Any Taint of Vice: A Kate Shugak Story (Kate Shugak Novels)
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Authors: Dana Stabenow
Dana Stabenow
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The call came in on Kate’s cell phone too early on a Monday morning. She was up but not necessarily coherent. “What?”
“It’s Kurt Pletnikof, Kate.”
“Your name on the display was the only reason I answered,” she said. “What?”
“Victor Boatwright’s son is missing.”
Steam rose from her first mug of the day, stopped halfway to her mouth as she stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows on the south side of her house. The Quilak Mountains were as yet only a ghostly presence against the light of the rising sun.
“Kate?”
“Then find him,” she said. “It’s what you do.”
“I did just mention that to him,” he said. “The General says he wants you.”
She drove into Niniltna and hitched a ride into Anchorage on one of George’s Suulutaq Mine crew-change flights. Kurt was waiting for her when they landed at Merrill. An ex–Park rat, an ex–bear poacher and an ex–drug smuggler, Kurt was these days a private investigator. Set a thief to catch a thief, and Kate was pleased to be his financial backer and silent partner.
Though today, not so much. Tight-lipped, she nodded a greeting and held the rear passenger door open for Mutt before climbing in next to Kurt. The 140-pound sidekick thrust her head between them as they turned left on East Fifth, yellow eyes taking the measure of the big town with the tall buildings and the many cars. Fewer bears than the Park, but the larger per capita percentage of perps and felons filled in the predator gap.
They turned south on the Seward Highway and east up into the Chugach Mountains, to a community of McMansions on broad, curving driveways lined with neatly groomed paper birches of precisely the same age. On a clear day, the view would go all the way to Iliamna. Today the clouds were thick and low and dark.
The General’s aide, Oscar Square, answered the door with a cold eye and a cool greeting, but then he and Kate had met before. He twitched not an eyebrow at the half-wolf, half-husky at Kate’s side, only stepped back to open the door wide enough to let all three of them inside, and led them to the General’s study. It was a poor imitation of Henry Higgins’s library—dark oak and brown leather sitting on an expensive imitation Anatolian carpet in deep red and dull gold. Heavy curtains at the tall windows were restrained with gilt ropes, and a silver coffee set sat on a low table between a matching couch and chair.
The General occupied the entire room from a bloodred wingback chair. Tall, spare, he had piercing blue eyes, a blade of a nose, and a thin mouth held in a permanently displeased line supported by a prominent, clean-shaven chin. His thinning gray hair was worn in a brush cut, and there was a distinctly martial note about the knife crease in his jeans. “Thank you, Oscar,” he said, thin lips stretching into a smile that everyone present understood was just for show.
Square nodded and vanished. He was still the perfect gofer, Kate thought, and turned her head to see the General looking at her. “Ms. Shugak,” he said.
“General,” she said.
Kurt and Mutt maintained a prudent silence. This was a fight for the big dogs.
“Mr. Pletnikof will have told you that my son is missing,” the General said.
“Yes.”
“I found these in his bedroom.” The General produced a manila envelope and handed it across the table. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the silver coffeepot. There was only one cup. He sat back and sipped while Kate opened the envelope and extracted the contents.
They were in living color, with digital time stamps in the lower left-hand corners. The camera lens had been mounted high in a corner of a small room containing a massage bed. On the bed was Cal Boatwright, the General’s son, and a woman unknown to her engaged in an act that was illegal in most Southern states.
Cal hadn’t aged well. Kate noted a receding hairline, an incipient beer belly, love handles, and the beginnings of jowls. The woman was about his and Kate’s age but in much better shape, a redhead with a well-developed musculature and an obviously outstanding flexibility.
She handed the photographs to Kurt, ignoring the General’s frown. “Who is the woman?”
The General’s jaw tightened. “Andrea Gohegan,” he said. “She owns and operates a—business.” He paused, and added distastefully, “In Spenard.”
Spenard was an Anchorage neighborhood close to the airport. Gentrification had made a dent on Spenard Road proper, which was brave in new hotel construction and landscaping. The back streets remained the go-to place for a hit of cocaine or a blow job. Convenient for anyone fresh off a plane—hunter, fisherman, Slope worker, or tourist.
Or useless parasite with more money than sense and a father who could be counted on to bail him out of any trouble he managed to stumble into. “A massage parlor,” Kate said.
The General nodded. His delicate sensibilities were outraged at having to yield even that much.
