Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 02 - A Fatal Thaw Read online

  FATAL THAW

  Kate Shugak Book 2

  Dana Stabenow

  Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY Berkley edition / January 1993

  Berkley Prime Crime edition / March 1994

  All rights reserved. Copyright 1993 by Dana Stabenow.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or

  any other means, without permission. For information address: The

  Berkley Publishing Group,

  200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  ISBN: 0-425-13577-2

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016. The name BERKLEY PRIME

  CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

  design are trademarks belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporation.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  v for the Four Major Food Groups

  & Literary Society you know who you are and you know why

  one

  IT was six A.M. on the first day of spring, and although sunrise was

  still half an hour away, when Kate opened her eyes the loft of the cabin

  was filled with the cool, silvery promise of dawn. She sat up, stretched

  and yawned, and flung back the covers.

  Pulling sweats on over her long underwear, she shimmied down the ladder

  from the loft into the cabin's single, square room. "Hey, girl." Mutt

  stood pressed up against the door, ears cocked, iron-gray ruff standing

  straight up around her face, yellow eyes wide and fixed imploringly on

  Kate. "In a minute. Hang on."

  Going to the stove, Kate opened the fire door and stoked the fire from

  the wood bin next to it. The coals from the night before were still hot

  and it only took a moment for the wood to catch. She went to the sink

  and pumped up some water to replace what had evaporated out of the

  gallon-sized kettle overnight. Straining a little, she set it back on

  top of the stove. "Okay, girl," she said. Mutt danced with impatience as

  Kate stamped her bare feet into boots, and then, as Kate got down the

  choke chain and leash, her tail went between her legs and she whined, a

  soft, piteous sound.

  "Forget it," Kate said severely. The scar on her throat, a whitish,

  flattened rope of twisted tissue stretching from ear to ear, pulled at

  her vocal chords in protest at this early morning use, and her voice

  rasped like a rusty file over

  her next words. "I saw that old he-wolf hanging around

  yesterday. I know you're looking to get that itch of yours

  scratched but the last thing we need underfoot is a litter

  of pups." Mutt flattened her ears and furiously wagged an

  ingratiating tail. "Don't try that sweet talk on me. I remember what

  happened last time even if you don't."

  Mutt heard the inflexible note in Kate's voice. Her tail

  stilled, her muzzle drooped and she gave a deep sigh.

  Conveying the impression that she had been beaten into

  it, she submitted meekly to the leash, and slunk through

  the door and around the woodpile.

  Kate let the leash run all the way out to give her some room,

  and waited. She breathed in deeply of the cool

  air, smelling of pine resin and wood smoke. The

  big, round, flat-faced thermometer fixed to the wall of the

  cabin read twelve degrees, and it was only six-thirty. Yes, spring was

  finally here, at last.

  She felt a single, experimental tug on the leash. One

  large yellow eye peered over the woodpile. "Not a chance," Kate told

  her, and took her turn in the outhouse

  without loosing her grip on the leash.

  The killer woke a few moments later, twenty-five miles to the east, and

  rose at once, whistling. He washed his face and brushed his teeth,

  slowly methodically, a deliberate ceremony to his movements. Shaving was

  almost a ritual, and he was very careful not to nick himself with the

  blade. The new clothes-Levis, a Pendleton

  shirt, socks, T-shirt, shorts, bought the day before in Niniltna-had

  been painstakingly laid out on his bed in the order that he would put

  them on.

  The clerk at Niniltna General Store hadn't recognized him yesterday, in

  spite of his shopping there all winter long. He wiped the last of the

  shaving cream from his face and smiled at himself in the mirror.

  Kate ate the last of last week's bread as toast dunked in her

  coffee. She mixed up a batch of dough and

  Flipped it into a buttered bowl. Covering it with a damp kitchen towel

  she sat it next to the wood stove to rise. Puttering around the cabin,

  she changed the sheets on the bed in the loft and the towels next to the

  sink, scoured out the sink, cleaned the top of the stove, took the rag

  rugs outside to shake, and swept the hardwood floor. Pumping up enough

  water to fill the washtub, she added soap and clothes and left it on the

  wood stove to heat through. She cleaned the chimneys and trimmed the

  wicks of all the propane lamps. It was her usual Monday morning routine

  and she performed it on automatic. It was good to have a routine. It got

  things done, and it kept her too busy to think too much on how isolated

  she was. In the middle of 20 million square acres of national park in

  Alaska, where her closest neighbors were the grizzly sow across the

  river just waking up after a long winter's nap and the he-wolf sniffing

  hopefully around her horny husky, if she let herself she could get to

  feeling pretty lonely. Kate never gave herself enough time to feel lonely.

