A Cold Day for Murder (21 page)

She said, and there was a great weariness in her voice, “To the extent of murder?”

“Oh hell, Kate,” he said scornfully, “killing a park ranger in Alaska ain’t the same thing as murder and you know it. They ain’t much better than fish hawks, and your own father accounted for at least one of them. God knows,” the old man said with a mixture of bewilderment and exhaustion, “God knows that however many of them we run off ten more spring up in their place. They’re like that goddam Greek thing you used to tell me about, the one where you cut off his head, two more grows in its place. Remember?”

“The Hydra,” Kate said. Her voice broke. “Oh, Abel.”

“Kate,” the old man said, almost pitifully, and for Kate that was worse than all the rest. “Kate,” he repeated, “we let them rangers come in here and make them surveys and put in them campgrounds and pretty soon we’ll be up to our ass in Winnebagoes. And if that happens I might as well move to Anchorage and buy one of them trailers across from the Northway Mall and let the Cessnas from Merrill Field land on my head all day and police cars run their sirens around me all night. I can’t let that happen.” Kate was silent, and he said, begging her, “Tell me you understand what I’m saying, girl.”

She said softly, “I can understand the ranger, Abel. I can even believe you when you say it was an accident. But Ken?”

“He found out! He came up here, nosing around, asking questions. When I found him poking into the Lost Wife…” Abel’s voice trailed off and he was silent. Finally he said, pleading, “I knew you was shacking up with him, girl, but what else could I do?”

“When you followed me into Niniltna, it wasn’t because you were afraid I might get hurt. It was because you were afraid of what I might find out. And then when you heard it was Martin who was shooting at us at the NorthCom shack, you figured that would be enough to convince me that Martin killed Miller and Dahl, so you came home. But just in case, you sabotaged the dumbwaiter, and stood guard.” She raised her head and stared straight into his eyes. “And then you shot at me to make me fall.”

“I been meaning to fix that dumbwaiter for weeks,” Abel said quickly, “and I wasn’t trying to kill you, I was just warning you off, trying to scare you a little.”

Kate almost laughed. “That’s the second time this week someone’s shot at me and not meant to kill me.” She shook her head. “Maybe you and Martin should get together.”

Abel stiffened. “It’s so easy for you, Kate,” he said, his old, thin voice rising. “The Native Claims Act gave you land and money, the Bureau of Indian Affairs paid your way to Anchorage when you were sick and took care of your medical bills when you got well, your father left you a home. I’ve had to work for everything I’ve got and then fight to keep it! Don’t look down your nose at me for that!”

Kate looked at Abel, the man greatly responsible for the woman she was. She shook her head. “I am sick and tired of people telling me how easy I’ve had it. Emaa, Xenia, Martin, the rest of my family. Now you. None of you tried to take out a student loan and had the loan officer at the bank tell you you had to have a white cosigner. None of you had to sit in a history class and listen to the white Outside teacher tell you how the Aleuts spread their legs for Alexander Baranov. And none of you has ever had a welder from Tulsa, Oklahoma, call you a nigger. You’re white in a white world, Abel, so don’t talk to me about easy.” Kate turned abruptly and went to the door.

“Where are you going, Kate?”

“To the village. To tell Billy Mike what I found out. So he can call Chopper Jim, and they can come up here and recover the bodies.”

“No you ain’t. Kate?”

She stepped through the door. She heard him moving behind her, heard him grunt when he got down his rifle, heard the sharp click of metal against metal. Next to her Mutt growled and tensed as if to leap.

“No, Mutt,” Kate said in a cold, gentle voice. “Come.”

“Kate, don’t do it, I’m tellin’ you.”

The dog looked from Abel to Kate and back again. “Come,” Kate repeated.

Dry-eyed, her spine straight, she took one step, another, a third. Mutt fell in next to her mistress, her puzzled yellow eyes lifted to Kate’s, her plume of a tail curled over her back into a question mark.

“I’ll shoot, Kate, I swear I will.”

Kate stumbled, recovered, and walked on, her pulse drumming high up in her throat. If Abel actually was capable of killing her, she’d rather be dead anyway.

“A man’s got a right, a duty to protect his home he’s worked for for eighty years, Kate!”

Kate didn’t look around. If, when it came, she didn’t want to see it.

