” Kate said. “The FBI’s running some kind of investigation of what they are calling PME’s ‘past improprieties,” and PME’s board of directors were all hand picked by her brother. You think he won’t be trying to pull strings from the inside?“

Max snorted. “He’s never going to see the inside. He’s going to be out on bail by the end of business today.”

“All the more reason Victoria could use a sharp-eyed old fart like you to watch her back. Not too many flies on you, old man.”

He smiled, albeit reluctantly.

Kate went for the jugular. “She could use a friend about now. All three of her children are lost to her, two to death, one to jail.”

“Okay, all right, enough with the violins,” he said. “I’ll talk to her.” He denied any softening by giving her a sharp look. “What about you?”

“Me?” Kate said. “Well, my record on this case has not been what you might call stellar. I got my employer killed. I got my employer’s father killed. I hired my first employee and almost got him killed.”

Max snorted again. “I don’t know how to break this to you, Shugak, but you’re just not that powerful. You didn’t make the calls. You didn’t pull the triggers.”

“Maybe I could have been a little smoother,” she said. “A little more subtle.”

“Maybe you could,” he said, “and maybe pigs’ll fly. Anybody who hires you finds out fast that your chosen instrument is the sledgehammer, not the scalpel.”

He surprised a laugh out of her at a time when she didn’t feel much like laughing.

“Not much point in looking back,” Max said. “Waste of time. Look forward.”

He leaned forward to give her knee a sharp rap. “There’s almost always tomorrow.”

She made one more stop on the way to the airport.

“Hello, Emily,” she said, when Charlotte’s partner opened the door.

Emily’s hand went to her mouth. There was almost nothing left of the smart, aggressive attorney Kate had met just days ago. Emily looked as if she hadn’t showered since the day of Charlotte’s death. She was dressed in the same gray sweats Charlotte had been wearing the first time Kate had visited this house. Her hair was lank and her face was colorless. She’d aged ten years since the last time Kate had seen her. “Oh,” she said listlessly. “It’s you.” She walked away from the door without closing it behind her.