Blood Will Tell (19 page)

Katalla. She raised her head, staring off into the distance with a frown. Something tickled at the back of her mind, something about Katalla, something she had known once and forgotten. She searched after it but it eluded her, vanishing into the wispy fog of memory and time.

Making an involuntary frustrated sound, at which neither Gamble nor Jack so much as twitched, she bent over the files again. All of the contracts were written in legalese, but after she got past the requisite amounts of whereases and whyfors and thereats, they all had two significant features in common: Each contract was for a project in a town or village in the Alaskan bush with a large Alaska Native population, and each one had been written by or under the legal oversight of the well-known law firm of Dischner, Rousch and Ford, known familiarly to the local populace as Huckster, Shyster and Finagle.

Kate had a thought and went back through the contracts one more time, looking at signature pages. Each of the contracts regarding a prospective project within the authority of the Niniltna Native Association, as was required by association bylaws, had been approved by an Association board member. This would have been fine, except for the fact that there were five board members, and only three signatures showed up on the contracts, those of Harvey Meganack and Enakenty Barnes.

And Billy Mike.

Kate closed her eyes and swore, once and thoroughly, to herself. She opened her eyes again and flipped through the contracts one more time, running a rough total in her mind. She couldn't believe the result, and ran it through again. It came out the same. She thought of Enakenty Barnes, and of motive for murder. She had motive now.

Gamble was breathing heavily down her neck so she turned over the files and moved off to open another drawer at random, not really looking at what was in it. She remembered, with an inward shudder, the gold nugget watch with the rams' heads on Harvey Meganack's wrist. She wondered again who had paid for Harvey's new house. She wondered if Pacific Northwest Paper made other wood products. She wondered if Pacific Northwest Paper made other building products. She wondered if Pacific Northwest Paper maybe contracted out for construction work, and construction work in town as well as in the bush.

Jack looked up. "What time is it, anyway?"

Kate looked at her watch. "Almost six," she said, surprised.

"About time we packed it in," Jack said, replacing the file he was holding and closing the drawer on it. "Dischner's a workaholic, he could be here any time."

Kate looked down to close her own drawer, and the name of a file caught her eye.

"Kate? Did you hear me?"

It was a thick file. She pulled it.

"Gamble, we've pushed this about as far as we should, don't you think?"

Jack said. "If we don't get caught in here, it's late enough or early enough or whatever you call it to get caught outside. Come on, let's pack it in."

She flipped through the file. They looked like leases. Subsurface leases for mineral rights. She saw Dischner's name, Mathisen's name, the names of the two ex-governors, the owner of one of the local newspapers, the president of UCo, half a dozen legislators, past and present, a couple of judges. Lew Mathisen. John King.

"Kate, come on, dammit."

Something nudged her elbow. She shrugged it off and flipped a page. The territory the lease form referred to was in map coordinates, latitude and longitude. They looked familiar. Something nudged her again and she looked down to see Mutt standing next to her. "What, you need to go outside?" __, Then the other three heard what Mutt had heard, the sound of the door shutting downstairs.

Kate stuffed the file back in the drawer and took three silent steps to the light switch. The room was plunged into darkness. Footsteps rang off the parquet floor. A stair creaked. Jack's whisper breathed into her ear made her jump. "There's a back stairway." One hand closed over her arm, another opened the door, and they slid into the hallway, Gamble shrugging into his suit coat and bringing up the rear. In the dim light reflected from the street lamps outside Kate thought she saw the white flutter of a dropped piece of paper, but the footsteps were halfway up the main stairs and Jack was pulling her in the opposite direction. This seemed like a very good idea and she went.

There was the hiss of a hydraulic hinge as Jack cracked the door. It was a fire stairway, rough concrete and gray painted steel lit with dim yellow emergency lights that stayed on twenty-four hours a day. Gamble was the last one through and trusted to the hinge to pull the door closed behind him. It did, slowly, too slowly. The light from the stairwell must have showed around the edges of the door, and whoever was climbing the main staircase saw it. "What the hell? Hey! Hey, who's there! Hey! Hey, you!"

All attempt at secrecy abandoned, Jack jumped every other riser, Kate right behind him. They hit the first floor and made for the door.

