Bad Blood (3 page)

He saw them at their landing on the other side or driving by in a skiff from time to time. Sometimes they waved. Sometimes he waved back. Sometimes he even said hi. The longtime rivalry and resentment between the two villages was a lot of damn foolishness anyway, although he’d never be able to convince his nephew, Dale, of that. Or any of the other Kushtaka men, for that matter, young or old.

Sometimes Pat Mack thought of moving out of Kushtaka himself, by god, to Niniltna, maybe, or Ahtna, or all the way Outside. The Macks had family, albeit distant, in rural Oregon. Probably didn’t snow as much there, and if there were family feuds, well, he didn’t have to opt in to them. In the Park, birth, community, and history forced him down on the Kushtaka side of the fence whether it was the right side or not.

He stamped over to the fish wheel and looked into the holding pen. Still some fish in it, although not many. And where was that useless little fucker, Tyler? Nowhere to be found, as usual.

Muttering curses, Pat pulled on hip waders, sleeve protectors, and rubber gloves and waded in. The current wasn’t as swift near the bank as it was center stream, but it had rained hard last week and the water was running high and dirty, so that he couldn’t see beneath the surface. It was plenty fast enough to pull at his legs, which were not so young or so reliable beneath him as they used to be, and it was cold enough to instantly chill his flesh through multiple layers of protection. He took a minute to get and keep his balance, leaned against the current, and bent to run his hand along the curved edge of the wheel.

Two of the baskets were submerged, one partially, the other entirely. The partially submerged basket was clear of debris, although an eight-pound red that would have looked a lot better in the tote swam out and away as he was feeling around. The second basket was wedged firm.

“What the hell?”

There was something long and rigid thrust through the basket and into the riverbed, a branch or something. Probably a limb broken off a scrag. Although it felt awful solid and inflexible. It sure was stuck, good and hard. The current must have brought it downriver at a fast enough lick that it had somehow jammed itself through the open mesh of the basket and become wedged into the river bottom, bringing the entire fish wheel to a halt.

He heard the sound of an outboard engine and looked up to see a Kuskulaner idling by in his skiff, watching him with a curious look on his face. He looked back down and wrapped his hands around the branch and tugged. It didn’t move. He wasn’t altogether sure he had enough upper-body strength left to make it move, but Pat Mack never lacked for stubborn. He set his jaw, squared his shoulders, dug his heels more surely into the gravel, and tugged harder.

It came free with a whoosh of water. He dropped it and staggered back up the beach, sitting down hard half in and half out of the water, looking at what was in his hand. “How the hell—?”

The current pulled at the wheel. The freed basket scraped across the gravel, still not moving normally.

“Well, shit,” Pat said, and pulled himself to his feet.

And then stood there, openmouthed, as the basket lifted free of the water to reveal the body of Tyler Mack crumbled inside it.

Three

TUESDAY, JULY 10, LATE EVENING

Kushtaka

The old man was sitting in his skiff, his back to the fish wheel, puffing methodically through a pack of unfiltered Camels.

Jim picked up his evidence kit in one hand and used his other to vault over the side of Roger Christianson’s skiff. His boots crunched when they landed in the gavel.

“Pat,” he said.

“Got here quicker’n I thought,” the old man said, lighting another Camel off the end of the last one.

“Chuck’s call caught me at the post,” Jim said.

The old man drew in hard on his cigarette. “That’d be Chuck Christianson, going by in his skiff? Yeah, I saw he had his cell phone out.”

Chuck had, in fact, snapped a picture of Tyler Mack in the basket of the fish wheel and texted it to Jim, but Jim thought it tactless to mention that. “Anyway,” he said, “I went straight up the hill, fired up the Cessna and flew to Kuskulana. Roger here was waiting on the strip. He brought me over.”

The old man puffed out a cloud of smoke and peered through it. “Appreciate it, Roger.”

Roger Christianson, staring with a sort of sick fascination at the body suspended in the fish wheel bucket above the swift-moving river, made a visible effort to pull himself together and said, “Glad I could be of help, Pat.” And then, as if the words were wrenched out of him, “I’m sorry as hell about this.”

“Yeah,” Pat said.

Which exchange sort of surprised Jim, because until that moment, he would have taken bets on neither man knowing the other’s name, let alone admitting to it out loud.

