Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 02 - Capitol Offense (24 page)

Watching Grantham wilt as the woman spoke was like watching a balloon deflate. By the time she was finished, he was just a tired old man. Kane went to the desk and took out a pad of hotel stationery and a pen. Then the three of them sat quietly as Grantham wrote down his tale and signed it.

“Thank you, Senator,” Kane said after he’d scanned the statement. “You may go.”

Grantham tottered to the door, opened it, and walked through.

“You can come out now,” Kane called, and Winthrop entered the living room, followed by Doyle and Cocoa.

“Did you get anything useful on the murders?” Doyle squeaked.

“No,” Kane said, “but we’ve got better ammunition for talking with Bezhdetny. Much better ammunition. What I’d like to do is get some sleep and tackle him in the morning.”

“Maybe not,” Cocoa said. “While we was in the kitchen, Cecil called. Said the big, white guy was in his car and it looked like he was driving to that mine storage place where those guys kept you.”

Kane shook his head.

“No rest for the wicked,” he said.

He folded Grantham’s statement, took Alma’s out of his pocket, and handed both to Mrs. Foster.

“Please put these somewhere safe,” he said. “If it’s okay with you, and with him, I’d like to take Winthrop along.”

“I can see to Mrs. Foster’s safety,” Doyle squeaked, and only the fact he was so tired kept Kane from laughing.

“You two lock the door behind us, and don’t open it for anyone but one of us,” he said. He turned to Winthrop and said, “You ready?”

The big man left the room and returned a moment later, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle out of his suit coat.

“Looks like this dude was born ready,” Cocoa said, opening the door to allow Kane and Winthrop to precede him.

T
he cab bounced slowly along the old mining road, lights off, Cocoa mumbling curses as he strained to miss the biggest potholes. A man stepped out of the brush and held up his hand.

“That’s Cecil,” Cocoa said as he brought the cab to a halt. The three men got out and Cocoa nodded to his cousin.

“‘Sup,” he said.

“Your big white guy is down at the mine,” Cecil said. “Couple other white guys joined him a little while ago. Ralph’s watching ’em.”

“They know you’re here?” Kane asked.

Cecil looked at him and shook his head.

“We’re Indians,” he said.

Kane nodded.

“Oh, yeah, right, I forgot,” he said, “that makes you invisible.”

Cecil and Cocoa exchanged a look.

“Not your typical
gussik,
is he?” Cecil said.

“Nope,” Cocoa said. He walked to the back of the cab, opened the hatch, removed something wrapped in a blanket, and said, “Why don’t you show us the way, Cecil?”

The four men walked down the side of the road with Cecil in the lead. Without talking about it, they let space open up among them like they were patrolling in hostile territory. Kane looked for clues that he’d been down this road before, but recognized nothing.

I must have been really drugged up, he thought.

Kane wasn’t sure how far they’d walked when Cecil led them into the woods. They moved quietly through the darkness until Cecil held up a fist and motioned them to the ground. They followed him as he began crawling. Kane could see the soles of somebody’s sneakers when Cecil signaled them to crawl into a line abreast.

They were at the edge of a big clearing. On the opposite side of the clearing was a rock face with a door in it. Kane wouldn’t have been able to see the door if it hadn’t been hanging slightly open, spilling light into the evening’s semidarkness. The light shone on two cars that were parked nearby.

Guess nobody’s had a chance to fix the door, Kane thought.

Cocoa and Ralph squirmed around until their heads were near Kane’s.

“Three of ’em,” Ralph whispered. “Heard some shouting, but nothing else.”

Kane nodded.

“I guess somebody’s going to have to go in there,” he said.

He could see in the men’s eyes that they didn’t like the idea. He didn’t either. Crossing open ground in the presence of the enemy was no way to stay healthy. But if they waited until the men came out, they could have a running gunfight on their hands and who knew what would happen. He wanted Bezhdetny alive. Better to get them when they were all in one place.

“If there’s going to be trouble,” Ralph said, “me and Cecil have got to go. Cocoa’s our cousin, but if we take another charge we’ll never see the outside again. Besides, we got no guns. Felons and firearms, you know.”

Kane didn’t like that, but he understood it. Nobody who’d been inside wanted to go back. Nobody sane, that is.

“You’d better go, then,” Kane said. He looked at Cocoa. “You, too?”

Cocoa shook his head.

“I’m good here,” he said.

Ralph crawled over and touched Cecil on the shoulder. The two men crawled off.

“What’s in the blanket?” Kane asked.