“Did she send you the pictures?”
“She did.”
“With a demand?”
“She wants a hundred thousand dollars or I’ll never see my son again.”
Any reason you would want to?
Kate thought but didn’t say. “May I see the note?”
“I burned it.” As if he heard her silent question, he said, “I kept the photographs so that you would know what you were looking for.”
“What do you want done, General?” she said.
“Find the photographic files and destroy them before she posts them to her Facebook page. Find my son and bring him home.”
In that order?
Kate thought, but again did not say. The General’s priorities were obvious.
Oscar Square materialized at the door. The General nodded in his direction. “Oscar has the particulars, and your check.”
In the hall, Square handed her a second manila envelope. She opened it and found a printed page with Gohegan’s full name, Alaska driver’s license, social security number, birthdate, and home and business addresses. There was also a check. She handed it to Kurt, as she watched Square. “You haven’t changed much, Oscar.”
He inclined his head the merest fraction of an inch. “Nor have you, Ms. Shugak.”
Her smile could have cut a throat. “Best if we both remember that.”
Another infinitesimal bow of the head. “You know your way out.”
A second later a door off the hallway closed behind him. As if on cue, another opened, and a taller, thinner, younger version of the General walked into the hall. “Hello,” he said. “And you are?”
“We had an appointment with your father,” Kate said. “We were just leaving.”
He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, inspecting them with a speculative gaze. “Is that a wolf?”
“Only half,” Kate said.
His eyes were as blue as his father’s but not so piercing, and his clothes were more Gap than G.I. Joe. “Why’d the old man want to see you? Was it about Rose?”
“Who’s Rose?” Kate said.
“My wife,” he said, and came forward, hand outstretched. “I’m Vic Boatright, the General’s son.”
“Kate Shugak,” Kate said.
He held on to Kate’s hand, looking down at her, ignoring Kurt and Mutt. “Did the old man hire you to find Rose?”
“She’s missing?” Kate said.
Too?
she thought.
“For three weeks.”
“You’re not in much of a hurry to find her,” Kate said.
He shrugged. “She isn’t much of a wife.”
Oscar Square rematerialized. “This way, Ms. Shugak,” he said.
Square must be slipping. She’d been talking to the General’s older son for a whole two minutes.
She was conscious of Vic Boatright’s eyes on her all the way out the door.
“How do you know Boatwright?” Kurt said.
They were sitting in Kurt’s stakeout car, a dirty, nondescript beige sedan, parking lot dings in all four doors and a smashed-in trunk tied shut with a length of clothesline. They fit right into the neighborhood, the wrong end of Jefferson in Spenard. The house they were watching was kitty-corner from their vantage point, an old two-story clapboard building held upright with crossed fingers and a new coat of paint. The front yard was a paved lot with eight marked spaces. Blackout shades covered all the windows, with very little light leaking through. Traffic in and out was steady but decorous, no revving of engines, no squealing of tires. The sign on the wall, small and discreetly lit, read
THE RIGHT TOUCH MASSAGE
.
A gentle snore came from the backseat, where Mutt had discovered the advantages of a comfortable back seat all to herself. Kate stuck her nose in the cup of coffee Kurt had just handed her and inhaled deeply. “Thanks,” she said, and took a long, luxurious swallow.
“We deliver,” he said.
“You don’t have to stay.”
“A couple minutes,” he said. “I can take over if you’re tired.”
“I am tired, but no thanks.”
“So, the General,” he said, and waited, creating a silence that must be filled. She admired his technique.
“He was the president of the University of Alaska–Fairbanks when I was a student there,” she said. “So was Cal.”
“Not Vic?”
“He must have been out by then,” she said. “Never met him.”
“What happened?”
“I was studying late one night in the library. Somebody screamed. I went looking for who, and found Cal Boatwright trying to rape a freshman.”
Kurt whistled beneath his breath.
“Pretty ineptly, I might add, but she looked like she could use a little help, so I helped her. And then I helped him to his feet and up the hill to his father’s house.”
“You recognized him, then?”
“Oh yeah, everybody knew Cal. The stories were legion, especially among the women undergraduates. He might have pioneered the use of Rohypnol at UAF.”
“Charming.”
“As in prince,” Kate said, and drank more coffee. She glanced at the clock in the dashboard. Almost 3 A.M. Evidently Gohegan believed in working shoulder to shoulder with her employees right through the night shift.