She was almost to the head of the trail when the shot echoed down off the indifferent shoulders of the Quilaks. Stumbling for the second time, almost falling, she caught herself against a tree trunk and waited for the pain to begin, for the warm, salty run of blood up into her mouth, the shock, followed by agonizing, debilitating pain. She knew what to expect. Leaning her forehead against the bark of the spruce, she braced herself and waited.

There was nothing, only the silent stillness of the forest, only the endless horizon of the sky. She understood, and the pain of her next inhalation hurt so much she wished she had been shot. Mutt looked up at her and whined anxiously.

“Kate!” Jack came crashing down the path, his face white. “Kate!” He grabbed her and for the second time that day ran anxious hands over her body. “I heard a shot! Are you all right? Are you hurt? Show me!”

Finding the words took a little time. “I’m all right,” she said in a rusty voice.

His hands stilled. “I heard a shot,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

He looked behind her. “Where’s Abel?”

“Dead,” she said, and slipped by him to walk up the trail.

Kate’s grandmother sat where she’d always sat, in a chair backed up against the wall between the oil stove and the kitchen table, knees wide apart, her right arm on the table, her left hand planted on her left knee.

Kate entered the room with slow, reluctant steps, pausing on the threshold. She stood where she was, head down. Her shoulders were slumped; her hands hung limply at her sides. Her gloves dangled from one, her face mask from the other. She didn’t unzip her snowsuit. “I have come to tell you that Abel is dead.”

Her grandmother rose ponderously to her feet and padded to the stove to put the water on to boil with slow, sure movements that argued the observance of a lifetime’s rite.

“You knew, didn’t you, emaa.” It wasn’t a question, it was a simple declaration of truth. “I think you might even be an accessory after the fact.”

The old woman smiled into the teakettle. “Are you going to arrest me, Katya?” She reached above her head and took down two mugs and the Nestle’s Quik. She went to the refrigerator and brought out a can of evaporated milk. She lifted the stove lid out of the way and set the teakettle directly over the flame.

“Why, emaa? Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“I had no proof,” the old woman said simply, without turning from her task. “I knew how the old man felt about the boy’s plans. I heard both of them testify before the subcommittee that afternoon. I saw the boy drive through the village toward Abel’s house early the next morning. You know I don’t sleep much anymore.” She paused, looking down at the spoon she held. “And then the boy was missing. That was all.”

“And when Ken Dahl came to you for help?”

Her grandmother turned and fixed her with the light brown eyes so like her own. “I told him nothing. It is not the business of Outsiders to meddle in our affairs.”

Kate knuckled her eyes, which were dry and burning. She was unable to make them focus on any one thing. Her gaze skipped around the room, table to window, window to door, anything to keep her from looking at Ekaterina. She put her hands up to her face and spoke into them. “Couldn’t you have warned him, emaa?”

“It is not the business of Outsiders to meddle in our affairs,” her grandmother repeated in the same stern voice.

Kate gave a short laugh, high-pitched and too close to hysteria. “Even if one of our own is guilty of murder?”

“A park ranger, born and educated Outside,” her grandmother said, her voice so indifferent it held not even the slightest trace of scorn. “A cheechako. And an investigator from Anchorage, much the same.” Ekaterina shrugged. She might as well have snapped her fingers. “And now the man who killed them is dead.”

“Abel,” Kate said steadily. “Abel is dead, emaa. He had a name.”

“They are all dead, Katya. What does it matter now?”

And what about me, emaa? Kate wanted to shout. What about me? I practically saw Abel die, and you as good as sent me there to do so! But she had no energy for anger this day.

The old woman was silent. “You should never have gone away to school, Katya,” she said at last. She turned and fixed her granddaughter with a cool, considering stare that Kate had never seen before. “Or you should never have come back.”

Kate’s breath caught in her ruined throat. “The unkindest cut of all,” she said finally, with a painful smile. “Why did you want me to think Martin killed Miller?”

“Because I knew that it was not true.”

“And if I had not discovered that?”

“Then you would have removed Martin from the Park.”

Kate expelled her breath on a long, soundless sigh. “Ridding Niniltna of a known troublemaker, and without you raising a finger in the process.” She shook her head. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out the truth?”

