Dana Stabenow - Whisper to the Blood

"No shells," she said. "Guy was careful." She walked a few steps away from the trailer and turned. "If it was Mac specifically he was shooting at, then he must have followed him out here."

He nodded, waiting.

"If it was Everynut with a gun, shooting at anything that moved because the hairy pink enchiladas were after him, then it could have been the same thing. Or the nutcase was already here and Mac could have just been a target of opportunity. Or." She took a deep breath and let it out and looked at Jim soberly. "It could have been someone who doesn't like the idea of the Suulutaq Mine, and figured anyone who was out here was fair game. Mac. Howie."

"Talia."

"Who?"

"Talia Macleod," Jim said. "Oh. Yeah."

Mutt, who had been conducting her own investigation by trotting to and fro with her nose to the ground, raised her muzzle in the direction from which they had come and barked sharply, once. Kate looked over her shoulder. "That's George's Cub. I heard she put him on retainer, so that's probably her now."

"Who?"

"Macleod. Your new girlfriend."

"She's not my new girlfriend."

She looked at him, startled by the bite in his voice. She couldn't see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but after a moment he smiled. "Well, she isn't."

"Good to know," she said. "Kinda hoping I had dibs there."

His smile broadened. "Good to know."

"Want to get Mac bagged up?"

"Might as well." They trudged back to the trailer, neither of them in a hurry to face the task ahead. It helped that rigor had not worn off. There was nothing worse than trying to stuff the body of a human being into an elongated plastic bag. It tended to flop around a lot. Stiff with rigor, you were just dealing with mass, much easier to handle.

It wasn't the first time for either of them and they were bringing him out of the trailer by the time George and Macleod had gotten to the door. They stood back, George stoic, Macleod pale. They deposited Mac in a snowbank for the moment.

"Is it okay to go inside?" Talia said. Her face was pinched and she looked cold.

"Sure," Jim said.

They went inside and stood around the office. "Talia, I'd like you to take a look around, see if anything's missing."

She made a helpless gesture. "There isn't anything out here to steal, really. There's a television in the living quarters, with a bunch of DVDs and a player."

"All still there," Kate said.

"Anything in the way of papers or information about the mine that someone might want to take a look at?"

She gave Jim an incredulous look. "Certainly nothing that I can imagine anyone killing for, Jim." She pointed. "There's the map, but it's the same map that's been reproduced in every one of the handouts, brochures, and flyers." She picked up a flyer and waved it, and then tossed it back on its pile. "We knew there would be rubber-neckers, especially after the first snow. The caretakers are instructed to let no one leave here without a fistful of Global propaganda."

"Where's Gallagher?" he said. Kate looked at him, frowning a little.

"Who?" Macleod said vaguely. "Oh. I sent him back to Niniltna with someone else. George didn't want to bring in anything bigger than his Cub, so only room for one passenger." She turned to face him. "There is one thing I don't understand."

"What?"

"Where's Howie Katelnikof?"

"Howie?" Kate said. "Why would Howie be out here?"

"It was his week," Macleod said. "I hired him to sit out here every other week, in rotation with Dick Gallagher. This is Howie's week. He should have been here. He should be here now."

"Ah hell, I knew that," Jim said, disgusted. "But I didn't connect the dots." He looked at Kate.

While it was a truth generally acknowledged that Mac Devlin had not been the most beloved of Park rats, neither of them had been able to come up with a good reason for anyone to kill him. Beat on him a little, sure, maybe, but not shoot him. He wasn't married, and if he had had a girlfriend Jim hadn't heard of it. So far as anyone knew he had no children. On the face of it the list of suspects in Mac's case wasn't just short, it was virtually nonexistent.

Howie Katelnikof, on the other hand, while he was also single and childless, had over the course of a long and prolific criminal career lied to, cheated, and stolen from anyone who had ever set foot in the Park who wasn't smart enough to see Howie coming. He had also done a lot of Louis Deem's wet work, especially when it came to intimidating juries. Kate herself had a very good reason to wish Howie dead. In fact, she had three.

The list of suspects in an investigation into the murder of Howie Katelnikof would have been so long Jim would have had to take numbers. Hell, if somebody shot Howie, the Park rats would have taken up a collection to reward the shooter.

That was a thought far too close to home for Jim.

Kate and Jim flew the body to Cordova to put it on the jet to Anchorage, and returned to Niniltna, landing at twilight. They walked into the trooper post and dispatcher Maggie Montgomery's face lit up. "Thank god! Here, take 'em!"

He looked down at the fistful of messages with resignation. "What, a crime wave?"

"They're all about the snow machine attack on the river. Jim?"

He paused in the door of his office. "What?"

She looked at him with wide eyes. "It's not the only one."

Jim didn't make it home until the next evening. "How come you didn't know about this?" he said, walking in the door. "I don't know," Kate said, honestly bewildered, and not a little aggrieved. It wasn't often she was this out of the loop in Park affairs. In fact, she couldn't remember a time when she'd been out of the loop at all. It was the Association board meeting in October all over again, leaving her swamped in an ignorance so complete she felt like she was going down for the third time. "I haven't been into town longer than it takes to check the mail and grab a cup of coffee since I got back. Maybe that's why I hadn't heard anything."

"I thought Auntie Vi was the town crier when it came to bad news, and what Auntie Vi knows, you know."

"I can't explain it," she said again. Mutt leaned her head on Kate's knee and looked up at her with sympathetic yellow eyes. "I haven't heard a word about it, Jim. Nothing. I would have told you."

"Bet your ass," he said, still smarting. He didn't like it when shit was dumped in his own backyard and he didn't smell it. He went to the map of the Park Kate had recently attached to a piece of cork and framed with colonial molding left over from the house raising-

It was smaller than the one in the Global Harvest trailer, and in much worse shape, but it was adequate to the purpose. He traced the course of the Kanuyaq River with his forefinger.

"Attack the first," he said. "Ken and Janice Kaltak on November sixth, headed home to Double Eagle from a trip to Ahtna, doctors' appointments and shopping. Stopped in Niniltna for a mugup at the Riverside Cafe. There was some light snow but no wind so visibility okay and not cold enough not to keep going. About a mile from home, three snow machines barreled out of a willow thicket, one of the drivers coming straight at them like he's playing chicken with them, while another one, this one with a two-by-four, comes up from behind and hits Ken across the side hard enough to knock him off his sled. Janice is riding behind and she rolls off with him. It all happens too fast for Ken to get to his rifle. The third snow machine roars around them in circles, loud, distracting, scary, while the first two guys disconnect the trailer, loaded with groceries from Safeway and Costco, and they're gone. Lucky they left them the snowgo, they woulda been dead otherwise and it would have been murder along with assault and robbery." He paused. "What amazes me is they didn't take the rifle."