“I take it the General wasn’t pleased?”
“No.”
“With Cal for the attempted rape? Or with Cal for getting caught?”
“I’d say more with me for catching him,” Kate said.
But he tapped you for this job,
Kurt thought, and kept his inevitable reflections to himself. “That the only time you and the General, ah, met?”
Kate turned her head. “Your interrogation skills need work..”
Kurt refused to be intimidated. “You seemed a little more familiar with each other than one meeting—what, fifteen, sixteen years ago?—would indicate.”
She faced forward again. He waited hopefully, but confidences had ended for the evening. He drained his cup. “Sure you don’t want me to take over?”
Kate flapped a hand. “Get outta here.”
“Getting,” Kurt said. The door closed soundlessly behind him and he cast only the merest shadow down the street and around the corner.
Another car pulled into the only vacant space in front of The Right Touch Massage. Kate slouched down in her seat and drank coffee.
It was coming on five o’clock, the dawn delayed by the cloud cover and a light drizzle, when the white Subaru Forester registered to Andrea M. Gohegan pulled out of the driveway that led around the back of the house and turned left. Kate waited until it was a block down before pulling out into the street behind, lights off until they both turned right on Spenard. Gohegan turned right again on Minnesota. Traffic was light and Kate kept her distance. Gohegan got off on 100th and turned on Maritime, following it about halfway around before pulling into the driveway of a split-level home, much newer than her office premises, painted gray with white trim and a meticulously groomed yard. Very suburban. Kate’s determinedly upwardly mobile cousin Axenia lived on Compass Circle. She grinned at the thought of Axenia’s reaction to living a street away from the madam of a flourishing brothel.
She waited half an hour, but it looked like Gohegan was in for the night. She was about to start the car when a dark blue Mercedes SUV barreled unsteadily up the street and nearly sideswiped Kate’s car before pulling into Gohegan’s driveway. The streetlights were few and far between and appropriately dim for such an upscale neighborhood, but Kate caught a glimpse of Cal Boatwright in the dome light when he opened the door of the SUV. He let himself into Gohegan’s house with his own key. Well, well.
She settled back into her seat and watched as lights went on and off inside the house, from the front door to what might have been the kitchen and up the stairs to the second floor. The drapes were too thick to see through, but there was the appearance of motion behind the windows on the left.
Twenty minutes passed, and again, Kate was thinking about hitting the barn when behind her Mutt woke from a sound sleep to full attention on all four feet. Shots fired—one, two, three, was it four or was the last shot only an echo?
Heart thudding against her breastbone, Kate reached for the door handle, and then hesitated when someone banged out the front door of Gohegan’s house and sprinted down the sidewalk to another driveway and a sedan as nondescript as the one she was sitting in, a car able to blend into the other cars parked on the sides of the street, a car designed not to attract her attention, and it hadn’t. A man, by the way he moved, medium height and weight, dark hair or wearing a dark knit hat. The dome light on the sedan was either burned out or turned off because it didn’t light up when he pulled open the door, and he was in and the car started and moving down the street before she saw that the plate light was out, too.
She could follow the car or check the house. She was getting paid to find Cal, so she opted for the house. Lights were just starting to come on in the neighbors’ homes, and if she wanted a first look before the APD started responding to the multiple 911 calls going in, she had to move fast. “Come on,” she said to Mutt. She left the doors to the car unlatched and soft-footed up Gohegan’s driveway to the front door. It was open. “Guard,” she told Mutt, and slipped inside.
Her eyes were already adjusted to the dark, and she found the stairs and took them quickly and quietly. A light was on behind the last door down the hallway. Peeking in, she saw Gohegan stretched across a bed the size of Lake Iliamna. The white silk comforter beneath her was rapidly turning a dark red that almost matched the madam’s hair. Her eyes were staring sightlessly at the ceiling, pupils fixed and dilated. Checking, Kate saw she wasn’t breathing and could find no pulse.
Something bright caught the corner of Kate’s eye. Shell casing, .38. She spotted three others. Matched the number of holes in Gohegan’s chest. She left them where they were.
There was no sign of a weapon, but there was a moan from the corner of the room. She turned and saw Cal Boatwright limp on a raw silk chaise longue. His pupils were dilated but he was breathing. She shook his shoulder. “Cal. Cal! Wake up!”
His head rolled to look at her. “Hey, Rose.” He giggled and tried to grab her.
