Bad Blood (12 page)

She sincerely hoped not.

Ten

THURSDAY, JULY 12

Kuskulana

The skiff swamped ten feet short of the bank, and Jim pulled his phone out, grabbed the bowline, and went over the side, holding the hand with the phone in it over his head. The water was up to his shoulders and so cold, he felt like an instant Creamsicle. The current, swollen with snowmelt after two warm days, was running strongly downriver.

He turned his body sideways to it to reduce drag and fought the current to shore, where he stumbled out and fumbled with numb hands to fasten the bowline to a convenient willow branch. He looked back in time to see Roger Christianson’s beautiful skiff and brand-new outboard sink beneath the surface of the river with a long, slow death gurgle.

His hair and hat and his phone and the bottom half of his left sleeve were still dry, but he was freezing cold and starting to shiver. He thought briefly about starting a fire, but there wasn’t an app for that and rubbing two sticks together seemed like a lot more trouble than getting to his feet and starting to walk.

In the very little time allotted to him to think when the skiff had begun to fill with water, he’d thrown the kicker hard over and headed straight for the Kushtaka side of the river. Not only was it closer, but if he had to walk out, the Kushtaka side was a better bet. The Kuskulana side dead-ended in the confluence of Cataract Creek and the Gruening River, and he would have had to wade across, which given the force of the creek’s current (not for nothing had it come by its name) was to say the least inadvisable.

The Kushtaka side of the creek, on the other hand, had Kushtaka village south and the Kushtaka fish wheel north of where he’d put to shore. The fish wheel was across the river from Kuskulana and his aircraft, but it was at least within shouting distance of Kuskulana landing.

The traffic on the Gruening was nowhere near what it was on the Kanuyaq, so his chances of thumbing a ride were not good. He thought of heading back to Kushtaka, but empirical evidence recently acquired advised him to head north instead.

The next two hours were among the longest he ever recalled living. Apart from a few game trails that meandered off into the woods too soon, the brush next to the river was so thick as to be nearly impenetrable, and it became immediately obvious that the reason Kushtaka’s fish wheel was two miles upriver from the village was that it was on the first stretch of open gravel above water between there and Kushtaka.

It was a long, slow slog. His clothes stayed wet and his boots squelched with every step and the trees were almost malevolent in their attempts to blind him and the mosquitoes swarmed around him like starlets around a Hollywood producer. He did his best to ignore current conditions and tried instead to concentrate on how he got there. He was pretty sure he knew.

While he’d been busy interviewing people in Kushtaka, someone had unsnapped the drain plug.

All skiffs had drains, a small hole beneath the outboard that drained the bottom of the skiff when it was hauled out of the water. When the skiff was in use, as in on the water, the drains were plugged with a drain plug that usually had some kind of simple locking mechanism.

Someone had unlocked the drain plug on Roger’s skiff while Jim was in Kushtaka. They’d probably loosened it, too, just enough so that the forward motion of the water beneath the hull would tug out the plug when he got well and truly up to speed on the river. The results were always fairly spectacularly fast, so he could rule out someone from Kuskulana having done it or he would have sunk on the way to Kushtaka.

His first year in the Park, he had responded to what was eventually called an accidental drowning when the same thing happened downriver from Niniltna. In that case, it was an old skiff with an older plug and an even older boat driver, who had drowned before he could make it to shore. Alaskan fishermen were notorious for not knowing how to swim, general opinion holding that you’d be dead from hypothermia before you figured which way was up, so why bother?

Jim could have been dead of hypothermia himself, and in a little while he was going to be warm and dry enough to be well and truly pissed off about that. There was zero chance of finding out who had pulled the plug, and he wondered if the guilty party had done it on his own or if it was a joint decision by the entire village of Kushtaka. The message was equally clear either way:
Keep your nose out of our business, Trooper.

Except that he couldn’t, and wouldn’t anyway, if what he suspected was true about Tyler Mack’s death.

He blundered through a stand of diamond willow, stepped into a saltwater marsh up to his knee, and swore, loudly and profanely, offending the delicate sensibilities of a cow moose who had until that moment been indulging in a peaceful nibble at some tender new willow shoots. She gave Jim an indignant look and turned to depart with dignity, shepherding her calf before her in an effort to shield her innocent offspring from the bad, bad man.

