Restless in the Grave (30 page)

“Can’t say I blame you,” she said, thinking of the havoc cell towers were wreaking on her Park at this very moment. “Pretty quiet out at the base today?”

“Something you wanted to know?” he said. “If there is, stop pussyfooting around and spit it out.”

Kate’s eyes narrowed. “Okay. Any traffic today?”

He shrugged. “That Cessna came through again, the Cargomaster. Seems like there’s one of those every day. The air freight business must be good. Oh, and Reid came back. I’m guessing either Campbell or Tina Grant called him. He was flapping around like a seagull, squawking about how terrible it was, what happened to Evelyn, and he assured me nothing like it had ever happened before, it was an aberration, he knew just how I felt, coming up here for a private vacation and then this happens, dreadful, he’d do everything in his power to see my name didn’t come into it, yadda yadda.”

“You don’t like him.”

McGuire shrugged. “He’s a suck-up and a starfucker. I never would have put my name to anything to do with Eagle Air if it had been only Reid involved, I don’t care how bad I wanted Outouchiwanet. Finn was the brains in that outfit.” He paused, as if he were deciding whether to tell her what came next. “Reid offered to buy me out.”

“Did he.”

He gave her a small smile, turning his glass of iced tea round and round in his fingers. “Seemed to think I would like to be shut out of the whole thing.” He drank. “He was right, too. I wouldn’t have bought in if Finn hadn’t been holding Outouchiwanet hostage.”

“Finn want you as partner for the star power?”

He nodded. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“How did you meet him? Finn Grant?”

“A mutual acquaintance. Although I don’t know how a first-string guy like Erland ever got hooked up with a wannabe like Finn. Still.” He shrugged. “I guess we were all wannabes at some point.” He drained his glass and grinned at her. “I certainly was.”

Kate felt a distant roaring in her ears. “Erland?” she said, in a voice not her own. Next to her, Mutt’s ears pricked and she looked up at Kate.

He looked at her curiously. “Yeah, Erland Bannister.”

“Oh,” someone else said, and in some distant portion of her mind noted how weak the response was.

“You know him?”

“Yes,” that other person said.

He misunderstood. “Yeah, I found out after the fact, he’s a pretty big mover and shaker up here.”

The roaring in her eyes died down, and she felt herself return to her body. “How did you meet him?” she said, carefully casual.

His brow puckered—he should be more careful about wrinkles—but she could see him decide that it wasn’t a state secret, after all. “I’d just hit it big with the Cook bio, and I got offered
Kandahar
.”

“I saw that,” she said.

“Yeah? No actor should ever ask, but I’ll risk it: Did you like it?”

She paid him the respect of thinking about it. Also because it gave her more time to adjust to the sudden and unwelcome appearance of a specter at the feast. “I don’t know that anyone with any truth in them could say they liked it. I couldn’t look away from the screen.” She looked at him and told the truth. “I couldn’t look away from you.”

He looked—was it displeased? “It was an incredible script.”

“Yes,” she said. “But it is all about that one character, that one year in Afghanistan filtered through him. His squad is assigned to take and keep one tiny little valley in southeastern Afghanistan, he gets shot at, he gets dehydrated from the heat, he shoots some people, he gets bit by a tarantula, he gets shot at again and shoots some more people, two of his buddies get shot dead in one firefight, he gets wounded and his best friend dies, his fiancée Dear Johns him from back in the world, he gets shot at some more and shoots some more people, he makes friends with an Afghani kid who gets shot by his own for fraternizing with the enemy, he shoots some more people, and after a year, after losing half his squad, the army abandons the valley. It’s all about him.”

Surprised, and showing it, he said, “He’s your way into the story.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know that I wanted a way into that story,” she said.

“You against the war?”

She shrugged. “As much as I ever pay attention to national politics. Seems like every president needs his little war.”

He made a come-ahead motion with his hand, and since according to the Oscars he was a Motion Picture Academy–certified good actor, she believed he wanted to hear more. “I watched
Kandahar
with a friend who lost both legs below the knee in Vietnam. When the movie was over he told me, “‘I left my legs in Vietnam to keep South Vietnam free of the red menace, to keep the dominoes from falling. Now it’s all one big happy country, our best friend in Southeast Asia, and a luxury tourist destination. What was the point?’”