Cocoa unwrapped the blanket to reveal an old, well-kept AK-47. The barrel seemed longer than Kane remembered. Cocoa unfolded a pair of legs from the barrel and set their ends on the ground.

“My dad’s,” Cocoa said. “Him and my uncles brought it back in pieces from that old war.”

“Okay,” Kane said. “That means you stay here to provide cover. If that door opens while Winthrop and I are crossing the clearing, we’ll be sitting ducks. So I want you to put fire on it. But aim high. I don’t want to be picking pieces of your lead out of my hide, or to get all three of those guys shot to pieces before I can talk to them.”

“Yes, sir, sir,” Cocoa said, giving Kane a mock salute.

Kane crawled over to Winthrop to tell him the plan. When Cocoa had his weapon set up and loaded, the other two men got to their feet and began moving across the clearing. Kane had the automatic out and hanging at his side. Winthrop was carrying what looked like a .44 Magnum.

Well, he’s big enough to shoot it, Kane thought.

He and Winthrop moved in a curve, trying not to get between Cocoa and the door, which would be a very unhealthy place to be indeed if anything happened. Although, Kane thought, with all this rock around, a ricochet could get you from anywhere.

Days passed as they moved across the clearing, or so it seemed to Kane. He was sweating and he had that peculiar itch between his shoulders that he’d always gotten on patrol.

How do I get myself into these situations? he thought. I’m too old for this shit.

They reached the door without incident. They could hear voices. Kane put his lips next to Winthrop’s ear.

“I want you to pull the door open,” he said. “Try not to make much noise.”

Winthrop gave him a disgusted look, ghosted across to the other side of the door, nodded at Kane, wrapped a hand around the edge of the door, and pulled it open. The door creaked loudly.

Kane looked around the edge of the doorway. All three men were standing, looking at the doorway. The blond one brought a pistol out from under his coat and fired. A bullet made a familiar stuttering noise as it cut the air next to Kane’s ear. Kane had his automatic up. He leaned into the opening and aimed along the barrel, feeling loose and confident. He pulled the trigger three times, then rushed through the doorway, staying low. The blond one began to fall. On his way down, he pulled the trigger again. Kane heard the bullet crack into the rock floor and something struck his leg, knocking it from under him. He hit the floor and rolled, bringing his automatic up to cover the dark-haired one, who was struggling to get something out of his pocket. He really should have bought a holster, Kane thought, but some people never learn. He put a bullet into the wooden storage locker next to the dark-haired one’s ear.

“Freeze,” he shouted, “or the next one blows your brains out.”

The noise from the gunshot had deafened him to the point that he could barely hear his own shouts. He hoped the other man could hear better.

The dark-haired one stopped moving.

“Hands where I can see them,” Kane shouted. “Now.”

The dark-haired one lifted his hands to show they were empty, then raised them above his head. Kane rolled himself into a sitting position and looked for Winthrop.

The big Native was half standing, half crouching. His left hand was wrapped around Bezhdetny’s right wrist. His right hand rested on the big Ukrainian’s shoulder. Bezhdetny’s left hand grasped Winthrop under the arm. Both men were straining, their lips peeled back to show their teeth. As he watched, a pistol dropped from Bezhdetny’s right hand. Both men ignored it. Kane was certain that if he could hear, all he would hear is the two men’s breathing.

He thought about shooting Bezhdetny somewhere nonfatal, but didn’t think Winthrop would appreciate the help. Besides, he didn’t like the idea of more metal flying around. His own leg was starting to hurt, and he snuck a peek at it. Blood was seeping from his thigh. When he looked back, the dark-haired man had his hands at waist level. Kane gestured with the automatic and he raised them again.

Kane had no idea how long the two men grappled. At some point, Cocoa came through the door, gun barrel first. He surveyed the situation, looked at Kane, and jerked his head toward the wrestlers. Kane shook his head, then nodded toward the body on the floor. Cocoa walked around Winthrop and Bezhdetny, knelt, and put his fingers on the blond man’s neck. He looked at Kane and shook his head.

The two men were still locked in their private struggle. It’s like watching an epic battle, Kane thought. Hercules contending with Apollo. Or maybe good versus evil, but with the conventional colors reversed. But we can’t watch this all night.

Kane was about to tell Cocoa to hit the Ukrainian with his rifle butt when Bezhdetny’s left leg buckled and he let loose a scream Kane had no trouble hearing. Winthrop let go of him and the big, white man fell to the floor, where he rolled around clutching his left knee. Winthrop shook his head like a man coming out of a fog, looked around, walked over to the dark-haired man, and pulled his hands behind his back.