"Morgan!" Gamble whispered. It was a panicked sound that carried clearly. "God dammit wait for me!" The toe of the Fibbie's wingtip caught on the last step and he went sprawling. "Shugak! Help me!"

Kate and Jack ran back to grab him by one arm each and hoist him to his feet. The exit was under the last flight of stairs and Mutt was already at the door, nose pressed to the crack. Jack shoved it open as the metal stairwell crashed with the sound of feet in a hurry. "Hey!"

And then they were outside and running for it. Gamble went up Fourth, Kate and Jack down Third, Mutt loping well ahead of them. They could hear the man's voice clearly. "I see you, you sons-of-bitches! I see you! I'm calling the cops! Run, you assholes! Run!"

They ran, flat out, for three and a half blocks. The Blazer was parked in front of the Carr-Gottstein building across from the state court house. Jack gave rapid but devout thanks for an absence of police cars around the state court building, unlocked the doors and they tumbled inside. The motor caught on the first try and they were gliding away from the curb, all in the same movement. Jack left the headlights off until they were safety on L and out of sight, succeeding so well that a Ford Pinto nearly ran into them at Fifth. Jack hit the brakes. The Pinto's driver flipped them the bird and roared off, trying to catch the light at Ninth.

"Never a cop around when you need one," Jack said, un clamping his hands from the steering wheel.

Kate let out a long sigh. "Thank God." Mutt nuzzled her with a soft whine and she reached around to rub her head. Her heart was still trying to climb out of her throat. "Good girl. Good girl."

"We should have scattered some of those files around," Jack said. "Made it look like vandals."

"I put all the files I looked at back and closed the drawers."

"So did I, but how much you want to bet Gamble left a trail a two-year-old could follow?"

"No bet."

"And he called me by name, and you, too."

"It wasn't Dischner. I didn't recognize the voice."

"Doesn't matter. He'll tell Dischner, and Dischner'll know. My prints are on file. Yours are, too."

"Still?"

"Probably."

There was a pause. "Doesn't matter," Kate said. "Dischner won't call the cops."

Jack looked at her. "Why not?"

"He won't call the cops," she repeated.

Jack's gaze didn't waver. "What was in that last file? You looked like you'd seen a ghost." "He won't call the cops," Kate said for the third time.

The light turned green. Jack switched on his headlights and shifted sedately into first. Five minutes later, they were home.

IT WAS ALMOST SEVEN A.M. WHEN THEY STUMBLED IN THE door, it was too late to go to bed and they were both so wired it would have been impossible to sleep anyway. Jack made coffee and they sat at the kitchen table and read the morning paper. Kate found the want ads and looked up two bedroom, two-bath apartments with heated garages.

There were half a dozen for rent, not one of them for under $750, with a second month's rent as security deposit.

"Lovely morning, isn't it?" Jack said, putting down his coffee with a sigh of contentment. "Of course, I tend to see any morning I haven't been caught in the act of breaking and entering a beautiful morning, don't you?"

She got up to refill her mug and sat down again. "What is it Jane does, Jack? I think you told me she reviewed bids or something."

He looked mildly surprised. "Yeah. She reviews bids submitted by contractors for capital projects. Roads and government buildings, stuff like that. Why?" Bingo, Kate thought. She shrugged. "Just curious."

He caught her hand and she let it stay there, which encouraged him to pick it up and kiss her palm, which was how Johnny found them when he walked into the room with a sleepy face and tousled hair. He looked at them and made a face. "Ick. Mushy stuff before breakfast. Jeez you guys." Kate laughed and escaped upstairs, pursued by Jack into the bathroom. She was naked and in the act of stepping into the shower when he reached for her with an anticipatory grin. She warded him off with upraised hands. "No shower action with the kid in the house, Morgan."

"He's got his own bathroom." He kissed her.

"That's not what I meant and you know it." He kissed her again and she weakened. "The hell with it." She wrapped her legs around his waist as he stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain closed behind them.

She looked up from brushing her damp hair, saw his smug reflection in the dresser mirror and couldn't resist a smile. "I will say this, Morgan, you are better at changing the subject than anyone else I know."