The body was mostly inside the basket, knees bent, arms tucked in, sightless eyes wide open and staring at the water hurrying swiftly south below it. The basket rocked a little, the river’s current hitting the baskets still in the water. Jim spotted the line attached to the stump of a birch, holding the wheel steady against the push of the water.

Pat saw him looking. “Tied it off when I got here. Figured you’d want to see him as I found him.”

Jim nodded. Everybody knew about
CSI
, even Kushtakans.

Water dripped from the body, making tiny circles on the silver surface of the river that quickly disappeared downstream.

Still in his skiff, Roger swallowed audibly. “That’s really Tyler?” He was having the usual difficulty reconciling the sodden corpse with the living man.

The old man nodded, still without turning around. “That’s him. Useless little fucker.”

Shocked, Roger looked at Jim, who was making a bit of a production of getting out his iPhone and turning on the camera.

“Couldn’t never get him to come up here, and then when I finally threaten him into it, stupid bastard falls headfirst in and drowns.” Pat inhaled, his cigarette burning down to his fingers. He lit another from the butt and flicked the butt over the side. A boil of water nearby indicated momentary interest on the part of something large with fins. Involuntarily, Pat thought of his dip net, Roger thought of his rod and reel, and Jim thought of Kate and the smoker she’d built from an old refrigerator out back of the house.

“Roger,” Jim said, “could I ask you to stick around a little while longer? I’m going to take some photographs, and then I’m afraid I’m going to need some help getting Tyler out of that basket.”

Roger swallowed hard and tore his eyes away from the body. “Sure, Jim. Whatever you need.”

If he had cause to regret the offer, he didn’t say so, even as he stood shivering uncontrollably on the river’s edge. Like Jim, his hands were bruised and numb, and he was so cold, he thought he might break if he bumped against the side of his skiff one more time. There was no help from the sun, which by now was well behind the trees that lined the bank. Roger had spent his life manhandling gear into his gillnetter and salmon out of the gear, twelve- and twenty-four- and sometimes thirty-six-hour periods at a time, but none of it was any comparison to trying to get 130 pounds of previously healthy man out of a fish wheel bucket. It had taken a couple of tries, him on Pat’s belaying line and Jim maneuvering the bucket to get it to a level where they could reach it from the skiff, which they had tied off to the fish wheel frame, and doing all this with the river pushing against them the whole time. It wasn’t the steadiest platform from which to operate. Rigor had set in on the body, which made things even more awkward.

Pat didn’t offer to help, but he didn’t go anywhere, either. He sat in his skiff and watched them, his leathery, seamed face set, his eyes narrowed against the smoke from the Camels. A collection of ravens, crows, and magpies had gathered in the nearby treetops, not saying much, like Pat watchful, and waiting.

By the time they got Tyler’s body out of the basket, Roger’s skiff was nearly swamped and both Roger and Jim were soaking wet. They put the body on the beach so they could tip the water out of the skiff. While Roger, teeth chattering, bailed out the rest, Jim squatted over the contorted body to see what he could see. His hands were almost too cold to tap the button on the camera app.

The limbs were frozen in place, elbows bent, knees up, head bent far back, and unresponsive to pressure. Time of death was going to be a bitch, given the temperature of the river water, which rose in the Quilak Mountains and consisted for the most part of snow and glacier melt. The mesh of the basket had imprinted itself on Tyler’s forehead.

In his pockets, Tyler had a cell phone that would not turn on—no surprise there—and a thick wad of twenties and fifties. That was all. Jim bagged them both and took a lot of photographs.

He stood up, stretching himself back into shape and trying not to groan out loud. His uniform was clammy against his skin. “What time did you say he came out here, Pat?”

Hiss of burning cigarette paper. “I booted his sorry ass out of bed at six
A.M.
He was on the river fifteen minutes later.”

Jim rose to his feet and walked over to look into the square plastic tote in the aluminum skiff. It held about a dozen dead salmon. They had been there for long enough to begin to smell.

“You ever do any canning or smoking here on-site?” he said.

Pat Mack thought it over and decided it wasn’t a trick question. “Sometimes.”

“This year?”

The old man drew smoke deep into his lungs. “Don’t think so. I haven’t, anyway.”

Jim looked into the pen attached to the fish wheel, again revolving with the passing river. The pen held more salmon, perhaps another dozen, these alive and well and whapping each other in the nose with their tails. Reds mostly, along with a few early silvers.

