a Night Too Dark (2010) (21 page)

“Crime lab?” The doc looked startled.
“I’m working a murder investigation,” Kate said. “I figured since we’re standing in the middle of a hospital with all the modern conveniences, you could get it done quicker. And I need quicker.”
Her face was stern, her manner brisk and no-nonsense, one professional to another. The doc stood up straighter and said, “I’ll take it down to the lab myself. I’ve got a friend down there, and it’s a simple test. Have you got a cell number?”
Kate had found her cell phone along with its charger behind the seat in her pickup the month before. She’d left it there and remembered to grab it when she was running to catch the plane that
morning. She’d tried it when they’d landed and was amazed that it still worked. That didn’t necessarily mean she knew the number. She fumbled it out of her pocket and looked at the keys. Green phone, green phone, ah, there it was. She pushed it, waited for her number to come up, and read it off to the doc, who scribbled it down.
She stopped at the nurse’s station on her way out. “Have you got a piece of paper and a pencil I could use?”
She wrote down her telephone number and asked for a piece of tape. The nurse, a pleasant woman in pink scrubs, watched with a bemused expression as she taped the number to the back of the phone.
She went back to the crime lab, endured Brillo’s invective until he had to pause for breath and she could show him the photograph of the putative bullet wound. It caught his interest, and she left him yelling for ballistics again.
She pointed the Forester downtown.
Not long ago Kurt Pletnikoff had been in the Park poaching bears for their gallbladders. What a difference two years could make. His office was on the seventh floor of a building that catered to the attorneys who practiced their trade at the courthouse two blocks away. The brass sign was small with a plain font. The door was solid and heavy and closed behind her on a discreet hydraulic hinge. Painted gray and furnished in teakwood and maroon leather or a reasonable facsimile thereof, the outer office also sported a receptionist. She was, at a guess, Yupik or Inupiat, short and plump with round cheeks, dark eyes, and thick black hair so shiny it looked oiled, cut short in the very latest style. She was dressed in a single-breasted dark red suit over a cream silk blouse with discreet cleavage. Around her neck was a thin gold chain with a tiny diamond pendant, which matched the tiny diamond studs in her ears.
She reminded Kate of Lyda Blue, if Lyda had worked in town and shopped at Nordstrom.
She took in Kate with a cool, steady gaze. The phone rang and she picked it up. “Pletnikoff Investigations.” Her voice was low and pleasant. “One moment please.” She waited for a reply and pressed the Hold button. She looked at Kate.
“Kate Shugak,” Kate said. “I called ahead.”
The receptionist, who according to the brass nameplate on her desk went by the name of Agrifina Fancyboy, pressed another button and murmured into the phone. She waited for a response.
The single door in the wall to her right opened and a firm step was heard. “Kate!” Kurt walked forward and enveloped Kate in a bear hug that raised her right off her feet.
“Oof,” Kate said. “Lemme go, I can’t breathe.”
He laughed and dumped her back on the floor, beaming down at her as if she was the best thing he’d seen in a month of Sundays.
“You look great,” they both said at the same time, and they both laughed.
“Hold my calls,” Kurt told Agrifina, and led Kate into the inner sanctum.
This room was three times the size of the outer office and decorated in the same colors, with some brass and glass thrown in. It was a corner office with dovetailed windows looking north and west, before which Kurt’s desk sat with two visitor chairs arranged in front of it. In another corner was a couch and two armchairs around a coffee table, and in a third corner was, if Kate’s eyes did not deceive her, a wet bar.
She blinked. “Just tell me we’ve still got some money left in the operating account.”
He grinned and flopped down on the couch, pointing to one of the chairs. On the table was a faux silver (hell, it might even be sterling) tray with two glasses of cracked ice and a large bottle of Diet 7UP. “Something to drink?”
“Sure.” Kate sat down and watched him open the bottle and fill up the glasses.
Their first significant encounter had been in a cabin in the Park. He’d had a hatchet on his side, she’d had quick and tricky on hers. Their next encounter, in Anchorage this time, had encouraged her to believe that he might not be the loser she’d thought, and had led her to start him down the road toward becoming a private investigator. Later on, she’d helped bankroll his first office, which she recalled being in the corner of a shabby strip mall in Spenard.
Attired in a black suit that did not look off the rack, a white button-down shirt with a dark blue silk tie, and black leather shoes gleaming with polish, he looked as if he’d been decorated with the same fine hand as the office and the receptionist sitting out front.
