Restless in the Grave (45 page)

“But—”

“In Adak, Shorty said something to Boyd about the boss. This was—” Was it only two days ago? “This was when I flew down with Boyd. Shorty seemed real concerned about the boss. Finn Grant died last month. What boss was he talking about?”

For the first time, she’d managed to shake Mason free of his habitual calm. “I—I don’t—Hugh Reid?”

Her laugh was mirthless. “You haven’t seen him yet, I take it. No one is ever going to be afraid of Hugh Reid, I promise you. But I can see someone being afraid of Fred Grant.” And she was certain Fred Grant had made a noise in the hallway as Moses Alakuyak was coming into the room, in hopes that Oren the family fuckup would kill everyone standing and put Oren away, leaving only Evelyn in between him and control of Eagle Air. And he’d already shot her once.

She remembered his outburst when he had seen Tina’s body. There had been real grief on his face.

So perhaps not everyone.

“Can you prove any of this?” he said.

“You probably could, if you tried,” she said. “But you won’t, because somebody here gave him immunity, so why bother.” She tossed down the pen and got to her feet. “You people never get it right.”

“You know, Kate,” Mason said as he waited with her at the elevator, “Hollywood action movies notwithstanding, there isn’t much anyone can do against an M4 with a full clip on full automatic, even if a moron’s holding it.”

“Maybe especially if a moron’s holding it,” she said.

Thirty-four

JANUARY 25

The Park

She and Mutt spent the night in Jack’s condo, and took a cab to Merrill early the following morning. George took one look at her face and put her on shotgun, where she wouldn’t frighten the other passengers.

The high that had been hanging over Bristol Bay for the last week seemed to have teleported itself to the Park. At any rate, the view was all the way to Canada before George began the descent into Niniltna. A river, yes, but not a delta, and the body of water it flowed into was only an edge of blue on the horizon. The Quilaks rose like a wall on the east, terrifying and comforting in their jagged proximity. The undulating landscape was lush with trees under a blanket of white. As George made his final, coming in over the river from the south, Kate saw a snowmobile head upriver, passing a four-wheeler headed down.

Jim was waiting for them at the airstrip. Mutt was first out the door of the Single Otter and crossed the space between in a single bound. When Kate, moving a little more slowly, brought up the rear, Mutt had both paws on Jim’s shoulders and was savaging his face with a serious tongue bath. He was laughing and trying not very hard to fend her off.

He looked over Mutt’s head and saw Kate. He grabbed the huge gray paws and said, “Okay, enough, glad to see you, too.” He settled her down on the hard-packed snow. He seemed oddly relieved. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Kate said, and suddenly, inexplicably, began to weep.

*   *   *

She’d brought home a print-out of the front page of the morning newspaper with Dunaway’s story in it.

FBI B
USTS
A
LASKA-BASED
I
NTERNATIONAL
A
RMS
S
MUGGLING
R
ING
BY JO DUNAWAY

[email protected]

Published: January 24, 10:34
P.M.

Last modified: January 25, 6:37
A.M
.

Local attorney Hugh Reid was remanded into federal custody today pending charges of wire fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, theft of government property and illegal transportation and sales of arms in the ongoing federal and state investigation of Eagle Air Ltd. Reid is a partner in the law firm of Chapados, Reid, Reid, McGillivray and Thrall in Anchorage, which firm was also the administrator for the estate of the late John Neville “Wes” Hardin, Alaska businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist. An unnamed source high in the FBI said agents are only beginning to unravel the story of a group of Alaska entrepreneurs who were apparently in the process of building one of the biggest illegal arms dealerships in history, based on theft of American arms from military armories across the United States, and transporting them to sell to terrorists overseas.

In related news, Anchorage District Attorney Brendan McCord petitioned the court to appoint a guardian ad litem for Alexandra Hardin, the heiress whose estate it appears Reid bilked for upwards of $200 million over a period of two and a half years. Hardin is the daughter and last living relative of John Neville “Wes” Hardin, and currently resides in the Bahamas in a long-term care facility for Alzheimer’s patients.

