Dana Stabenow - Whisper to the Blood

"She was practically twelve inches taller than me," Kate said, a little pale.

"Let's do it again," Jim said, tight-lipped. "This time kneel on the seat."

Ken and Matt pushed the snow machine back, Kate braced her left foot on the running board and her right knee on the seat, leaning forward on the handlebars, and they did it all over again. This time the yellow tape slid up the windshield and caught Kate across the forehead. It stung. She didn't complain.

Jim took photos of that, too, and more of the body and the head. He handed Kate a pad and pencil. "Take some notes for me?"

He got out a tape measure and measured the distance between everything, snow machine, body, head, trees, monofilament ends. Kate jotted down numbers with increasingly numb fingers.

He opened his Leatherman and reached up to cut the almost invisible length of pale green monofilament that had been wrapped multiple times around the base of the tree, taking care to preserve the knots, although the filament was so fine it would take a microscope to tell if they were granny knots or double sheet bends. He bagged it carefully, and did the same with the remnants of line on the opposite tree. "Okay," he said. "Let's bag the body and get out of here before we all freeze solid."

Kate shook out a body bag, Jim picked up the head, and Matt turned, walked two steps away, and threw up. Mutt whined once, softly.

They loaded Macleod's body on the trailer Matt was towing. Jim hooked her snow machine to his and Kate took her trailer. They hauled everything to Ken Kaltak's house and took his statement, which varied very little from Gallagher's. At Jim's request, Ken fetched half a dozen of the other villagers, and for the most part everyone's statements agreed. Everyone in the village had turned out for GHRI's dog and pony show. With that many people present, it was inevitable that there were moments when Macleod and Gallagher's time was unaccounted for, but not so often or for so very long that Jim thought he had to run down more witnesses.

"Anybody in Double Eagle seriously pissed about the mine?" Jim said.

"Not this pissed," Ken said definitely.

Jim persisted. "Macleod have any arguments forced on her? Anybody try to pick a fight?"

"Not that I saw." Ken reflected, and added, a little reluctantly, She flirted with anything in pants. Even me, with Janice standing right next to me. But Jesus, Jim, you don't decapitate somebody for flirting. I mean, if Genghis Khan isn't around."

"She flirt with Gallagher?"

Ken thought. "He was always there, a step behind, but she kept it pretty businesslike, at least in public."

"She order him around?"

"More like he was anticipating her every need. She didn't even have to ask, and he had it ready for her."

"The perfect assistant, in fact."

"Pretty much." Ken looked at Jim. "Why, you think he did it? Stringing that line would have taken some time. I don't recollect he went missing from the gym that long. And she was his meal ticket. He looked pretty happy in his work to me."

Jim gave a noncommittal grunt, and they left soon after. The trip back to Niniltna was necessarily slower than the trip out had been, and it was almost four o'clock before they pulled up in front of the post. "I'll get George to take her into Anchorage in the morning. Help me put her in the walk-in?"

The post had a free-standing walk-in cold locker out back, lined with plywood shelves, and there they placed Macleod's body.

In Jim's office, he didn't bother to shed his parka before he called Fairbanks to let them know. Kate waited while he typed up a preliminary statement and sent it off. "I heart the Internet," he said. "Let's go home."

"Should we-"

"Tomorrow's going to be a nightmare," he said. "She was a celebrity in Alaska, and she had a pretty high profile Outside, too. Plus she was a babe, and if that wasn't enough she was a blonde. I'm guessing local media, big-time, and didn't she have a stint on one of the networks as a commentator?"

Kate didn't know.

"It's going to be about as bad as it can be," Jim said gloomily. "I hate a celebrity murder. Let's just go home, okay?"

They went home and went to bed, and Kate wasn't alone in spending the better part of the night staring at the ceiling.

Jim was gone before eight the next morning, Johnny to school shortly thereafter, declaiming something about New Hampshire in iambic pentameter, and Kate soothed the savage breast by some intensive housecleaning. When she was done the fireplace was spotless, so were all the dishes and towels, and both beds were freshly made with clean sheets, although negotiating the flotsam and jetsam of Johnny's room was as always a challenge. They could have eaten off the floor under the stove and the refrigerator, too, always supposing anyone would ever want to do that.

She made salmon salad for a late lunch-canned salmon, chopped onions, sweet pickles, and mayo-and didn't have enough energy left over to slice bread so she ate it out of the bowl with a fork, curled up on the couch and feeding herself blindly as she looked out the window. It was a gray day, which matched her mood. The previous day's gruesome sights lingered unpleasantly before her mind's eye.

She had disliked Talia Macleod on sight but she wouldn't wish something like this on her, or on anyone. Except maybe Louis Deem, and he was already dead, and to be perfectly honest she would have been wishful of rather more dismemberment about his person than Macleod had suffered.

She checked herself guiltily. This was no subject for humor, no matter how backhanded. She put bowl and fork into the sink, donned gear, said "Let's take a ride" to Mutt, and headed for town.

Her first stop was Bingley Mercantile, where she loaded up on three hundred dollars' worth of staples: flour, sugar, coffee, tea, eggs, pilot bread, Velveeta, peanut butter, grape jelly, canned milk, canned vegetables, a case of Spam, another of canned corned beef, a mixed case of Campbell's soup, salt, pepper, garlic powder, toilet paper, Ivory soap, dish soap, clothes soap, a packet of disposable razors, Tylenol, Neosporin, some Band-Aids, a box of assorted candy bars, a bag of peppermints; and at the last minute she tossed in half a dozen magazines, including a new Playboy and a new Penthouse, on the theory that foldout company was better than no company at all.

"Point of order," Cindy said when she rang up Kate's purchases. Kate ignored the reference-et tu, Cindy?-and offered a bland stare and no explanation of her purchases as punishment.

She left the store secure in the knowledge that in approximately four minutes and twenty-three seconds the rumor that Kate Shugak had turned lesbian would be circulating the Park on the Bush telegraph. It might even have gone out on Park Air, but for the fact that Bobby Clark had the best of all possible reasons to know that it wasn't true. Not that that would stop him laughing like a hyena about it, also on the air.

Be worth something to see Jim Chopin's expression when he heard it.

She loaded the small mountain of purchases in the trailer of her snow machine and headed out for Tikani. She made good time up the river beneath gray clouds heavy with moisture, presaging a big dump of snow. When she got close to the village she slowed down and approached with caution, but it was as deserted as it had been three days before. She nosed the machine up over the bank and stopped in front of Vidar's house. A wisp of smoke trailed from the chimney. The woodpile didn't look any taller than it had the last time she was there. She unloaded the trailer, piling everything against the door as quickly and as quietly as she could.

She turned the snow machine around, banged on Vidar's door with a heavy fist, hopped on, and hit the throttle, Mutt loping easily beside her. As slow as Vidar moved, they'd be out of sight by the time he got to the door. He'd have a pretty good idea who'd left him the supplies but she didn't want to put him in the position of having to thank her. It'd just make them both cranky.