He looked up to find the old man watching him, the red glow of his cigarette the only warm thing on the river that evening. “How long would it take him to pick this many fish out of the pen and toss them into the skiff?”

Pat expelled a cloud of smoke with a snort. “Woulda took me about five minutes. With Tyler checking his text messages every thirty seconds, probably take him an hour.”

So, Jim thought. On the water by six fifteen, twenty minutes, half an hour to get to the fish wheel. Pat’s estimate on Tyler’s fish-picking abilities could be taken with a grain of salt. Say thirty minutes. Jim checked his phone. It was now just after ten o’clock.

Rigor set in after three to four hours, held on for twelve. Fix a tentative time of death at, say, somewhere between 8:45
A.M
. and 12:45
P.M
. “What time did you find him, Pat?”

“Got here about five,” Pat said. “Fish wheel was stuck. Took me a while to figure out why.”

“How long is ‘a while’?”

The old man’s eyes narrowed. Jim met them with a steady gaze, refusing to apologize for the question.

Pat blinked first and looked away, across the river. “Maybe fifteen minutes.”

“What had the basket stuck on?”

Pat shrugged again. “A stick.”

“What stick? Where is it?”

Another shrug from Pat. “I must have tossed it. I got a little distracted there, what with trying to see if Tyler was still alive and all. Useless little fucker though he was, he’s family, and he was my first concern.” His cigarette had again burned all the way down to his fingers. His free hand searched for the packet. It was empty and he crumpled it up and threw it into the little skiff. Not into the water. Not on the beach. Not into his skiff. Into Tyler’s skiff. It was a statement, Jim thought, although he didn’t yet know exactly what statement that was.

The sun wouldn’t go below the horizon again for another month, and then only for a few minutes, but when it got this low, the light was dim enough to reduce old men sitting in skiffs to grayish outlines.

Jim squatted again, this time to put his hand in the river.

If Tyler had died at 8:45
A.M.
, normally rigor would have set in by 12:45
P.M
. If Tyler had screwed around, on his cell like the old man said or maybe just sacking out in the sun, and had not started picking fish until later, rigor would only now be coming on, or not coming on at all. In neither case should rigor be so fully involved as it was, but that discounted the effect of the body being immersed in the water from then to discovery. Temperature played hell with rigor, especially in the Arctic.

His hand was numb again. He pulled it out and dried it off, and made a mental note to replace the thermometer to his evidence kit. The last one had disappeared at the last crime scene.

He pulled out a flashlight and walked up and down the gravel bank, peering into the shallows at the water’s edge and into the shrubbery at the land’s edge. He found an empty Coke can, a dozen empty Budweiser cans, some waterlogged cigarette butts that looked as if the fish or the ducks had been taking the occasional desultory nibble, a small pocketknife with just a blade and a nail file, an empty bag of Lay’s potato chips, and a crumpled thermal receipt with the print so faded, it was unintelligible. He bagged them all.

Roger sat shivering in his skiff, Pat immobile in his. Roger’s skiff was a large aluminum affair, free of rust and dents, a powerful new Mercury Marine on the back connected to a shiny red fuel tank by a clean black hose. A set of oars was run beneath the thwarts, and oarlocks dangled inside the skiff from their holes. A workmanlike tackle box sat next to the oars, and two fishing poles were locked into opposite sides below the oarlocks. A bought-new bailing can sat in the bow, with an aluminum body and a smooth wooden handle.

Pat’s skiff was a lot older but much the same in its spare neatness.

Jim stepped over to look into the third skiff. “This Tyler’s?”

“Yeah.”

Tyler’s skiff, on the other hand, was half the size of the other two, holding so much junk, Jim was surprised it was still floating. His bailing can was made from a sawed-off plastic gallon milk jug. His kicker looked like Ole Evinrude had put it together with his own hands, and his fuel tank looked like it was about to rust through from the inside. The bottom was covered with a collection of bits of two-by-four and a torn-off section of rain gutter and a piece of rebar and cogs and gearwheels and other unidentifiable machine parts, including a quart-size ziplock full of mismatched nuts and bolts. There was a twelve-pack carton of beer dissolving around the last can, the same brand as he’d found on the beach. Jim spotted a fishing reel—but no poles—and a ballpeen hammer and a couple of screwdrivers and a pair of needle-nosed pliers, but no toolbox. The tools looked as rusty as the fuel tank.