  Chores complete, she sat down at the table next to the oil cookstove and

  pulled the one-pound Darigold butter can toward her. Dumping it out, she

  began to separate bills and stack coins. When she was through she had

  the grand sum of $296.61.

  "Well," she told Mutt, "better than at breakup last year. At least we're

  going into this spring solvent."

  Mutt wagged her tail in halfhearted agreement.

  The Winchester Model 70 30.06 was new, purchased just the day before,

  from the same general store in Niniltna that had sold him his new

  clothes, from the same incurious clerk. The bullets were new as well, a

  dozen cardboard boxes of shiny new cartridges, 180-grain hunting

  ammunition, Winchester (he was loyal to the brand) Super X Silvertips,

  twenty rounds to the box. He succumbed to temptation and opened one of

  the boxes, pulling out a round. Even in that early light the brass

  gleamed, the

  copper glowed and the silver shone. He'd never seen anything so beautiful.

  He set up a row of empty cans and bottles on a sawhorse placed across

  the road leading to the lane outside his cabin. From the crossbar he

  hung a paper target, a series of concentric circles.

  He paced off 150 yards down the old, straight railroad bed that served

  as the Park's main, and only, road. The hard-packed snow of winter was


  beginning to melt and break up beneath his feet. He squatted and set the

  boxes of ammunition to one side. Taking the rifle in both hands, he held

  it to his face for a moment, inhaling the fragrance of the oiled walnut

  stock, running an adoring fingertip down the gleaming black barrel. The

  bolt worked smoothly, the craftsmanship of the piece evident in each

  planed and polished surface, all the machined parts working together to

  form a perfect whole.

  He pulled the stock firmly into his shoulder and sighted down the

  barrel. The tiny metal bead at the end of the barrel seemed at once so

  close and so far away. The metal was so new it glistened in the early

  morning light. He frowned, and felt around in his pockets for a match.

  Striking it, he held it so the smoke rising from it blackened the bead.

  He looked at the factory sights and shook his head with an indulgent

  smile. From another pocket he produced a Williams Foolproof peephole

  sight and mounted it next to the receiver. He loaded the rifle, five in

  the magazine, one in the chamber, and stood. He pulled the stock in

  tight and sighted through the aperture, noting that in spite of the

  overwhelming whiteness of the surrounding snow pack the dulled black

  bead at the end of the barrel stood out clearly, with no distracting

  reflection of light. He squeezed off six shots, enjoying the cracking

  sound of the reports, the solid thump of the butt into his shoulder, the

  smooth action of the bolt between rounds. When the chamber was empty, he

  walked back up the road and inspected the target. Most of his shots were

  grouped above

  and to the left of the bull's-eye. He adjusted the peephole sight with a

  small screwdriver, reloaded, and repeated the process. The third time he

  shot at the bottles and cans.

  It took him less than an hour. When he was done, he had a killing

  machine that would reduce the three hundred yards between target and

  shooter to point-blank range. "A dead shot," he said, and smiled. And

  his wife had accused him of having no sense of humor.

  He reloaded, and was careful to switch on the safety afterward. He

  didn't want to hurt himself.

  "No, I said, and no, I meant," Kate told the door. Mutt whined

  mournfully behind it. "Besides, take it from me, men are nothing but

  trouble."

  She pulled hard on the knob to see that the door had, in fact, truly

  latched, and turned to walk to the garage. Its double doors swung open

  easily, now that a winter's worth of ice and snow packed around the sill

  had melted down.

  The building was an unheated shell made of three-by-six sheets of

  plywood on a frame of two-by-fours. A row of windows, encrusted with a

  year's worth of grime and mosquitoes, shed little light on the interior.

  The inside was lined with long strips of fuzzy pink fiberglass

  insulation between the studs, and shelves bolted to the studs, floor to

  ceiling and wall to wall. The floor was made of rough, unplaned planks.

  There was a red metal tool chest as tall as Kate mounted on wheels

  standing in one corner, a table saw in another and a counter with a line

  of power tools hanging from a pegboard nailed up above it. Unfinished

  and utilitarian, the garage was neat, reasonably clean and arranged so

  that everything in it was immediately ready to hand. Kate swept the

  tools with a stern eye and was satisfied that none of them had rehung

  themselves carelessly in her absence.