“Yeah, you’re just lucky I’m a law enforcement professional,” he said to her retreating back, and bushwhacked on. Twenty minutes later, he muscled through the thick underbrush out onto the beach where the Kushtaka fish wheel had returned to its stately circle, dripping water and the occasional fish down the chute into the holding pen.

He had his first bit of real luck of the day when he saw a skiff passing downriver. He staggered down to the edge of the water and waved his arms like semaphores. “Hey! Hey!”

The skiff driver, by a miracle from neither Kuskulana nor Kushtaka but a sports fisherman from Eagle River, gaped at him for thirty seconds before recovering enough to put the kicker over to the right and come to the rescue of the bedraggled trooper. Safely ashore on the right side of the river, Jim said thanks and offered him a sodden twenty-dollar bill peeled out of his wallet. The Good Samaritan took it gingerly by one corner and said, “Really, Sergeant, you shouldn’t have,” without conviction. Jim knew the day he’d picked up the soaking wet Park trooper off the side of the Gruening River was about to enter into Park, if not Alaska, legend and lose nothing in the telling, either.

He shook his sodden uniform into some semblance of order and hoped he had no cause to draw his weapon anytime soon. He stared across the river at the Kushtaka fish wheel.

Kuskulana didn’t have a fish wheel. Kuskulanans fished for salmon in Alaganik Bay from fishing boats they owned. He wondered if it was partly because the Kushtakers were originally Athabascan in ancestry, Interior dwellers with an innate distrust of salt water. Although it was probably more due to the difference in their median income.

He wondered, too, what someone standing where he was right now might have seen across the river early Tuesday morning.

*   *   *

Carol Christianson invited him in with exclamations of concern, relieved him of jacket, shirt, boots, and socks and sat him down at the kitchen table, and offered him his choice of coffee, tea, or cold beer. He was greatly tempted by the beer. “Better be coffee,” he said regretfully. “I’m flying.”

“Then how about a latte?” she said, and demonstrated on a big cube of stainless steel, with spouts, that she said was from Switzerland. While the drink was creating itself, she produced half of a coffee cake that smelled of lemon and proved to be frosted with cream cheese icing. Jim hadn’t had anything since pie for breakfast, and he dug in. The cake was moist and chewy and tasted of fresh lemons, and the latte was a perfect brew, hot and aromatic and revivifying.

Roger, next to him, was similarly occupied, and Carol pulled up a chair and observed them both with satisfaction. “Love me a man who likes to eat,” she said.

“Marry me,” Jim said, spluttering crumbs.

“Hey,” Roger said, spluttering his own crumbs, “I’m sitting right here.”

Carol laughed, a mellow sound full of good humor. “It’s okay,” she said. “I think Kate Shugak got in there ahead of me.”

“At least give me the recipe,” Jim said, and Carol wrote it out on a three-by-five index card forthwith. He tucked it carefully away and sat back looking around him with new eyes. The sugar and the caffeine together produced a low-level simmer just beneath the surface of his skin. “I might live,” he said, as if it were a new idea.

Carol regarded him anxiously. “Are you sure you don’t want some dry clothes, Jim? I’m sure I can find something of Roger’s to fit.” She eyed their respective sizes. “Or maybe Ryan’s.”

“Hey,” Roger said, indignant, and Carol laughed again.

“I’m sorry about the skiff, Roger.” Jim had already said it once, but, considering the lemon coffee cake, he felt that it bore repeating.

“Not your fault, Jim,” Roger said, all trace of humor vanishing. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone from Kushtaka took their mad out on someone from Kuskulana.”

Which was the first time Jim considered that pulling the drain plug on Roger Christianson’s skiff might be regarded as a twofer in Kushtaka.

The kitchen was painted white with sunny yellow accents in the backsplash and curtains, and the floor was white and black tiles. The appliances were white, a six-burner propane stove, a massive refrigerator, they even had a dishwasher. He felt warmer and drier just looking around the room.

The white-framed sash-weight windows opened into a yard planted with pale pink Sitka roses and midnight blue delphiniums onto a street that appeared to be bustling with traffic—pickup, four-wheeler, and foot. Through a doorway, he could see a living room with a rock fireplace and an enormous flat-screen TV where an ordinary mantel would have been, and a brown leather couch that looked long enough for even Jim to stretch out on, flanked by a love seat and two recliners.

