Blood Will Tell (17 page)

"Look, Dischner's offices are upstairs."

He was still staring at the door. "Why was it unlocked?"

"I don't know, Jack," she said patiently. "Possibly because whoever was last out the door yesterday afternoon forgot to lock it? It happens. Now let's get a move on before the rent-a-cops show."

He caught her arm. "Wait a minute. Did you hear that?"

She froze, hardly breathing. "Hear what?"

The only light came from an alcove containing the receptionist's desk.

The three of them stood where they were, listening hard. Mutt's ears were straight up. Kate had one hand knotted in her ruff. The muscles beneath didn't move and she relaxed. "Mutt didn't hear anything."

"It was a bump or a thump or something."

It sounded again, directly overhead. Already tense, Jack twitched in response, bumping into Kate, who knocked against Mutt, stepping on one of her feet. Mutt let out an involuntary yelp. "Mutt!" Kate said, and Mutt, hearing fogged by a bruised toe, misheard this as a command to investigate and streaked up the stairs.

"Mutt!" Kate said.

"We're toast," Jack said.

From the second floor there was the sound of a solid shoulder hitting wood, a door banging back against a wall, a loud

"Ooof!" and a scream of pure terror.

Kate and Jack stared at each other with wide eyes.

"Oh my God! Nice doggie! Help! Oh my God!"

In the next instant Kate was up the stairs and down the hall, Jack faint but pursuing. The door to the corner office was wide open, and the light inside more than enough to adequately illuminate the scene.

Oh shit, Kate thought, halting in the doorway.

Oh shit, Jack thought, peering over her shoulder.

The man was spreadeagled flat on his back, surrounded by a drift of white papers and files. Mutt stood over him, lips drawn back from her teeth, a low, steady growl issuing forth, bared teeth inches away from his throat. She was probably embarrassed not to have heard anything downstairs the first time and was bent on regaining her reputation as the perfect sentry.

"Oh my God! Help! Nice doggie! Please don't bite me! Help!" "What now, genius?" Jack whispered.

"I don't know," Kate hissed.

"Nice doggie won't bite the nice man, will he! Oh god! Help! Somebody, anybody, please help!" Mutt growled again and the voice faltered into a pitiful whimper.

There was something familiar about that whimper. Kate cocked her head.

"Call her off," Jack whispered.

"If I do he'll see us," she said, still trying to identify the man's voice.

Mutt's growl eased, and some of the man's courage returned. A quavering voice said pleadingly, "Nice doggie, nice, nice doggie. You don't want to bite your Uncle Fred now, do you?" Jack said in an urgent whisper,

"Call her off from the hallway and we'll make a run for it. Kate? Are you listening to me? We're fucked, let's get outta here!"

To Jack's astonishment and alarm Kate actually took a step into the room. "Uncle Fred?" she said in a carrying voice. "Is that you?"

"Kate!"

Jack's urgent whisper probably carried into the next borough. "What the hell] are you doing?"

"Oh thank God, is someone there? Help me! Please help me! Nice doggie!"

Mutt's growl rumbled in her throat. "Oh my God!" "Mutt," Kate said.

"Off."

The growl ceased. Mutt backed off the prone man and came to stand at Kate's elbow. The man sat up, breathing hard, his face a dull red and running with sweat. "Jesus," he said weakly. "Sweet Jesus."

Kate walked across the room and gave him a hand up. "You remember Fred Gamble, don't you, Jack? Fred Gamble, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation? One of J. Edgar's finest? As opposed to Edgar P." whose office all three--excuse me, Mutt--all four of us are in the process of breaking and entering?"

Gamble rose to his feet on legs that trembled visibly and released Kate's hand, looking from her to Jack and back again. "Morgan?" His face got even redder. "Jack Morgan, as in the fucking D. A."s investigator's office?" He looked at Kate. "And Ms. Shugak, late of same?" His Adam's apple bobbed. He was so angry he was almost gobbling. "You sons-a-bitches! Would you mind telling me just what the fuck you think you're doing here!"

Mutt didn't like the way his voice raised, and the growl reappeared.

Gamble's eyes shifted between Kate and Mutt and back again. "You keep control of that goddam wolf, Shugak, or I swear I'll have you arrested for assault!"