  She went around the snow machine parked in front to the pickup truck

  behind it. It was a small diesel, an Isuzu Trooper, with a homemade

  toolbox mounted in the bed

  behind the cab. She popped the hood. She'd disconnected but not removed

  the battery when the first big snow fell the previous autumn. Now she

  took it out and set it on the counter. She left the garage and went to

  the generator shed. The Onan 3.5KW had been new last fall, but it was

  also diesel and balked at an easy start as a matter of principal. She

  bled off some air from the compression-release valve and, grunting, gave

  the hand crank a few more turns. The engine caught, and she winced away

  from the resulting roar. She shut the door on it and returned to the

  garage. A single, 150-watt light bulb she had forgotten to turn off in

  February lit up the dim interior. She hooked the truck battery up to the

  trickle charger and left it.

  As an afterthought she went around to the back of the

  cabin and climbed the wooden ladder to the rack that held.

  the diesel fuel tanks, a dozen fifty-five gallon Chevron drums mounted

  on their sides, connected with lengths of insulated copper tubing to

  each other, the cabin and the generator shack. Pulling the dipstick from

  its rack next to the ladder, she tested each barrel. The diesel was used

  only to run the truck, the cabin's oil stove and the generator to run

  the power tools in the garage, so the barrels were all about a quarter

  to a third full. It was enough to see her through to late May or early

  June, when the road opened up and the tanker from Ahtna could get

  through. "Close enough for government work," she said out loud, and

  wiped the dipstick and capped the last barrel.

  She went back into the house and reappeared with a bucket of soapy

  water, a sponge and a squeegee and began to wash the windows on the

  garage. After a while the sun grew warm enough to remove her sweatshirt

  and work in shirtsleeves. "Bet we hit thirty-five today," she said. She

  stopped and looked guiltily at the cabin. Huge yellow eyes stared

  reproachfully out at her from the window over the sink. "Get your paws

  off the counter, dammit," Kate called, but her heart wasn't in it.

  Something halfway between a whine and

  a howl was the reply, and she sighed and put down the squeegee.

  Mutt greeted her at the door with ecstatic yips and tried to weasel her

  way outside. Kate wound one hand in her ruff and with the other reached

  for the choke chain and leash. She led Mutt outside, slipped the choke

  chain around Mutt's cringing neck and fastened the leash to a length of

  wire stretched between two trees at the edge of the clearing. The leash

  was just long enough to let Mutt run up and down the length of the wire

  without tangling itself. Mutt immediately dropped to her belly and,

  without a trace of shame, groveled for freedom.

  "Don't look like that," Kate told her. "You know it's for your own good."

  The killer donned hat and jacket and gloves and shouldered the rifle. He

  took the little mirror from its nail on the wall and held it at arm's

  length to survey his appearance. He frowned and made a minute adjustment

  to the collar of his shirt. His brows puckered a little over the

  wrinkling effect of the rifle's strap on his new mackinaw. He smoothed

  the jacket down with one hand, readjusted the strap just a hair to the

  left, and was satisfied.

  He looked around the cabin. It was spotless, the chipped white porcelain

  of the sink scrubbed clean, the stove top scoured and gleaming blackly,

  the floor swept, the bunk made up neatly beneath its olive-drab army

  blanket. He nodd
ed his head, pleased. No one was ever going to be able

  to say he wasn't a good housekeeper.

  His first stop was a mile down the road. He enjoyed the walk, the cool,

  calm air, the chittering of the squirrels. Once he paused and cocked his

  head, certain that he'd heard a golden-crowned sparrow trill out its

  trademark three descending notes, Spring Is Here. It didn't repeat

  itself, and he moved on.

  When he came into the clearing of the next cabin down the road, he met

  his neighbor coming in from the outhouse.

  He was greeted, if not with enthusiasm, then at least with civility.

  "Hey, hi there. Great first day of spring, isn't it? Want some coffee?"

  He turned toward the cabin and the first bullet caught him in the back,

  severing his spinal cord and exploding out of his chest in a hole six

  inches across. The second bullet went in the back of his neck and ripped

  out the front of his throat, changing his last terrified scream into a

  bubbling gurgle of bewilderment.

  The sun was high and warm in a clear, pastel sky, and the thermometer on