Bad Blood (22 page)

“I was on my own side of the river,” Kenny said.

“Anybody see you?”

Kenny smiled without humor. “Every man, woman, and child in Kuskulana.”

The hell of it was, every single man, woman, and child in Kuskulana would swear to exactly that if Jim asked them.

To Kate, Kenny said, “Déjà vu all over again, huh?”

“I had nothing to do with your brother’s death, Kenny,” Kate said.

“No, you’d done enough already,” Kenny said.

She said nothing.

“Hard not to notice, Kate,” he said, needling her, “that I’m the last Halvorsen standing. How long have I got?”

She stood up. So did Mutt. “Well, Kenny, that would depend on you, now. Wouldn’t it?”

His hands tightened on the handlebars. “Is that a threat?”

“Was yours?” she said. “Or was it just more of the same.” She made a fist with thumb and fingers and mimed jerking off.

Kenny flushed a dull red. “Someday you and me are gonna have a conversation, Shugak.”

“Yeah,” Kate said, “I can hardly wait.”

For a moment, Jim thought Kenny might put the ATV in gear and run Kate down. In the next, he gave a contemptuous laugh that sounded too close to tears for comfort, and put the four-wheeler into a 180 and headed down the track to the village at full throttle.

Jim thought about Kuskulanans and Christiansons and Halvorsens, and Kushtakans and Macks and Estes, all the way back to Niniltna.

Twenty

FRIDAY, JULY 13

Niniltna

In Niniltna, Kate waited until Jim took off and then went into the post office. Bonnie put up her eyebrows in exaggerated surprise. “Three times in one week,” she said. “Color me stunned.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kate said, and went to check her box and then Jim’s. Mixed in with the junk he had a personal letter, return address Medford, Oregon. She resisted the impulse—barely—to take a photo and text it to him. She didn’t want him to wreck the plane.

When she came out again, she saw Demetri Totemoff with the same bunch of guys across the airstrip at George’s. Curious, she watched from her pickup as he ushered them onto one of George’s town-bound Otters. When it took off he looked across and saw her, and walked across the strip. “Hey, Kate,” he said.

“Hey, Demetri.” She nodded at the Otter climbing into the sky. “Clients?”

He braced his hands on either edge of the driver’s-side window of her truck. “Not exactly.”

“Didn’t have the look,” Kate said. She nodded and he stepped back out of the way and she got out.

Demetri Totemoff was in his fifties, dark and stocky and fit. He was Kate’s second cousin a couple of times removed through one of the aunties, and they shared the high, flat cheekbones and the olive skin of the Alaskan Aleut. Her eyes were a changeable hazel, his a dark brown. They were both tanned a deep, golden brown from a life spent outdoors, and they both embraced taciturnity as a preferred mode of expression. “Something you want to tell me, Demetri?”

He looked at her, his expression as still as always. “I get the feeling I have,” he said.

“You’re funding Gaea,” she said.

There was silence for a few moments. He stared over her shoulder while she stared over his.

“When did you find out?”

She snorted. “It wasn’t all that hard. It probably took Kurt all of five minutes on his computer. If he didn’t hand it off to Agrifina Fancyboy as beneath his skill set.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. What I don’t understand is, why the big secret? The Roberts court says all you’re doing is exercising your right to free speech.”

“You aren’t pissed?” he said slowly, feeling his way.

She looked at him until he turned his head to meet her eyes. “When I am, you’ll know it.”

A little yellow and white aircraft appeared out of the southwest. They both watched in silence as it descended toward the far end of the runway.

“I don’t get it,” Demetri said. “I thought you were for the mine.”

“Tell me why you’re so against it,” she said.

“Those earthen dams they want to put in to contain the tailings?” he said. “If they fail, the toxic outflow will kill every fish in every stream around my lodge.”

“Will the dams fail?”

“One earthquake, Kate,” he said.

She nodded. They watched the little yellow and white plane touch down, bounce once, twice, then settle down onto the asphalt. Not as smooth a landing as the last one Anne had made with Kate watching.

“We can’t let it happen, Kate,” he said.

“Then you better start praying,” she said.

“For what?”

“For the price of gold to drop far and fast.”

He looked at her. “I don’t get it,” he repeated. “It’s not like you to take it up the ass just because there’s no other option.”

