Dana Stabenow - Whisper to the Blood

Kate gave something like a sob. "Kate-," Dinah started to say, but by then Kate was out the door and halfway down the steps.

Jim popped his door and stuck his head out. "They're okay, Kate," he said. "They're all okay."

By then Johnny was out of the cab and on the ground, looking tired and beat up, and Kate had her arms around him and her face buried in his bib overalls. She wasn't crying, she never cried, but she didn't want anyone to see whatever it was on her face. His arms came around her, hugging her back just as fiercely.

She might have sniffled, just a little, and then she forced herself to let him go. "You're okay, then," she said, a little gruffly.

"Yeah," he said, with a long sigh.

She looked past him, at Ruthe and Van, Ruthe angry, Van exhausted. "All of you?"

"Yeah. All of us. Kate?"

"What?"

He suddenly looked older than his years. "Mac Devlin has been murdered."

Jim was in the air at first light, on his way to Suulutaq. Kate was with him. "You'll need help loading the body," she said. "And if some nut is running around out there with a gun, you could use the backup, preferably backup that knows enough not to mess with your crime scene."

No point arguing with that, and Jim didn't waste his breath. She had her snow machine. If he hadn't let her come with him, she would have been on the river by sunrise.

Bobby had fetched the Grosdidier brothers, who patched up the walking wounded and made sure everyone saw two fingers, after which Bobby drove them and Van home. Ruthe put away a gargantuan breakfast, eggs and bacon and potatoes and the better part of a loaf of bread, toasted and slathered with butter, and departed for home on the Jag, resisting Dinah's entreaties to rest up on one of the couches before making the journey. "Gal's almost psychic, she'll know something's wrong and she'll be anxious after me," she said, adding, not unaffectionately, "Damn cat."

On the doorstep she paused. "I never liked Mac Devlin much," she said after a moment, appearing to chew on the words. "But he was a Park rat, and a neighbor. We lent him one of our cabins the year his burned. He stayed there for two months while he rebuilt. After that, whenever we needed some dirt work done, he was there with his D6 or his front-end loader. Never had to ask more than once. Never had to ask, really, just had to say what needed doing and he was there, usually the next day."

She looked at Kate. "You'll find out who did this, and why, and you'll make sure they get what's coming to them."

"Yes," Kate said.

Ruthe nodded, still in that ruminant way, and took herself off.

Katya attached herself to Johnny like a barnacle and refused all attempts to remove her, until she finally fell asleep, drooling into his shoulder. Dinah detached her and put her to bed. In turn, Johnny passed out on one of the couches. Kate covered him with a blanket and stood looking down at him.

"Little fucker like to give his momma a heart attack?" Bobby said fondly, rolling his chair up next to her.

"Shh," she said, "you'll wake him."

"Couldn't wake that boy with a goddamn air horn," Bobby said. "Wanna try?" Without waiting for an answer he rolled to the table and tucked into his own breakfast. "When's my next fare?" he said between bites.

"Me to the airstrip," Kate said. "I'm flying out to Suulutaq with Jim as soon as it's light."

Bobby chewed and swallowed. Mutt was sitting next to him, gazing at him with an adoration that had very little to do with the strip of bacon he was eating. He fed it to her anyway, still eyeing Kate. "Mac Devlin," he said. "The Park's least favorite miner. At least until Global Harvest came along. You know Global Harvest bought him out for about ten cents on the dollar?"

"Yeah."

"He wasn't happy about that."

"No," Kate said, "he wasn't."

"He's been popping up everywhere in the Park that Macleod broad has shown up talking about the mine-Bernie's, the Riverside Cafe, up the store. I heard he was at the Chamber of Commerce meeting she spoke at in Ahtna, even. You could almost say he was stalking her."

"You could," Kate said.

"What the hell was he doing out there, Kate? Trying to burn it down? Even Mac Devlin had to know what a futile gesture that would be."

"You'd think," she said. "I don't know anything about it yet, Bobby. All I know is he's been shot, and that he's dead, and that it happened in the Global Harvest trailer at Suulutaq."

"Interesting to speculate, though," he said. "There'll be a lot of that going on in the Park."

"Yes," she said grimly. "There surely will."

The high over the Park was holding and according to Bobby was supposed to keep holding at least through the weekend. It was another clear, calm day when they rose into the air off the end of the forty-eight-hundred-foot gravel airstrip that ran behind the village of Niniltna.

"I love CAVU," Jim said over the headset.

Ceiling and visibility unlimited. "I heard that," Kate said with feeling. "Have you talked to Macleod yet?"

His voice came back over her earphones, sounding tinny and devoid of its usual resonant assurance. "Yeah."

"Where is she? I kind of thought she might insist on accompanying us."

"She probably would have, but she's in Cordova."

"You talk to her on the phone?"

"Yeah. She'll be back in the Park this evening."

"She say what Mac Devlin was doing out there?"

"No, but she said he was really unhappy over what Global Harvest paid him for the Nabesna Mine, and he didn't mind saying so every time he saw her."

"Bobby said he was stalking her."

"Pretty much. She told me that she figured he was going to make enough of a nuisance of himself that Global Harvest would buy him off. And that Global Harvest knew that the longer they waited the lower Mac's price would be."

"Whoa."

She could hear the shrug in his voice. "That's business. It's all about the bottom line for those people, Kate."

The Quilaks rose up on their left, the land falling gradually and inevitably to sea level in a series of lesser mountains, foothills, knolls, buttes, plateaus, and valleys, hedged about by glaciers large and small, creviced by rivulets, streams, and creeks, all frozen now, a hundred, no, a thousand wrinkled cracks in the face of the Park smoothed to a crisp white finish by a thick layer of snow. The sky was a pale, icy blue, the Gulf of Alaska a hint of deeper blue on the southern horizon, and the sun a small, bright ball of pale yellow on the rising half of its tiny winter arc. It'd be below the horizon again in five hours. They didn't have a lot of time.

Fortunately, the Suulutaq wasn't far by air, and shortly Jim was banking left and losing altitude to glide the length of a wide, majestic valley, one end open to the southwest, curving up and right to the other, northeastern end in a roughly half-moon shape, the top end much narrower and steeper, and hemmed about by nervous mountains afraid to give up their jealously held treasures.

Too late, Kate thought.

Jim brought the Cessna down to fifty feet off the deck and Passed over the isolated little trailer. The wind sock hung limply from its pole, and the snow looked smooth and settled enough to land on without sinking out of sight. He pulled up, came around, and let down the skis. They set down with a hiss of metal on snow, rolling out to a stop about ten feet from the cleared area between trailer, woodpile, and shed. "Show-off," Kate said.

The smug grin beneath his sunglasses was answer enough.

They got out and walked carefully to the trailer, and any lingering amusement vanished when Jim popped the lock on the handle of the door and they went inside.

The odor that the others had described was even stronger now, but rigor had yet to wear off. Jim took photographs of the scene as Kate prowled around outside.