A Cold Day for Murder (11 page)

“And by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States and probably by d-2, too,” Kate agreed. “So what? I haven’t asked you to divulge the contents of any outgoing messages. I just want to know if he sent one.”

He said nothing. Kate snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, and he transferred his gaze from the curtain to her face. “What’s your name?”

“Melvin Haney.”

“How long have you had this job?”

“Four months.”

“Uh-huh.” Kate folded her arms on the counter and leaned forward. “Melvin, my name is Kate Shugak.” His eyes widened, and dropped involuntarily to her throat, hidden by the turtleneck of her long underwear. “Mark Miller is the son of a United States congressman, and this congressman has set the FBI on his boy’s trail.” Melvin’s eyes widened further, and at last Kate felt she had his complete attention. “The FBI went to the Anchorage District Attorney for help in locating the young man, and the Anchorage District Attorney came to me.”

Kate smiled kindly at the young man, showing all her teeth. He flinched perceptibly. “Now, Melvin, I’m telling you all this so you’ll know that law enforcement at every level in this country is interested in your answers to my questions here tonight. If I don’t like them, your answers, that is, then the District Attorney’s office won’t like them, and if the D.A. doesn’t like them, the feds won’t like them, and if the feds don’t like them, the congressman sure as hell isn’t going to like them, either. When that happens, I won’t have any trouble getting the Niniltna Native Association to request the Alaska Beverage Commission and maybe even the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to make a trip up here to sift through your back invoices for the last six months, just to assure themselves that you’ve been abiding by the DampAct.” Kate gave him another wide smile. Mutt suddenly reared up to place both paws on the counter, and she showed all her teeth, too, in a display of concern over the tension she heard in Kate’s voice.

He hesitated. “You Xenia’s cousin? That Kate Shugak?”

Kate kept her smile fixed to her face and pitched her torn voice to carry. “I can’t say I’m flattered by any resemblance you might imagine you see. Talk to me. When was the last time you saw Mark Miller?”

He regarded the two sets of glistening canines gleaming at him from not far enough away and capitulated. “The night he disappeared.”

“You’re that sure about the date?”

He nodded. “I would have remembered anyway because he made such a fuss about getting a call through. Couldn’t do it because the dish was down. He wasn’t the first one to come in here and rant; I had outgoing stuff backed up for twenty-four hours.”

Frowning, Kate said, “What did you mean, you would have remembered anyway?”

He shrugged. “There was another guy looking for him about two weeks ago. He pinned me down on the day Miller was in.”

“Blond, blue-eyed?” she asked.

“Talked like Teddy Kennedy running for office?”

“Jesus Christ,” Kate said under her breath. “Yeah, that’s him. He say where he was going after he talked to you?”

“The ranger or the blond?”

“The blond.”

“No.”

“How about the ranger, he say where he was going?”

“Nope.” Again his eyes slid to the curtain and back to her. “But everybody knows he went out to the Roadhouse. His car’s out there.”

She nodded. “Did you see him in it? Did you see him actually driving the Toyota?”

“Yeah.”

Kate looked at him and said, “What do you think happened to him?”

“Beats me.” He looked again at the curtain. “First I heard he was gone was when O’Brian over to Park Headquarters sent the message to Washington, D.C.”

Kate nodded again. “Did you like him? Miller, I mean.”

He looked confused. “I didn’t hardly know him.”

Kate looked deliberately at the curtain, and back to him. “Anything else you can remember?”

Awareness came slowly, and when it did his eyes popped and he shook his head violently. “I told you, I didn’t hardly know the guy at all.”

“Uh-huh,” Kate said in a neutral voice.

He swallowed and said, “You think he’s dead?”

She looked behind him at the curtain and raised her voice one more time. “That, or he left because he knows there’s nothing to hold him here.” She looked back at the NorthCom operator and said with another smile, “Or he was removed because he was in the way.”

She closed the door behind her and heard the operator say plaintively through the thin door, “And what the hell is that when it’s at home?” She heard Xenia mumble a reply, and moved out to the porch.

