As in the Kanuyaq Kings, the local high school team, and very likely the only team logo George could recognize on sight. He was dutiful in his devotion to the hometown boys, but he wasn’t the biggest sports fan. “And this was last Tuesday?”
George nodded.
“Okay,” she said. She started to thank him, then caught his eye, and thought better of it. “I need a ride into town,” she said instead.
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
He thought for a moment before giving a short nod. “I can do that, if you don’t mind early.”
“I don’t mind early. Seven?”
He nodded again. “Don’t be late. I’ve got to be back here in time to bring the Grosdidier brothers home from Alaganik.”
“You can fit them all into one plane?”
He grinned, the most natural expression he’d shown her all summer. “I packs ‘em tight,” he said, adding, “Don’t tell the FAA.”
She drove up to the Niniltna Native Association headquarters, a prefabricated building beneath a metal roof that positively sang in the rain and to which even the heaviest snowfall did not stick, to the imminent danger of those walking into and out of the building through the set of double doors centered most precisely beneath its eaves. It looked as if someone had let Auntie Balasha off the chain because the side of the building facing the road was engulfed in flowers of every size and hue, from nasturtiums at the road’s edge to delphiniums tethered to stakes brushing the first-floor windowsills. It was a riot of color right across the spectrum, and it made the building look as if it housed something other than the organization that oversaw and administered the moneys and lands Kate’s tribe had received as a result of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.
Billy, chief of said tribe, looked up from his desk when Kate walked in, and, it must be said, paled at the sight of her. Kate, weary of this reaction, held up a hand. “It’s all right, Billy. You get to help me this time.”
He failed to hide his relief. “What do you need, Kate?”
Billy Mike’s face used to be as round as his body, and his smile at least as broad. He was thinner now, paler, too, and there was a bruised look in his eyes that had not been there before and that hurt Kate to see. It was only three months since he’d lost his youngest son, Dandy, and Billy and his wife, Annie, were both still grieving. They had taken in another child, a fourteen-year-old named Vanessa Cox, who was Johnny Morgan’s boon companion and who, Kate greatly feared, was rapidly becoming rather more than that. This was in addition to the Korean baby they had adopted when Annie began to suffer from empty nest syndrome, not to mention the six children who had grown up, gone to school, and, instead of moving back home, had stayed in Anchorage, where there were jobs and bars and cable television, and who were proving remarkably dilatory in providing the Mikes with the grandchildren both of them were vociferous about wanting.
That Billy and Annie didn’t blame Kate for Dandy’s death was a mystery for which she would be eternally grateful. That they had opened their home and hearts to Vanessa, the killer’s child, was even more extraordinary, but it was a fact that Vanessa, orphaned when both her parents had been killed in a car crash Outside and then shipped to Alaska to live with her nearest relatives, was looking more like a kid and less like a prematurely aged old woman than she had since she arrived in the Park the year before.
“I’m looking for Kurt Pletnikoff,” Kate said. “He’s not in the same old cabin out on Fool’s Gold Creek, is he?”
Billy shook his head. “He moved. He came into some money when his father died. The father evidently couldn’t figure out anybody better to leave it to. Kurt bought Luba Hardt’s property off Black Water Road and built himself a house. Sort of.”
“I didn’t know that,” Kate said. “Did Luba move out of the Park?”
“No, she just got thirsty, and Kurt happened to be standing next to her at the Roadhouse with a fistful of his daddy’s cash when she did.”
“Where’s she living now?”
“Last I heard, she was on the street in Anchorage. I got George to put the word out at Bean’s Cafe and the Brother Francis Shelter that when she wants to come home, we’ll foot the bill.”
“I’m going to Anchorage myself tomorrow or the next day,” Kate said. “I’ll look around.”
Billy nodded. “Appreciate it. Why do you want to know where Kurt is?”
Kate looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
He waved her off. “Yeah, I know, ask a dumb question. Don’t kill him, okay?”
“No promises,” Kate said, and left.
Kurt Pletnikoff’s home, if you could call it that, had been built on an elevated foundation of cement blocks around a frame of two-by-fours in a space in the middle of a thick stand of tall, heavy spruce that blocked out the sun. It was a gloomy little clearing, but neat, the wood stacked and the trash picked up.
The steps to the front and only door were made of more two-by-fours, in which there were a lot of nail pops to catch at the soles of Kate’s shoes. The building shook slightly when she knocked on the door. “Kurt?”
There was no answer.
She knocked again. “Kurt Pletnikoff? It’s Kate Shugak.”
Still no answer. She tried the handle. It was unlocked. She peered inside.
It was one room, about the size of her former cabin, with neither the loft nor the charm. The inside was even less prepossessing than the outside. A narrow iron cot with a thin mattress stood beneath the only window, a couple of green army blankets smoothed across it. A broken-down couch stood on one side of an oil stove made from a fifty-five-gallon drum. On the other side of the stove stood a table made of an old door, with two-by-fours for legs. There was a pile of magazines, nothing too sophisticated- Guns & Ammo, Sports Illustrated, Penthouse. A cupboard minus the doors had been screwed to one wall and was filled with canned and dry goods. A bag of apples, the top knotted off, sat on top of a bag of dog food.
The floor was clean, and a big galvanized garbage can sat next to the cupboard. A bowl, a spoon, and a mug were upended on a dish towel spread next to the apples.
Kate touched the bowl. A drop of water coalesced on her fingertip. She felt rather than heard motion behind her, and she stepped quickly to the left, dropping to the floor in a shoulder roll and regaining her feet in the same movement. She picked up the chair and brought the seat down on the head of the man who had been sneaking up behind her, not hard enough to knock him out, just hard enough to get his attention.
“Ouch!” the man yelled. He grabbed his head.
“Hi, Kurt,” Kate said, and put the chair down. It had been a while, and it pleased her to know that she still had the moves. Especially after she’d gotten blindsided by that shovel in May, an event she still couldn’t think of without a certain amount of shame. Mutt, galloping up to the door, her tongue lolling out to one side, surveyed the situation with an expert eye, gave a short congratulatory bark, and went back to sniffing out the moose cow and calf who had left such an intriguing scent trail crisscrossing the yard around the cabin. She wasn’t all that hungry, but like Kate she liked to know that she still got game.
Fifteen minutes later, Kurt was sitting on the bed and Kate was sitting on the chair. Two mugs of steaming chamomile tea-Kurt was into herbal teas-sat on the table, along with a box of sugar and a spoon.
“Did you have to hit me so hard?” Kurt said plaintively, rubbing the crown of his head with a careful hand. “I mean, Jesus, Kate.”
“Did you have to shoot half a dozen bears just for their gallbladders?” Kate said. “I mean, Jesus, Kurt. Where are they, by the way?”
“I worked hard for those bladders, Kate. You can’t just-”
“Yeah, I can. Where are they?” When Kurt looked stubborn, Kate surveyed the cabin. “Well,” she said, “if’s not much, but it’s home, and I have to say I like your housekeeping. Be a shame if I had to start tearing it apart.”