“So, he didn’t like it,” McGuire said. “But you did.”

She laughed in spite of herself, and shook her head. “The film was amazing.” She thought, and added, “It’d make an unbeliever out of you.”

His turn to laugh. “So you are against the war.”

“Wars,” she said.

“All wars?”

“Unless they’re coming across our borders in tanks?” She thought it over. “Yeah. Well, okay, Hitler had to be stopped, no question. But since then? Has anyone really threatened our borders? Korea? Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan?”

“You don’t think 9/11 was a good reason for going to war?”

“In Afghanistan?” She snorted. “A hundred thousand of our guys on the ground for ten years, and who takes him down? A seventy-nine-man SEAL team. In Pakistan.” She thought of Irene Grant, dead of a sniper shot less than three months before, and grieved for the waste of a woman she had never known.

He made that same come-ahead motion with his hand, which must have had some kind of power of hypnosis in it. Or maybe she just needed more breathing space between her and the name he’d just dropped oh so casually into their conversation. She said, parsing the words out carefully, “I think what I really object to is the deification of the warrior.” She leaned her head back against the booth. “We send them off to marching bands and waving flags and tears, we bury the dead at places like Arlington with more marching bands and waving flags and tears, we honor them with parades and speeches and more marching bands and more waving flags and more tears on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. I can’t help but think that all of it is at least in part a cynical attempt by the nation—any nation—to convince young, impressionable people to volunteer to be cannon fodder. Which in and of itself guarantees the continuation of war. No cannon fodder, no war. It’s not like any Bush ever personally challenges any Saddam to a duel.” She shook her head and looked down at her drink, swirling the melting ice around in the glass. “Like Bobby said. For what? Does anyone really think Iraq is going to become the fifty-first state? They can’t even keep the lights on in Baghdad twenty-four/seven.”

“Wow,” he said. “I didn’t know we were telling the truth.”

She smiled, a little mocking in her turn. “Be careful what you ask for, little boy.” The shock had worn off, leaving her cool and clear-eyed, mistress of the now familiar fury simmering just below the surface. If Erland Bannister was in the house, she wanted to know how he had got there, and what he was up to. “You were telling me about buying your jet.”

He had an obvious inner debate over whether to let her change the subject, and gave in. “After
Captain Cook
and
Kandahar,
I could finally afford my own transportation, so I went shopping for a plane. I met Erland Bannister at a Gulfstream dealership. We got to talking, he mentioned he was from Alaska, I told him I was looking for a hideout along with the airplane to get me there, and he told me about Finn’s operation.”

Deliberately casual, she said, “You and Erland Bannister best friends now?”

McGuire shook his head. “It was the only time I met him. It was a good tip, though, I owe him. Finn was just Bristol Bay Air then, an outfitter running hunting and fishing and flightseeing trips out of Niniltna. I remembered how much I’d liked it up here when I was a kid working in Akutan. So I came up, and I’ve been up at least a couple of times a year ever since.” He smiled at her. “I make enough money to pay for gas and groceries. Someday I just might make it a one-way trip.”

“Spend a winter here first,” she said. “A lot of people can’t handle the cold, let alone the dark.”

“I’m from Montana, remember?”

“I never knew where you were from in the first place,” she said, and got to her feet and began collecting his dirty dishes. “You all done here?”

“Yeah, but, hey, where you going?”

“Back to work. See you around.”

Or not. She delivered the dishes to the pass-through and made another round of the bar, which had filled up a little, but was nowhere near as full as it had been the night before, which was just as well, because someone else was filling drink orders and making change. She saw McGuire come to the bar to pay his tab, stand chatting to Bill and Moses for a while, and then, giving her a long, unfathomable look, take his leave. She made sure she was on the opposite side of the room until he did so.

Erland fucking Bannister. Was there any pie in the entire state of Alaska he didn’t have a finger in?

