Blood Will Tell (13 page)

When she hated, she hated forever. The rest of the garbage she could and did ignore. Like Cindy Sovalik, diplomacy was not one of her weaknesses.

A crowd was forming in front of Cindy's kuspuks and Kate let herself be elbowed to one side, until one of the elbowers recognized her. "Kate!

Kate Shugak!" half a dozen people exclaimed, and the rest was madness.

After thirty minutes of greeting distant cousins' newborn babies, several old classmates from the University of Alaska, Fair banks, regional officers of CIRI, Aleut, Ahtna and Sealaska and village elders from Metlakatla to Toksook Bay, she became aware of Ekaterina working her way slowly around the room. Aha. Rescue.

Only it wasn't, because when Ekaterina finally did arrive she brought a retinue, and proceeded to introduce Kate to each and every one of them, very much in the air of an elder statesman introducing a promising young protege. She accepted commiseration on the deaths of Sarah Kompkoff and Enakenty Barnes with dignified grace and no trace of emotion. Kate began to gaze yearningly toward the door. Unfortunately it was all the way across the room, there were about 346 people between her and it, and, at a deep, rock bottom, atavistic level, she simply could not bring herself to snub her grandmother in public.

So she stood there, shaking hands until her fingers went numb, smiling until her cheeks hurt, nodding her head like the little doggie in the window. She hadn't seen this many people in one place since college.

There was a reason she lived by herself on a homestead in the middle of the Park, and that reason wasn't that she liked crowds. Her heart was beating uncomfortably fast high up in her throat, and she longed for a breath of fresh air, even Anchorage fresh air.

The one good thing about her present predicament was that she got all the gossip. The biggest buzz, after the deaths of Sarah and Enakenty, was about Harvey Meganack's new house. Thirty-six hundred square feet, someone said, although someone else put it at forty-eight hundred, with a four-car garage and bathroom faucets plated in fourteen-karat gold, which last Kate found difficult to believe, even of Harvey.

On the other hand, gold-plated bathroom faucets would match the watch he'd been wearing at Mama Nicco's Monday night.

Rumor, that nosy and relentless bitch, also had it Billy Mike was running for public office, state senator for the Park district.

Enakenty's Hawaii trip was generally envied, al though the news of him not going alone didn't seem to have reached the general population as yet. It probably would by nightfall. Martha should have come this morning and gotten it over with. The leader of the Native sobriety movement had tears in his eyes as he spoke simple words of praise for Sarah Kompkoff, and Kate had had just about all she could take when Axenia materialized. "Hello--oh." She smiled, a real one this time. "Hi, Axenia."

Axenia didn't smile back, and the next thing Kate knew Axenia was standing between Ekaterina and herself, smiling and shaking and nodding with the best of the them. With true and sincere relief, Kate allowed herself to be nudged into the background. Ekaterina saw what was happening, and gave Axenia a steady, unsmiling look.

Axenia's color was high. She avoided Ekaterina's gaze and concentrated on exchanging family gossip with Diana Quijance and her two daughters, gossip she was certainly more up on than Kate was.

And then suddenly Lew Mathisen was standing before Kate and had her inescapably by the hand. "Kate, how nice to see you, ha HAH!"

It wasn't, but by then the smile and the handshake were on automatic.

"Kate, it's great to see you again, what's it been, three, four years, ha HAH?"

"More like thirty-six hours," she said, struggling unsuccessfully to free her hand. "We met at dinner Monday night."

"Of course, of course, ha HAH!" He leaned closer, the overpowering wave of Old Spice nearly pulling Kate under, and his voice dropped. "Just heard about Enakenty. Say, that's an awful thing. How is Martha? She taking the news about the girlfriend all right, I hope? I'm sure it was just one of those flings, didn't mean a damn thing. Us guys, you know how we are, ha HAH!"

Kate was afraid she did. She pulled her hand free and barely restrained the impulse to wipe it down the side of her jeans. She reached around Axenia and gripped her grand mother's elbow. "Emaa, I've got to go, I'm meeting Jack for lunch." "Lunch?" Lew said, all teeth and enthusiasm.

"Sure, hey, my treat. Where do you want to eat? Ha HAH!"