Just for that he bit her once on her shoulder, before reaching around her to pull a pair of jeans out of a drawer. "Everybody's got to be good at something." He yanked on his jeans with brisk movements and went to the closet to investigate the possibility of a clean shirt. He found one, blue naturally, the chronic choice of the Y chromosome, and pulled it on. She put down the brush and went over to button it up, he leaned down to kiss her and that was how Johnny found them when he came out of his room, dressed in neon Jams and a T-shirt big enough for Godzilla. He paused in the open door. "Jeez you guys, are you still at it?

Disgusting." Footsteps crashed down the stairs. "Why, Shugak, I believe that is a blush." "Up yours, Morgan," she said, but she didn't move.

"So, Kate," he said, nuzzling her ear, "why did you want to know where Jane works?"

She jerked, a reflexive movement she couldn't hide, and his gaze sharpened. "I told you," she said, pulling free and edging toward the door. "I was just curious."

Jack followed her down the stairs, reflecting on how well she lied, to everyone except him. The knowledge gave him a warm feeling around his heart. "You look tired, Dad," Johnny said at the kitchen table. He glanced at Kate. "So do you, Kate." "You are not wearing that to school," Jack said, looking his son and heir over with a critical eye that had just become aware of the younger generation's idea of sartorial splendor.

"Da-ad," Johnny said, dragging the word out into two syllables. "Did you forget again?"

"Forget what?"

"It's an in-service day. Only teachers go to school. I brought the notice home a week ago."

"Oh."

"So I'm going next door to Brad's, like usual on in service days. His mom got him a new Super Nintendo for his birthday."

Jack hazarded a guess. "Mario Brothers?"

"Da-ad." Johnny rolled his eyes. "Mario Brothers is, like, ancient.

Brad's got Master Blaster, with a joystick and everything."

"Oh." Jack dished up a plateful of scrambled eggs, onions and cheese into which his son and heir disappeared head down to give his best impression of a vacuum cleaner. Jack and Kate were hungry, too, and there was silence in the kitchen for all of five minutes.

"You going back to the convention this morning?" Jack said as they cleared the table.

Kate nodded. "The panel on subsistence is today."

"Oh boy. Is Ekaterina speaking?"

"She's the moderator." "What's it like?" Johnny said, putting the plates in the dishwasher.

"What's what like?"

"The convention. Do you, like, dance and stuff?" Kate paused, looking at him. "You've never been?" He shook his head.

"You want to come?" Johnny looked at his dad. "I thought--"

"What?"

"Well." The boy hesitated. "I'm, like, you know, white."

Kate grinned. "Hopelessly. So?" "So I thought the AFN convention was only for Alaska Natives."

"Everyone's welcome," Kate said. "True, we mostly talk about issues that affect Alaska Natives, but nobody checks your family tree at the door.

Besides, your family's been around this country a pretty long time." She thought of the time line they'd made together in the sand along the Coastal Trail. He caught the thought and they smiled at each other.

"Probably one of your missionary grandmothers misbehaved with a Lakota brave back there somewhere. Propinquity is a wonderful thing. Look at me and your father."

"Pro-what?" he said.

"Never mind," Jack said, scowling at Kate. "You're pretty chipper this morning, considering."

"Considering what?" Johnny said.

"Never mind," Jack said, scowling at his son.

"So you want to come?" Kate asked Johnny.

Johnny hesitated, the allure of Master Blaster warring with a natural curiosity. He'd seen Dances with Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans and Geronimo and a lot of cowboy movies on TNT. He thought Hawkeye was a great fighter but he thought he ought to have found something better to fight over than some dumb girl. Wind in His Hair was cool, too. Geronimo scared him a little, John Wayne not at all, not even in The Searchers.

"Okay," he said. "I guess."

Kate looked at Jack.

"Okay," Jack said. "I guess." Johnny tore upstairs for his jacket.

"Kate."

There was a note in Jack's voice she hadn't heard before. She looked up from tying her sneakers. His eyes were troubled. "What's wrong?"

"Listen." He hesitated again.

She finished tying the second shoe and dropped it to the floor with a loud thump that expressed her displeasure. "For crying out loud, Morgan, just spit it out. Do you not want him to come with me or what?"