“Richie Constantine was a small-time thug who had the single virtue of loyalty. Some people say he had some kind of a thing with Calvin.” Max shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t know. Alls I know is that Calvin was one of the sicker sons a bitches to walk the streets of any town, anywhere, and Anchorage was unlucky enough for him to call it home. Richie was his button man, his bag man, his enforcer, you name it. Calvin said jump and Richie said how high.
“Calvin told him to put a scare into Jasper, and Richie watched and waited until Jasper was away from home, and he went inside and raped and killed Ruby Jo.”
Max brooded for a bit. “We knew right away, of course. We arrested Richie within twenty-four hours. We even had ourselves something of a case-physical evidence linking him to the scene, not a half-bad description from an eyewitness, who even picked his photo out of a book of head shots.” He looked at Kate. “So we let him go.”
Kate stared at him. “What?”
“We let him go,” Max repeated, and waved over another martini. When it came and Max had appreciated the waitress’s walk enough, he said, “It was a different time, Kate. The word came down to turn Richie loose.” He smiled, and it wasn’t a nice smile. “He didn’t want to go. At one point, we had to pry his hands loose of the bars. But we tossed him out on his ear.”
Kate was beginning to understand. “When did you find him?”
“We didn’t.” He paused, enjoying Kate’s expression for a moment. “We found Calvin, though. Next morning, floating facedown in McHugh Creek. His dick was cut off and stuffed in his mouth.”
“Jesus,” she said.
Max nodded. “Yeah.”
“And Richie?”
“Richie?” Max’s mouth twisted up at one corner. “Richie was next found on the payroll of Jasper Bannister.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.”
Max shook his head. “Oh no. Jasper appreciated loyalty and efficiency in an employee, especially when he needed somebody to get at those hard-to-reach areas.” Max paused, clearly enjoying the expression on Kate’s face, and added, “Of course, there was that whole disappearing thing Richie did during the pipeline days-oh, say a year before oil in. Richie just flat disappeared. You know that rumor that kept floating around, about somebody finding a body in the pipeline when they walked the first pig in front of the oil from Prudhoe to Valdez? I always thought that must have been Richie.”
In spite of herself, Kate couldn’t repress a shiver. Seeing it, Max nodded. “Calvin was an amateur compared to Jasper.” He saw her expression. “What?”
“I had a case this summer. A guy got killed in the Park. Turned out he was a baby raper, on the run from the law. We had the hell of time identifying him. He didn’t have a driver’s license or a pilot’s license or a fishing license or a hunting license. He didn’t have a social security number. There was a screwup with the fingerprints, and we didn’t know until way late in the game that he’d done time, let alone been in the army. Hell, he never even applied for a permanent fund dividend check. By then, I knew we had a vie who didn’t want to be found. I never did know who he didn’t want to be found by.”
“So?”
She met his eyes and said softly, “One of his victims was a Bannister girl.”
Max pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. “Yeah,” he said finally, “I’d have run, too.”
Kate digested all this new information for a moment. “Like father like son, you think?”
“Erland?” It was Max’s turn to think. “I don’t know. I never heard so, but I never heard different, either.”
“He could be riding on his father’s reputation.”
“It would be enough for a while,” Max said, “but not forever. Sooner or later, he’d have to make his own bones.” He drained his glass. “You said Victoria was fighting with him and her father back then, in public, something to do with the family business.”
“They were laying off union employees and replacing them with contract hires. Victoria thought that sucked and said so, right out in front of God and everybody.”
“Reason enough to get you killed, in Jasper’s book,” Max said.
“But his own grandson?”
Max looked exasperated. “Are you deaf, girl? Have you been listening at all to what I been telling you?” He fixed Kate with a stern look. “Two things. One, Victoria could have threatened to expose whatever shenanigans was going on over to the family firm, and her house could have been burned down as a warning, and the boy’s death would’ve been collateral damage. After all, Victoria and Charlotte were gone, the arsonist could have thought the house was empty.”
Kate nodded.
“Two, the arson could have been either an attempt on or a warning to Eugene, not Victoria. He might have been gone, but his kids were still living there, weren’t they?”
Kate’s mouth opened and closed once or twice. Max regarded her, not without satisfaction. “Didn’t think of that, did you now, missie?”
Kate rubbed her forehead. “Fuck,” she said, and saw Max wince. Like he said, he came from another time, when women didn’t use those words. “Sorry, Max,” she said, and then she swore again. “Sorry, Max, I almost forgot,” she said, pulling out the photograph of the young woman she’d found in Eugene Muravieff’s cabin. “Do you know who this is?”
Max picked up the photo and smacked his lips. “Oh my yes,” he said, “I surely do. There wasn’t a red-blooded all-American boy in Anchorage at that time who didn’t. Talk about a honey pot. Mmmm, mmmm.”
“Does the honey pot have a name?” Kate said.
“Sure,” Max said. “Wanda Gajewski.”
“Wanda Gajewski,” Kate said. She took the picture back and looked at it. “Wanda Gajewski, Ernie Gajewski’s sister?”
“That’s the one. She went to high school with Victoria’s kids. Was a classmate of William’s, I think.”
“Okay,” Kate said, “what we have here in policespeak is a clue. Ernie Gajewski is the guy who bought Eugene Muravieff’s set-net permit.”
“Really,” Max said. “That’s interesting.”
“Why?”
“Because Ernie Gajewski drowned off Augustine Island when he was just a boy, swimming from the shore to his dad’s seiner.”
Kate stared at him. After a moment, she said, “And this case just keeps on getting more and more fun. Why would Eugene have a picture of Wanda, his oldest son’s teenage classmate?”
Max drained his martini with the air of a man who knew that was all he was going to get, and grinned his evil grin at the woman sitting across from him. “Because Wanda Gajewski was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She was the reason Victoria divorced Eugene.”
Kate called Brendan and in five minutes had an address to go with Wanda’s name. “She’s got a phone number,” Brendan told her, “but it’s unlisted.” He gave her that, too. “Anything you want to tell me, Kate?”
“I’m wading through a pit of snakes and they all bite.”
“Okay, not loving the visual,” Brendan said.
“Not loving the reality, either,” Kate said, and hung up.
Wanda’s house was in Windermere, the split-level four-bedroom, two-bathroom floor plan so dear to the hearts of developers during the sixties and seventies. Kate pulled into the driveway and knocked on the door. No answer.
She went next door, same floor plan, different paint job. No answer. Same thing with the house on the other side. It was a sad day when the women had to go to work outside the home and not be there when Kate needed answers to questions.
She went across the street to a third house, this one with the biggest Winnebago Kate had ever seen parked in the driveway, and struck gold. The door opened at the first knock. A plump woman with thick white hair cut short stood there, dressed in brightly flowered polyester trimmed with plaid braid in rainbow hues. Kate blinked involuntarily, and the woman chuckled. “Pretty, aren’t I? ”Dayglo Diane,“ that’s what my friends call me. But we need something to brighten up these long, dreary arctic winters, don’t you think?”