Pulling the door to behind her, she stood on the doorstep for a long time, breathing the cold air deep into her chest. She was ashamed of herself, using that boy as a target to get to Xenia. They were just a couple of kids doing what came naturally on cold winter nights in Niniltna. The kid had showed some backbone, too, and Kate liked that.

Still. Every instinct she possessed told her that Xenia knew something she wasn’t telling her cousin. She wondered how long it would take to get it out of her. She never doubted for a moment that she would, but in spite of her fierce rejection of family responsibility, her protective instincts where the younger members of her family were involved ran strong and deep. They would not permit her the luxury of an all-out frontal assault. But a little gentle prodding and Xenia would remember all the times good old cousin Kate had kept Tiny Mike the school bully from beating up on her. Eventually she would decide that Kate was after all a fit person to confide in. She made plans to return to her grandmother’s house early the next morning.

The light from the uncurtained window in the shack’s door streamed out into the arctic night, clearly outlining her figure on the top step. She heard a snap like ice cracking on a frozen lake, a whine like a super-charged hornet past her cheek and a
splat
as the bullet carved a furrow into the door and lodged in the jamb.

Mutt barked once, a sharp, warning sound. Kate took a giant leap and hurled herself down the short, steep flight of stairs and behind the berm of snow that lined the path to the shack. Her shoulder hit first and she rolled into a crouch, her heart pounding so loudly that for a few moments she could hear nothing else. Her body felt instantaneously cold all over, right down into each individual digit. She felt as if she had X-ray eyes, that she could hear and decipher with bare ear the signals coming in via the satellite dish behind her, that she was able to smell the decay of summer grass buried deep beneath hard-packed snow. Every one of her senses was receiving such an overload of information that she was too busy collating it all to be scared. She had never felt more alive in her life.

“What the hell was that?” she heard the NorthCom operator yell. She heard the smack of bare feet as Xenia hit the floor, and knew her cousin would be fleeing in a panic out the door in moments.

“Stay where you are!” she yelled, or tried to. Her maimed throat made it difficult. She eeled herself backward, beneath the steps, and spoke as loudly as she could through the floor. Mutt, clearly puzzled, slunk along beside her, her ears up in inquiry, whining a little. “Stay where you are,” she repeated. “It’s some nut with a gun up at the school. Get down behind the counter and stay there.”

She kicked the floor for emphasis. “Stay!” she told Mutt, and slid back over the hard-packed snow. She risked a look up over the berm. Nothing. She stretched out flat and slithered on her belly down the icy path to where the walkway met Niniltna’s main street. A quick peek from behind the snow piled at the side of the street revealed no stir of movement. She got up on all fours and picked her way over dog turds and Snickers wrappers and empty plastic Windsor Canadian whiskey bottles, carefully keeping her head below the level of the snow berm. When the berm ended in the school’s parking lot she paused, stiffened her spine and risked another look up over it.

There was a second crack and a splatter of snow over her face. At the same time a heavy weight hit her in the small of the back, laying her out flat on her stomach. Mutt growled out a bark and she heard a scrabble of padded feet.

The breath had been knocked out of her, and all she could do for the next few moments was lie there trying to get it back. She waited for Mutt to tear the head off of whoever was on top of her.

The dog skidded to a halt less than three feet away; Kate could see her clearly from where her cheek was pressed against the cold snow. Mutt growled once, barked once and then flattened her ears and wagged her tail.

“You all right, girl?” a voice rasped in her ear.

Kate got her breath back with a rush. “Abel?”

“Who else?”

“Get off me, you old fart!”

Abel slid to the snow next to her and jacked a round into the bolt-action Winchester Model 54 that was almost as old as he was and that he always carried with him just in case he met up with a bull moose in rut or a Fish and Game agent, whichever came first. He pulled his legs up under him, popped up behind the berm and let off a round in the general direction of the school. “Just to let the bastard know we got teeth, too,” he said reassuringly as he flopped back down next to her. “Who’s shooting at you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hmm.” Abel worked the bolt of his rifle and pulled himself upright again.

“Abel, no!”

This time the shooter was waiting. As soon as Abel’s torso cleared the berm there was a shot. Abel returned fire and fell back down next to Kate with a thump.

“Goddam you, old man!”

