"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean those other names you found. There aren't any men attached to them." He saw her expression and held up a hand. "But wait, there's more. Southeast First Bank is looking for Henderson Gantry. Seems there's a little matter of overdue loan payments, amounting to something like half a million dollars. And they can't find the boats to repossess them." Again Jack forestalled Kate. "It gets better. I had an interesting conversation with the district attorney in San Diego, and they're looking for Harley Gruber. Seems Mr. Gruber subdivided a prime piece of property located, according to the surveyor's marks, somewhere a little to the west of the city, and sold the lots to an Eastern developer for a luxury hotel."
Kate's brow puckered. "Don't strain yourself," Jack said dryly, "to the west of San Diego is the Pacific Ocean. And it's legal. The buyers apparently didn't check beyond Gruber's references, which were above reproach, naturally, since they were forged, and nobody noticed until after the check cleared that the construction crew building this hotel was going to have to be fitted with scuba gear."
Kate grinned in spite of herself. "My, I do like style in a villain."
Jack didn't grin back. "This villain may be a murderer twice over. That we know of." He looked at the bundle of paper in his hand and estimated his chances of producing what he wanted before the turn of the century.
They weren't better than fifty-fifty, so he tossed the bundle on the table and quoted from memory. "I tried to trace some of those boats. So far, I know they worked the oil spill, but that's it. Except for one in dry dock in Valdez with a stoved-in hull, they seem to have vanished off the face of the earth. Oh, yes, and another interesting sidebar-the owner listed on the contract with the guy working on repairs is Harold Gunderson."
He paused. "I told the guy to stop working, that he probably wasn't going to get paid and that there were probably thirteen claims before his if he filed a lien, but I'm not sure he believed me." Jack shook his head, half in disbelief, half in admiration. "This Gault is some piece of work. When he embezzles, he embezzles down to the last dime. And now you tell me he's wholesaling cocaine."
"He's greedy," she pointed out. "He even shorted us on our crew shares. Not much, a couple hundred each, but he is greedy. Greedy people never get enough. What's coke retail for now? A hundred a gram?"
"More like a hundred twenty-five." him.She shrugged. "You see? It's easy money, or it has been so far. How can he resist?"
"I suppose you're right." He paused. "Can you stay for a while?"
She shook her head. "We're not leaving for another six hours, no, but I can't stay."
"Why not? Is Gault on to you? If-"
"No, it's not that. There's somebody I've got to see."
"In Dutch Harbor? What, are the Russians back?"
"You said we need a witness. I might have one for you.
Twenty minutes brisk walk brought her back to the little clapboard house on the edge of Unalaska village. The lights were on in the kitchen and Kate could see Olga sitting at the table, surrounded by the detritus of basket weaving. She stood still for a moment, watching through the window as the old woman's strong brown fingers attached another spoke with deft movements.
Something in the scene wrung her heart. One woman, old, alone, practicing a craft that had almost died out, that might have had it not been for her. She was the last of her race, and yet there were those six young girls, making their spending money at a skill as old as recorded time. There was something for everyone in the picture, Kate thought, optimist and pessimist alike. A traditionalist might be appalled that basket weaving went on only to fulfill an urgent need for the latest from Run D.M.C., but at least it went on. Andy would approve wholeheartedly.
A movement caught the corner of her eye and she turned her head toward the beach. Sasha sat hunched over at the water's edge, alone, her back to Kate. Kate looked from daughter to mother and back again, and after a brief tussle with her conscience went to squat next to the daughter. When Sasha said nothing, she said,
"Hello, Sasha."
Sasha didn't look up. " 'Lo, Kate," she said in her slow, thick voice.
"How did you know it was me?"
The hand holding the storyknife didn't pause in its deft, swooping, graceful strokes. "Hear footsteps. Know footsteps. Know you."
Kate smiled a little. "You hear like a fox."
Magically, a fox appeared in front of her in the sand, all ears and tail and pointed, inquiring nose. Sasha looked up and smiled. The smile was crooked, a little unfocused, but the gleam in the brown eyes, half-hidden by drooping lids, was alert and intelligent. "Move like fox. When want."
"I'm sure you do," Kate said, and pointed to a figure off to one side. "More thunderbirds?"
"Thunderbird," Sasha corrected. Both fox and thunderbird disappeared, to be replaced by another thunderbird closer to center stage.
"And kayaks."
"Kayak. Big kayak."
"With men on it," Kate said, watching the tip of the storyknife. "Five men."
Five Y's with legs appeared, to be encompassed with the thunderbird and the kayak inside two concentric circles.
"Home."
"Home," Kate repeated. "Where is home, Sasha? Is your island home? Is Anua home?"
"Home," Sasha said firmly, drawing a set of concentric rings, the first just inside the second, to enclose the other figures in two perfect circles. She paused, elbows resting on her knees. A ray of sun gleamed briefly through cloud and fog, shining off the wet sand, throwing the figures drawn there into stark relief. A boat passed by offshore, sending a wavelet to taste the edge of Sasha's drawings.
Kate held her hand out, palm up. "May I try? Please?
I've never told a story."
Sasha considered the matter with a thoughtful frown.
She must eventually have reached the conclusion Kate was a trustworthy person because she extended her two hands, the storyknife balanced between them like a ceremonial offering. Kate accepted the rich weight of the thing with care. "How do I hold it? Just like a knife?
Like this. I see."
"Wipe.
"Wipe?" Kate echoed her teacher. "Oh, I see. Wipe the sand smooth for my story. Okay." With a broad stroke of the blade she swept the sand clear and began to draw. "Thunderbird."
Sasha watched intently. "Longer."
Kate extended the thunderbird's wing. Next to it she drew a crude hull shape. "Kayak."
Sasha made a face. "Everybody's a critic," Kate muttered, and made the three wavy lines beneath the kayak symbol, indicating the ocean. The stick figures were easier, if not as clear or as spirited as Sasha's. "Men come on the kayak." She paused. "Did men come with the thunderbird, too, Sasha?" She made the male figure next to the thunderbird.
"No." Sasha shook her head violently. "No no no no."
Snatching for the storyknife, she erased the man figure.
Oh," Kate said, disappointed but not really surprised.
It had been only a guess, after all.
Sasha was drawing in the sand, next to Kate's shaky thunderbird. She drew a male figure. She drew a second.
"Mans," she said, sounding like a not very patient schoolteacher trying to impart valuable information to a not very bright student. "Mans."
"Oh," Kate said, light breaking. "Not one man with the thunderbird. Two men with the thunderbird."
"Mans," Sasha repeated, satisfied. She handed back the knife and waited expectantly.
"Okay." Kate hunkered down, shoulder to shoulder with Sasha, both of them absorbed in the drama unfolding in stick figures on the sand before them. "Five men on the kayak, two men with the thunderbird, all home."