“Pick up the weapons, Cocoa,” Kane called. “Get the one in that one’s pocket as well. And the last time I looked, they both had ankle holsters.”

When Cocoa was finished, he had an armload of handguns.

“Dump them outside,” Kane said.

When the other men’s weapons were all outside the rock room, Kane limped to the door, took out his cell phone, dialed 911, and told the dispatcher what he needed. He used Tank Crawford’s name liberally. When he finished, he limped back to a chair and sat. Cocoa took out a Buck knife, knelt next to him, and cut open his pant leg, revealing a jagged hole surrounded by black-and-blue tissue that leaked blood. He took a not-too-clean-looking handkerchief out of his pocket, folded it, and laid it on the wound. Kane put his hand on the handkerchief and pushed. A bolt of pain shot through his thigh, but he kept the pressure on.

“Good thing you called for an ambulance,” Cocoa said. “That’s going to need looking at.”

Kane nodded.

“I don’t know how long it will take for the cops to get here,” he said, “but if you want to hold on to your toy, you’d better stash it somewhere.”

Cocoa smiled and left the room.

Winthrop had finished tying up the dark-haired man. The big Ukrainian lay as he had, his hand wrapped around his knee. He was no longer howling, but had his teeth set in a way that said he was in real pain.

“We should talk before the cops get here, George,” Kane said. “It would be in your best interest.”

Bezhdetny shot him a hard look.

“Fuck your mother,” he grated.

“That’s no way to talk, George,” Kane said. “You should know that I’ve got written evidence that you were involved in blackmail and kidnapping, and I’m sure that your pal here”—he nodded toward the dark-haired man—“will be only too happy to talk as well. So maybe you should tell me why you murdered Melinda Foxx. You know, sort of practice your story before the authorities arrive.”

Bezhdetny’s expression seemed to contain real surprise.

“Murder?” he said. “I murdered no one. I didn’t even know this Melinda Foxx. And I know nothing of blackmail or kidnapping.”

Then he closed his mouth and didn’t utter a sound until what seemed like the entire Juneau police force arrived, guns drawn.

K
ane was staring morosely at a bowl of Jell-O when Tank Crawford walked in.

“This is what they call lunch,” Kane said. “Can you believe it?”

“If you’re looking for sympathy, bubba, you’ll find it in the dictionary between shit and symposium,” Crawford replied.

Mrs. Richard Foster looked up from the magazine she was reading. Crawford’s face reddened.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I didn’t see you sitting there.”

Kane was in the hospital again, with a thick wrapping around his throbbing thigh and a slightly thick head from the anesthetic they’d given him before digging around in there. The room looked exactly the same as the previous one. For all he knew, it was the same as the previous one. Mrs. Foster was here keeping him company, while Winthrop was at the courthouse watching Oil Can Doyle trying to use the Ukrainian crime wave to pry Matthew Hope out of prison.

“The language doesn’t bother me,” Mrs. Foster said, “but the sentiment does. Sergeant Kane was wounded apprehending dangerous criminals.”

The red in Crawford’s face grew brighter. He opened his mouth, but Kane intervened.

“I think the two of you should know who you are talking to,” he said. “Mrs. Foster, this is Juneau Police Detective Harry Crawford. Tank, this is Mrs. Richard Foster, the widow of
the
Richard Foster.”

The two nodded to each other.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Crawford said. “But what I meant was, if Kane here and his pals had just let the police do what we’re trained to do, he wouldn’t have gotten shot.”

“I didn’t get shot, at least not technically,” Kane said, trying to change the course of the conversation. “It was a piece of rock they dug out of my leg, not lead.”

The woman was not deterred.

“Detective Crawford,” she began.

“Tank,” Crawford said. “Just call me Tank, ma’am. Everybody does.”

“Tank, then,” the woman said, “what do you think would have happened if Sergeant Kane had gone to the police? Did he have enough evidence for a warrant? Could you have gotten a warrant at that time of night? How long would it have taken to round up your SWAT team, or whatever you call it here? Would those men still have been there by the time all that happened? Would you have been able to creep up on them if they were, as Sergeant Kane and Winthrop did? Or would you still be out there trying to get them out? As I understand it, the cave or room or whatever it is they were in would have been difficult to remove them from. How many police officers do you think might have been injured, or even killed, in the process?”

By the time she was finished, Crawford was holding his hands out in front of him as if to stop the flood of rhetorical questions.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “You might be right, ma’am, but Nik here will tell you that civilians taking the law into their own hands makes cops nervous.”

