Dana Stabenow - Whisper to the Blood

"I know," Kate said. "I didn't do that."

"What did you do?"

She told him. When he stopped laughing he said, "Okay. You didn't whale on them. Who did?"

She gave him a look.

"Yeah," he said, "we don't have to talk about that right now. Or maybe ever. So did they confess to anything?"

She shook her head. "Ick shut up Gus and Dead. You should probably separate them."

"I've only got two cells."

"Not my problem," she said. "My work here is done."

"Need a statement." He opened a document on his computer and gave her an expectant look. She sighed and started talking. Half an hour and some questions later he printed it out and she signed it. By way of payback she made him type up an invoice from Kate Shugak to the Department of Public Safety for services rendered and made him sign it in front of her. "Okay," she said, rising to her feet, "absent any further objection, I'm headed for the barn and a hot shower and a hot meal, and then I'm going to bed."

"Kate."

She turned, hand on the doorknob. "What?"

"Nice job." He smiled.

She smiled back, smug. "I know."

Outside, enough of the crowd remained to offer up another round of applause, approving comments, and pats on the back. Mutt stalked next to her, tongue lolling out in a canine grin, receiving her share of adulation with less than appropriate humility. George Perry was there, laughing out loud, Demetri Totemoff with one of his rare smiles creasing his dark face, Laurel Meganack and her father, who looked less than thrilled, Old Sam, Keith Gette, and Oscar Jimenez. Kate realized that they must have hit town the same time as the mail plane. At the edge of the crowd she saw the four aunties, huddled together, chirping away at each other in whispers. Auntie Joy saw her looking at them and the usual radiant smile faltered at Kate's expression. She said something and the other three aunties turned to look at Kate.

She returned their gaze for a long moment, her eyes traveling from one face to another. Auntie Edna, the bully, strong, unyielding, always right, always willing to say so, always with that anger simmering away beneath the surface. Auntie Balasha, the sentimentalist, soft, tender, a heart made for unconditional love. Auntie Joy, the idealist, who saw good in everything, impervious to evil.

And Auntie Vi, the independent businesswoman, the entrepreneur, the capitalist, the hard-eyed realist who knew stability, accountability, and transparency were essential to increase business to, from, and within the Park and who knew they would come only with a steady hand on the Park's tiller, and so much the better if it was the hand of her choice.

All four pairs of eyes bored into her back as she mounted her snow machine, called to Mutt, and left.

She didn't go as advertised, though, instead cutting through the village and following the track about a quarter of a mile downriver. She pulled up in front of a two-story house with blue vinyl siding, black shingles, and a deck the width of the house that faced the river. Safely above its frozen surface, a handsome drift netter called the Audra Sue sat in dry dock.

There were four snow machines in the shed at the side of the house, along with some other interesting items. Kate climbed the stairs to the deck and banged on the door. She had to repeat the action a second and a third time before Matt Grosdidier, his shiner somewhat less spectacular now, poked his head outside. "Kate?" he said, sounding dazed. "What the hell time is it?"

"Late enough to come calling," she said, shouldering her way inside. "Get your brothers up." He stared at her, his hair flattened on one side and a pillow crease on his cheek. "Go on," she said, "go get them. This won't take long."

She gave him a hard look that propelled him upstairs, and a moment later she heard him thumping doors and calling his brothers' names. In the meantime, she looked around her at the chaos that was the Grosdidier en famille. Their front room looked like a larger version of Johnny's room. She shuddered.

In short order they were assembled before her, wary at this home invasion and assuming an early morning grouchiness to cover it up.

Without preamble she said, "Whose idea was it to go after the Johansens?"

Luke, Peter, and Mark looked at Matt, who grinned. "Don't know what you're talking about, Kate."

"I'm not looking to jam you up here," she said. "I'm just looking to fit in another piece of the puzzle. You four are looking like ten rounds with Muhammad Ali. The Johansens are looking like fifteen with Mike Tyson. Seems reasonable to suppose the two groups might have encountered each other recently."

Luke, Peter, and Mark looked at Matt again. It wasn't that they couldn't all speak, it was just that Matt was oldest. It was habit, mostly. He'd been the only one of legal age when their father's boat had gone down off Gore Point with their mother on board, and he'd raised the other three, seeing them safely through puberty and high school, working as a deckhand until he'd saved enough money to buy a boat so he could work his father's drift permit with his brothers as deckhands.

She looked them over dispassionately. They were an attractive bunch, medium height inherited from their French father, black hair inherited from their Aleut mom, ruddy outdoor skin and dark, merry eyes. They were loud and boisterous and good-humored, and they fought each other with enthusiasm, until one was attacked by some clueless other, and then the four of them united to annihilate him with even more enthusiasm. They were fair about it, they cheerfully patched up whoever they beat the snot out of, but Jim Chopin had been known to observe that these occasional contretemps appeared to be more a matter of drumming up EMT business than of wreaking vengeance.

They seemed to have adopted the Park as a fifth sibling since they'd all four graduated from the EMT class, however. Kate, looking past Matt, saw a framed copy of the Hippocratic oath hanging crookedly on the wall, surrounded by a bunch of family pictures.

She sighed. "Did you bait them out? I saw the sled with the supplies packed into it in the garage. I also noticed that all the boxes were empty."

"You're a snoop, Kate Shugak," Matt said without heat.

"Yes, I am, Matt Grosdidier," Kate said. "Did one of you bait them out and the rest of you jump them when they bit?"

He looked at his brothers. "If we did, so what? Boys needed a whupping." He looked back at her. "And at the time it didn't look like anyone else was going to give them one."

Kate ignored the unspoken implication. "So you stepped up."

He shrugged. "Even if we did, and I'm not saying that, it didn't do a whole lot of good, now, did it? They jumped that guy from Anchorage."

"So it doesn't count if it didn't work?" He didn't answer.

"Will you tell me one thing?" she said. "Was it your idea?"

His eyes shifted. "I don't know what you mean, Kate."

The Johansen brothers emphatically, categorically, and comprehensively deny killing Talia Macleod," Jim said that evening.

"Of course they do," Kate said.

"They say they didn't kill Mac Devlin, either."

"Of course they do," Kate said again. She was stretched out on the couch with a copy of Christopher Hitchens's latest polemic against all gods, all faiths, and all those who sailed in them. Since she agreed with every word he said, naturally she considered it a work of genius, and she wanted to get back to it. Besides, she had a feeling that this conversation was going to do nothing but go around and around, like a snake chasing its own tail and eventually eating itself. Serene in her ignorance of Jim thinking the same thing about a previous conversation, she said with as much disinterest as she could infuse into the words, "What else would you expect them to say?"