Though Not Dead (49 page)

All of them had been concealed with slabs of rock cleverly stacked to look like they were part of the face of the cliff. The undirected eye slid right over them, especially beneath a thick layer of snow. Kate would never have been able to find them without the map, and she no longer wondered that she’d never heard anyone talking about stumbling into one.

She emerged from the eighth adit to find the sun low in the sky and alpenglow on distant peaks. Any of its lingering warmth had long since vanished. Her breath steamed before her face, her nose felt numb to the touch, and her front teeth were frozen. If anything, it was even colder inside the adits than it was out here.

There had been so much climbing up and down and snowshoeing in between that she had very little feel for how far she was from the cabin. “Man, I am whipped,” Kate said out loud. “And starving.”

Ten feet below, pacing back and forth on the canyon floor, Mutt woofed her approval. It would be much easier to guard Kate’s precious ass if she was at Mutt’s elevation.

There had been nothing except the claw marks of the pickaxe in any of the mines, and Kate wasn’t enough of an expert to see if Mac had ever found a legitimate claim or if Old Sam had struck it rich. But then, if he had, wouldn’t he have said so? Wouldn’t he have flashed it around? Bought a new truck? A new boat?

Well, maybe not a new boat. Old Sam and the
Freya
were a couple, an item, a long-term romance, even a religion. Thou shalt put no other boats before me.

Kate pulled the map from the inside pocket on her parka. The last mine was all the way around the next bend of the canyon and at a considerable increase in elevation. She could check it out tomorrow.

She climbed tiredly down the canyon wall, strapped herself unenthusiastically into her snowshoes, and slogged back to the cabin.

They had company.

Thirty-one

Kate thumbed the latch on the homemade door handle and pushed the door open as far as it would go. It hit the inside wall with a gentle thud.

Ben Gunn looked up from where he was crouched in front of the stove, into which he was poking wood. “Hey, Kate.”

“Hey, Ben,” she said.

“I thought you’d be surprised to see me,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I figured Old Sam talked to Jane, and she talked to you.”

“I helped myself to some of your coffee,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not a problem,” she said.

He looked behind her. “Where’s Mutt?”

“Around.” She stepped inside and let the door swing closed, shedding her parka. She poured herself some coffee and sat down facing him, her back to the wall. “I gotta give you credit for coming here in broad daylight, Ben. Figured you’d wait until it was dark, see if you could take me out when I was sleeping.”

He listened with a quizzical expression on his face. “You’re pretty relaxed.”

She blew at the surface of her coffee, and took a sip. “No reason not to be. You only beat up on old women.”

His face reddened. “That was an accident.”

Kate took another sip of coffee, cradling her mug in both hands. Outwardly she sat at her ease, but she was perched on the edge of the snowgo seat, her knees bent, her legs spread, leaning just that little bit forward with enough weight on her feet that she could move when she had to.

“So Jane told you about the manuscript,” she said. “You weren’t researching your grandfather’s biography when I walked into the Adit office, you were establishing an alibi.”

He was silent for a moment, debating the wisdom of telling her too much. “How do you know it was me? There’s been a bunch of break-ins around town this fall.”

“You had tears in your eyes when I told you she was dead,” she said. “You were hoping she had lived.”

He was silent.

“You saw me go into the courthouse,” she said. “You heard me tell Judge Singh I was going to talk to Jane. You panicked, afraid Jane either had it herself or knew where it was, and I’d get to it first.”

Still with the silent treatment.

“So,” she said, “Jane told you about Old Sam’s manuscript, that it had been written by Hammett. It’s an unlikely story. What made you believe her?”

He made up his mind to talk, and Kate gave a silent cheer. So much of the mystery that Old Sam had left behind for her solve had involved too much guesswork.

“Like I told you, my dad was one of Castner’s Cutthroats,” he said. “He got wounded, and, like Old Sam, he met Hammett when he was in the hospital on Adak. Hammett mentioned that he was writing a story about one of the other men in the unit.” He paused. “Hammett died without writing anything after
The Thin Man.
”

“I didn’t really suspect you of anything,” Kate said, “until it was pointed out to me how much a new Hammett manuscript might get at auction.”