The woman gave him a sweet smile.

“Is it a job-security issue?” she asked.

Crawford’s face got so red Kane was afraid it might explode. Then Tank began to laugh.

“Maybe so,” he said, “maybe it is. But we like to think we’re here to keep citizens safe, not the other way around.”

He turned to face Kane.

“Anyway, I’ve got good news and bad news for you,” he said. “The good news is that the City and Borough of Juneau is recommending to the DA that you not be charged with a crime in connection with the events of last night. Your story matches those of the other witnesses and the forensic evidence, so it’s pretty clear the other guy shot first. Lucky for you, one of our techs found his first bullet in a tree way the hell and gone on the far side of that clearing. Guys don’t usually get off a shot like that after taking three in the pump.”

“That’s good enough news,” Kane said. “What’s the bad news?”

“Your pal Bezhdetny swears he didn’t have anything to do with Melinda Foxx getting killed,” Crawford said, “and he’s sticking to that story like glue. He’s denying everything, of course, but he’s got a darn good alibi for the night she was killed, since he was wining and dining some members of the Putnam administration, including the Commissioner of Public Safety.”

“That is bad news,” Kane said. “What about Frick and Frack?”

“Believe it or not, their names really are Smith and Jones,” Crawford said. “Until recently, they’d been working security for an oil field service company, Dorian or Delorean or something like that. Left there last month. Who they’ve been working for and what they’ve been doing since then is a little murky, but the one you didn’t shoot says they were in Anchorage that night and he’s got the credit card receipts to prove it.”

Kane lay there thinking.

“Maybe you should find out why the state DAs kicked them loose,” he said. “That might tell you who they were working for.”

“And it might not,” Crawford said. “You didn’t hear this from me, because telling you would be very wrong, but after you had them arrested for that little fracas in your hotel room, the DA got a call from the governor’s office, said to let them.”

“That’s interesting,” Kane said. “Where did you hear that?”

“One of the trooper investigators told me when I asked him,” Crawford said. “He was nice enough about it after I let him know I’d be going to ask the DA myself if he didn’t. The other one, though—is he an asshole or what?”

Crawford’s face reddened again.

“Sorry again, ma’am,” he said, then to Kane: “I got to get going. Thought you’d want to know first thing about the charges, and about the White Rose Murder still sitting there. Take care, bubba. Ma’am.”

When they were alone, Mrs. Foster put her magazine down and said, “This is so irritating. Matthew Hope did not kill that woman. Even though I am very upset with him, I know that.”

Kane looked at the woman for a moment, then said, “Perhaps now would be a good time for you to come clean about your relationship with Senator Hope.”

“I’ve already told you,” the woman replied calmly, “I don’t have a relationship with Senator Hope.”

Kane rolled his eyes and sighed.

“You know,” he said, “I’m getting tired of being lied to by all and sundry. In case you haven’t noticed, Winthrop isn’t around to protect you, so there’s really nothing to keep me from turning you over my knee and spanking you. In fact, I might like it.”

The woman showed him a wicked grin.

“I might like it, too,” she said, “but aren’t you afraid you’d reopen your wound?”

Kane didn’t say anything, and after several moments the woman said, “My husband was quite ill there at the end. Senator Hope came to visit him several times and was always so nice and considerate, asking me if there was anything I needed.”

The woman was quiet again for so long that Kane thought she had thought better of talking. But, finally, she continued, “He was so sweet. And he is a very handsome man, and I—God forgive me—began to wonder if, maybe, after Richard died we’d…”

Again she was silent before resuming. “Isn’t that awful? My husband lying on his deathbed and me having lustful thoughts about another man? I thought it was awful. I’ve done some things that are condemned by polite society, but that was the first thing I’d done—thought, I guess, since I never really did anything—that I’m actually ashamed of.”

Kane wondered if he should say something, but he wasn’t sure if her story was done, so he held his peace.

“Then—it wasn’t a week before he died—my husband asked me to bring him his wallet,” she said. “He could barely open it, but he took out an old piece of paper and said, ‘I’m leaving you everything, Amber, but I want you to promise me that if any of the people on this list needs help, you’ll give it to them.’ Then he handed the paper to me. I’ve got it right here in my purse. There were eleven names on it. Three had been crossed off. Of those that are left, Matthew Hope’s is number seven.

“I didn’t know exactly what to make of it then, but I gave him my promise and I’m keeping it. And something about that—about the way Richard sounded when he asked, or about Matthew Hope’s name being on the list—it changed the way I felt about the senator. No more lustful thoughts. But I continued to support him politically, and when his name turned up as a suspect—
the
suspect—in the White Rose Murder, I knew I had to do something. I’d promised my husband. So I hired Mr. Doyle and you.”