BY ONE O'CLOCK THE LUNCHTIME CROWD WAS THINNING out at the Downtown Deli and Kate found Jack in a front booth. "We've got a continuance until Monday," he greeted her, "isn't that great?"

"What happened?"

"The judge is settling two other cases." He looked like one who has received a last-minute reprieve from the guillotine, which changed when he became aware of Kate's expression. "You look whipped. Better feed you up a little, get that blood sugar up." He waved down a waiter and they ordered, Kate a Reuben with potato salad, Jack the deli special with a green salad.

"I feel whipped," she said, rolling her head, stretching her shoulders.

"I can't do this anymore. Not that I ever could. It's too much like work." "Work?" Jack said, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "What is, standing around talking all day? That's pretty much all the convention is, isn't it?"

"Work I said and work I meant. It's a performance, Jack. It's all a performance. Half the time I don't know what's real and what isn't. I don't know how emaa can tell, either."

"It's all real to her, she's a born politician, she sees everything in shades of gray." He captured her hand and smiled across the butcher block table at her. "Whereas you, Katie, you're just a cop at heart, you see things in black and white."

She acknowledged the truth of his words by not instantly attacking them.

"It would help considerably," she said, "if I knew who the hell I was supposed to be."

He threaded their fingers together. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure, that's the problem." She struggled to explain, the exercise as much for her own benefit as his. "Emaa sees me as the heir apparent, no matter what she says to the contrary. Axenia sees me as competition, I'm not sure for what, see above. Because I'm emaa's granddaughter Harvey Meganack sees me as the enemy, a tree hugger and a posy-sniffer and a charter member of Greenpeace. Lew Mathisen sees me as a vote, a commodity, something to be bought and consumed. And," she added tightly, "everyone else sees me as Ekaterina Moonin Shugak's granddaughter, when all I am, all I want to be is just plain old Kate Shugak." Her head dropped against the high back of the booth and her eyes closed.

Jack looked at the still brown face across from his, at the closed, narrow Asian eyes, at the shadows lying beneath the fans of dark lashes, at the still, stern line of the wide mouth, at the shining black hair bound severely back in a French braid, and his heart, generally a more dependable organ, turned over in his chest. "You're just a cop at heart, Kate," he repeated. "You exist to serve and protect. Your problem is you want to serve and protect everybody, and you can't, and you know it.

It's one of the reasons you lasted only five years in the department."

It was the second time in a week her psyche had been put under a magnifying glass by someone who knew her too well. She would have been offended if she'd had the strength. She would have pulled her hand free if his hadn't felt so warm and comforting in her own.

"You know what your problem is, Kate?" She smiled without opening her eyes. "No, but I'm sure you'll tell me."

"Your problem is--" He stopped again. Some quality in his silence made her open her eyes and look at him. He met her gaze, took a deep breath and said simply, "Your problem is you don't need me." "No," she said at once.

He let the breath out slowly. "It bugs me," he admitted.

"Yes," she agreed.

He surprised them both with a short, sharp bark of laughter. The sandwiches arrived and for a while there was silence at their table.

"You know that party emaa invited us to tonight?" Kate said, licking her fingers. Jack nodded. "I think I need to go."

"You what!" A piece of provolone went down the wrong pipe and Jack gagged and coughed and wheezed and gasped for breath. His face turned red and tears came to his eyes. He made so much noise that the guy at the next table looked as if he were about to offer to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

"Jack?" Kate eyed him cautiously. "You okay?"

He caught his breath. "You want to what?" he choked out.

"Well, I don't want to go, exactly, but I think I need to. There are some people I want to see that I haven't run into yet at the convention." What she really wanted, she thought, was to see who they brought to the party.

"You want to go to a party," Jack said, apparently having become hard of hearing in the last five minutes.

"Yeah," she said, brows coming together.

"A party," Jack repeated. He liked things clear. "With dress-up clothes, and music, and dancing."

She was starting to feel defensive and she didn't know why. Belligerence was always a good fall-back position. "So?"

He actually put his sandwich down unfinished, a sure sign she had his complete and undivided attention. "This party is at the Captain Cook."

"Yes."

"Am I to understand you want me to be your date?"

"You've got your own invitation from emaa," she snapped. "We can go separately if you want but we'll save on gas if we go together, yes.