“Are you kidding me? Sell it? Sell an original manuscript by Dashiell Hammett? I don’t want to sell it. I just want to have it. To hold it in my hands.” He sounded like Galahad talking about the Holy Grail. “To read it,” he said in a hushed, reverent voice.

Kate snorted. “Which is why you killed Jane Silver when she caught you breaking into her house, looking for it. Just so you could hold it.”

He reddened again. “That was an accident,” he repeated.

“What happened?”

Again, he debated telling her the truth, and again, the eagerness to talk outweighed the need for self-preservation. Either that or he meant Kate never to leave Canyon Hot Springs.

“I was going through her bookshelves,” he said. “She walked in.” He leaned forward. “She rushed at me, Kate. She grabbed for the book I was holding. I tried to shake her off but she just wouldn’t let go.” His head dropped so that she couldn’t see his expression. “She tripped. She lost her balance, and she just fell.”

“Old people do that,” she said.

He shook his head, his eyes shut. “Her head hit the corner of the table. It was the most awful sound. Then I heard someone coming up the steps. I ran.”

“She didn’t die right away,” Kate said. “She managed to speak to me, a few words, only one of which I could understand. ‘Paper.’ I thought she meant some kind of document. Turns out she was trying to say newspaper, or newspaperman. That’d be you.”

“I told you, it was an accident,” he said.

“Involuntary manslaughter,” she said.

“But not murder,” he said.

“You figured I survived the same treatment, why shouldn’t Jane?” Kate said.

He looked startled. “What?”

“When you clobbered me with the piece of firewood in Old Sam’s cabin. Made me a nine-day Technicolor wonder, I can’t thank you enough. But hey”—she rapped her head with her knuckles—“takes a licking, keeps on ticking. The Grosdidier brothers regard me as a medical miracle.”

He sat up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Old Sam was alive and well the last time I was in the Park, and I never went anywhere near his cabin that trip.”

This, unfortunately, had the ring of truth, but then she’d been pretty sure he hadn’t been the one wielding the firewood. “And then there’s the little matter of you running me off the road.”

He looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did someone run you off the road?”

She shook her head. “Come on, Ben. I saw that big-ass truck parked in front of the
Adit
’s office. Looks about the same general size and shape as the one that ran me off the road.”

“Everybody’s got a big-ass truck in the Park,” he said. “You’ve got a big-ass truck. That doesn’t prove anything.”

“You knew I was headed for home when I left your office. You didn’t find the manuscript at Jane’s that morning, so you figured Old Sam must have held on to it. You wanted to stall me, slow me down so you could search his cabin.” She looked at him, and said softly, “Or you wanted to get me out of the way entirely.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said again.

“Attempted murder, this time,” she said. “At the very least assault with intent. You’ll still do a healthy chunk of time.”

“No,” he said. “I won’t.”

“I will tell,” she said mildly.

“No,” he said. “You won’t.” He had let his hand slide down to rest on the butt of the pistol he wore in a holster at his belt. It looked very old, like something out of
Casablanca.
Another stellar Bogart performance, she thought irrelevantly. “It’s a plan,” she said to Ben, complimentary. “I can see only one flaw.”

“What?”

“You don’t have the manuscript.”

“Not yet.” He matched her look for look, hand still on his pistol.

“See, there’s your problem.”

“What?’

“I don’t have it, either.”

He looked disconcerted, then rallied. “But you know where it is.”

“Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t let you shoot me before I told you,” she said, and while he was still absorbing that cheerfully delivered statement she threw her coffee in his face. It wasn’t that hot but he flinched, and she rocked forward to the balls of her feet and pushed off. A beat later he reacted, pulling the pistol free. It was one beat too long.

Sometimes it just didn’t matter how many times they’d heard The Legend of Kate Shugak. When six-foot men faced a five-foot woman, they naturally assumed they had the advantage. It was Kate’s very great pleasure to instruct them otherwise whenever she got the chance, and with all the considerable force and speed of one hundred twenty well-directed pounds of pissed-off woman behind it, Ben’s hand slammed against the wall.

