Breakup. Part 24

Bobby thought it over and didn't get it. He said so.

"I didn't, either, at first. Then there was the shoot-out." She fortified herself with a Fig Newton. There was a forty-eight-ounce bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard but what with one thing and another she had yet to get around to baking. With luck, she could seduce Jack into baking for her, chocolate chip cookies being his specialty.

"And," Jim prodded.

"And, I've always found that flying bullets really focus my attention, you know? I was lying there in back of the bar, and I remembered sardine is a kind of herring."

The other four exchanged speaking glances. "Hooligan," Kate said, unperturbed, "is also another name for herring, right?"

"Yeah," Dan said, brow furrowed, "or it's a family member, or something like that."

"And hooligan sounds pretty close to Harrigan, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

Kate leaned back and stared at him. "Ring any bells?"

Dan stared back, bewildered. "No, I-"

"Kate-" Jim said.

"Wait a minute!" Dan said, sitting bolt upright. "Of course! Harrigan, Nathan Harrigan! That was the name of the pilot! The one who flew Stewart into the Park last fall!"

"Yes." Kate waited for Dan to fill in the rest of them on his first meeting with Stewart and Stewart's pilot.

Jim's brows snapped together. "Wait a minute. You mean Nathan Harrigan, your DB"- he pointed at Kate -"was the same guy you"- the trooper pointed at the ranger -"saw with Mark Stewart in the Park last fall?"

Kate refrained from repeating yet again that Nathan Harrigan wasn't her dead body, and simply nodded. "Yes. And, according 230 to Auntie Vi, Harrigan was also in the Park with Carol Stewart last spring. According to Dan, he was back, this time with Mark, Carol's husband, six months later." She drank coffee. "And Stewart, Dan informs me, has had permits for moose, caribou and bear, not to mention fis.h.i.+ng licenses, in this game management unit for the last ten years. You were right, Dan, he's an experienced hunter. There was no excuse for him to go up to the mine unarmed."

"Wait a minute," Jim said. "Wait just a d.a.m.n minute. Are you talking about a double homicide here? You think Stewart killed his wife and Harrigan, too?"

"I know he did," she said, and polished off the cookie and reached for a second. "You said the coroner said Harrigan was an electrician in Anchorage. Bernie says Mark Stewart is a longtime contractor, also in Anchorage, one of the good old boys who went into business during the oil boom in the seventies. He put up the Roadhouse back when they were both starting out."

"I didn't know that."

"Bernie was telling us about it, day before yesterday," Bobby said.

Kate nodded. "Anyway, Anchorage isn't that big a town, so my best guess is Harrigan probably worked for Stewart at one time or another. Probably how Harrigan met Stewart's wife, too."

Bobby and Dinah and Dan exclaimed together, but Bobby's stentorian bellow naturally won out. "Harrigan, who you're saying is the dead body got found out here the day the sky fell, was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Carol Stewart?"

Kate nodded again. "Yeah, and right here in the Park, too. Auntie Vi said she'd met Carol before, on a visit to the Park last spring, only she wasn't with Mark, she was with some guy called-"

"Sardine!"

"Only she remembered by a.s.sociation, a sardine is a hooligan, and hooligan sounds close enough to Harrigan."

"Let me get this straight," Jim said. "You're saying Harrigan actually came out hunting to the same place he'd been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the wife of the guy who invited him on the hunting trip?"

231 Kate shrugged. "I don't know much about Harrigan, but I do know enough about contract hiring that he'd think there might be a job in it if he accepted Stewart's invitation."

"He was taking an awful chance," Dan said.

"Dumb," Bobby said. "Dumb to come back to the Park with Stewart, dumb, dumb, dumb."

Kate's smile was thin and noticeably lacking in amus.e.m.e.nt. "Stewart probably insisted on it."

The three men didn't get it, but Dinah did. "Returning to the scene of the crime?"

