Bad Blood (7 page)

Kate would indeed, since she was already convinced that little Stephanie Chevak of Bering was well on her way to becoming the Carl Sagan of her generation. Fifteen seemed to be a little early to be thinking of graduation, even for Stephanie, and then Kate remembered that her middle school teachers had jumped her a grade. Or was it two? Past time Kate went out to Bering for a visit. She set the letter aside with Andy’s postcard.

Another envelope from Pletnikof Investigations, Ltd., held a deposit slip to her account in the Last Frontier Bank. Kate paid her respects to the amount of numbers in front of the decimal point with a reverent whistle. A scribbled sticky note read, “Business is good. Kurt.”

From bear-poaching Park rat to Alaska’s Allan Pinkerton in three years, courtesy in part because Kate had bankrolled Kurt Pletnikof as a silent partner. One of her better investments.

She looked over at Stephanie’s letter. Stephanie would undoubtedly be offered a full ride at whatever institute of higher learning was lucky enough to get her, but just in case, it was good to know Kate had her financial back.

There was a separate communication from Kurt’s executive assistant, a flat manila envelope postmarked the previous month, which contained an update on the activities of one Erland Bannister, owner and proprietor of Arctic Investments, an Alaska venture capital firm that was a recent minority shareholder in the Suulutaq Mine. She’d put Kurt on retainer to keep an eye on him. This month’s report included a few clippings from the
Journal of the Alaska Chamber of Commerce, Alaska Business Monthly,
and a highlighted paragraph in a
Wall Street Journal
story on the Suulutaq Mine, in which Erland declared himself delighted at being a stakeholder in the mine, a project with an extremely beneficial effect on the long-term economy of the state of Alaska.

The fact that he’d been jailed for attempted murder until a smart—read expensive—lawyer got him out on a technicality involving alleged prosecutorial misconduct appeared to have escaped the reporter’s notice. Lips pressed together in a straight line, Kate stuffed the clippings back in the envelope without reading the rest of them and set it aside. She leaned back against her seat and stared out the open window of her pickup.

Traffic at the Niniltna airstrip was certainly more active than at this time two years before. One of George Perry’s Single Otter turbos touched down at the end of the 4,800-foot runway, paved only last year, and taxied briskly up to the Chugach Air Taxi hangar to disgorge a load of Suulutaq workers, hungover from their weeks off. They were bundled into two Beavers, which whisked them into the air on a south-southeast heading for the mine. Meanwhile, the Otter loaded the mine workers headed for town. Some of the outgoing miners didn’t look to be in much better shape than the incoming ones, and Kate wondered what Vern Truax, the mine’s superintendent, was doing about substance abuse on the job. She also wondered who was bringing said substances in. There were over a hundred workers out at Suulutaq, last time she checked. Howie and Willard at their most efficient couldn’t have supplied a tenth that many without tripping over their own dicks in front of Jim, or her.

Two of the outgoing miners, both skinny young men in worn jeans, scuffed boots, and plaid jackets, got into a fistfight over who got to board first. A third, in line behind them and older and much larger, raised two hands the size of baseball gloves and smacked their heads together, once. Once was enough. The two younger miners went rubber-legged up the airstairs with an inexorable assist from their disciplinarian and a round of applause from the miners behind him.

George, observing from a distance, saw Kate on the other side of the runway and waved in the middle of his preflight. In very few moments, the Otter was but a memory on the horizon. “You fine,” Kate said to its rapidly disappearing rudder. The Otter turbos were new, and very fine, indeed.

Demetri Totemoff drove up to meet a Cessna 180 with a pilot and five passengers on board. Demetri loaded them into his brand-new Dodge Durango Citadel (the one with all the options, including the fold-down captain’s chairs in the second row and the DVD entertainment section; Kate had already had the tour), and he, too, waved without stopping. Kate wondered where he was taking them, because there wasn’t a road to his high-end hunting and fishing lodge. It was located south of the Suulutaq, almost as close to the Canadian border as Canyon Hot Springs, and with a lot better view of Mount Saint Elias.

Well, she thought, there hadn’t been a road last time she’d checked.

A yellow and white Piper Tri-Pacer set itself down with circumspection at the end of the runway and taxied decorously to a parking spot on the post office side of the runway. When the pilot got out, Kate could hardly believe her eyes.