Bones cracked and he yelled. He was, in fact, bigger than she was, but he spent most of his time typing. She spent most of her time kicking ass. He heaved, trying to throw her off, but she clung like a limpet. He rolled, trying to push her into the hot stove, and she leaned forward and sank her teeth into his nose.

“Ahhh! ‘Et ‘oh, ‘et ‘oh!” She could feel his grip tighten on the pistol, which he had somehow managed to keep hold of. It fired a round at close quarters into the stove. Kate looked up to see the stack tremble, but the coffeepot was too close to the edge and it started to fall. She rolled out of the way just in time, before what was left inside the pot poured down his right thigh and his crotch.

Ben screamed like a little girl, and while his attention was diverted she pounced on the pistol and popped to her feet. He wasn’t even looking at her as he frantically plucked the fabric of his jeans away from his crotch, shaking his leg, and giving out with what she considered to be pretty pedestrian language. “Ouch, shit, goddammit, shit, fuck, ow, ow, ow!” The blood gushing from his nose was a nice grace note, though.

It took a few moments for Ben’s pants to cool off and for him to reacquire focus. By then Kate had some fourteen-inch zip ties she’d brought along specifically for the purpose out and ready, and before he could react she had his right hand bound to his left foot. It was an effective hobble she had used before. They were going to be here at least overnight and she didn’t want to have to feed him or unzip his fly.

Mutt shouldered the door open and poked her head inside. Gunn froze in place. Kate wasn’t sure he was even breathing, and given the speculative look in Mutt’s yellow eyes she didn’t blame him.

Satisfied, Mutt cocked an eyebrow at Kate. Leave anything for me?

“Back on watch,” Kate said, and Mutt huffed out an indignant breath mostly for show and vanished again.

“You’re not very good at this, are you?” Kate said to Ben, not unkindly but without much interest, either. “You should have read Mr. Hammett with more attention. Sam Spade would never have let me get the drop on him like that.” She considered. “Well, Humphrey Bogart never would have, anyway.”

She grabbed the collar of his jacket and the seat of his pants and hauled him to where he could lean up against the wall, sort of. She retrieved the pot, made a fresh batch of coffee, and poured them each a cup, taking care to set his down a little distance away, so she was safely out of reach by the time he could get to it.

“You broke my hand,” he said, and in fact his right hand looked a little crushed. The flesh had begun to swell against the zip tie. He had a hard time picking up the mug, bound as he was, and finally rolled over on his right side so he could reach for the cup with his left hand. His nose was the size of a banana and his eyes were swollen half shut and beginning to blacken. Kate watched without sympathy as she unloaded his pistol and tucked it into her pack.

He sat up again, awkwardly. He kept his head down, unable to meet her eyes, and when he spoke his voice was barely above a mumble. “What happens now?”

“Now?” She gave him a sunny smile. “Now we wait.”

“Wait?” he said. “What for?”

“Not what,” she said, “who.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This who would be the guy who clobbered me over the head in Old Sam’s cabin in Niniltna, and ransacked it before you could. Why didn’t you turn around and keep going to Niniltna that night, by the way? You’d already killed once that day, what the hell. You could have broken into the cabin and searched all night if you wanted to.”

“My hand hurts,” he said. “Haven’t you got some aspirin or something you could give me?”

“Or I suppose you could have just lost your nerve,” Kate said. “One killing that morning, another that night, both with no witnesses. You probably decided it was time to head for the barn.”

He said nothing.

Night fell soon after. Kate fried moose liver with onions and apples and bacon and ate heartily. Ben, sadly not a liver fan, ate, too, although less heartily, and gulped down the 222s Kate offered as a side dish. “I need to use the, er,” he said, and jerked his head at the door.

“Go right ahead,” Kate said amiably.

He maneuvered himself to his feet, more or less, and looked at her, his face red from his hunched over position. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll run away?”

A long, low howl sounded from somewhere outside that wasn’t far enough away, and his face lost some of its color. Kate smiled. “Not very.”

Back inside, having lurched to his piece of the floor and clawed the spare sleeping bag around him, he said, “Can’t I sleep closer to the stove? There’s a draft coming through the walls under the tarp.”