The list of suspects in an investigation into the murder of Howie Katelnikof would have been so long Jim would have had to take numbers. Hell, if somebody shot Howie, the Park rats would have taken up a collection to reward the shooter.
That was a thought far too close to home for Jim.
Kate and Jim flew the body to Cordova to put it on the jet to Anchorage, and returned to Niniltna, landing at twilight. They walked into the trooper post and dispatcher Maggie Montgomery's face lit up. "Thank god! Here, take 'em!"
He looked down at the fistful of messages with resignation. "What, a crime wave?"
"They're all about the snow machine attack on the river. Jim?"
He paused in the door of his office. "What?"
She looked at him with wide eyes. "It's not the only one."
TWELVE
Jim didn't make it home until the next evening. "How come you didn't know about this?" he said, walking in the door. "I don't know," Kate said, honestly bewildered, and not a little aggrieved. It wasn't often she was this out of the loop in Park affairs. In fact, she couldn't remember a time when she'd been out of the loop at all. It was the Association board meeting in October all over again, leaving her swamped in an ignorance so complete she felt like she was going down for the third time. "I haven't been into town longer than it takes to check the mail and grab a cup of coffee since I got back. Maybe that's why I hadn't heard anything."
"I thought Auntie Vi was the town crier when it came to bad news, and what Auntie Vi knows, you know."
"I can't explain it," she said again. Mutt leaned her head on Kate's knee and looked up at her with sympathetic yellow eyes. "I haven't heard a word about it, Jim. Nothing. I would have told you."
"Bet your ass," he said, still smarting. He didn't like it when shit was dumped in his own backyard and he didn't smell it. He went to the map of the Park Kate had recently attached to a piece of cork and framed with colonial molding left over from the house raising-
It was smaller than the one in the Global Harvest trailer, and in much worse shape, but it was adequate to the purpose. He traced the course of the Kanuyaq River with his forefinger.
"Attack the first," he said. "Ken and Janice Kaltak on November sixth, headed home to Double Eagle from a trip to Ahtna, doctors' appointments and shopping. Stopped in Niniltna for a mugup at the Riverside Cafe. There was some light snow but no wind so visibility okay and not cold enough not to keep going. About a mile from home, three snow machines barreled out of a willow thicket, one of the drivers coming straight at them like he's playing chicken with them, while another one, this one with a two-by-four, comes up from behind and hits Ken across the side hard enough to knock him off his sled. Janice is riding behind and she rolls off with him. It all happens too fast for Ken to get to his rifle. The third snow machine roars around them in circles, loud, distracting, scary, while the first two guys disconnect the trailer, loaded with groceries from Safeway and Costco, and they're gone. Lucky they left them the snowgo, they woulda been dead otherwise and it would have been murder along with assault and robbery." He paused. "What amazes me is they didn't take the rifle."
"Was it registered, maybe?" she said.
He looked at her.
She closed her eyes and held up a hand. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking."
"Attack the second. On November ninth, three days later-" He moved his finger downriver. "-just outside Chulyin, maybe a mile from their house, Ike Jefferson and his kid, Laverne, are hauling home a fifty-five-gallon drum of diesel fuel when what sounds like the same three assholes on snow machines show up, whack Ike with the two-by-four, terrorize the kid, and take off with the diesel."
"Did they hurt her?" Kate said.
He shook his head. "She's only eight and they laid her dad out in front of her a mile from home. She got him back on the sled and home all right. She was pissed by the time I got there yesterday." He gave a reluctant smile. "Told me I had a shiny new gun but it didn't look like I used it much."
Kate smiled, too. "Good for her."
"Yeah, she's a feisty little pup. I can see why Ike is so proud of her. And I'll tell you, Kate, if I'd had one of the bastards at point-blank when her dad was telling me the story, I might have pulled the trigger on my shiny new gun then and there."
"You said there were three incidents."
"Yeah, attack the third." He looked back at the map and slid his finger farther down. "November fifteenth. They waited a week this time, by which time they had upgraded their arsenal." He held up a small, innocuous-looking black cylinder. "Don't move," he said, and gave his hand a casual flick. A telescoping rod cracked out with astonishing speed and Kate jerked back instinctively.
"It's weighted on the end," he said.
A chill went up Kate's spine. "I know," she said quietly. "It's a collapsing baton, isn't it? I've heard about them but I've never seen one before."
"It's lethal force, Kate. You whack someone with this, you can hurt them badly, you can even kill them. And you can order them off Amazon for twenty bucks apiece." Another wrist flick and the baton collapsed in on itself again. "They used it on Christine and Art Riley of Red Run when they were on their way home from a trip to Niniltna to bring Art's mother home. Grandma Riley has been feeling poorly lately, and wanted to go downriver once more before she died."
Kate closed her eyes briefly. "Grandma Riley is something like ninety years old, isn't she?"
"Ninety-three. Evidently these assholes are no respecters of elders. They jumped the Rileys halfway between Potlatch and Red Run. Christine managed to get their rifle out of the scabbard but this thing knocked it out of her hands. The good news is, it knocked this out of the attacker's hands, too. Christine picked it up and brought it home. I had to talk her into giving it to me. I think she was planning on using it on them if the Rileys ever ran into them again. Can't say I blame her." He ran a hand over his face. "I'm figuring that's why they went back to the two-by-four for the attack on Johnny and Ruthe and Van thirteen days later. Attack the fourth."
"Although they've probably already ordered another of those batons."
"They've probably already ordered another dozen," he said. "Fifty-five gallons of diesel fuel at, what's the most recent Bush price, four sixty a gallon? That's almost two hundred and fifty-five bucks. They could sell that off a couple of gallons at a time, buy a dozen of these fuckers, and have enough left over for a case of Windsor Canadian." He tossed the baton into the glove and hat box behind the door and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Art Riley says it was the Johansens."
The spatula paused in the act of flipping a steak. "He identified them?"
"They were wearing helmets. But he says it was them." He scrubbed his face again. "God, I'm tired."
Kate decided it was time to relax, regroup, and reassess, and for her that always began with food. "The question is, are you hungry?"
He gave her a tired smile. "Is the answer to that question ever no?"
She smiled back at him. "I just started a fire. You want something to drink?"
"I'd love some Scotch, but I better not. I've alerted all the village councils about the attacks, up and down the river, and I've called Kenny Hazen and got him excited about it, too. I better be sober if any of them call back."
"Grab a shower, then. You've just about got time."
Demonstrating the innate ability of the adolescent to arrive just as dinner was put on the table, Johnny walked in the door as Kate served up a large and redolent offering of country fried caribou steak and gravy, mashed potatoes, and canned green beans drained and stirred into caramelized onions and crispy bacon bits. Served with bread baked fresh that morning, everyone dug in with a will, and everyone felt better afterward.