Bad Blood (8 page)

“And if God sees the little sparrow fall,” Kate said.

Anne grinned, remembering, like Kate, the first time they had met. It had been, Kate thought, a total-immersion experience.

Anne’s grin faded. “I was so sorry to hear about Old Sam.”

It was going on a year, and the words still put a lump in Kate’s throat. “He is missed,” she said softly.

Anne reached across the table and touched her hand briefly. Kate wasn’t much for outward shows of affection, but this, from this woman, she would take as Old Sam’s due. “He liked you, a lot,” she said.

“I know,” Anne said. “I was proud he did. He didn’t like everybody.”

The remark surprised a laugh out of Kate. “He sure didn’t.” She willed the tears from her eyes. Laurel watched, fascinated, until Kate glared at her and she remembered that there was something she had to check in the kitchen. “The girls okay with this?” Kate said. “How are they, anyway? What are they now, fourteen?”

“Lauren and Caitlin? Fifteen. They’re good. They stay in Cordova with their grandmother while I fly the circuit.”

“They still packing lightsabers?”

Anne laughed. “I’m either happy or sad to report that they’ve graduated to phasers and photon torpedos. They’ve been watching all the
Star Trek
series on DVD. Lauren keeps running into doors. I don’t know if she really expects them to slide open, so much as she thinks they ought to in a better organized universe.”

“Ah,” Kate said. “
TOS
or
TNG
?”

Anne laughed again. “They love
Voyager
for Janeway and Nine, but they were both
DS9
girls from the first year. Everyone’s using iPads in
DS9
. I think they’re both geeks for life.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go. I’m due in Double Eagle this evening for a christening, and then Kushtaka tomorrow.”

“Kushtaka?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Jim’s down there. Been an accident of some kind.”

“Somebody hurt?”

“He wasn’t specific,” Kate said, crossing her fingers beneath the table. “But there is trouble.”

Anne frowned. “Good thing I’m already scheduled there, then.”

She said it utterly without ego or vanity. Anne Flanagan was in service to the community and it wasn’t about her; it was about the people on her pastoral circuit. Kate had to admire that, even if she was never going to attend one of Anne’s services. Although she might do that one day, too, because what Anne said about faith would be a lot different from what Pastor Seabolt in Chistona said about faith. Kate was certain any god Anne paid homage to would be a lot more accepting of the various, beautiful, and new flavors of people. She might even have a sense of humor, too.

She drove Anne back to the airport. As the minister preflighted and did the walkaround, one of George’s Single Otter turbos took off for the mine and a small white private jet touched down and rolled to a stop in front of his hangar.

Anne paused, following Kate’s gaze. “What is that, a G2?”

“Beats me,” Kate said.

Her clipped tone made Anne give her a quizzical glance, which narrowed when a tall man with thick white hair and jeans that looked tailored to fit disembarked from the jet. He caught sight of them, waved, and jogged across the airstrip.

In the cab of Kate’s pickup, Mutt sat up, ears cocked and yellow eyes fixed on the oncoming figure.

“Stay, Mutt,” Kate said.

“Kate?” Anne said in a low voice.

“Kate,” the man said jovially, coming to a stop in front of them, hands in the pockets of an elegant olive green safari jacket that Anne estimated probably cost as much as her Tri-Pacer. “And this is?” He smiled at Anne, and she had to admit it was a very nice smile, white even teeth in a tanned face filled with interesting lines. He walked like a much younger man, but up close she could see he was older than she’d first thought.

“Anne Flanagan,” she said, and wondered at the faint sense of uneasiness she felt in his presence.

“Ah yes,” he said, holding out his hand, “the new flying pastor?”

“Why, yes,” she said. His grip was hard and firm and meant to leave an impression. “I’m sorry, we haven’t met, have we?”

“Erland Bannister,” he said, and the faint sense of uneasiness jolted into full-blown alarm. She recovered almost immediately but he had seen, and his smile widened. “I see you’ve heard all about me, Reverend Flanagan.” He turned that smile on Kate. “Yes, well, you might like to consider your source.”