“Anne! Anne Flanagan!” She got out of her truck.

The pilot shaded her eyes with one hand. “Kate? Kate Shugak?”

She was of medium height and sturdily built, with blond hair cut short and blue eyes that crinkled when she smiled. She was smiling now, and she took Kate’s hand in both of her own.

“What are you doing in Niniltna?” Kate said.

“I’m on my way downriver. Hoping Bonnie will let me use her bathroom.”

Kate nodded at the Tri-Pacer. “Since when are you a pilot?”

Anne’s smile was proud. “And thereby hangs a tale.”

*   *   *

This time when Kate walked into the Riverside Cafe, a young miner who was either drunk or high or both was behind the counter making an inept attempt at opening the cash register. Laurel kept slapping his hands away, and looked to be rapidly losing her patience. “Knock it off,” she said as they walked in, but the miner either ignored her or was so under the influence that his ears had stopped working.

Kate walked up behind him and tapped on his shoulder. She had to do it twice before he turned around. His pupils were the size of Lincoln pennies, and the whites were a streaky red. He scratched first beneath his left arm, moved up to the back of his neck, and then reached for his crotch, stepping from one foot to the other. “Hey,” he said to Kate, without much interest, “you’re hot.” He looked at Anne. “You wanna dance? There should be music.” He looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “I need me some Linkin Park! Building it up to burn it down! Whoa.”

He closed his eyes and put out his arms for balance. “The room’s going around. I hate that.”

When he opened his eyes again, they fell on the cash register and he reached for it again. Laurel slapped his hands away. He burst into tears.

Laurel looked at Kate. “Five minutes ago, we were having a perfectly rational conversation about whether Justin Bieber was the Antichrist.”

The young miner stopped crying as if he had turned off a faucet and said, “Do you have any eggs? I’ve got a recipe for a killer cheese souffle.” He made for the kitchen, only to be thwarted again by Laurel.

Before he could burst into tears a second time, Kate said to Anne, “Be right back,” got the miner by one arm and a handful of hair, and frog-marched him out the door and up the street, to scattered applause and a few honks from Peter Grosdidier’s passing pickup. Around the corner and up the hill to the trooper’s post they went, where with Maggie’s blessing, Kate tucked him into one of the cells and left him to dry out or come down.

It was the only one of the cells that was empty, and the smell of vomit lingered unpleasantly on the air. She went back out to the office and tossed a small, clear plastic bag full of white powder on Maggie’s desk. “Found it in the pocket of his jeans.”

“Another one?” Maggie sighed and got out an evidence bag.

“Is that what the other three are in for?”

Maggie nodded, her face grim. “And those are only the ones we caught.”

“I haven’t been in town for a while,” Kate said. “This happening a lot lately?”

Maggie pushed back from her desk and scrubbed her hands over her face. She looked tired and exasperated. “Since May, it’s been like someone has been parachuting the stuff in. The cells have been full since June, and as soon as we ship the miscreants off to Judge Singh in Ahtna, they’re full up again.”

“Any ideas on who’s bringing it in?”

“The usual suspects deal retail, not wholesale.”

“So, somebody new.”

“Somebody new to the business,” Maggie said. “Not someone new to the Park. Moving that much product requires resources. Staff. Storage. Transportation.”

“Oh,” Kate said. “So not just cocaine.”

“No, indeed,” Maggie said, “booze, too. A lot of booze.” Her gaze went past Kate to the map on the wall. It was a large-scale topographical map of the Park, every physical detail faithfully rendered and including every village of one or more people and every known airstrip. “Sooner or later, someone will talk, or someone unexpected will flash out with a lot of money. We’ll get them, Kate.”

Eventually, Kate thought. In the meantime, the Niniltna trooper post was running a B and B for drug users. It was only a matter of time before one of the dealers got greedy and started cutting the cocaine with Alka-Seltzer Plus or some equally ostensibly harmless over-the-counter drug and Park rats started stroking out.

*   *   *

Back at the Riverside Cafe, Laurel said, “You know, I never made all that much money before the mine went in, and I love what it did for my bank balance, I really do, but I’m beginning to wonder if the trade-off in drunks and highs are worth it. When you get a chance, tell Jim I said so, would you?”