But that was only on the surface. It was what was beneath that surface that she found most interesting, and gratifying. Where before there had been a subdued despair, now there was a quiet confidence. He was going to be okay. Who’d have thought Kurt Pletnikoff, Park rat, poacher, and all-purpose super-duper utility screwup, would have a happy ending?
He handed her a glass and caught her looking at him. “You look good,” she said again.
“Thanks,” he said, and the fact that he didn’t try to aw shucks it off told her that Kurt had come to a certain sense of his own worth. It was good to see.
“When did you move into the new office?”
“Remember I told you about that case last year?”
“The banker?”
“Yeah.”
“A moneymaker, was it?”
He held up one hand and rubbed finger and thumb together. “Turns out I’m a natural-born peeper.”
“Private investigator,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I found most of the embezzled funds and we got a percentage. I got a lot of referrals after that, too, and I
could see on the expression of clients’ faces that it was time to trade up.”
She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Agrifina?”
“Found her at Bean’s.”
“She was on the street?”
He nodded. “Fresh in from Chuathbaluk, on the run from a home life she won’t talk about.” Their eyes met. “I could relate, and she seemed clean.”
“She sure does.”
He grinned again. “Yeah, she’s seen a lot of Lauren Bacall movies.” He hesitated. “I gave her a clothing allowance.”
“So? I gave you one, too, if you remember.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to all the richest murder suspects walking in your door.”
“Hear, hear.” They drank and he put his glass down. “What can I do for you, Kate?”
“How are you with industrial espionage?”
“You’re kidding.” He leaned forward. “Tell me.”
She told him the whole story, leaving nothing out. At the end, she handed him the phone number Allen had listed, the three Social Security numbers, and her cell phone number. “I need anything you can get me and I need it fast. I’m especially interested in anything you can dig up on Allen. Gammons, yeah, but not as urgent.”
“How fast?”
“End of the day if possible, tomorrow if not. My phone doesn’t work in the Park.”
He grimaced. “I can call in a few favors.”
She drained her glass and got to her feet. “Please do. And you’ll be billing me at the usual rates.” He was about to protest and she said, “I’m working for Jim.”
“Oh well, that’s different, then,” he said.
They shook hands, and she left with the warm feeling that here at least was a quarterly shareholder dividend being put to good use.

• • •

From Pletnikoff Investigations it was only an elevator ride and a block’s walk to the offices of the district attorney. Ten minutes later she was having the stuffing hugged out of her for the second time that day by Brendan McCord, a large, untidy man with a mop of red hair and a tie that invariably announced what he’d had for breakfast. Again she told her story, and asked him to run what little she had on Gammons and Allen through every database he had access to. They hadn’t called her “Two-source Shugak” for nothing back in the day.
“Okay,” Brendan said, “but only because I’ve been trying to seduce you for eight years and this might get me to first base.”
“In your dreams,” she said. “Besides, you owe me.”
“For what?” he said in mock outrage.
“For serving paper on the Smiths last year,” she said, ignoring for the purposes of the current conversation that she’d been well paid for the task.
“I thought you did that because you were secretly in love with me and wanted to bend me to your purpose,” he said, hurt.
Kate left with a grin on her face.
The next stop required the Subaru and a lot more self-control.
The house was in a quietly affluent cul-de-sac off 100th Avenue in south Anchorage, with a finely tuned yard back and front. Axenia answered the door, baby on her hip, and after a startled moment invited Kate inside with a politeness designed to freeze the marrow in Kate’s bones. It failed of effect because it was nothing more than she had expected.
Kate and her cousin Axenia had been stuck in a cold war for years. Kate, the elder, had been the one tasked by Emaa to look out for Axenia all through school. The plan—Emaa’s plan—had been for Axenia to follow Kate to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, there to study some discipline that she could bring back to the Park, to better
serve her tribe. That had been the big idea for Kate as well, but Kate had moved to Anchorage instead and gone to work as an investigator for the Anchorage district attorney. Axenia had never gone to college, instead remaining home to run through a series of boyfriends, each of whom she hoped would get her out of the Park and each one of whom proved less worthwhile than the last.
The case that had brought Kate out of retirement on her homestead, following five and a half harrowing years working sex crimes in Anchorage, had concerned the disappearance of Axenia’s most recent boyfriend, one of Dan’s rangers and Axenia’s best prospect to date. When the case ended, Kate went behind their grandmother’s back and got Axenia a job in Anchorage. Anchorage could be a large, lonely place to someone raised in the Bush, but Kate called in a lot of favors and saw to it that Axenia landed in a preselected social circle.
