A fine and bitter snow (14 page)

Kate leaned forward. "Dina and Ruthe would be the first to tell you that the land is what's important, Dan. Not us. The land. We're only custodians, and temporary ones at that. We do the best we can and then we pass the job along to the next generation. I don't think you're ready to hand off just yet."

He looked at her with the faint glimmer of his old smile. "You be careful there, Shugak. You're starting to sound like your grandmother."

She sat back. "Did you see the guy Jim brought in?"

He shook his head.

"Did you see anything yourself?"

"No." He seemed about to say something else, then repeated firmly, "No. I didn't see anything. It doesn't matter, really, if I saw anything or didn't see anything. Jim got the guy. Crazy bastard, sounds like," he added as an afterthought.

It sounded like the truth, she thought as she made her way back down the trail from the Step. It also sounded like Dan was trying to convince himself that it was. Which was crazy. Like Dan said, Jim got the guy, had him in custody in Ahtna. Case closed.

The sky had clouded over in the night and the temperature had warmed up to ten above, and if the rising barometer at the homestead was working right, there was a storm coming in off the Gulf. She drove through Niniltna to the turnoff and then, for the second time that week, negotiated the narrow track to the little cabin perched high on the side of the mountain. The snow in the yard was packed down hard from the passage of many vehicles, wheeled and tracked, and there were a couple of snow machines already parked there. She stopped hers and climbed the stairs.

There were two strange men in the house, men she'd never seen before. They swung around, startled, when the door opened. "Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?" she said.

They were both in their early twenties, hairy and with the aroma of an unwashed winter about them. They hadn't bothered to doff their Carhartt jackets, bib overalls or their knit caps, only their identical pairs of black leather gloves. "Just poking around," one of them said. "Seeing if there's something we can use."

Both of them were looking at Mutt, who was standing at Kate's side and looking both of them over with a long, considering stare. Mutt was half wolf, and when she wanted to, she let it show. Sensing Kate's rising anger, she bared a little fang.

The man who had spoken visibly paled. "Look, we're not doing anything wrong. The two old ladies are dead, they don't have any relatives, and—"

"Wrong," Kate said flatly. "I'm their relative. Get out."

He tried to bluster. "Who the hell are you anyway? You'll just take all the good stuff if—"

"Russ," the other man said.

"Well, hell, Gabe, we got here first. We're not going to turn around and—"

"That's Kate Shugak."

"What?"

The other man nodded at Kate. "That's Kate Shugak."

"Oh." Russ gulped. "And that must be—"

"Mutt."

Mutt had perfected the art of the unblinking stare. It could be unnerving.

"Oh." Russ gulped again. "Actually, we were just leavin
g."

"That we were," the second man said, and beat him out the door.

Mutt looked up at Kate and raised an eyebrow. Kate shook her head. "Not worth it." Mutt gave an almost-perceptible shrug. "Find Gal," Kate said. Mutt looked disgusted and stalked out, disapproval evident in the slightly backward set of her ears.

The room looked as if it had been hit by a chinook, one of the spring storms that roared up out of the Gulf like a lion and proceeded to blow everything in front of it out of the way. There wasn't really any good place to start. Kate shed parka, bib, and boots and rolled up her sleeves. Finding that someone had banked the embers in the woodstove, she loaded it with wood, and waded in.

The bookshelves were freestanding and had been pulled down, but they'd been emptied of books and so were easy enough to stand back up. She began putting books in at random, figuring they could be organized later. She righted furniture, replaced the canned goods and pots, pans, and dishes—plastic, a good thing—in the cupboards, and cleaned up those supplies that had been spilled, mostly flour—both wheat and white, it looked like. Most of a forty-eight-ounce bag of chocolate chips was spilled across the floor, too. She swept it all up and into a garbage bag, which she tied off and put on the porch. The bears were asleep, and she'd get the bag to the dump before they woke up again in the spring.

A lone bunny slipper, one of its ears lopsided, was sitting on its side under the woodstove. Kate fished it out and put it on a shelf, unable to stop the tears from welling in her eyes. She conducted a search but couldn't find the other one. Maybe it was with Dina's body.

There didn't seem to be a dish towel to be found, or a towel of any kind, and then she remembered. Ruthe had been hurt, and transported to the hospital. Someone had probably used them for bandages. She climbed the ladder to the loft and discovered, somewhat to her surprise, that the chinook had hit here, as well. The two beds were off their stands, a pillow leaked feathers, and clothes had been emptied from closets and drawers and were strewn all over the floor. The blankets were gone. Ruthe again, she figured. She got the beds back on their stands, the clothes back into place, and as much of the leaky pillow and its errant feathers as possible into another garbage bag.

When Ruthe got better, Kate didn't want her coming home to a destroyed house. If she didn't get better . . . No, she would.

She went to the top of the ladder and turned around, hands on the posts, foot on the first rung, and gave the loft a long look. Pale light leaked in from a skylight in the ceiling.

Why the loft? The two women had been assaulted downstairs. Why beat up on two women and then trash the loft? Seemed like overkill. She winced at the word. Dan had called the perp a "crazy bastard." That could be all it was. Enough crazy bastards came into the Park and misbehaved that it was usually enough of an explanation, requiring the full-time attention of three troopers and more than a few tribal policemen. Hell, there were enough of the homegrown variety to keep everyone in business, never mind the newbies.

