Killing Grounds (23 page)

Kate turned east. A small plume of smoke spiraled up out of the chimney of the small cabin. The trail they were on led almost directly to it.

"That the Meanys' cabin?" Jack said.

She nodded.

"Convenient."

She nodded again. "Johnny?"

"What, Kate?" The boy's color was back to normal, the awful beginnings of shock checked by the excitement of the chase.

"How long does a game of Monopoly last?"

He was taken aback, convinced this was some elaborate grown-up joke with a punch line that was going to come at his expense.

"I mean it," she said. "How long?"

Johnny grinned. "Depends on how good one of the players is." He added, "And on how you play."

Kate frowned. "You mean there are different ways to play?"

"Uh-huh. You can deal out the deeds, that shortens the game a lot. And if you don't put any money in Free Parking, the game could last forever."

"What's the shortest game you ever played?" Jack said.

Cocky, Johnny said, "Twenty-three minutes."

"You win?"

With the flip of a hand Johnny dismissed the question as not worth answering.

"So," Jack said, "Neil Meany could have come home earlier than he told you, seen the drifter drop anchor on his way back to the cabin, taken a little detour and killed his brother, and been back on shore and in his bed before anyone was the wiser."

"Or Calvin Meany could have come ashore for a little TLC after his beating in Cordova and gotten a little more than he expected from his wife," Kate said.

"Let's go find out whodunit," Jack said. "Johnny, keep behind us. If there's action, run."

"Daa-aad!"

"Run," Jack repeated firmly, and in another of those odd flashbacks Kate remembered the bear charge and her father telling her to run. She hadn't. She saw the determination in Johnny's eyes, and knew he wouldn't, either.

She led the way to the cabin. Her knock on the door echoed hollowly, and for a moment she thought there was going to be no reply. Then the door swung inward.

A fire burned briskly in the barrel stove, and there were signs of packing, a suitcase open on one lower bunk with a strip of bright blue material hanging out of it, a box on the counter half full of toiletries.

No one was home. This fact registered at the same time they heard a shout. Kate turned to see Marian Meany coming down the beach at a fast clip, son in tow. "Where's my daughter? Have you seen my daughter?" She skidded to a halt, panting and disheveled. "My daughter is gone. She was gone when we got up." She grabbed Kate and shook her. "Where is she? Where is she?"

Over her shoulder Frank was frightened and belligerent about it. "Where is she? Have you seen her?"

It was to him she spoke. "Bring your mother inside."

Something in the quality of her reply must have warned them. Frank's face went white. Marian gave a low moan and sagged. Jack caught her before she fell, only to be shoved away by her son. "I'll take her." Frank put an arm around his mother's waist and assisted her inside. Kate and Jack followed them in. Johnny remained on the porch, staring in the open door with wide eyes.

"I knew something was wrong, I knew it." The words were wrenched out as if by force, and seemed to drain all the energy from Marian's body. She slumped into a chair. "She wouldn't talk to me, she just wouldn't, and I couldn't force her. Could I?" Marian raised her head. Her face was wet with tears. "Could I?"

Frank, looking far older than he should have, said quietly, "Where is my sister?"

Kate said, as gently as she could, knowing it wouldn't do any good, "She's dead, Frank. I'm sorry."

Marian stared at her through blurred eyes for a moment, and then she screamed. It was a loud, long, drawn-out scream that raised the hair on everyone's neck. It went on and on and on, and might never have stopped if Anne Flanagan had not stepped around Johnny, frozen in the doorway, and dealt Marian Meany a deliberate slap across the face. The sharp crack of skin on skin echoed around the cabin, and Marian's scream cut off abruptly. She stared at the minister dazedly for a split second before dissolving into sobs.

"It's all right," Anne Flanagan said. "It's all right, Marian." She shouldered Frank to one side and drew the other woman into her arms. "Shhh, now. Everything's going to be all right. Shhhh, now." She looked over the sobbing woman's shoulder. "Could somebody maybe make some tea? And if there's any liquor in the house, now would be the time to get it out."

"I heard that." A grim-faced Jack rifled the cupboards, lit the camp stove and put on the teakettle.

Kate motioned Frank outside. He followed, stumbling a little. "When did you first notice Dani was missing?"