Kate’s expression didn’t change. She didn’t offer her hand, and she didn’t say anything, but something in the steady gaze of those hard hazel eyes caused some of the self-satisfied assurance to fade from Erland Bannister’s smile. Anne, watching, had the breathless feeling of sharpened weapons ready to be drawn on a moment’s notice, with no quarter asked for or given.

She knew the story, of course. Everyone did, or a version thereof. Some years before, Kate had hired on to look into a suspicious death in Erland Bannister’s family, which had resulted in a nearly successful attempt on Kate’s own life and in Erland’s incarceration at the maximum security facility in Spring Creek. Owing to Erland’s seemingly limitless resources, he’d stayed there for only two years before the courts set aside the verdict on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. He was released and the district attorney’s office, seeing the writing on the judicial wall, had declined to prosecute the case a second time. About the only consolation the friends of Kate Shugak could take was that declining to prosecute was not the same as being released without a stain upon his character.

In other words, if it looked like a skunk, if it smelled like a skunk, if it walked like a skunk, it probably was a skunk. Anne wondered what said skunk was doing in Niniltna. She also wondered why he was so au courant with Park affairs that he knew who she was.

A question for another day. She said briskly, “Well, I’ve got to hit the road.”

Erland broke off the staring match first and said courteously, “Certainly, Reverend.” He raised two fingers in a salute. “Kate,” he said, and turned and walked back across the airstrip.

“What the hell was that?” Anne said in a low voice.

“Well,” Kate said, “it wasn’t Justin Bieber.”

Both women started to giggle, more from a relaxation from tension than out of mirth, but Erland heard them. He didn’t look around or pause in his stride, but even at that distance, Kate could see his neck reddening. Erland Bannister enjoyed a joke as much as anyone, just so long as the joke was never on him.

Anne looked at Kate and raised an eyebrow. “Anything you want to tell me?”

Kate watched Erland walk around his jet. “You already know everything there is to know.”

Anne snorted. “Sure I do.”

She climbed into the Tri-Pacer without further conversation. The engine twitched into life, and the nose pulled down as the prop accelerated into a blur. Anne waved at Kate, pulled the little aircraft around, lifted off neatly on a southeasterly heading.

Kate climbed into her pickup and stared at Erland’s jet.

She liked Anne Flanagan fine, but Niniltna and the Park had been blessedly—she smiled at her choice of adverb—blessedly free of the taint of religious controversy for most of her life. Niniltna had to be the only village of its size in Alaska without its very own Russian Orthodox, Pentecostal, and Catholic churches. Ahtna was a big enough town that it had at least a minimum complement of every denomination from atheism to Zoroastrianism, but in Niniltna, the one organized congregation met at the Roadhouse, and not too regularly, mostly because of simple logistics. The Roadhouse had begun life a century ago as an actual roadhouse, a waypoint on the stampeders’ trail between the Port of Cordova and Interior Alaska. It was fifty miles from Niniltna, the road was not maintained, in winter it was virtually impassable until the snow machines had beaten it into at least a semblance of flat, and lately falling spruce trees were a real hazard at any time of year. It didn’t make for regular meetings of the congregation.

Ulanie Anahonak, the token right-wing nut on the Niniltna Native Association board, had been bemoaning the lack since she’d been sworn in, so far without much success. Most Park rats operated under the theory that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Maybe bringing back the flying pastor was the thin end of the wedge.

Kate stared at Erland’s jet as if trying to see through the fuselage, and wondered who had really bankrolled Anne Flanagan’s Tri-Pacer.

Act III

Seven

THURSDAY, JULY 12

Anchorage

At the same moment Anne Flanagan’s Aviating Evangelist Piper Tri-Pacer was taking off from Niniltna, Jim Chopin was landing his Alaska Department of Public Safety Cessna 180 in Anchorage, where he unloaded Tyler’s body into the back of an ambulance. He spent the night at the Merrill Field Inn, had pie for breakfast at Peggy’s Airport Cafe, called the ME to make sure the body had arrived at the right lab, and was leveling off on a northeasterly heading, adjusting for drift under the influence of a twelve-knot tailwind, when his cell phone played a short burst from Lenny Kravitz’s “Lady.”