“Mason was right,” Jim said. “Nothing you could have done.”

“I know,” Kate said. “I know he was right.”

They were at the house. Kate and Jim were on the couch, Johnny on the floor with his head pillowed on Mutt’s flank. She’d told them everything, the whole blackmailing, gunrunning, chest freezer– and Dumpster-diving, fish hold freight container, hitchhiking, flight-sabotaging, illegal arms–selling story.

Well. She’d made only passing reference to Gabe McGuire, and that only because she couldn’t avoid it. He hadn’t been mentioned publicly in connection to the case, at least not yet, but it was only a matter of time. Or Liam could mention him in passing when he was talking to Jim, and then Jim would want to know how she could possibly have left him out. So she said he was just like he looked in the movies. Hadn’t talked to him much. Seemed like an okay guy.

“But you got to ride in his private jet?” Johnny said, stars in his eyes. “Twice?”

“Me and a bunch of other people,” Kate said, conscious of Jim’s eyes on her.

“Sweet,” Johnny said.

She didn’t mention that she’d let her inexplicable reaction to Gabe McGuire nearly push her out of Newenham too soon, before she’d finished the job.

“I’m just glad the little fuckup with the M4 missed you,” Jim said, pulling her under his arm.

“That’d be me, too,” she said, curling up next to him and putting her head on his chest. The reassuring beat of his heart thumped against her ear.

“That’d be me, three,” Johnny said soberly. “Dumpsters and chest freezers are one thing.”

“Don’t forget the freight container, and the near miss with the Cessna,” she said. She smiled at him. He didn’t smile back, and in his youthful face she saw again the echo of his father’s.

The faint echo of another man’s. Or was it? Maybe she just wanted Gabe McGuire to look like Jack Morgan so as to make her attraction to him seem a rational reaction. She hoped he was back in L.A., or on his way there. She hoped the feds seized every single piece of property Finn Grant had ever owned or ever thought of owning or ever had owned, including Outouchiwanet Mountain Lodge, and sold it all off to pay Grant’s back taxes. She hoped Gabe McGuire never had cause to cross north of the fifty-third latitude ever again.

There was the movie about the gold rush, but Nome was a long way from Niniltna. There was no reason their paths should ever cross again. She never wanted to see another one of his movies, if it came to that.

I think you’re just as attracted to me as I am to you, and because you think of me as a face on a magazine cover, and in spite of that self-confidence you clank around in like a suit of armor, I think you don’t know what to do about it.

It wasn’t bad, as lines went. But it was only a line. Probably written by a screenwriter, delivered in a film of his she hadn’t seen. She rubbed her face against Jim’s chest, the pilling of his ancient sweatshirt rough against her cheek. This was real, this was here, this was now. A movie star was someone who couldn’t pass a mirror without checking their hair.

Oblivious, Jim was still reading the newspaper, and craning her neck she saw that he had moved on to the obituary page.

Grant, Clementina “Tina” Tannehill. Wife, mother, businesswoman.

Donations in her memory may be made to a special account at the First Frontier Bank branch in Newenham, Alaska.

For further information, contact her son, Oren Grant, also of Newenham, Alaska.

“A loving son,” Jim said, tossing the newspaper on the floor.

“Yeah,” Kate said. “One thing his father got right.”

Mutt snoozed on her quilt. A log popped in the fireplace.

Jim took a deep breath and blew it out. He scooted his butt to the edge of the couch and got his feet beneath him, just in case a quick getaway was called for. “Remember the day you left, the little jet parked in front of George’s hangar?”

“Uh, yeah,” Kate said, a little bewildered at this seeming change of topic.

“It was Erland Bannister’s jet, Kate,” Jim said.

Kate stiffened.

“It might even have been the jet he was shopping for when he ran into McGuire shopping for his, who knows? Anyway, it was his jet, and he was on it.”

“What,” Kate said, spacing the words out, “was Erland Bannister doing in the Park?”

“You won’t like it,” he said.

Kate looked at him, eyes like flint.