Kate, by way of reply, patted Mutt's head. Mutt's hard yellow stare never moved from Gamble's face and she kept her fangs on display but the growl eased up.

The agent swallowed and said, with a fair assumption of his former belligerence, "Now, like I said before, just what the hell are you doing here?"

The best defense is always a good offense, and Kate said promptly, "Just what the hell are you doing here, Gamble?"

"I've got a warrant," the Fibbie snapped.

"Oh shit," Jack said, repeating himself.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't arrest your asses and throw them in jail," Gamble said, his voice rising again.

Kate's knee nudged Mutt's shoulder. Mutt barked once, sharply. Gamble looked down to encounter the same hard, yellow, un winking stare. He swallowed again. "Then again, it wouldn't hurt to discuss the matter like civilized human beings." He pulled at his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt as if the neck were suddenly too tight. He looked at Mutt again. "Jesus!" He grabbed for the chair behind the desk and sat down hard. "As I've said before, Ms. Shugak, that is some fucking doorman you've got there."

Jack shrugged and sat down across the desk. Kate took the chair next to him. Mutt gave a polite sneeze that nevertheless indicated her skepticism that everybody was friends now, and sat down next to Kate, a discomforting stare fixed on Gamble that he tried hard to ignore. Nobody said anything for as long as it took Gamble to get his breath back, which gave Kate time to look around.

The room took up an entire corner, about a quarter of the second floor of the building. Nearly every item in it was made of teak, the enormous desk, the base of the lamps, the coffee table, the clients' chairs, the frame of the couch and two walls of filing cabinets, even the frames of the uncurtained windows were teak. The floor was covered with lush white carpet. Kate couldn't imagine how Dischner kept it clean, but it matched the white leather cushions on the couch and chairs and maybe that was all that mattered.

On one wall was a Byron Birdsall triptych of Denali, which in daylight would echo the view out the north-facing windows behind the desk. On another was a Stonington watercolor of the Crow Creek Mine. On the desk were a soapstone carving of a bear and an ivory carving of a walrus.

Kate was ungenerous enough to be pleased that both statues were clunky, amateurish and inferior to anything she'd seen at the convention crafts fair the day before.

The room reeked of money and one-stop shopping. There was no reflection of a life here, no personal mementoes, not even the framed diplomas usually so dear to the hearts of attorneys, as if they had to constantly remind themselves of their fitness to practice law. No, all this room said, indeed shouted in clear, ringing tones was, "If you have to ask how much I cost, you can't afford me."

After careful consideration, Kate hitched her chair closer to the desk and crossed her feet on its gleaming surface.

Jack had been doing some thinking, too. He laced his fingers across his chest and grinned at Gamble. "You don't have a warrant."

Gamble looked as startled as Kate felt. "Of course I have a warrant," he said, but he sounded uneasy.

Jack shook his head. "You guys work in pairs. Where's your partner?"

"Don't have one," Gamble said promptly. "Budgetary problems. Cutbacks.

You know."

Jack shook his head again, still grinning. "Nope. Won't wash. Fibbies always go in two by two. Like the Ark."

Gamble gulped and this time the color in his face came from embarrassment.

Kate smiled at Gamble, giving it her best effort. It lost something in the translation from black silk to blue jeans but it was good enough to cause Gamble to very nearly begin to glow under the influence. Jack reflected yet again on the un wisdom of putting Kate into bugle beads.

Who knew where it would end? He kept his mouth shut and watched the treatment take effect on a man who had once described Kate Shugak within Jack Morgan's hearing as being "as friendly as a double-bladed axe."

"I don't believe I had the opportunity earlier this year," Kate said warmly, leaning forward a little, "but I wanted to thank you for the reference you gave John King."

Her voice was low to begin with. The scar added a rough huskiness that when she chose invoked an atmosphere of intimacy. Gamble shifted in his chair like a snake in front of its charmer. "Yes. Well. Of course. I was happy to oblige. I heard you caught the perps."

"In the act." She somehow made it sound as if the successful completion of the case had been all his doing. He almost purred.