Kane let the silence stretch out before saying, “You think Hope is Richard Foster’s son, don’t you? That the list is the names of his children?”

The woman sighed.

“I guess I must,” she said, the words coming in a rush, “because when I tried to figure out why my feelings toward him had changed, all I could come up with is that if he is Richard’s son that would mean…would mean any sort of physical relationship between us would be somehow a betrayal. And I just couldn’t do that. I won’t do that. I won’t betray my husband’s memory. It’s all I have left of him.”

The woman fell silent. Kane lay there thinking about fathers and sons and all the complications those relationships created. He’d never run into one quite like this, but he recognized that fathers and sons and issues like sex were just a bomb waiting to go off. He must have dozed then, because the next thing he heard was the squeaky voice of Oil Can Doyle.

“That Ritter is a disgrace to the bench,” Doyle said, throwing his coat on the floor and knocking his toupee cockeyed in the process. “The old fraud is a tool for whoever has power.”

Kane started to say something, but his lips were stuck together. He drank from the cup on his bedside table and said, “I take it the judge didn’t buy your arguments for letting Senator Hope out on bail.”

Doyle went and sat in the other chair in the room. That left Winthrop and Cocoa, who must have arrived while Kane dozed, standing, Doyle and Mrs. Foster sitting.

“Maybe if we got a couple more people in here, we could set a record,” Kane said.

“No, the pompous fraud didn’t buy it,” Doyle said. “Claimed that nothing was proven about Bez-whatever-his-name-is and his pals, and that even if they’d done it there was no way to connect them to the White Rose or the other aide, and that even if there was, there was plenty more evidence against my client. So I guess I should congratulate you, Kane. You have apparently solved a mystery, but not the freaking mystery you were hired to solve.”

The little lawyer closed his mouth with a click and cupped a hand under his chin.

“Feisty little fella, ain’t he?” Cocoa said. “Anyway, I just came here to see when they’re going to let you out, Nik, and whether you’re going to need a ride when they do.”

“Don’t know, Cocoa,” Kane said. “I haven’t seen much of anybody on the staff. Maybe I’ll have to check myself out again.”

The minute the words were out of his mouth, a nurse came in followed by a doctor who looked maybe eighteen.

“What’s this, a convention?” the nurse said. “I’m going to have to ask you all to leave so we can examine the patient.”

“Come back when they’re done, Oil Can,” Kane said. “I’ve got something to tell you that you’ll want to hear.”

After everyone left, the nurse unwrapped Kane’s leg and the doctor poked and prodded for a while, following every painful noise Kane made with an even more vigorous thrust. When he was finished, he said, “I’m told that back when you were my age, doctors kept people like you in the hospital for several days. But I want you on your feet walking by tonight, and if that doesn’t open anything up, I’ll send you home tomorrow.”

While the nurse rewrapped Kane’s leg, the doctor made some notes on the chart that hung at the end of the bed. The two of them left together and everyone but Winthrop returned.

“He’s bringing the car around,” Mrs. Foster said. “I’m going back to the hotel for a while. What did the doctor say?”

“He said I could get out tomorrow,” Kane said. “So I’ll call you, Cocoa?”

The cabbie nodded and he and the woman left the room. Ignoring the fact that the little man’s toupee now seemed to be on backward, Kane told the lawyer what Tank Crawford had said about the governor’s office intervening on behalf of the two criminals. By the time Kane was finished, Doyle had a big grin on his face.

“Oh, I hope I can get to a reporter or two with that before they’ve finished their stories,” he said. “This blackmail and kidnapping and shooting is so hot right now that everyone’s pretty much forgotten about the White Rose for the moment. If I can tie this around that idiot Putnam’s neck, it’ll help when I show that he’s been messing around in the White Rose case, too.”

Kane thought about what he’d told Alma and Grantham about trying to keep their statements quiet and decided he didn’t care. They’d each had a chance to choose between right and wrong, and they’d both chosen wrong.

The lawyer picked his coat up off the floor.

“So what you’ve done so far isn’t really a complete loss,” he said. “You might not have proved that Hope is innocent, but you’ve given me plenty of the kind of skulduggery juries love.”

Doyle bustled out of the room. Kane lay there thinking. If Bezhdetny wasn’t involved in the murders, he would pretty much have to start from scratch. And he wasn’t going to get very far until he talked with the people in O. B. Potter’s office.