Blood Will Tell (7 page)

"I think so."

"So he would have been born, let's see, about here." Kate marked it on the time line, with the notation, "Jack born" beneath it. "Okay. When was your mom born?"

His face closed down.

"Come on," Kate said impatiently, "she's still your mom and part of your family history. How old is she?" He mumbled something. "What?"

"Thirty-nine," he said, raising his voice. "She turned thirty-nine this year." His eyes slid away from Kate's. Amused, she said, tongue in cheek, "I take it it wasn't the happiest day of her life." A snort was his reply, and with real nobility she forbore from pressing for more information. "Okay, forty, that means she was born about here. When did she come to Alaska?"

He brightened. "She flew up with my grandfather."

Elbows resting on her knees, she looked at him. "Now that sounds like a story comes with it. Tell me." Uncertain, he said, "I don't know. A story?"

"Tell me," she repeated. "What time of the year was it? When they flew up?"

"May. 1955, I think."

"May, 1955. Alaska was still a territory. So your grandfather was a pilot?"

"Yeah. Um, he was the copilot, and my grandmother and my mom and my aunt and my uncle were all on board. The plane they flew in on was a DC-3

Starliner, and it took eight hours to get from Seattle to Anchorage, and Uncle Jim got to go up front with the pilots and Auntie Margaret drank so much pop she barfed all over Yakutat." The words came out by rote, as if he had heard just those words said in just that order many times.

Kate grinned. "And your mom?"

"She was just a baby. But Auntie Margaret had a kitten. They took her picture when the plane landed and it was on the front page of the paper."

"What happened to your grandfather?"

"He died before I was born."

"Too bad. Pilots are like fishermen. They tell all the best stories."

Kate made a mark before the one indicating Johnny's birth. "What happened to your grandmother?"

"She's retired. She lives in Tucson, Arizona. We go down to see her every year."

"What did she do before she was retired?"

He straightened up and preened himself a little. "She lived in Charlotte Amalie."

He looked at her, expectant, and she didn't disappoint him. "Charlotte Amalie? Never heard of it. Where is it?"

"On St. Thomas."

Again he waited. Again she played straight man. "Where's St. Thomas?"

"In the Virgin Islands," he said, triumphant.

"The Virgin Islands," she said. "In the Caribbean?" He nodded. "Wow. How did your grandmother get from Alaska to the Caribbean?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. She went there after my grandfather died, I guess. She had a job with the government. She used to send me the greatest presents. One time I got a voodoo doll."

"The kind you stick pins in?" He nodded proudly, and Kate gave an elaborate shudder. "Eek." She gave him a stern look. "Did it work?"

He grinned. "I'll never tell."

She put her hand to the side of his head and shoved. He toppled over into the sand, laughing.

"So," she said, contemplating the time line, "your grandparents, your mother, your aunt and your uncle flew up to Alaska in the fifties. How about your dad? When did he come north?" "Nineteen-seventy," he said at once.

"Oho." Kate made a mark on the time line. "Right after the Prudhoe Bay nine-hundred-million-dollar lease sale. Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, what we got here is a family legend. Look." She pointed at the mark indicating his family's arrival. "Your mother's side of the family came up before Alaska was even a state. In fact, they came up the year of the constitutional convention. The territorial governor, Ernest Gruening, gave the keynote address to the constitutional convention in Fairbanks." She looked at Johnny with a twinkle in her eyes. "In which he compared the territory of Alaska to revolutionary America and the federal government to King George III ."

Johnny brightened. "We've been studying King George III in school. Isn't he the guy that on the day they issued the Declaration of Independence wrote in his diary, "Nothing of importance happened today'?"

"That's the guy. You know what Ernest Gruening said at the convention?"

"No, what?"

Kate pulled in her chin and deepened her voice. "

"Inherent in colonialism is an inferior political status!"

" she thundered. "

"Inherent in colonialism is an inferior economic status!"

" "Wow," he said, awed. He didn't understand all the words but he caught the drift.

"Makes you want to run right down and throw tea in the harbor, doesn't it?" Kate agreed.

"Isn't that, like, you know, treason?"

