Restless in the Grave (26 page)

Kate had spent most of her life avoiding a nose-to-nose confrontation with any of the above, but one man’s meat. She backed out of the Eagle Air website to Jackknife Pass Outfitters and clicked on
CONTACT US
. The website for Eagle Air, Inc., Newenham, Alaska, appeared again.

She felt someone hovering behind her, and turned to look. A dark-haired man of medium height stood in front of the magazine shelf, nose in a copy of
Ms.
magazine. My, wasn’t he evolved.

She turned back to the computer. So Finn Grant had video evidence of an Alaska big game guide committing two of the highest penalty offenses you can commit as a hunter, either one of which was guaranteed to lose a guide his license. And the website of the guide caught committing these crimes on camera was now automatically forwarded to the Eagle Air website.

Kate clicked on the folder again and counted.

There were eleven separate files.

Campbell’s voice echoed in her ears.
He strong-armed a lot of the businesses he bought out. Bought up their debt and foreclosed. Bought the buildings they were doing their business out of and raised the rent on them, or just booted them out. Bought out their competitors and lowered prices to drive them out of business.

The dates on the documents went back more than fifteen years, so this was not an activity Grant had begun recently. She clicked through the files, one at a time, with a steadily increasing feeling of incredulity, and disgust. Infidelity, wife abuse, child abuse, prostitution, driving while drunk, flying while drunk, same flying and shooting, cheating on taxes federal, state, borough, and local, fishing inside the markers, fishing in a closed area, and fishing with illegal gear. Grant even had evidence of the Newenham postmaster refusing to give someone their mail because that someone refused to attend the postmaster’s church. It was the only other video file in the folder. It looked like Grant had worn a hidden camera when he went in to pick up his mail.

Interfering with the mail was a federal offense, for which you could do federal time. Kate wondered what Grant had gotten from the postmaster in question in return for keeping quiet about it.

Most of the documents had been created by Grant, but every instance had corresponding evidence, a date, a place, a time, copies of documents and faxes, sometimes a statement by a corroborating witness. In the case of the post office video, there were half a dozen witnesses, and most of them had signed statements. Kate wondered what they had received in return. Finn Grant looked to her like a quid pro quo kinda guy.

There was nothing nastier, nothing dirtier, nothing more soul destroying than blackmail. She longed violently for a shower, a hot, scouring shower, preferably with a Clorox rinse. She wanted to return to the apartment, pack up her gear, and even if she had to walk to the airport get on the first plane going anywhere, just away from here.

Being tossed into the chest freezer now seemed more like a reasonable reaction to outrageous provocation than personal assault. Any one of Grant’s victims would be frantic to recover the evidence Grant had held over their heads all these years. They would start on the outbuildings, the shop, the garage apartment. She made a mental note to ask Campbell if there had been any reports of break-ins at Grant’s house, Grant’s Newenham hangar, or out at the Eagle Air base.

Well. Other than the one of which he had personal evidence right at the scene. Currently occupying a bed in the Newenham hospital.

She glanced at the clock on the wall and went grimly to work. Each folder was dedicated to one person. There was no indication as to how Finn Grant had started his little hobby, just a steady accumulation of information over the years. An item in a tax cheat’s folder read

Last night at Bill’s WW said he hadn’t paid income taxes in twenty years. Terry Ballard said today that WW’s been high boat for herring spotting the last three years. Have to find out how much that comes to. Ten percent of that, plus interest and penalties, is a pretty good stick. Might even be worth turning WW in myself.

A note in an adulterer’s folder read

Got in from Jackknife late last night, crashed at the hangar, on the way home this morning saw Chris Bevens backing out of Tasha Anayuk’s driveway. Think Chris’ wife Annika is the one with the money, have to check.

Another note read

Saw Father Tom with Sergei Watson’s little boy. Wasn’t the archbishop at that Chamber of Commerce meeting in Anchorage in June?

By the time she got to the last folder she wanted to throw up. When she clicked on it and saw the name there, she was sure she was going to.