His eyes were dull with grief and fatigue, his voice numb with grief. "This morning. We woke up and she was gone."

"So she must have gone out last night sometime. You didn't hear her leave?"

He shook his head. "What happened to her" He swallowed. "Did shewas she"

Kate, watching him intently, said, "Was she what? Murdered? Yes. Somebody hit her over the head with a chunk of wood. She either died at once or fell face forward into the water and drowned."

His white face turned green. He stumbled to the edge of the deck and vomited over the side. She waited motioning Johnny back when he would have gone to help the other boy. They waited. He retched until he couldn't bring anything else up, and staggered over to the bench and sat down limply. "Frank," Kate said, "I know this is the worst possible time for you to have to answer questions, but I have to know everything you know, and I have to know it now. What was Dani doing up the creek last night?"

"She was meeting Mac," he said, his voice exhausted. "She'd been meeting him on that little beach all month, since after the first day Dad hired him."

Kate frowned. "You're sure it was Mac she is going to meet last night?"

"Who else could it have been?"

"Where is Mac?"

"I don't know." The boy looked around as if expecting to see the hired man spring out of the air.

"Was he here this morning when you got up?"

"No."

"So they met last night, and neither of them came back?"

"I guess so. I don't know, I didn't see him, either." His eyes filled with tears. "He sleeps out back in a hammock. Uncle Neil said he got up early and went hunting."

Hunting? Kate thought. In July? "Where is your uncle? Was he home this morning?"

He nodded. "Yes. We were all here. All except Dani." A tear slid down his cheek.

"Where is he now?" He didn't answer and Kate, remorseless, repeated, "Where is your uncle now, Frank?"

"Ms. Shugak." Kate looked up to find Anne Flanagan in the doorway. "I think that's enough. The boy's had a considerable shock, and it's not helping him to have you hammer away at him."

"I'm not enjoying it any more than he is, Ms. Flanagan," Kate said curtly, "but a young girl has been murdered, and every minute that goes by, every second, lets her killer get that much farther away. Where is your uncle, Frank?"

He blinked at her, as if she might be a little fuzzy around the edges to him. "I don't know. He didn't come with us to the Flanagans'. I don't know," he repeated in that same monotone. Frank Meany had had as much as he could take and no more.

A low buzz sounded from the mouth of the creek, and Kate looked up to see Chopper Jim grounding Old Sam's skiff. "Johnny. Find a tarp and take it down to the skiff. Move!" she said when he hesitated.

"There's one under the porch," Frank said, his head leaning back against the railing, his voice exhausted.

Johnny looked at Jack, and Jack nodded. Johnny went.

"Ms. Shugak." Anne Flanagan's voice was calm but urgent. "Do you think Mac McCafferty killed Cal and Dani?"

"No. Mac McCafferty had nothing to gain from these murders. I don't think he killed either Cal or Dani." She paused.

"What?" Jack said.

She met his eyes. "I don't think he killed them, but I think he knows who did."

Jack examined her shrewdly. "And you do, too."

"Well, hell, Jack," she said with asperity, "who's left? Ms. Flanagan, what kind of Monopoly game did you play with Neil Meany the night of the Fourth?"

The other woman stared at her with gathering anger. "I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Dammit, did you play the short way? Did you" Kate had forgotten what Johnny called it.

Jack said, "Did you deal out the deeds?"

The minister's mouth tightened, but she answered. "Yes, we did."

"How long did the game last?"

"I don't know." Anne Flanagan made a visible effort to collect her thoughts. "Neil won. He's very good at it." She paused. "It was a .short game," she said slowly. "He bankrupted the girls in nothing flat. I held on longer, but not much."

Kate told Jack, "Any Monopoly game I've ever played lasted three hours or more. I figured Neil Meany was at the Flanagan site long past the time his brother made it back to Alaganik, and Chopper Jim says the time of death was figured around midnight. Roughly."

From where he come to a halt on the beach below the deck, Chopper Jim said, "There's a lot of leeway in that figure because of the time he spent in the water."

"Yeah, but that's just about the time he got back to the bay, according to Mary Balashoff. And, if they were playing Monopoly the short way, Neil Meany headed for home right after, and probably saw the drifter from the skiff. An easy detour for him," she added, using Jack's words.