"That's why we've got a First Amendment, so you can say what you think without getting thrown in jail for it." She returned to the time line.

"So your family was in Alaska almost five years before it's even a state. They might even have landed at Merrill Field, which at that time was still out of town." Kate made a mark for statehood. "In 1964 is the Big One."

"The earthquake?" he said quickly. "Were you born then?"

"I was three. I don't remember it. Of course, we didn't get it as bad in the interior as they did on the coast, anyway. They got the tidal wave.

Whole villages were wiped out on the coast. An entire suburb went in Anchorage." She nodded at the houses on the rise of ground behind the trail. "The next big one, they slide right into Knik Arm."

"Really?"

"Really. Your father's a moron. Promise me you'll never buy a house anywhere on the Coastal Trail. The view won't be worth it, trust me."

Johnny was agreeable. "Okay. What's next?"

"Let me see. After statehood, Fish and Game outlawed all the fish traps at the mouths of the rivers and in the late sixties the salmon started coming back. About that same time we started to fish for king crab commercially. Then in 1968, they discovered a super-giant oil field in Prudhoe Bay, the largest one in North America. In 1969, they had a lease sale, and--"

"--in 1970, my dad came up!"

"Right. When did your mom and dad get married? What year? Do you know?"

"Ten years before I was born."

And you were born the same year as the divorce, Kate remembered. She made a mark. "Right here, construction began on the Pipeline. Oil in was

1977."

"Oil in where?"

"Into the pipeline. That's how they call it. Oil in."

"That's right, you went up there this year, didn't you? Did you catch the bad guys?"

"Ah-yup," Kate drawled in her best Dodge City sheriff imitation. "We run thim varmints right outta town." She tapped the sand in front of the time line, drawing his attention back to it. "So what do we have here?"

He contemplated the scratches in the sand.

"What we have here," she said, "are stories. Just stories."

He looked up, uncertain. "Stories?"

"Sure. Just stories about people. Without any one-eyed monsters or guys with magic cloaks in them. Or guys that chase girls into the water and get turned into whales. Still, just stories."

She pointed at him with the stick. "But wait a thousand years. By then, your grandfather will have become the god of travelers himself." He looked blank, and she said, "Mercury."

"The guy with wings on his shoes?"

"That's the guy."

He thought about that for a moment. "Draw your time line." She smiled.

"That would take up the whole day and most of the beach."

She tossed the stick to one side and thought how to say it. She'd probably only get one chance, and she wanted it to come out right. "When you go to court, Johnny, and you have to get up on the witness stand and speak your piece." She could see him stiffening, and kept her voice neutral and her eyes on the time line. "When you get up there, and your mom's lawyer is asking you questions, and maybe you hear some things you don't want to hear and maybe she makes you say some things you don't want to say, and you're maybe getting a little mad at your mom, and maybe even your dad, too?" Kate pointed at the timeline. "Remember this.

It's just another story, just another part of the family history. Some stories are good. Some are bad. Some are both." She pointed at Susitna.

"Like that one."

"Is that what a legend is?" She nodded. "So," he said slowly, "so she could be like Medusa, and I could be like Perseus."

Remembering what had happened to Medusa and who did it to her, Kate was a little alarmed. "Yes. Well. I suppose you could--remember, Johnny, the Gorgons had the heads and arms of women. They may have been monsters, but they were partly human, too."

He looked unconvinced, and she decided it was time to leave before she waded any further into that particular mire. They started walking again, staying down on the sand instead of climbing back up onto the trail.

There was a soft swish of wings and they looked up to see the two eagles returning, flying low and slow, the tips of their wings almost brushing the tops of the trees. Across the water the white peak of Mount Spurr reared up against the pale blue of the sky.

They paused to admire it, and a gray streak cannoned into Johnny from behind, knocking his feet out from under him. He landed on his back in the sand. "Whoof." He blinked up at the sky for a moment before elbowing himself up and looking around.

Kate was standing next to him, shaking with laughter. A few feet away Mutt crouched down, tail wagging furiously, eyes begging for fun. Johnny caught his breath and said, "So you wanna play rough, do you? You asked for it!"