“I did not know if you would. I hoped not, for my cousin’s husband’s sake.”

“What did you think would happen if I did?”

Her grandmother was silent for a moment. “I knew the old man would never go to jail.” The teakettle whistled and she turned to remove it from the flame. “It is finished,” she said, her back to her granddaughter. “Leave it. You can’t change anything that has happened. We will drink some cocoa and eat some bread, and talk of other things.”

Kate looked at the old woman, so strong, so proud, so righteous. Watching her, feeling off-balance and disoriented and one step removed from reality, she wondered idly if that was how she would feel drunk. “Jack is going to give Xenia a receptionist’s job in Anchorage, emaa,” she said. “He knows of another young woman in his office who needs someone to share rent. I’ve made conditions; for starters, she has to sign up for and pass with a C or better at least three credits every semester at UAA.”

The old woman’s back stiffened, and her voice was stern and disapproving. “You are taking her out of the only home she has ever known, away from family and friends.”

“I’m getting her away from you,” Kate said flatly.

Ekaterina turned and met her eyes. They were two women so alike, and at the same time so completely different. The chasm of more than a generation yawned between them and they stared at each other from opposite sides of the abyss. Kate, though the other woman had not spoken, shook her head. “No,” she said, and then in a stronger voice repeated, “No. I’m not packing any more guilt out of here than I came in with. Good-bye, emaa.”

Jack and Mutt were waiting outside the house. They drove back to Bobby’s house and dropped off his Polaris. Kate took Jack up behind her and drove him to the airstrip, Mutt loping along next to them, her tongue hanging out, her head never very far from Kate’s elbow.

Jack dismounted next to his Cessna, and stood with his eyes fixed on her set, white face. “Did she know?”

“Yes.” Kate let the engine drop down to an idle.

Jack drew in a long, slow breath. “Makes her some kind of accessory.”

“That’s what I told her.”

“What did she say?”

Kate laughed shortly. “She suggested I arrest her.”

Jack scratched his head. “Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” They stood without speaking for a moment, and then Kate said, “Did you ever notice? To everyone else in the world, I’m Kate. Emaa calls me Katya.”

“She’s getting to you, Kate. Or trying to.”

Kate kept talking, compulsively, the words spilling out of her as if he had not spoken. “Every time she says it, ‘Katya,’ she says it in that voice of doom. I see fifty generations of Aleuts lined up behind her, glaring at me. Every time she says it, she’s telling me I betrayed her and my family and the village and my culture and my entire race by running away.” She gave a thin smile. “And now, she’s believes I’ve betrayed myself by running back. I’ve been preaching, and I quote, ‘assimilation into the prevailing culture for the survival of my people.’ Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Sounds like I’ve had seven or eight sociology classes. Sounds like I know what I’m talking about.” Kate smiled, and Jack winced away from the sight of it. “And I live in a log cabin five miles from my closest neighbor and twenty-five miles from the nearest village. I’m shipping Xenia off to town, but I can’t bear to go in myself.”

“Kate,” he said.

“Don’t you understand, we’re not all like this,” she said fiercely. “We’re not even mostly like this. We’re not all drunks and adulterers and murderers. We’re just people, like anybody else trying to get along in this goddam world. We’re starting from behind and we’re just trying to catch up.”

“Kate,” he said again, reaching for her.

She held up her hands, holding him off. “Get out of the Park, Jack,” she said in a tired voice. “You don’t belong here.”

“Do you?”

She shook her head again without answering, called to Mutt, and left.

· · ·

It was a month before he came, out of the south, a big man in a parka with a wolf ruff, alone on a snow machine that threatened to destroy once and for all the peace of the little homestead in the clearing. Mutt shoved her way past her mistress and galloped out to him, her huge pads kicking up miniature clouds of the new snow that lay thick upon the ground.

“Hey, Mutt,” he said, scratching the dog’s head.

Kate stood motionless next to the open door, arms wrapped around herself. She was shivering and, realizing it, was angry with herself and with him. “What are you doing here?”

He walked to the cabin and gave her a gentle shove inside. He hung his parka next to hers, and sat down on the couch to unlace his mukluks. He set them carefully, one at a time, below his parka, not looking at her because it hurt him to see her so thin and tired. She looked as if she hadn’t slept since he saw her last.