It was a comfortable home by anyone’s standards, whether you were in Kuskulana, Anchorage, or Des Moines. The difference between Kuskulana and Kushtaka could not have been made more manifest. The fact that Roger had stayed for coffee and cake instead of rushing immediately down to pull his skiff out of the river told its own tale.

Roger polished off the last piece of cake and got up to refill everyone’s mugs. He brought them back to the table and sat down. “Other than trying to drown you, how are the Kushtakers holding up?”

Jim thought of Dale Mack’s glowering presence. “Angry, mostly.”

Roger nodded. “Understandable. I don’t think they’ve got thirty people left in Kushtaka. Losing even one has got to be hard.”

Remembering the general attitude in response to his questions, Jim didn’t think “hard” was exactly the right word. Or “loss,” for that matter. “Did you know him?” he said. “Tyler?”

Roger looked at Carol “There aren’t many people in Kuskulana who can say they know many in Kushtaka,” he said.

His answer felt deliberately evasive to Jim. “You seemed to know Pat.”

“To wave to, sure.” Roger shrugged. “We don’t socialize.”

“I thought when the state closed the Kushtaka school after their enrollment dropped below nine students that their kids came to yours.”

The couple looked uncomfortable. “Some of them did,” Roger said. “The ones whose parents didn’t decide to homeschool them so they could keep ’em on their side of the river, well away from our pernicious influence.”

Carol put a hand over his, and Roger looked a little embarrassed. “Sorry. I think one or two got sent to the boarding school in Ahtna, too.”

“Was Tyler one of the ones who attended Kuskulana?”

Roger nodded. “I think so. Ryan would know.”

Interesting, Jim thought, considering Ryan’s misdirected answers to Jim’s questions that morning. “Is he here?”

“No, he’s not. Him and a bunch of his buddies are camping their way downriver to Alaganik, on the off chance there will ever be another opener.” He looked momentarily envious.

Jim remembered those anonymous cardboard cartons and felt a little envious himself. Being a teenager didn’t totally bite, not in the Park. “Anyone else here you can think of who might have known Tyler?”

He was aware that something had changed in the way both of the Christiansons were looking at him. “You’re asking an awful lot of questions about a boy who tripped and fell into a fish wheel,” Carol said.

“Yeah,” Roger said, “what’s going on here, Jim?”

Jim gave a mental sigh. He had already aired his suspicions to Dale Mack, which meant everyone in Kushtaka knew by now. “Until the medical examiner says different, Tyler might have been murdered.”

The ticking of the kitchen clock was very loud in the silence that fell. Outside, an ATV roared down the road, followed in more stately fashion by a pickup truck. A bird twittered. A fly buzzed.

A glance exchanged between host and hostess acknowledged that the silence had gone on too long. Roger raised his mug, took a long, deliberate pull, and set it down, centering it precisely on the table in front of him. “What makes you say that?”

“Somebody took a comprehensive whack at the back of his head. Also, as you saw yourself, he was seriously stuck into that basket. I have a hard time believing anyone could just fall into a fish wheel basket, first, and second, get so stuck, he couldn’t get out again. Seems more likely he was put there, unconscious, and left to drown.”

“That’s awful, Jim,” Carol said. “That’s—that’s just awful.”

She rose abruptly and left the room, returning shortly with his shirt and socks. “Do you have any idea who might have done it?”

He understood and even appreciated the strategic change of subject. “So far?” he said, shrugging into his shirt. “Not a clue.” He sat down to pull on his socks. They were wonderfully warm from the dryer. “Who’s the chief here?”

“Good question,” Roger said, looking at Carol.

“I suppose I am,” Carol said, pulling a wry mouth. “I’m not elected, but if we’re counting old blood, I’ve probably got more of it than anyone else in town. We never applied for status individually. As a federally recognized tribe,” she added when she saw Jim’s blank look. “We’re all Niniltna Native Association shareholders in Kuskulana.”

Jim hadn’t known that, but then he tried to keep his distance from Native politics in the Park. He was white and he was a cop, which made two strikes against him already, and some people would say sleeping with Kate Shugak made three. “How’d that happen?” he said, his voice carefully incurious.