Mutt gave a joyous yip and raced off, he tore down the beach in hot pursuit, Kate close behind, and for the rest of the walk Johnny was just a boy playing tag with a dog and a friend.

They arrived back at the townhouse at ten-thirty, red faced and breathless. Jack greeted them at the door with a scowl. "We're going to be late. Get upstairs and into the shower. I've got a clean shirt and your good jacket laid out on your bed. Hop to it."

Johnny disappeared up the stairs and Jack transferred his scowl to Kate.

"Where the hell were you?" "I told you we were going for a walk," she said mildly, shrugging out of her coat. "Relax, Jack. Court's not in session until one o'clock, and didn't your attorney tell you the trial might be delayed a few days anyway, if the one the judge was trying on Friday dragged over?"

He shook his head. "Ganepole just called, she says today's the day." He went into the living room. Kate went into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee before following.

He was pacing back and forth in front of the picture window, hands alternately fussing with his unnaturally slicked- down hair and the knot of his tie. Kate found a seat out of the way and drank coffee. "Do you need me in court today?"

He shook his head without looking at her. "Ganepole says the testimony of the current girlfriend is too easily discredited."

"So you won't need me at all?" Kate said, relieved.

"I don't know. I don't think so. Not unless things really get ugly and we have to throw everything we've got at her. Jane, I mean."

"She wants sole custody, right?"

He nodded, pacing.

"She won't get it, Jack. She can't stop you seeing him. You're his father, and you haven't done anything wrong." He paused long enough to shoot Kate an impatient, angry look. Again, she saw through to the fear beneath. "Jane is vicious, malicious and entirely without scruple."

Kate couldn't have put it better herself.

"Who knows what she's going to say once she gets on the witness stand?

She's a good liar, Kate, the best." "Not the best," Kate said. "Johnny has never believed anything she said about you."

His brow lightened. "That's true." He stopped pacing. "That is true." He sat down next to her and rubbed his palms over the creases in his pant legs.

In ten years Kate had never seen him in anything other than blue jeans.

The suit had stretched out of shape at the shoulders from hanging so long unused in the closet. Probably where the horizontal creases in the legs came from as well. The tie, a nauseous shade of lime green, she recognized from his court appearances. The judge undoubtedly would, too.

She put a hand over his. "Jack. Relax. You're not going to do Johnny any good if you get yourself all worked up. Jane is at her best on the attack. Don't let her make you scared. And don't let her make you mad.

Tell the truth, and keep telling it. Wear her down with it."

She found herself caught in a rough embrace, his face buried between her shoulder and her neck. "I'm scared, Kate. I'm scared to death. She says she wants to move to Tucson, be near her mother. I'll never see him then." Kate pressed her cheek to his and stroked his head, one eye on the mug of coffee she still held in her left hand, trying to keep it from spilling down his back. His hands gripped her, hard, once, before he let her go. His laugh was a little shaky around the edges. "Sorry. I must really be shook."

"Don't be." "Which one?" he said with an attempt at a smile. "Sorry, or shook?"

She cupped his cheek in a brief caress. "Either."

He leaned forward as if to kiss her and the phone rang. He swore and got up to answer. "If it's Ganepole with a delay, I'll--hello? Oh, hello, Ekaterina. Yes, she's right here. Hang on." He handed the telephone to Kate.

"Hello, emaa," Kate said. "No, I've been up for hours. Johnny and Mutt and I just came back from a walk. I'm sorry, what were you saying?" A pause. "What?"

At the window, Jack became aware of a change in Kate's silence and turned to look at her. She stood with the telephone to her ear, coffee mug forgotten in her left hand, all expression wiped from her face. "All right," she said at last. "Give me the address." She scribbled it down.

"No, emaa. No. Just stay there. As soon as I know anything, I'll come tell you. Emaa. You hired me for this. Well okay, maybe not this, but you've got me on retainer, right? So let me handle it." A long pause.

"Good. All right. Yes." She hung up.

"What's wrong?" Jack said.

She looked at him and through him, intent eyes focused on some distant object. "Enakenty Barnes is dead."