It was three in the morning and they were sitting in an office to which they had gained illegal access, located not six blocks from the Sixth and C police station. Jack, twiddling his thumbs, seemed to be the only one at present aware of that fact. He amused himself by adding up their respective sentences for the BE. Kate would smile at the judge and be released OR." Gamble would invoke executive privilege or some other federal nonsense and never have to call a lawyer, the pound hadn't been built that could hold Mutt, and he, of course, would spend the rest of his natural life behind bars. The idea didn't appeal to him.

"Yes, well," Gamble said again. Kate continued to smile at him, and he said apologetically, as if it were a matter in questionable taste he was forced to raise only under protest, "Do you think you could tell me what you're doing here?" As the words were spoken he seemed to recognize the pleading quality of them. The recognition stiffened his spine and gruffed his voice into a semblance of authority. "What I mean to say is, what are you doing here?"

Jack let Kate take it. The whole thing had been her idea from the start.

"I expect for the same reasons you are, Mr. Gamble," Kate said, all concern. "I know, why don't you tell us what you're after, and we'll fill in any cracks?"

And Jack found himself suppressing a belly laugh as Gamble obediently complied. No wonder this guy had been posted to Alaska, where the breaking of federal laws usually meant somebody shooting a walrus on a wildlife refuge. A thought flashed through his mind. Or maybe the cutting down of trees in a prospective national park? He sat up to pay closer attention.

The Fibbie put his elbows on the desk and propped his hands into a steeple. He regarded them with a weighty frown. One felt it was a pose he had worked on in the mirror instead of the picture of the competent, judicious federal agent he no doubt felt he was portraying. We all have our little illusions, Kate thought. It wasn't her job to destroy his, and she schooled her face into an expectant expression.

"We're concerned over the influence Dischner and his associates are exerting over some of the Native corporations," Gamble said. The frown transferred from the steepled fingers to Kate's face. "I hope you will not take this amiss, Ms. Shugak, but there are certain--well, certain anomalies present in the dealings between the two."

Kate's nose almost twitched. "What kind of anomalies?"

He waved a hand, a gesture that included the files he'd been studying on the desk and the open file drawers they had come from. "Sole-source contracting, for one."

"Specifically?"

Gamble rubbed his nose and looked wise. "Were you aware that Mr.

Dischner is a member of the board and part owner of Pacific Northwest Paper Products? No, I can see that you weren't. Well, then, did you know that he is also a silent partner in UCo?"

Kate sat up straight in her chair, next to a no-less-startled Jack. "No, I didn't know that, either."

Satisfied with their reaction, Gamble gave an expansive wave of his hands. "I'm sure you see the potential for conflict of interest there."

"Not to mention kickbacks up the wa zoo Jack observed.

Gamble inclined his head.

Kate sat very still, lips tight and brows together, thinking fast and furiously. Pacific Northwest Paper Products was the company Ekaterina had mentioned as being interested in the Iqaluk logging project. UCo was RPetco's major contractor at Prudhoe Bay, providing employees to do everything from wellhead cleanup to working ground crew for the charter aircraft to driving buses. UCo was the company she had ostensibly gone to work for undercover on the Slope the previous spring.

Dischner's piece of UCo was one explanation for why John King had been hanging out with Dischner at the party. But UCo also had a finger in every construction pie baked in the state of Alaska, everything from docks in Kodiak to utility corridors in Barrow to schools all over the bush. They were the lead contractor on the aborted road to Cordova, too, she remembered, aborted because of the careless and wanton destruction during initial excavation of approximately five miles of prime salmon spawning areas along the Kanuyaq River, which action had caused environmental groups to join with the Niniltna Native Association to successfully sue the state to halt construction.

In fact, nearly every questionable construction project to come down the Alaskan pike had UCo's hobnailed bootprints all over it. "Why am I not surprised?" she said out loud.

"Dischner and UCo," Jack agreed, "a match made in hell." Gamble grunted assent, and Jack added, "So, Gamble. What are you doing here, without a partner?" He raised his brows. "Or a warrant?"

Gamble colored and fidgeted. Kate smoothed out her furrowed brow and said in a gentle, reproving voice, "Jack. Think. If Agent Gamble can prove Dischner has exerted undue influence with local governments in the allocation of certain contracts, and if Agent Gamble can further prove that Dischner received remuneration in recompense thereof, it could result in federal charges against Dischner, as well as against his co-conspirators." She glanced at Gamble. "Who would have to include elected officials as well as contractors?" The answer was evident on his face.