Jeannie had granted her a stay when her first thirty minutes were up, but half an hour later she looked over her shoulder at the librarian’s desk and Jeannie spread her hands and mouthed
Sorry
and nodded at a man pretending to read a newspaper. It was the same man she’d seen earlier reading
Ms
. His left hand was missing the top half of its middle finger. Another fisherman who hadn’t moved fast enough to get his hand off a running line between a winch and his cork line.

She wasn’t sorry to close out the folder and pull the thumb drive. She stuck it in her pocket and hoped it didn’t smell. When she stood up, the man with the newspaper hustled over and elbowed her aside to get in front of the computer before anyone else could.

The library had filled up over the past hour. All the seats at the two tables were filled and there was someone browsing at each of the six bookshelves. The library had been arranged so that anyone sitting at the desk could see straight down the rows of shelves. Kate was pretty sure she knew who had made certain of that. Jeannie Penney was seated at her desk and Kate stopped on her way out to thank her for the extra half hour.

Jeannie waved her off. “It’s there to be used. Some people—” She cast a dark blue look at the man who had taken Kate’s place. “—think they can park on it all day, so I had to make rules so everyone would get a chance.”

“Is there a fee?” Kate said. “I’m happy to pay it.”

“This is a public library,” Jeannie said firmly, “and by definition is a free service for all citizens.” She grinned and shoved forward a large glass jar with a punctured plastic lid, half full of bills and coins. “Far be it from us to discourage anyone from supporting their local public library, however.” She watched with approval as Kate stuffed a five-dollar bill into the jar.

“How long have you lived in Newenham?” Kate said on impulse.

“Honey, I was born here.”

“You’re local?” Kate hadn’t meant to sound so startled, and Jeannie flashed an appreciative smile.

“You think I’m a little too high end for a Newenham librarian? Honey, that’s so nice of you.” Jeannie twinkled. If Kate had been a man, she would have gone down like ninepins. “My parents were BIA teachers. I grew up hating every living thing in this town and in the entire state, too. I married young and well, a high boater from Anacortes, and moved us Outside first chance I got. We were happy there for over thirty years. And then my children grew up and moved out, and he died and left me more than enough money to spend every winter in Hawaii, so I started looking around for something useful to do with myself.” She shook her head. “Don’t ask me how I ended up back here, because I don’t know myself. It is not my favorite place in the world, but someone has too look out for these people. They were going to let the library close, can you imagine?” She cocked her head. “You?”

For the first time on this job, Kate was sorry she had to lie. “Kate Saracoff. I’m not from around here.”

Jeannie laughed. “Honey, I’d know you if you were.” She looked expectant.

“Anchorage,” Kate said, “at one time, anyway. I got to Newenham by way of a man.” It had worked before.

Jeannie looked wise. “And you wouldn’t be the first to do so. You got a job yet?”

Kate nodded. “Waiting tables at Bill’s.”

Jeannie nodded approvingly. “Bill’s a good person, she’ll look out for you.” She added, “So long as you can abide that drunk shaman she’s landed herself with. Anyone who would invite drinking and prognostication into their lives in one package must have some kind of death wish.”

“Prognostication?” Kate said.

Jeannie rolled her eyes. “He’s supposed to be some kind of seer.”

“Seer?”

“You know, predict the future, or know if you’re telling lies, or talk to the dead.” Jeannie rolled her eyes again. “Personally, I think it’s the box checked ‘None of the above,’ but the locals, especially the Yupik locals, think he’s the real deal.”

“He kidnapped me my first morning and made me do something he called form.”

Jeannie’s eyes sharpened. “Really. Interesting.”

“Why?”

“They say the last time he did that was when Liam Campbell got here.”

“Wow,” Kate said, making a joke out of it or trying to, “I’m so special.”

You know he didn’t do it, right?
Who didn’t do what? Finn Grant didn’t blackmail all those people? Didn’t kill himself in his own airplane? Finn Grant’s death was why she was in Newenham, why Liam Campbell had asked her to come, he was the only
he
Moses could mean.