She smiled. “There are always other options, Demetri. They’re just not all good ones.”

The yellow and white plane kicked hard right rudder and buzzed onto their side of the strip.

Goaded, Demetri said, “I’ll tell you someone else who’s on the side of the angels, Kate, though you won’t believe it.”

“Who?” she said, indifferent.

“Erland Bannister.” Her head snapped around, and he gave a thin smile. “That’s right. Erland’s writing us big checks. Keep the wilderness the wilderness, he says.”

Later, Kate would date that moment as the beginning of her understanding of just how much Erland Bannister hated her. “But he’s a partner in Suulutaq.”

“I know.”

“Don’t you care that he has a foot in both camps?”

Demetri shrugged. “His checks clear the bank.”

The yellow and white plane shut down its engine and Anne Flanagan hopped out. “Kate!”

“Think about it, Kate,” Demetri said. “We shouldn’t be on opposite sides on this.” He nodded at Anne. “Reverend Flanagan.”

“Mr. Totemoff,” Anne said. Her face looked tight and drawn and she was making an obvious effort to be civil. “I hope I’ll see you at services next Wednesday.”

A faint smile creased Demetri’s face. “I hope so, too.” He nodded at her, looked at Kate, and walked away.

“Anne,” Kate said. She looked over Anne’s shoulder and noticed that Anne was carrying two passengers.

“I need to talk to you,” Anne said. “Someplace private.”

*   *   *

Kate drove them to the school, where she knew a back door that was always open, even in summer, and settled the three of them in the teachers’ lounge. “Okay,” she said, “what’s going on?”

“This is Jennifer Mack,” Anne said. “And Ryan Christianson.”

“Jennifer Christianson,” both young people said in unison.

“Oh,” Kate said.

“They’re eighteen, they had a license, they asked me to marry them when I went down to Kushtaka to officiate at the Tyler Mack service,” Anne said. Anne looked at Jennifer and Ryan. “Tell her.”

“All of it?” Ryan Christianson said.

Jennifer was a beautiful young woman, with long dark hair, a pure oval face, wide-spaced dark eyes, and a lovely, lissome figure. She would turn heads wherever she went, but it was also clear to Kate that her looks were not all or even most of what she had going for her. There was a fierce intelligence there, an indomitable self-possession, and an iron will.

“This is Kate Shugak,” Jennifer said, and there was no gainsaying the certainty in that rock steady voice. “We tell it all.”

They told it together, one picking up the story when the other stopped.

“You didn’t mean to do it,” Kate said at the end.

A vigorous shaking of heads, and real regret and sorrow on both faces. “No. It was an accident,” Jennifer said. “He surprised us just as we were about to get in the skiff. He grabbed me and he hit Ryan.”

A black eye and a split lip on Ryan’s face supported their story.

“He was dead when you left him?” Kate said.

Ryan’s face contorted. “Yes,” he said, his voice husky.

Not depraved indifference
, then, Kate thought.
Involuntary manslaughter at worst
.

Jennifer, too, was close to tears. “He thought he was in love with me, and he knew my father … but I wasn’t going to let him force me back there,” she said. “I won’t go back now.” She didn’t say it defiantly. It was a simple statement of fact.

“Where have you been?” Kate said.

Ryan looked at Jennifer. “We didn’t tell him anything.”

“We don’t want to get him in trouble,” Jennifer said.

“Finish the damn story,” Kate said.

Jennifer sighed, looking suddenly exhausted. Ryan put his arm around her and she leaned into his shoulder. He kissed her head and rested his cheek on her hair.. “The plan originally was that we would take the river up to Ahtna and take the bus to Anchorage and on down to the Kenai Peninsula. I’ve got a job waiting for me in Kasilof. We figured it would be a good place to hide out while the folks got over our getting married. And then—” He swallowed. Eighteen-year-olds were by definition immortal. It was difficult for them even to say the D-word in any kind of real-world context. “After Rick surprised us on the beach and it happened, we knew they’d be looking for us right away. At first we didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t go upriver, because we’ve both got too many nosy aunties in Niniltna and Ahtna. Same if we went downriver, because both our families and all our friends are fishing on Alaganik Bay. And then I remembered Scott Ukatish.”

“Potlatch?” Kate said. “Why Potlatch?”