"Okay," Jack said, frowning, "but Neil Meany on the drifter with a what? Why such" He searched for the right words. "Why did he have to be so damn thorough?"

"You save up enough mad for a long enough time . . ." Kate said, and left it at that.

"Motive," Jim said. "Does he inherit?"

Kate shook her head. "I think Cal Meany was playing real-life Monopoly, and I think it might have been going to interfere with his brother's plans." She walked into the cabin. "Frank, do you have a pair of binoculars?"

Frank had gone back inside to sit next to his mother, who had her head pillowed in her arms. He blinked at Kate, helpless in his own grief. "Binoculars," she repeated, and he raised an arm and pointed. They were sitting on the windowsill on top of a tide book. She took them out on the deck. The clouds had made good on their promise of rain and the resulting drizzle had soaked into her hair and the shoulders of her shirt.

She ignored it and concentrated on the scene revealed by the lenses.

There wasn't much to it. Meany's drifter rode placidly at anchor, a good distance from the few other drifters who had chosen to remain at Alaganik during the hiatus between openings. Probably they were avoiding contamination from close proximity to the scab boat. The hatch to the cabin was closed, no light shone through the galley windows and there was no other sign of any activity on board.

She lowered the binoculars and handed them to the trooper, still standing on the beach below, also impervious to the rain. He scanned the drifter. "Doesn't look like there's anyone to home."

"He's there," she said, and pointed. The buoy used to anchor the Meanys' skiff was empty. "And look." She pointed again. Barely still in sight through the increasing fog and rain, a skiff was drifting out of the bay on the ebbing tide. "Bet that's the Meany skiff."

Jim looked at the skiff, puzzled. "If he couldn't be bothered to tie up the skiff, why hasn't he pulled the hook and hightailed it for town?"

"Let's go out there and ask him." He remained skeptical. "Where's Evan McCafferty?" she said bluntly. "He sure as hell isn't hunting, Jim. Not in July, not in Alaska, and even if he was poaching, sure as hell not in a place with as much traffic in and out of it as this one."

His face changed. "Let's go."

They climbed into the skiff and Jack shoved them off, most displeased at not being allowed to accompany them, but, as Jim pointed out, he shouldn't even be bringing Kate with him, and he wouldn't be if he knew what Neil Meany and Evan McCafferty looked like.

And if he didn't need backup against a man who had already murdered twice. Jack stooped to slide his hands beneath the tarpaulin-shrouded body of Dani Meany, and carried it to the cabin.

By the time they closed in on the no-name drifter, the weather had socked in so low that they were bumping their heads on the clouds. The beach had long since vanished, they could barely make out the outline of the Freyas hull off to starboard, and the other boats were next to invisible. A steady drizzle collected on the brim of Jim's trooper hat and dripped down the back of his jacket. Kate had no hat and her hair was soaked through, leaving her braid a wet rope lying down her spine. She was engulfed in Jack's windbreaker, which gaped at the neck and didn't provide a lot of protection. All they needed now was for the wind to start to blow, she thought sourly, and as if in response a breeze caught at the rigging of the drifter and produced a low hum that startled them both.

For the rest, the boat sat silent and dark. It looked deserted, and forlorn, as does any working boat without its gear in the water and a crew hustling go for broke on deck.

"Looks like you were wrong, Shugak," Jim said. "There's no one on board."

"Then why are we whispering?" Kate put her hand out to catch the rain-slick gunnel, and in that moment a dark figure rose up off the deck and brought a boat hook down on the trooper's head with a solid thwack that echoed off the fog and rain. Without a sound Jim fell face forward into the bottom of the skiff.

In falling Jim had cut the throttle. The kicker sputtered and died. The bow of the skiff bumped into the hull of the drifter, and Kate used what forward momentum that gave her and both hands to pull herself up over the gunnel into a tumbling somersault that should have carried her past Meany and his boat hook to the other side of the deck. It would have, if the hold hadn't been open and she hadn't somersaulted right into it.

She hit heavily, not on the bottom of the hold itself, but on something just as solid but softer.

It took her a minute to get her breath back. When she did, she raised her head and opened her eyes.