Kate nodded. "First with Harrigan, then with his wife. Rubbing their noses in it."

They thought about that for a while. "If you're right, this guy's some kind of s.a.d.i.s.t," Dan said.

"Some kind," Kate agreed.

Dinah shuddered.

"Dumb," Bobby insisted. "If I'd been Harrigan, I would have run a mile from the guy."

"Maybe," Kate said. "Maybe not. You read the papers. The state economy hasn't been the same since the pipeline years. Construction jobs are few and far between. If he needed the work, and if he thought the hunting trip meant work, Harrigan would want to believe Stewart knew nothing of the affair. He'd will himself to believe it."

"You're guessing," Jim said flatly, leaning back in his chair. He sounded disappointed.

"About all the Anchorage stuff, yes," Kate said. "Did you get a positive ID on the body?"

Jim nodded abstractedly. "It came in this morning. It is Nathan Harrigan. But-" He fell silent.

Kate finished her cookie. "Two wounds, the coroner said. One blow to the head, hard enough to knock him unconscious, not hard enough to kill him.

While he was out, another blow to his leg, hard enough to break it, to incapacitate him, so Stewart could walk away and let it look like an accident."

232.

Jim thought about it, and gave a slow nod.

"Maybe Stewart waited until Harrigan woke up, maybe he was gone when Harrigan woke up, and so was anything Harrigan could have eaten, or used for warmth, or for shelter. So Harrigan lay where he was and waited for death."

Her voice lowered, her words taking on an unconscious rhythm.

"Maybe Agudar was kind, and let him slip into the long sleep in peace with the cold of the night.

"Maybe Raven led the bear or the wolf there first.

"I don't know."

She paused. "All I know is it took a while, and during that time he knew who, and he knew why, and Stewart wanted it that way."

The room was silent. In the distance a raven croaked at a squirrel, and got a chatter of outrage in return.

Dan stirred. "The murder weapon?"

"I imagine the coroner's report will say a blunt instrument of some kind." Kate looked at Chopper Jim. "Used properly and with enthusiasm, the b.u.t.t of a gun is a fine offensive weapon. They teach you how to use one in the service, I hear. Stewart didn't need any special tools.

Enough fools out here already fall over their own guns and shoot themselves; it doesn't take much imagination to turn one into a murder weapon."

Dinah s.h.i.+vered, all trace of fun wiped from her face. "It's so- so cold."

Kate nodded. "Literally." She reached for another cookie.

Incredulously, Jim said, "Did Stewart admit all this to you last night?"

"G.o.d, no." Kate shook her head. "He's too smart for that. This guy diagrammed the whole operation, like a military exercise. You might want to check on that, Jim," she added dispa.s.sionately. "Be interesting to know if he's ever seen military service, and if he did time in tactical command."

Jim's expression was pained. He hated it when a soldier went bad.

233 "Yeah," Kate said, thinking it over some more, "he was smart enough to take a rifle when they went up to the mine-"

"But he said-" Dan burst out.

"He lied."

"You don't know that."

"Yes," Kate said. "Yes, I do." And she did. "He's too smart not to. He broke it down and carried it in his pack. He waited until they were out of sight of the village, maybe pretended he heard a noise and stopped to a.s.semble it. Carol Stewart probably watched him do it. For their protection, I'm sure he said. For his protection, really. So whatever he suckered out of the woods to eat on her wouldn't turn on him." She used a swallow of coffee to wash the bitter taste out of her mouth.

"What did he do with it?"

"He tossed it. Probably used it first to scare the bear off. We never would have heard the shots over the noise of the road or the truck's engine."

Dan sat up straight in his chair. "Remember, Kate, when we said we'd called the trooper? Stewart was surprised. He didn't think anyone official could make it to the scene so quick."

"He was probably counting on it," she agreed.

"Maybe we could go back up there," Jim said, "run a search pattern, see if we can dig that rifle up."