She climbed down the ladder and began to try to make sense of some of the letters and paperwork that she had piled on the coffee table. There were advisory reports on this and that species of wildlife, letters asking for endorsements in political campaigns and for a presence at fundraisers, some from candidates whose names made Kate's eyebrows go up. There were fat files on various parks and refuges, environmental-impact studies on a couple of construction projects, including a hiking trail someone wanted to run down the side of the Kanuyaq River from Ahtna all the way to Cordova; it would run partway along the existing roadbed into the Park.

She noticed for the first time that Ruthe and Dina had no family photographs, no pictures of mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers or sisters. She shrugged. Maybe they were both orphans. Still, it seemed odd. Everybody had pictures of people, at least a few. Ruthe and Dina's albums were of plants, animals, glaciers, avalanches, and mountain-tops, and if there were people in them, they were usually Ruthe or Dina.

Then she found one with both of them and Ekaterina, posing in front of the Kanuyaq Copper Mine, along with a crowd of other people. The beaver-hatted man on Emaa's right must be Mudhole Smith, the Bush pilot from Cordova. All four aunties were there, three with their husbands, who were still living at the time. Demetri Totemoff and John Letourneau were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, which would put the date back in the days before they'd split their guiding business and gone their separate ways. John was standing next to Dina and laughing down at her. Anastasia was next to Demetri, looking up at him with a soft smile. Demetri's arm was draped tentatively around her, as if he had yet to be convinced that he had the right. He probably still feared the appearance of Anastasia's father with a gun, which, from everything Kate had heard, would have been just like Frank Korsakovakof. A protective father
and a good man. Anastasia had found it hard to go up against him, so the story went, but Demetri had prevailed, and in the end, Frank had come around. And now both Frank and Anastasia were gone. She made a mental note to stop in and see Demetri soon.

In the photograph, the polyester clothes and the hair, either board-straight or permed to a curlicue, put the time in the mid- to late seventies. They all looked tanned and fit, and so very vigorous. So alive. There was a man standing to the right and a little behind Ekaterina. Kate took a closer look. Ray Chevak, from Bering. Emaa's—what? Even back then, he wasn't young enough to be called "boyfriend."

It was unnerving to see how far back Ray and Ekaterina's relationship went. Kate hadn't known about it until after Emaa's death, and she didn't want to know more, didn't want her imagination to work out any of the details.

She heard a noise on the porch and went to the door. Mutt was on the top step, Gal between her front paws, her face screwed up into an expression of deep distaste as Mutt washed her with a raspy pink tongue. They both became aware of Kate at the same moment. Gal sprang away and hissed.
Grr,
Mutt said in return. Gal jerked her tail and padded between Kate's legs. She gave an imperious meow, but when Kate got her some food, she barely waved a whisker over it before going right to Ruthe's chair and curling up.

"Welcome home," Kate said. She was immensely relieved. She didn't want to have to tell Ruthe that Gal had disappeared. She bent to give the cat a scratch behind the ears and found her fur damp to the touch from Mutt's ministrations. She looked over at Mutt. "You make a pretty good nurse."

Mutt gave an elaborate yawn, and cleaned up Gal's food with a single swipe of her tongue. It was all show, because Kate knew for a fact that Mutt had dined very nicely the
day before on the remains of a moose carcass not a mile from the homestead.

She noticed a book she had missed beneath the sofa and bent down to pick it up. Wedged under the couch was a narrow tin box, of the size to hold standard file folders. It was locked. Kate looked for a key in hopes that there might be names and numbers for her to call—not that either Dina or Ruthe had ever referred to having anyone to call in the event of, other than each other. There was a key rack with hooks sprouting from little tin chickadees, with airplane keys, snow machine keys, and truck keys, but no keys to fit the tin box. She set the box to one side, not feeling things were to the point that she had to break into it.

"Hey," a voice said from the deck.

She looked up, to behold Jim Chopin peering at her through the window. She didn't notice that the sight of him didn't cause its usual knee-jerk antipathy. "Hey, yourself."

He came in. "What are you doing here?"

She waved a hand. "Trying to clean up for when Ruthe gets home."

He looked at her and forbore from saying what was on both their minds.

"You?" she said.

He shrugged. "I don't know. I think I wanted to see if I'd remembered to lock the door."

"There's no lock."

He examined the doorknob. "I'll be damned."

"Dina didn't believe in locks in the Bush. Said if she and Ruthe were both away from home and somebody got lost in a blizzard that she wanted them to be able to get in."

"I don't know who'd stagger up this mountain in a blizzard, but it's a nice thought."

"I caught a couple of guys poking through the rubble."

His eyes sharpened. "Who?"

She shook her head. "Don't know them. I ran them off."

"Get tags?"

She shook her head again. "I don't think they'll be back. And I'll get Bernie to spread the word that I'm looking after the place."

Which all by itself would be enough to keep the cabin and the surrounding property sacrosanct, Jim thought. At least for a while, at least until they knew if Ruthe would live.

"I hear you got the guy," she said.

"Yeah. Knife in hand. Blood wasn't even dry on it. Tests already confirmed Ruthe's and Dina's blood on it."

"That was quick."

"The governor himself called the crime lab. Love them or hate them, Ruthe and Dina helped make a lot of the history of this state. He ordered the flags to fly at half-staff today."

In spite of herself, Kate was impressed. "A nice gesture."

"Yeah, ought to pick him up a few more votes in the next election." Gal's head poked up over the back of the chair, and Jim said, "Hey, Gal, you came back! Good girl. Thank god. I couldn't find her after she took off."