Kate said she would, not that Jim had a magic wand to make everything all better, and she and Anne settled into a booth. During Kate’s absence, Paul and Alice had also found their way to the Riverside. Paul was still studying his map with a frown of concentration, and Alice was looking at the cappuccino in her hand with an expression of outright incredulity.

“When was the last time I saw you?” Kate said.

“Three years,” Anne said promptly. “I was spackling your Sheetrock. Is the house still standing?”

Kate smiled. “It is, and I love it even more now than I did when you built it for me.” Anne had responded to Dinah Clark’s call to action when Kate’s cabin was torched and she and Johnny had been left with shop, outhouse, greenhouse, and cache, but no beds. Park rats current and former, friends of Kate going all the way back to college, ex-clients, and people she had met during some of her cases in Anchorage had rallied with tools, supplies, transportation, heavy equipment, and sweat equity to effect a house-raising in three days.

“You were still grieving over your cabin then,” Anne said.

“That pretty much went down the flush toilet the first week,” Kate said.

Anne laughed. Her skin had a healthy tan, her eyes were bright, her hair gleamed.

“You look,” Kate said, “terrific. Are you in love, or what?”

Anne laughed again. “No. I mean, yes, I guess.” She took a big bite of one of Laurel’s plain cake doughnuts. “Yumm,” she said thickly.

“I know,” Kate said. “Best cake doughnuts this side of the Girdwood Y bakery. Well, don’t leave me hanging. Do the girls like him?”

The girls being Anne’s twin daughters, who had to be, what, fourteen years old now.

“It’s not a guy,” Anne said, swallowing. “I guess … I guess it’s flying.”

“You’re in love with the Tri-Pacer?”

Anne chuckled. “I just might be, at that.” She brushed crumbs from the front of her denim shirt and straightened her shoulders. “Allow me to introduce you to the new flying pastor for the Park.”

“Well.” Kate sat back in her seat and thought about it. “Been a while since the Park had a flying pastor.”

“About fifteen years,” Anne said, “since Father Frank pranged the parish Beaver down at Chulyin.”

“Yeah,” Kate said, remembering. “I’d forgotten about that. Didn’t I hear he’d been drinking?”

“He was always drinking,” Anne said. “Nobody minded that so much, because he was a damn good shepherd to his flock. But they were really annoyed with him when he totaled their aircraft.” She smiled. “Why they’re making me buy mine.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded. “They fronted the purchase price, I’m buying it back out of my salary. Okay by me, I’d rather be flying—and maintaining—my own plane.”

The smile spread across her face, and Kate saw again how, well, happy the Presbyterian minister looked. “I never knew you wanted to learn how to fly,” she said.

“Oh yeah,” Anne said, “like only since the first time I ever got on a small plane. There was no point in talking about it, because I figured I could never afford it.”

An old story, although Kate had noticed that Alaskans who wanted to learn to fly usually found a way. It was an instantaneous and lifelong addiction. Before long, when people asked Anne Flanagan what she did, she’d answer, “I’m a pilot.”
Minister
would be just an addendum.

Kate did not say that, however. “What’s the actual job like?” she said instead, curious. “Do you fly and preach every day? Do you get days off? How many people do there have to be assembled before it’s worth it for you to fly in?”

Anne drained her mug and Laurel brought a refill just so she could loiter around to hear the answer. She might even be a potential member of the congregation, although Kate knew enough about Laurel’s personal history that she took leave to doubt the possibility. “One person who needs me is enough for me to stop. One or a dozen or a hundred, it’s all the same. No flyover country in the Park, not for me. The circuit can last anywhere from a week to ten days, then I fly back to Cordova for a week.”

“So week on, week off,” Kate said. “More or less.”

“Like working at Suulutaq,” Laurel said.

“It can be,” Anne said. “This time of year especially. There’s almost no one left in the villages, they’re all out fishing. I’m guessing winter will be a lot busier.”

“Where do you meet?” Laurel said. “Somebody’s house?”

Anne nodded. “If they don’t have a gym.”

“Do you preach every time?”

“Sometimes they don’t need a sermon,” Anne said. “Sometimes they need some family counseling. Sometimes they just want to talk about faith, and life, and…”