It turned out that Axenia, in spite of an impassioned plea that Kate help her get out of Dodge, was less than grateful for this masterful orchestration of her life. She became even less grateful as time went on. Raised in the shadow of her legendary cousin, she had always been a little jealous of Kate’s seniority and of her status within the tribe. Free from the Park’s parochial vigilance for the first time in her life, Axenia had struck out on her own.
Kate followed her cousin into the kitchen, perched on the proffered stool, and accepted the cup of coffee and the plate of assorted cookies Axenia was honor bound to offer. One thing about Bush hospitality, if you were raised in it it stuck even after you moved to the big city. Kate ate, drank, and attacked. “I wanted to talk to you about the mine,” she said, pushing away her cup. “The board is—”
“Actually,” Axenia said with a thin smile, “I wanted to talk to you about the mine, too. Mathisen, Dischner has been retained by Global Harvest.”
Axenia was married to an Alaskan lawyer and lobbyist named
Lou Mathisen. Lou and Kate didn’t get along for many reasons, not least of which was her conviction that he’d married Axenia because he was white and she was Alaska Native. There had been a lot of that going around Alaska ever since ANCSA, Natives suddenly becoming desirable mates to whites who wanted a share of the money, the land, and the political influence the act had granted them.
“Oh,” she said, thrown off stride. “I didn’t know.”
“Lou says Global Harvest thinks you’re in their pocket. One hundred percent pro-mine. Don’t have to worry about the chair of the Niniltna Native Association board of directors, boys, she’s got her hand out just like the rest of them.”
Kate set her teeth and said nothing.
Determined to provoke a response, Axenia said, “You might not have won if people had known all that before the election in January.”
The baby was sucking on its fist and the toddler was drowsing in a playpen in a corner of the large, expensively furnished kitchen, so Kate didn’t do what she wanted to do, which was reach across the counter and separate her cousin’s head from its body. “Axenia,” she said, keeping her voice calm, “you know it’s not anything I ever wanted.”
Axenia snorted her disbelief and hitched up her baby. “What did you come here for, anyway? I have to put the baby down for a nap, and then I’ve got some errands.”
Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry. “I was hoping to talk you into organizing the NNA shareholders who live in town.”
“Organize them to do what? Support your moves on the board?”
“Nothing like that,” Kate said. She took a breath and moderated her tone. “Start a regular shareholder meeting here.”
“In Anchorage?”
“Yes. I—We were thinking you could maybe have monthly or even weekly meetings, the people getting together to say hi and exchange
news and introduce the grandbabies. The aunties could come in and teach a quilting class. You could get somebody else in to teach beading or basket weaving. Ask Ossie to teach dance classes. People could bring food. I—we could get Park rats to send in meat and fish. It doesn’t have to be political, Axenia, it could just be about family, visiting, keeping in touch.”
“And where would this meeting take place? A lot of NNA shareholders I wouldn’t have in my house.” Her expression indicated present company not excepted.
One of the great things about a tribe was that it was all about family, Kate thought. And one of the worst things about a tribe was that it was all about family. There was no bloodier warfare than brother against brother. Or cousin against cousin. “I managed to talk a few bucks out of the board. It’d be enough to rent the Alaska Native Heritage Center once a month for six months.”
“And what would we do at these meetings?”
“It would be your show.” Kate shrugged. “They’ve got a theater, you could even watch movies if you want.”
Axenia examined this proposal with suspicion bordering on scorn. “Why? What’s in it for you?”
“Over a third of NNA shareholders live in Anchorage, Axenia. Half or more of them never make it back to the Park for the annual shareholder meetings. I—The board feels like the Anchorage shareholders have been orphaned. This is a way to, I don’t know, bring them back into the family, I guess.” Maybe not such a desirable objective, Kate was thinking now. “Auntie Joy thinks we should send a board member into town to attend, so they can answer questions and hear about problems.”
“What do you get out of it?”
Kate looked at Axenia. If she stayed, Axenia would just keep asking that question over and over again. “Think about it, Axenia,” she said, sliding to the floor. “If it sounds like something you’d like to do,
let Annie know and she’ll get you contact information for the Anchorage people.”
“Or maybe I’ll just run for the board myself,” Axenia said, her voice rising as Kate walked away. “Maybe I’ll run for president!”
“Feel free,” Kate said. “Thanks for the coffee and cookies, and say hi to Lou. I’ll find my own way out.”
She was proud she didn’t slam the door.