Abel’s eyes were screwed shut as he groped around near his right shoulder. One eye opened and surveyed her with disfavor. “You’re beginning to repeat yourself, girl.”

Kate crouched over him and yanked his hand down from his shoulder. With it came a handful of down pulled out of the torn sleeve of his parka, a cloud of tiny feathers which caught in her hair and flew into her eyes and were inhaled up her nose. She sneezed once, violently, and glared at him. There was no wound, no blood. She felt a wave of relief supersede the roil of terror, and glared all the harder. “And I’ll keep repeating myself until you hear me, old man. You keep getting in my way, goddammit. I won’t have it, do you hear?”

His head came up off the snow. “Yeah.”

“Yeah what?”

“Yeah, I hear that bugger who was just shooting at us beating feet outa here.”

Kate became aware of pounding footsteps moving away from the back of the school gym. A swell of pure rage heaved her to her feet in one surging movement. “Mutt!
Fetch!
”

Mutt hit the ground running, a gray streak stretched out low, skimming over the snow like a ghost. Even as she vanished around the dark bulk of the gymnasium, they heard a snow machine splutter into life and roar off. Kate cursed and ran after the dog.

The lot was empty of anything but snow and ice and what looked like one of Dandy Mike’s half-breed husky—German shepherds who, seeing her, came trotting over to sniff interestedly at her crotch. Mutt, looking for a fight in her frustration at not catching whoever had had the audacity to shoot at her very own private human, growled a loud and toothy warning.

“It’s all right, Mutt,” Kate said, beating back her rage and fear. She knew just how Mutt felt. She slapped the other dog’s nose away and began a search of the area, doubled over with her nose nearly touching the snow. It was too late; whoever it was had disappeared into the night. And they’d either picked up their shell casings or she couldn’t find them in the dark. The old snow, worn down by a healthy and energetic student body, grades one through twelve, was not the best surface on which to find tracks. It was so dry and hard it squeaked underfoot. Kate gave it up in disgust and walked back to the road.

“Guess we scared the bugger off,” Abel observed complacently.

Kate shook her head. “Abel, Abel, Abel,” she said, still shaking her head and trying to keep her knees from doing the same. “What am I going to do with you? You could have been shot. You could have been killed.”

“Well, I wasn’t,” he said testily, “and it seems to me we should stir around and find out who that bugger was instead of standing here freezing to death, moaning over whether or not I should be here!”

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Kate said.

No answer. Abel bent over to retrieve his moose exterminator and occupied himself with removing every speck of snow or ice that might or might not have found its way into the mechanism.

Kate, half-amused, half-exasperated, said, “You think I can’t take care of myself, is that it? You raised me to, Abel.”

“I ain’t saying a word.” Abel’s jaw set stubbornly. “All I know is a guy’s missing, and the guy that went after him went missing, too, and if it’s cold now it’ll be twice that when I have to come looking for you when you go missing. You and your goddam loaded pipeliners.”

Kate’s eyes widened. “Abel, were you at the Roadhouse this evening?” she demanded.

“I ain’t saying a word.” He sighted carefully along the barrel of his rifle. “Maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t. Somebody had to put in a call to make sure Chopper Jim was on his way.”

Kate, wanting to order him home, knowing he wouldn’t go, praying he wouldn’t get in the way, knowing he would, gave it up and resigned herself to a second guard dog. “Well, all I know is it’s a little late now to decide you were a lousy teacher.”

“I ain’t saying a word,” he said, shedding a glove to pick at a minute speck of ice on the Winchester’s trigger guard.

“Fine,” she said, and stamped back to the NorthCom shack, where she found the NorthCom operator and Xenia shivering in the doorway. Xenia jumped the three steps in a single leap and clutched at Kate. “Did you see who it was, Katya? Did you catch him?”

“No.”

Xenia’s grip relaxed and her hands slid down to her sides.

Kate looked thoughtfully at her cousin’s tense, frightened face. “You and I are going to have ourselves a little talk, Xenia.” She looked from her cousin to the NorthCom operator. “Mind if we use your place?”

“Sure, I—” The kid caught her eye and cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. I was just about to go down to the store to, uh, buy some milk, anyway.”