“Oh yeah?”
“She was Harold Elwell Bannister’s granddaughter. You never heard me say that, of course, the record is naturally sealed as she was a juvenile.”
“Oh.” Harold Elwell Bannister was an old-time Alaskan, a stampeder who had stayed on after the gold rush to found a chain of grocery stores and subsequently to guide the footsteps of first territorial and then state governors. The Bannisters were a wealthy and historic Alaskan family, and Kate doubted there was a cop or a prosecutor, or more importantly a judge, in the state who wouldn’t have done their utmost to see that a crime against any relative of his did not go unavenged. “I see.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t like there was any doubt, though. There was semen residue, and they tested it for blood type. And there was an eyewitness who saw him make the snatch. She was out walking her dog. She was eighty-three and you know how dark it is winter mornings, but she ID’d him in a lineup. Girl was waiting for the school bus. Duffy had staked her out, and grabbed her up the one morning she was standing there alone.”
“Did he admit that?”
“Not to staking her out, but the cop is pretty sure that’s what happened. Still, the prosecutor had to fight for it, blood tests back then were pre-DNA, there was plenty of room for the defense to maneuver, and our eighty-three-year-old witness wore Coke-bottle glasses and failed to identify her own daughter in the courtroom.”
“But Duffy was found guilty anyway.”
Brendan shrugged and grinned. “The judge was a regular guest at Einar Bannister’s duck shack out on the Beluga flats every September.”
“Collusion,” Kate said. “Conspiracy. Also,” she added, “justice.”
Brendan sobered. “As close to it as the girl was going to get, I reckon.” He smiled, and Johnny felt a chill run up his spine. “Myself, I’m of the opinion that castration without benefit of anesthesia, followed by hanging, drawing, and quartering at high noon in the town square, televised live on all local stations with viewing made mandatory by all citizens either live or in living color, would be a more effective deterrent.”
Kate thought of Gary Drussell’s youngest daughter putting the moves on a boy she had met for the first time half an hour before, and said, “Sounds about right to me.”
Johnny’s eyes went wide. “Jeeze, you guys.”
“Sorry, kid,” Brendan said, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Thanks, Brendan,” Kate said. “I appreciate you coming in on your day off to help.”
“I have no days off. My pleasure.” He found a leer somewhere and produced it to effect. “Your tab’s piling up, Shugak.”
She batted her eyelashes. “I can hardly wait until the bill comes due, McCord.”
“Really,” said a dry voice from the doorway.
They turned and Jim Chopin was standing there.
They all wound up at the Lucky Wishbone for a late lunch. Jim was jealous of Kate’s easy camaraderie with Brendan, trying like hell not to show it, and not succeeding very well. Brendan was hugely enjoying the resulting spectacle and losing no opportunity to flirt with Kate by word, glance, and touch.
Kate was doing her best to ignore them both, which wasn’t easy, because the only other person there to talk to was Johnny, and Johnny wasn’t speaking to any of them because before Kate had left Brendan’s office, she had called his mother and set up a meeting for later that afternoon. He’d stared at her, speechless in betrayal, and had refused to listen to any explanation she had tried to give between Third and L and Fifth and Karluk. She’d given up, finally, saying the one thing she’d never expected to hear out of her own mouth: “I’m older than you are, I’m smarter than you are, and I’m tougher than you are. You’re going to have to trust me that this is the right thing to do.”
They were pulling into the parking lot as she spoke, and his eyes grew to the size of saucers. “Look! Look at that!”
“What?” She looked where he was pointing with an accusing finger.
“There’re cops all over the place!”
Three blue-and-whites were parked in front of the row of windows that separated booths from the parking lot. “So cops like fried chicken. That a problem for you?”
He’d slammed out of the Subaru without replying and stamped over to where Brendan and Jim were waiting. He’d made his displeasure known in a few curt sentences and been further outraged by Brandon saying, “Better to get it over with, kid,” and Jim saying, “He’s right, Johnny.” So he sat in a corner of the booth, face like a thundercloud, studiously ignoring the gang of men in black and badges sitting in the next booth and shoveling in fried chicken and French fries in a mechanical manner that wrung the heart of Heidi, their ebullient, redheaded server. She kept topping up his Coke and adding to his fries with a hopeful smile, which he ignored until Jim pulled his cap off and smacked Johnny with it. Even then all Heidi got was a stiff nod of the head and a gruff “thanks.” Kate longed to send him out to wait in the Subaru, but she was restrained by the fear that he would take off, and by the knowledge that his anger was caused by fear.
Brendan burped and patted his belly, of a size that barely fit between booth and table. “That was great.” He smiled at Heidi as she came to the table, and repeated the remark. She beamed at him and topped off his coffee and put a little extra into the process of walking away, which Brendan greatly appreciated and which Kate was sure added substantially to her tip. “I gotta go, I gotta girl waiting on me,” he said. “Kate, always a pleasure. Jim, likewise. Kid? Get that lower lip of yours off the floor, you’re in good hands that I don’t see letting go of you any time soon.”
With a genial wave, he was off. “I flew in a perp,” Jim said. “Brendan told me he’d be in so I figured I’d drop off the file in person.”
“Did I ask?” Kate said.
It made him nervous that the question wasn’t pugnacious. In fact, she was smiling, which made him even more nervous. Things had been so relaxed between them the night before, there was no reason for him to be nervous now. But he was. Dinah’s voice kept coming back to him. What do you want with her? He’d never asked himself that question; it seemed obvious to him what he wanted. He’d never thought about what happened after he got what he wanted.
He was thinking about it now. He cleared his throat. “So you’re going to meet with Jane.”
“Yes.”
“Want me along?”
“I appreciate the offer,” Kate said, “but let’s not make her any more insane than she is already by showing up with a trooper in tow.”
“If you need me…”
“I’ll yell for help.”
That was so out of character that he stumbled getting out of the booth. It didn’t help that she caught his arm and helped him regain his balance. “Are you in town overnight?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Got a ride home?”
“George.”
“Oh. Ah. Well. I’m in overnight, too. I’m picking up the autopsy report on Duffy in the morning.” His eyes searched the heavens for inspiration. “You could cancel George, ride with me. Save yourself some money.”
“I was planning on billing the state for the trip,” she said.
“Oh. Right. Sure. Of course. You’re here on the Duffy case. So I’ll see you back at-”
“But, okay.”
“Sorry?”
She thoroughly enjoyed his moment of blank incomprehension. She wasn’t sure she, or anyone else for that matter, had seen Jim Chopin unsure of how to act around a woman. It gave her, she admitted, if only to herself, a feeling of power. Not to mention satisfaction. Jim Chopin, the father of the Park, the cause of many a feminine flutter of heart, at her beck and call. She decided to push it, just a little. As her grandmother would have said, if you had power and didn’t use it, then you’d be giving it away to someone else, and they surely would. Kate didn’t like the idea of giving away any power she had over Jim Chopin. He’d bedeviled her long enough, he with the too-knowing eyes and the predatory grin. And the unquestioning comfort of his embrace, and the quick understanding of her loss, and-well. It was time and more than time for some payback. “Okay, we’ll ride home with you. Save the state some money.”