Well?" she said, when He didn't say anything. "You coming or not?" He looked at her, and only then did she see the expression of unholy glee in his eyes. "What?" she said, suddenly wary without knowing why.

"What's the matter?"

He held up one finger. "Wait right there." There was a pay phone in the back of the restaurant and contrary to orders Kate deserted the remains of her Reuben and tailed him to it, a good thing since he didn't have change and had to borrow it from her. "Don't move," he told her, deposited the coins and dialed a number. "Bill? It's Jack. How's that homicide coming, the kid they found up on Bluebell?" He listened, his eyes going unfocused for a moment as he concentrated hard enough to forget Kate was in the room, no mean feat for Jack Morgan and one of the things she liked best about him. Kate found competence to be the single most compelling trait in a man, whether it involved lighting a fire with one match, gutting a moose without nicking the gall bladder, setting a drift net without getting it caught in the prop or conducting a murder investigation over the phone. Competence, and a deep voice, the deeper the better. A deep voice, in Kate's opinion, was good for a twenty point rise in blood pressure any time.

"Look, Bill," Jack said, in a voice deeper than did ever plummet sound,

"that one dog brought home the mandible. So? So, does maybe another neighbor have a dog that might have brought home a bone? You know those people up on Hillside keep voting down police protection, they've probably all got packs of Doberman Pinschers and German Shepherds loose in their yards just in case some poor schmuck decides to go over the fence. Probably keep ' hungry, too. The dogs, not the schmuck. We're missing the elbow down on the left arm, right? Okay, check the neighbors again, see if they've got dogs and if one of the dogs brought a bone home they maybe thought was from a bear or a moose or maybe another dog.

Okay? Okay. Has the lab put the mandible together with the rest of the skeleton yet? How long before we get an I. D.?" He listened some more.

"You sound like you've got it under control. Anything else come up? No?

Good. I'm taking the rest of the day. Personal leave." He laughed and glanced at Kate, his eyes coming back into focus. "You wish. See you tomorrow."

He hung up the phone and very nearly rubbed his hands together in anticipation. The man looked ready to cackle. Maybe even crow. "Okay."

Kate put her fists on her hips. "Okay, what? What the hell is going on?"

He tossed a bill at their waiter and pulled her out of the room and onto the street with such determination that Mutt had to scramble from her seat next to the Anchorage Daily News dispenser on the curb and run to catch up. "If we're going to a party at the Cook, you have to dress up."

"Dress up!" Kate promptly dug in her heels. "What? Why? I don't have to dress up, this is Alaska, for God's sake. You can wear jeans and a T-shirt anywhere you want anytime you want. I'm not dressing up for this party or any other party, dammit, Jack, quit dragging me down this goddam street!" "Kate." He sighed and stopped. She yanked her hand free and nursed her fingers, giving him an aggrieved stare. The expression on his face was as sorrowful as hers was heated. "How could you even think of embarrassing your grandmother that way? I'm ashamed of you. You know everybody puts on the dog when they come to town. Gives ' a chance to strut their stuff. God knows they don't get much opportunity for it in Emmonak." She hadn't thought of it that way, and with a growing sense of apprehension realized that it was just within the realm of possibility that he might be right. The party at the Cook would be a proving ground, when town met bush and bush showed itself aware of fashions other than those constructed of caribou hide and trimmed in beaver and rickrack. He saw awareness dawn and tugged on her hand again. "Wait!" she said.

"Where are we going?"

"To buy you some dress-up clothes." He saw a flash of something in her eyes that in a lesser woman might have been identified as panic. "Maybe I don't have to dress up," she said, getting desperate "Maybe I could go as a waiter or something." She warmed to the idea. "Undercover. You could get me a uniform from Prop, you remember, like we did it when we went into the University cafeteria that time."

"Kate." The amused indulgence in his voice made her teeth grit together.

"How many people will be there who know you? Who know what you do? Who know you came to town with Ekaterina?"

He was right. How she hated to admit it, but he was right. Her face showed it and Jack moved in for the kill. "It's work, Kate, and you need work clothes, same as any other job. You wouldn't go on a winter hunt without your parka, would you?" He hauled her to a stop at a red light.