“You going back to the apartment?” When Kate nodded, Jeannie said, “Oh good, then you can drop these off at Tina’s,” and handed her a couple of books, the latest by Laurie King and T. Jefferson Parker and a reprint of a Manning Coles novel Kate herself was interested to see. “She’s a huge crime fiction fan, is our Tina,” Jeannie said. “To tell the truth, which I shouldn’t and almost never do, I always bump Tina up to the top of the waiting list when a new Laurie King comes in.” She looked down at her desk and said in a less audible voice, “She has had little enough joy in her life, poor thing.”

“She just lost her husband,” Kate said, testing.

“No big loss, there,” Jeannie said. “But she lost her daughter, too, last year.”

“The photograph of the soldier I saw in her hallway.”

Jeannie nodded, still looking at her desk.

“She’s not having her best year,” Kate said.

Jeannie started to say something, and stopped. Kate decided to push a little. “I flew in from Togiak,” she said. “We stopped at Eagle Air on the way. It was her husband’s, right? I wondered why…”

Jeannie looked up, the friendliness in her eyes on the wane. “Wondered why what?”

Kate reminded herself that she was on the job. “Tina seemed glad to get my rent in cash. And then she rented me her ATV, for cash. It just—” She shrugged. “—seemed odd for the owner of a ritzy operation like Eagle Air to act broke.”

Jeannie’s eyes narrowed, and Kate knew immediately that she had asked one question too many. All confidences were at an end.

At least for the moment. Jeannie Penney seemed like a source worth cultivating.

Nineteen

JANUARY 20

The Park

“You look like hell,” Johnny said.

Jim stared morosely into his coffee cup. “Like to see what you would look like after a night like I’ve had.”

“I heard you come in,” Johnny said, flipping a slice of French toast. “What was it, four
A.M
.?”

“More like three.”

“What was it this time? Or should I say, who?”

Jim drank coffee. “Darryl Kvasnikof got high and broke into his parents’ house.”

Johnny was annoyingly blasé. “That all? Darryl finally draw down on his dad?”

“If that had been all, I would have been home a lot earlier,” Jim said.

Johnny either did not notice or ignored Jim’s testiness. “So what else was going on while I was getting my eight hours of uninterrupted sleep?”

Jim made a rhetorical suggestion as to what Johnny could do with his eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Johnny laughed. “He broke in with a chain saw.”

“Oh.”

“And then he resisted arrest.”

“Uh-oh.”

“And then after I took him in he busted out the cell light, pissed on the floors, took a dump and smeared his shit on the walls, and lit the cot on fire.”

“Wow,” Johnny said, awed.

“I understand him being mad at his dad, but it would have been nice if he’d managed to exercise his rage on his dad’s house instead of my post.”

“Probably knew you wouldn’t shoot him.”

“And none of which I would have known about until this morning if I’d been able to come straight home after I jugged him.”

“Why weren’t you able to?”

It wasn’t as if Johnny wouldn’t hear all about it at school. “There was a rape last month, at a Christmas party. The girl’s underage and there was more than one guy involved. Little fuckers took pictures with their cell phones and put them online, and one of the girl’s friends saw them and told her parents, who finally told the vic’s parents last night. The vic didn’t want to come forward. It took her parents until midnight to convince her. Or just about the time I was coming home from jugging the Darrylinator.”

“Jesus,” Johnny said, shaken.

Jim raised his head from his hands. “You hear something? Did Van?”

Johnny shook his head, looking a little green around the gills. “Nobody ever tells us anything. They know I live with Kate, and that you do, too, and that Van and I are, you know.”

A few moments later, a plate loaded with thick French toast and spicy moose sausage patties appeared in front of Jim, along with a jug of real maple syrup.

Food is love. And he was starving. He picked up his fork and dug in.

Johnny sat down with his own plate. He knew better than to ask the victim’s name, but there was something he had to know. “Tell me it wasn’t guys at the school.”

Niniltna Public School, grades kindergarten through high school, had a student population of less than eighty. Jim appreciated Johnny’s apprehension. “All three were Suulutaq miners, is the bad news. The worse news is two of them are locals. And no, none of them were your classmates.”