"You know that nine-millimeter Cindy took out after Ben with?" At their nods, Kate said, "She told me she pitched it into the river. h.e.l.l, it's right there, all you have to do is step to the edge of the cliff and let go. Stewart's rifle is probably offsh.o.r.e of Port d.i.c.k by now, and probably the pack with it, so we can't look for gun oil or anything on the fabric."

"But-"

"It's in the river," Kate said flatly. "I'd bet every dime I've got on it."

Her eyes fell on the fat manila envelope reposing innocently on one shelf. Well. Maybe not every dime.

234 There was no dragging the Kanuyaq, which emptied into the Gulf at a gallop during a spring thaw with heavy runoff. "So," Jim said heavily, breaking the glum silence, "Harrigan and Carol Stewart were having an affair."

"His landlord said there had been a girlfriend," Kate said. "He said she was blonde. Carol Stewart was blonde."

"The landlord also said the girlfriend might have been a brunette," Jim said. "So, Stewart finds out about Harrigan and his wife, and he plans his revenge. He brings Harrigan up last fall, breaks his leg and leaves him for dead, and brings his wife up this spring and feeds her to a bear? This what you're telling me here, Shugak?"

"Yes."

"How did he kill her?" Jim asked. "He couldn't have used the rifle, there's no way you could hide that from the coroner. You're the one says he's so smart, he'd have to have known that. So how did he kill her? You hardwired into that, too?"

She ignored the sarcasm in his tone because she knew it wasn't really directed at her, and reached in her pocket. The Swiss Army knife clattered to the table. They stared at it, mesmerized. "Auntie Vi says he had one of these. Maybe even this one. Cindy stumbled over it the morning of the attack, when she chased Ben up the road."

Chopper Jim picked up the knife and located the blade. Over it, his eyes met Kate's. "You didn't think to bag it?"

"At the time, I didn't know it might be important. Besides, it'd been lying in the slush and the mud before Cindy found it. Cindy's handled it, I've handled it, Auntie Vi's handled it."

"h.e.l.l, I remember now, I watched you clean it yesterday afternoon."

She nodded.

"Not much of a killing machine," Dan said, examining the two and a half inch blade critically.

"One slice from behind." Kate's hand went to the scar on her 235 throat, a thin ridge of roped flesh that had healed badly and now would never fade. "You take the victim by surprise, you're stronger than she is anyway-" Her hand dropped. "You don't need a bowie knife to get the job done." She added dispa.s.sionately, "He would have waited to kill her at least until he heard the bear. Fresh blood, hungry bear.

Unbeatable combination."

Dinah shoved her chair back. "Excuse me," she said, and left the cabin.

Bobby started to go after her. "Don't," Kate said.

He scowled at her.

She shook her head. "Don't," she repeated.

He looked at the open door, hands resting on the wheels of his chair.

With an oath, he brought them back up to the arm rests. "And if Stewart hadn't heard a bear?"

Kate's shoulders rose and fell. "It didn't have to happen the first day.

Auntie Vi said they were booked in for a week. He had time to wait for the perfect opportunity. He just lucked out the first day. A bear showed up on schedule, Stewart killed Carol, let the bear chew on her enough to obliterate the evidence." She reflected. "Then he heard us coming, and either chased the bear off or it ran off. Stewart didn't have time to break the weapon down again, so he pitched it into the river and came to meet us." She frowned down at her coffee. "Too bad we couldn't have tested his hands for residue."

"I don't know." Dan crossed his arms and frowned. "Seems awfully iffy to me."

"Then he would have fallen back on plan B."

"There was a plan B?"

"Dan," Kate said with finality, "there is always a plan B for the Mark Stewarts of this world."

"h.e.l.l." Jim sat back, lips flattened into a thin line. "It doesn't matter much whether he used the knife. Even if we found his fingerprints on it, which we won't, and traces of her blood on it, which we won't, it wouldn't be enough."

236.

"No." Kate shook her head. "It wouldn't."