“He’s invested in the Suulutaq. I’d guess in a fairly substantial way, because he had Truax on board.”

Kate didn’t say anything. After exchanging a glance with Johnny, who had learned all this before Kate had and who had been and remained now extremely apprehensive as to her reaction. Jim said, “Just out of curiosity, I got hold of a copy of Global Harvest Resources’ annual report. There’s a list of non-majority shareholders in it. One of them is Arctic Investments.”

Kate’s face was wearing a strained expression.

“I checked with George,” Jim said. “The jet’s papers are in the name of the aforementioned Arctic Investments. They’re a registered corporation in Alberta. And Erland Bannister is its majority shareholder, as well as its president and CEO.”

“Arctic Investments?” Kate said in a queer voice. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure, yes,” he said. “Or I should say, Kurt Pletnikof is. I, ah, availed myself of his services. Figured you wouldn’t mind. Why?”

“Because,” Kate said, feeling suddenly tired all over, “Arctic Investments is one of the partner companies in Eagle Air.” She stopped.

“What?” he said.

“His tail number,” she said. “Did it begin with a
C
?”

He frowned. “Yeah. It’s registered in Canada. Kurt said it was probably a tax dodge.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“What?” he said again.

“I’ll have to check with Mason,” she said. “But remember the reporter I told you about? Jo Dunaway?”

“I remember,” he said.

“She said Alexandra Hardin was brought to the Bahamas by two men, from their descriptions Grant and Reid.”

Jim nodded. “And?”

“And she said they came in a private jet, piloted by Grant.”

“Tail number start with a
C
?” At her nod, he swore.

“My sentiments exactly,” she said. She raised her mug in a toast. “Here’s to Erland Bannister, who has the best eye to the main chance of anyone I’ve ever met.” She drank the rest of her cold cocoa and set the mug down on the floor with a savage thump. Mutt snorted and almost woke.

“I apologize in advance,” Jim said.

“Honest to god,” she said, spacing out the words, “I’m not sure how much more I can take.”

“Axenia was on the jet with Erland.”

She stared at him. “My cousin Axenia? Axenia Shugak? Mathisen?”

He nodded.

She let her head drop forward into her hands. Jim exchanged another look with Johnny. It was silent until Jim reached for a large manila envelope.

“Just one more thing about Bannister, Kate.”

Her voice was muffled by her hands. “I don’t want to know.”

“This, you do.” She raised her head and watched him open the envelope and extract an eight-by-ten photograph, black-and-white, although it had yellowed with age. It felt brittle to the touch. One of the corners had broken off.

It was a picture of a room in a house, a large sitting room. There were built-in bookshelves along the walls filled with a lot of leather-bound books with gilt lettering on the spines, the kinds of books that were only for show, never read. There was a lot of furniture that looked as if it was covered in some dark leather, and there were half a dozen tall, narrow display tables, beautifully crafted with scrolled legs and beveled glass, artfully placed in an implied path so as to entice a viewer to walk from one to the other.

At middle left there was an overturned wooden desk.

The desk had a body beneath it, a middle-aged man with a bit of a paunch, dressed in a suit and tie. It was a black-and-white photograph, but Kate was guessing that the stain on his clothing and on the carpet beneath him was blood. He didn’t look like anyone she knew.

She looked up, a question in her eyes.

Jim nodded. “Emil Bannister.” He handed her a second photograph. This one was a close-up of the desk, which was still overturned, although the body had been removed. “Look at the corner of the desk, here.” He pointed.

Kate followed his finger. It was hard to see in black-and-white, but it seemed to her there was a spot of something on one corner. She looked back up at Jim.

He got up and got a magnifying glass from the kitchen. “You can see it better with this.”

Through the glass the stain looked gummy. “You think it’s blood,” she said.

“I do,” he said. “What’s more, I think it’s Emil’s blood. Which means he hit his head on it after he either fell or was pushed, or possibly struck. I don’t see any bruising on his face but these aren’t the most detailed crime scene photographs I’ve ever seen in my professional life. Not surprising, since they’re sixty-odd years old.”