Bad Blood (28 page)
Kate almost smiled. “So,” she said. “We’ve got three deaths. Best guess is, two were accidental, one deliberate. You figure Kenny for Tyler?”
“Course I killed him,” a voice said, and they looked up to see Kenny Halvorsen emerge out of the trees, the business end of a .30-30 pointed their way.
Jim unsnapped his weapon and pulled it out. “Put the rifle down, Kenny,” he said.
Bolt action,
Kate thought, looking at Kenny’s rifle.
Take some time to get off more than one shot.
Next to her, Mutt went up on all fours, a menacing snarl ripping out of her throat that could have been heard in Niniltna.
“He killed my brother,” Kenny said, his face congested with rage. “What’d you expect me to do?”
“Drop it, Kenny,” Jim said. “Drop it. Now!”
“Like you said, Kenny,” Kate said in a steady voice, hands up and palms out, “I didn’t kill Mitch.”
“No,” he said bitterly, “but you killed Pete.”
“What?” Jim said.
Kenny ignored him. “What the hell else were we supposed to do to support ourselves? We’re the poor relations in Kuskulana. It was what we knew how to do. Pete came from Outside, and when Dad died he took over. He showed us how to move the booze. It was the only thing we knew, the only way we could put food on the table. And then you.” He looked at her with bottomless hatred. “Did you think we didn’t know? Did you think we’d never pay our debt? Pete’s dead. Now Mitch is dead, too. I’m the only one left. And what the fuck does it matter?”
From a standing start at Kate’s side, Mutt went airborne, launching herself at him with teeth bared.
He shot her, more in reaction than with malice aforethought.
Jim fired at the same moment.
Kate saw Kenny’s left shoulder jerk back and red bloom below.
Mutt seemed to stop in midair, and then fell heavily to the ground.
Somebody screamed. After what seemed like forever, Kate realized it was her. She took a step forward, so slowly, as if she were waist-deep in one of the bogs they’d been caught in going up to Canyon Hot Springs, pushing her way through the water and mud toward Mutt, who seemed somehow to be receding into the distance.
Kenny’s rifle swung back toward her, and Kenny and Jim fired at the same moment a second time.
Kate felt as if she’d been punched hard in the chest. She looked down in surprise and saw a small dark hole, replaced by a rapidly spreading stain. The strength drained from her limbs as if someone had pulled a plug. She sat down hard on the seat of the four-wheeler.
Across the clearing, Kenny grunted and staggered back, nearly dropping his rifle, but not quite. The barrel began to rise again.
Behind her, Jim’s gun boomed a third time.
This time Kenny Halvorsen went down.
Kate blinked at him, her vision starting to blur.
A tiny songbird with a golden crest lit high up in the branches of a spruce tree, and sang a mournful three-note descant that echoed beyond the clearing, down the river, and off the peaks of the very Quilaks themselves.
Acknowledgments
Heartfelt thanks go to my editor, Kelley Ragland, whose comments made this a much better book. You would think that by now I wouldn’t need to be told to show, not tell. Yeah, you’d think that.
Thanks go to my friend Pati Crofut, whose travels around Alaska have provided me with so many great story ideas, including the entire plot for this novel.
My thanks to Der Plotmeister, who came through yet again with an all! new! and improved! method for murder. This guy really shouldn’t be allowed out without supervision.
And my thanks to Carl Marrs, for giving me a great, true line, without even knowing he was doing so. All writers are thieves, especially when you don’t know we’re robbing you.
Many of the minor crimes passingly referenced in my novels come straight from the trooper dispatch page on the Alaska Department of Public Safety Web site. It makes for very entertaining reading, although not as entertaining as Sergeant Jennifer Shockley’s Unalaska police blotter, which has also provided much grist for my crime fiction mill, not to mention Facebook posts.
A long time ago in an Alaskan village not that far away, I babysat for Darlene Kasheverof Crawford. Darlene had three kids and full-cast recordings of all of Shakespeare’s plays. I’d make Crystal, Kim, and Don go to bed early so I could listen to the plays. It is Darlene’s fault that the first place I went on my first trip to Europe was Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and saw there at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre my first Shakespearean production,
Romeo and Juliet,
starring Timothy Dalton as Romeo, no less.
I thought then and I think now that
Romeo and Juliet
is less about the lovers than it is about their families, and that their elopement could have been much better managed. Forgive me, Will.
ALSO BY DANA STABENOW
THE KATE SHUGAK SERIES
Restless in the Grave
Though Not Dead
A Night Too Dark
Whisper to the Blood
A Deeper Sleep
A Taint in the Blood
A Grave Denied
A Fine and Bitter Snow
The Singing of the Dead
Midnight Come AGain
Hunter’s Moon
Killing Ground
Breakup
Blood Will Tell
Play with Fire
A Cold-Blooded Business
Dead in the Water
A Fatal Thaw
A Cold Day for Murder
LIAM CAMPBELL SERIES
Better to Rest
Nothing Gold Can Stay
So Sure of Death
Fire and Ice
NOVELS AND ANTHOLOGIES
Prepared for Rage
Blindfold Game
Powers of Detection
Wild Crimes
Alaska Women Write
The Mysterious North
At the Scene of the Crime
Unusual Suspects
THE STAR SVENSDOTTER SERIES
Red Planet Sun
A Handful of Stars
Second Star
About the Author
DANA STABENOW
,
New York Times
bestseller and Edgar Award winner, is the author of nineteen previous Kate Shugak novels, four Liam Campbell mysteries, three science-fiction novels, and two thrillers. She was born, raised, and lives in Alaska, where she was awarded the Governor’s Award for the Humanities. Visit her online at
www.Stabenow.com
.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BAD BLOOD. Copyright © 2013 by Dana Stabenow. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.10010.
Jacket design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Jacket photograph by QT Luong/
terragalleria.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Stabenow, Dana.
Bad blood / Dana Stabenow.—First St. Martin’s Minotaur edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-312-55065-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-02239-4 (e-book)
1. Shugak, Kate (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women private investigators—Alaska—Fiction. 3. Revenge—Fiction. 4. Alaska—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.T1249B33 2013
813'.54—dc23
2012038380
eISBN 9781250022394
First Edition: February 2013