“He’s sort of a relative,” Ryan said. “I’ve stayed with him a couple of times before. I heard Bobby talking about him on Park Air, how Scott was dragging up, and I figured he’d be busy enough that he wouldn’t be too worried about us. There would be a lot of coming and going to look at what he had for sale, and maybe we could bum a ride with somebody who couldn’t care less about Kushtaka or Kuskulana.” He looked down at the dark head on his shoulder. “When we got there, Jennifer saw that he had an airstrip, and got the idea to call Reverend Flanagan on Scott’s shortwave.”

“I flew up from Cordova and picked them up,” Anne said. “They couldn’t think of what to do next, so I suggested we talk to you. And here we are.”

“If it was an accident, why didn’t you stay and explain?” Kate said. Although she was depressingly aware she already knew the answer.

Ryan met her eyes straight on. There was nothing shifty about this young man. “It was an accident.”

“So you said.”

“We didn’t stay, because there would have been no explaining,” Jennifer said, looking up. “After Rick—after he—we were so scared, we just piled into the skiff and headed downriver as fast as we could go.” She looked back at Kate. “If we’d gone to them, if we’d tried to explain, they wouldn’t have listened. They would have torn Ryan to pieces on the spot.”

“And they would have hurt Jennifer, too,” Ryan said, his eyes bright. “Maybe not as bad as me, but…”

Kate looked at Anne, whose shoulders raised in a slight shrug. “I asked the same question. They gave the same answer. I don’t have as much time served in the Park as you do, but from what I’ve seen so far, my guess is that Ryan now has the half-life of a gastrotrich if he’s not out of the Park as in yesterday.”

Kate got up and walked to the window. The view was a parking lot with a row of recycling Dumpsters. Behind them rose the cell phone tower, bristling with antennas and satellite dishes. Behind the tower the Quilaks rose from rolling green foothills to buttes with flattops leveled by glaciers to an impenetrable wall of jagged, blue white peaks.

Although not quite impenetrable, she thought.

If Kate turned Jennifer and Ryan over to Jim, Rick Estes’s death would be squared away and off the books. She was certain that Jim wouldn’t even file charges, but if he had to and it got as far as trial, she knew to a moral certainty that Judge Bobbie Singh at the district court in Ahtna would never allow either one of these children to see the inside of a prison.

Jennifer and Ryan—and Anne—were right. Every extra moment they remained in the Park was hazardous to Ryan’s health, and very probably to Jennifer’s as well. It would, she realized with a sinking feeling, be even more hazardous to the health of the Park.

The advantages of being a Park rat were many. You knew your neighbor and your neighbor knew you. In the worst winter, there was help there for you when you needed it.

The disadvantages of being a Park rat were also many.

You knew your neighbor.

Your neighbor knew you.

The Suulutaq Mine was divisive enough, pitting parent against child, brother against sister, community against community. If the tensions between Kushtaka and Kuskulana were allowed to exacerbate an already incendiary situation, there was no telling where it would stop. Kushtakans and Kuskulaners were so far off the grid, they were used to doing and making for themselves. The law was at minimum half an hour away by plane, and if the weather socked in, it could be days before there was any kind of incident response.

The Kushtakers would not rest until Rick Estes was avenged. If they exacted that vengeance on the person of Ryan Christianson, the Kuskulanans would retaliate. Kate had a very real nightmare vision of landing in Kuskulana to find dead bodies littering the streets. This thing had already precipitated two murders and an involuntary manslaughter. Kate could not allow it to escalate to include collateral damage.

Okay, turning them over to Jim was out. However angry it made him, and she was sure he was going to be very pissed off.

But there was no possible way to guarantee either Ryan or even Jennifer’s safety if they remained in the Park. Going home was not an option for either of them.

Putting them on a plane to Anchorage and getting them out of the state. Could that be done before the Kushtaka and Kuskulana jihadists found them? Like every other village, Kushtaka and Kuskulana had as many relatives living in town as they did at home, more probably.

Driving them out. There was one road out of the Park, and one road at Ahtna going one of two directions, south to Anchorage or north to Tok.

Again, Anchorage was not an option. She turned her head to look at the young couple. “What kind of identification are you carrying?”

They both had driver’s licenses. No passports. Which meant, with the new 9/11-inspired border controls, they couldn’t get through the Beaver Creek border crossing. So trying to get them out through Tok wasn’t an option, either.