She slapped his hands to one side, and only then saw the mirror on the elegant writing desk next to the chaise longue, complete with remnants of lines of white powder, straw, and razor blade.
A laptop sat next to the mirror. She’d been in the house two minutes. She opened it, and the desktop lighted up. No password. Careless. There was a folder marked “Files.” She clicked on it, scanned the titles of the documents, clicked on a few, and then clicked out again. She opened the broswer, accessed her Gmail account and attached the folder to an e-mail addressed to herself, and clicked send. She exited Gmail, deleted the activity from “History” for all the good that would do, moved the “Files” folder to the trash can and emptied it for what that was worth, and closed the laptop again.
Five minutes. Time to go. She grabbed Cal’s hands and smelled them, one at a time. He woke up enough to say, “Ooooh, kinky, I like that,” before passing out again.
“On your feet, Cal.”
“Doan wanna,” he mumbled, fending her off.
She grabbed his arm and rotated it around on its elbow, bending it up behind his back. He shot upright, all the way to his toes, protesting. “Shut up, Cal.” She muscled him down the stairs and out of the house and into the car. The reliable engine started at a touch, and she put it in gear and pulled sedately away from the curb, lights off. Left on Southport, right on 100th, lights on, and as the four-way stop receded in the rearview, a blue-and-white came rapidly in the opposite direction. She saw a second blow through the stop sign in the other direction before she turned on the access road for Minnesota. When South Anchorage called 911, APD responded.
She drove directly to the General’s house, where Vic Boatwright answered the door, fresh out of bed and attractively rumpled. He looked at Cal and said, “Oh, crap.”
They got him inside and on a couch, where he passed out. Vic watched the drool slide down his brother’s cheek and looked up at Kate. “Maybe it’s time you told me what the hell is going on.”
“No time,” Kate said. “Tell the General I’ll call later.”
She drove back to Gohegan’s house, parking some distance away. Broken clouds moved swiftly across the face of a sun just now rising over the edge of the Chugach Mountains. Kate rummaged in the trunk of the car, where Kurt kept a stash of props useful to a private investigator, and came up with a red paisley bandanna and a length of polypro. She knotted her T-shirt beneath her breasts and left her jacket in the car. Five minutes later she was jogging down Maritime Loop behind Mutt, who now wore a bandanna collar attached to a polypro leash. They came up on Gohegan’s house, in front of which stood two blue-and-whites, two uniformed officers out of their cars taking statements from pajama-clad neighbors.
Kate slowed her pace long enough to assure herself she knew neither officer and went trotting up to a man wearing an Aces sweatshirt over polka-dotted flannel pants held up by a drawstring. “Gosh,” she said, wide-eyed, “what’s all this?”
He looked at her and she threw in a glance admiring of his physique. It wasn’t difficult. He smiled back at her, eyes lingering on her bare midriff. “There was a shooting,” he said, sounding proprietary, as if living on the block gave him ownership of the event.
“Wow!” Kate said, “really!” and drew a little closer to him, as if for protection, and also to hang on his every word.
He preened, and then was momentarily sidetracked by the sight of Mutt. “That’s a beautiful dog.”
“Isn’t she?” Kate said with a fond look. “Say hello to the nice man, Maggie.”
Mutt’s sideways glance gave Kate to understand that she’d pay for the alias, and soon, but she lavished a warm welcome on Polka Dots. Kate waited for the full effect to set in before she nudged him along. “A shooting, you said?”
“Yes,” Polka Dots said, “but—” He gave the police officers a covert look. “—it was evidently a false alarm. Nobody’s home, and they haven’t found a body.”
“What?” Kate saw his eyebrows go up at her sharp tone and gave out with a breathless giggle. “Maybe it was just kids playing with firecrackers.”
“Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “I know gunshots when I hear them.”
“Well,” Kate said, making a show of consulting a nonexistent watch, “I’d better be getting on.” She made play with her eyelashes. “See you round the neighborhood.”
“Wait, what’s your name?” he said.
She waved without replying, moving into a smooth jog as she rounded the corner. They got back to the car and disrobed themselves of their various costumery. The drive home was given to speculation.
Where was Gohegan’s body? Who had moved it, and why? Not to mention the comforter and the mattress, stained with Gohegan’s blood? And how had that been managed in the time between Kate leaving the scene with Cal and the police arriving?
And who had shot Gohegan in the first place? And why?