“Here, take this.” She dug in her bag and pulled out something, which she handed to him. A business card. “That has all my info on it. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks.”
“Good luck.” Smiling, she watched him leave.
He was at the pay phone before he took a good look at the card. It was for a radio station: KNOB. Her name: Kitty Norville. And a line: Host of The Midnight Hour, The Wild Side of Talk Radio. She hosted a talk radio show. He should have guessed.
He hadn’t talked to his parents in months. Not since he’d run away. He’d done it to protect them, but now, dialing the operator, he found himself tearing up. He couldn’t wait to talk to them.
He heard the operator ask if they’d accept the charges. Gave him his name, and he heard his mother respond, “Yes, yes of course, oh my God . . .”
He said, his voice cracking, “Hi, Mom?”
Thankfully, Jane turned the news off when the reporter started repeating herself.
The movie was long over. The carols were back, all the ones Kitty knew by heart. Jane must have had the same compilation album that her parents played when she was growing up. Funny, how it wouldn’t be Christmas without them.
One of her favorite tunes came on, a solemn French carol. A choir sang the lyrics, which she had never paid much attention to because she didn’t speak much French. But she knew the title: “Il Est Né le Divin Enfant.” Il Est Né. He is born.
She dug in her bag and found her cell phone. Dialed a number, even though it was way too late. But when the answer came, Kitty heard party noises in the background—her parents, her sister, her niece and nephew, laughter, more carols—so it was all right.
She said, “Hi, Mom?”
The Perfect Gift
Dana Stabenow
Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage and raised on a seventy-five-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere, and found it in writing. Her first science fiction novel, Second Star (1991), sank without a trace, but her first crime fiction novel, A Cold Day for Murder (1992), won an Edgar ® Award, and her first thriller, Blindfold Game (2006), hit the New York Times bestseller list. Dana’s second thriller, Prepared for Rage, came out in 2008, and her twenty-fifth novel (and sixteenth Kate Shugak novel), Whisper to the Blood, is due out in February 2009.
“They’re overgrazing their range.”
“True.”
“If we don’t reduce their population, there’ll be fuck all left to hunt.”
“Also true,” Neri said.
“They savaged us the last two times we tried to establish some control over their activities, to the point that the population of the various packs is now seriously out of balance.”
“No one is arguing with you, Lucas,” Mannaro said.
“Then why are we pussyfooting around here?” Lucas had a long, strong nose, a square jaw, and cheekbones by Praxiteles, although Mannaro thought his countenance exhibited an almost regal lack of animation. Austerity was not usually a characteristic of the young, and Mannaro thought it only made Lucas appear ever so slightly pompous. “We have to make a decision,” Lucas said, “and the sooner the better.” His attitude said all too clearly that they had left it too late as it was.
Wulver leaned forward. His broad Scots’ accent would have been impossible to understand if he hadn’t spoken so slowly and with such deliberation. There was no doubt the board understood the seriousness of the issue before them. “One caveat, however. Do we really want to start a shit-storm of this magnitude just before Christmas?”
He looked at the head of the table. Mannaro, impeccably coifed and immaculately tailored, sat very much at his ease, an attitude belied by the restless brilliance of a pair of shrewd dark eyes, which lingered on Neri for a considering moment. She was worth the attention, a long- limbed blonde with creamy skin that flushed easily, heavy-lidded blue eyes, and a lush red mouth that hinted to most men of soft kisses and lazy Sunday afternoons.
Mannaro knew his niece rather better than most men, however. There was nothing soft or lazy about Neri. “Wulver makes a good point,” he said. “The last two times the Board of Game proposed a hunt, there was an outpouring of sentiment—and may I say, sentimentality—from the larger community. E-mails, letters, and phone calls poured into the commissioner’s office. ‘Predators are a necessary part of the food chain.’ ‘Predators are a vital and beautiful part of the balance of nature.’ ‘These predators cull only the weak and infirm, thereby keeping the prey herd healthy and viable, which in turn keeps the predator population healthy and viable.’”
He held up a hand. “I know, you’ve heard all this before. Very well. We are agreed that action is necessary, are we not?”
There were nods from around the table. “We are also agreed that this pack is out of control. Reluctantly, we agree that the sole action left to us is elimination. Such a draconian decision is arrived at only after repeated attempts at remedial action, all resulting in failure of effect, and after extensive deliberation over what will benefit the greater good.”
Again, no outward dissent.
Mannaro looked at Wulver. “But Wulver is also correct in that every time we propose controlling the population, there is a backlash of epic proportion, and as the controlling body we’re left hanging out there all alone, the target of every rights group with an in-house attorney. And he makes a very good point in that the season will exacerbate reaction community-wide.”
“But something has to be done,” Lucas said. “Their actions have become too widespread to safely ignore. Any more publicity will result in full-scale vigilantism, putting the greater population at risk. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.”
“Indeed.” Mannaro inclined his head in a graceful acceptance of the challenge that Lucas’ near snarl had flung down. “What we need is to turn this action into a gift. So let me put it to you. Who will this action benefit, other than ourselves?”
He was looking at Neri as he spoke. “To whom,” he said, “may we offer it as something befitting the season? As, say, the perfect gift?”
She met his eyes for a startled moment before comprehension came.
And then she laughed, a full-throated sound of amusement, with an underlying excitement sharp enough to cut.
Mannaro smiled, content.
The Alaska state troopers in Anchorage worked out of a five-story rectangular building with a dull gray exterior and an interior cut into matching gray cubicles. Littered surfaces of metal desks were lit by fluorescent tubes, every third or fourth one burned out.
Lobison thought it worked as a metaphor for the job, although it would have been as much as his life was worth to use a word like metaphor in here. He dumped four packets of creamer and six packets of sugar into his coffee mug and went to his desk, where the stack of case files had not miraculously diminished overnight.
His partner was already at work, sleek head bent over a series of crime scene photographs, the graphic nature of which made the human in him wince away and gave even the cop in him pause.
“Morning, Ben,” she said.
“How do you do that?” he said. “I didn’t make a sound. You must have ears like a cat.”
She looked up and fluttered her eyelashes. “Maybe I just have a sixth sense for big good-looking doofuses.”
They’d been partners for a year and their working relationship had evolved into a low-key flirtatious raillery that never overstepped the rule of no departmental fraternization. Romanov was so hot she sizzled, but Lobison had too much respect for the job to hit on his partner, or that’s what he told himself whenever his imagination went into overdrive.