Where are you?

He texted back.

Ten minutes out of Anchorage. OTG Niniltna in a couple of hours. You?

Her:

Home. Who died?

He was only surprised she hadn’t heard yet.

Tyler Mack.

Seconds passed.

Accident or on purpose?

On purpose.

Sure?

Pretty sure. Waiting on the ME.

Coming home?

Going straight back to Kuskulana.

Crap. Later then. Horny.

He laughed.

Me, too.

He was in a much better mood when he landed in Kuskulana than when he had departed the day before. It didn’t last long.

Kuskulana was a lot like Niniltna in structure, albeit higher in elevation. There was, incredibly at any time of year but particularly in summer, an air of bustle about it, two new houses going up at opposite ends of the village, an extension going onto the two-year-old store that would double its size. It didn’t have a hotel yet, but Jim saw five B and B signs between the airstrip and the creek landing, and Kuskulana hosted one of the brand-new cell towers that had sprung up overnight like mushrooms between Ahtna and Cordova.

The landing, at one time nothing more than a wide spot on the river, now boasted a mooring slip, a twenty-five-foot wooden float topped with open metal grating. Pilings had been driven through open squares in the four corners so that the slip would rise and fall with the rise and fall of the water on the river. It sat lengthwise against the bank and was reached by a metal gangplank, attached to a flight of wide, sturdy stairs made of treated wood posts and more metal grating, attached to more pilings that climbed the cliff to the plateau. The wood of the pilings gleaming with tar that had yet to turn brown from time and weather, and a pile of construction material, two-by-fours, twelve-by-twelves, angle iron, rebar, a couple of leftover Permafloats, some broken concrete blocks, were piled neatly beneath the gangplank out of the reach of the river. This far upstream, the Gruening River was too shallow for fishing boats, but every second Kuskulaner had his own skiff, and that de facto presupposed the existence of the upriver equivalent of a small boat harbor.

There was a cluster of young men at the landing when Jim stepped off the gangplank. In their late teens, dressed in T-shirts and jeans, most of them looked familiar enough that Jim knew he’d seen them in aggregate at a basketball game or a potlatch in the Niniltna gym, but none of them were so familiar that he’d ever arrested them for vandalism or underage drinking.

They were piling backpacks, folded tents, sleeping bags, and cardboard cartons into two big skiffs. They paused when they saw him. The tallest stepped forward. “Sergeant Chopin?”

“That’d be me,” Jim said, pulling off his ball cap and pushing his fingers through his hair to let the breeze dry off his scalp. It was a warm day, welcome after all the rain. “And you are?”

“Ryan Christianson.”

Roger’s son. They both had the sharp Kuskulana cheekbones, although Ryan was whipcord lean in comparison to Roger’s comfortably padded frame, and his son was maybe two inches taller. His brown hair was a little lighter in color, but he had the same deep-set eyes and the same firm jaw. There was a little acne left over from adolescence but on the whole a handsome boy with the promise of character in his steady gaze and firm chin.

“Dad said you’re to have the use of the skiff for as long as you need it,” Ryan said.

Jim resettled his cap on his head. “He going to be home this afternoon?” Ryan nodded. “Tell him I’ll stop in on my way back.”

“Will do.” Ryan hesitated, then said, “Is it true? Is Tyler Mack dead?”

“Yes,” Jim said.

The emotion that flitted across the boy’s face was fleeting and hard to identify. It might have been fear, or it might have been something else entirely. Jim looked across the river at the Kushtaka fish wheel, sitting just above the first bend south of the Kuskulana landing. Take all of five minutes to get there from where he was standing. “You know him?” he said.

Ryan followed his gaze, and then looked back at Jim. “Everybody knows everybody around here,” he said.

Jim was very conscious of the other boys standing in back of Ryan, their attention a palpable weight. When he looked over at them, inspecting every face one at a time, they met his eyes readily enough, perhaps even with a trace of challenge in their collective gaze. They were united in the way most teenage packs were united, either against his age or his profession or both. “True enough,” he said peaceably, and this time there was no mistaking the relief on Ryan’s face.

“Maybe not by name,” Ryan said.