She went blindly about her job, taking orders, busing tables, washing glasses, conscious that Bill and Moses both were watching her. So was Mutt, all of them wary, as if waiting for a delayed fuse on a bomb to tick down to detonation. She made an effort to contain her rage, so it didn’t spill all over Bill’s Bar and Grill and frighten the customers. She owed Bill that much.

The last week had been a nice respite from the memory of Old Sam’s death and the scavenger hunt he had sent her on the month following it, which revealed more about him and her family than she had ever wanted to know. Erland fucking Bannister had played a big part in those revelations, and he had never been on her dance card to begin with. Not the least attractive part of Sergeant Liam Campbell’s proposition was that the job took place six hundred miles away. Any rational person would have thought it a safe distance. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.

Not.

Although why was she so surprised? Why wouldn’t Erland Bannister know Finn Grant? What could be more natural? Thick as thieves, wasn’t that how the old saying went? Took one to know one. Finn Grant would incline in Erland Bannister’s direction the way water ran downhill.

She made an effort and smiled at the half dozen men sitting at the table she was currently tending. To a man, in a group fight-or-flight reaction they shoved their chairs back, so as to get the table out of the way if either became necessary. One of them even bolted to his feet.

Her rage did not cloud her powers of observation so that she didn’t notice the sideways looks, the elbow nudges, the flurry of attempts to chat her up, at least until they saw her smile. If Gabe McGuire was interested in Kate Saracoff, she must really be something. Even Bill said invitingly, “You and Gabe seemed to be having an interesting conversation.”

“He thought so,” Kate said, and moved off.

Bill called for last drinks at eleven thirty and closed the bar promptly at midnight. “I got this,” Kate said.

“Good,” Bill said, “since it’s your job.”

Kate gave her a grin that was almost real. “Go home.”

Bill thanked her and she and Moses left.

Kate washed down the tables and swept the floor, still on autopilot. Mutt plunked herself down next to the front door, indicating her willingness to head for the barn immediately, if not sooner. Kate wasn’t the only one who’d been up most of the last two nights. “At least Moses didn’t tie you into a pretzel for an hour and a half,” Kate told her. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t mind an early night myself.”

She bagged the garbage and took it through the kitchen to the back door. She flipped the wall switch to turn on the light over the stairs but she didn’t see it come on through the window in the door. Crap. She opened the door, straining to see in the darkness, and felt her way down the stairs and over to the Dumpster. The door swung closed behind her.

Maybe it was mention of Erland Bannister that had shaken her out of her usual caution, but really there was no excuse after the chest freezer incident for her not to be on her guard.

They rushed her as she was lifting the lid of the Dumpster. There were two of them, and they hit her at the same time, knocking her chest-first hard into the edge of the Dumpster.

All the breath was forced from her body in a single
whoosh
.

“Can’t see a fucking thing!” she heard someone say from a great distance as she tried to breathe in and couldn’t. Her lungs, her chest felt paralyzed.

“Have you got her?”

“I think so!” They caught her hands and held them behind her. “Can you find her pockets? Check her pockets!” A hand groped her breast and somebody laughed, a high, thin giggle stretched to the edge of terror.

Not professionals, someone thought somewhere in the deep recesses of an oxygen-depleted brain. Little white lights were sparking in front of her eyes. Her diaphragm would not extend no matter how hard she pushed at it. She heard a thud like a distant cannon going off, and then the sound of claws scrabbling on wood. She heard deep-throated, growling barks that promised much. She kicked out feebly, no strength behind it, because she couldn’t draw any air into her lungs.

“Find her fucking pockets before that fucking dog of hers breaks out and rips us a fucking new one!”

Hands forced their way into her pockets, one after the other. “It’s not here! Goddammit, I thought you said she had it!”

“I saw her put it in her jeans at the library, goddammit!”

“Shit! Did you check her watch pocket?”

Both speakers were male. One seemed to be the boss and the other a whiner.

Another ominous thud coincided with the definite sound of splintering wood.

“It’s not on her, goddammit! What the fuck do we do now?”

“Come on, help me!”

“Oh, man, gross!”

“If she’s in here, the dog won’t chase us! Help me, goddammit!”