Part 14 (2/2)
Jack's eyebrows snapped together. Kate, who had left her bandage back on the Freya precisely to prevent unwanted and unnecessary solicitude from either the aunties or the big man with the increasingly p.i.s.sed-off expression, resisted the natural impulse to put her Nike right up Jim's elegant navy-blue backside. ”I'm okay,” she said. ”Really,” she said, warding off lack with an upraised hand. ”Auntie,” she said, stepping forward and addressing Auntie Joy directly, ”Tim says you broke up his fight with Meany. Is that true?”
Auntie Joy said nothing.
”Kate,” Jack said, ”we've got to talk.”
She shook off his hand. ”In a minute. Auntie, Tim says you helped Meany after the fight. Did you take him somewhere? To Uncle Nick's house, maybe?”
Auntie Joy said nothing.
Behind Kate Jim stirred. ”I think you'd better come back into town with me, Joyce.”
Kate whirled. ”No!”
Jim said, not without sympathy, ”Kate, I don't see that I've got any other choice. She's a material witness to the hours directly preceding Meany's murder. She's not cooperating. What the h.e.l.l else do you expect me to do?” He paused. ”I could arrest her for withholding evidence, what do you say?”
From behind the aunties a new voice spoke. ”You'll have to wait your turn, Jim.”
Everyone looked up to see Lamar Rousch standing behind Auntie Joy, along with a very tall man with an abundance of gray hair and a smug expression on his face.
The gray hair was natural, the smug expression acquired. Bill Nickle had come into the country fifty years before, apprenticed as a deckhand on a seiner, worked his way up to skipper and made a pile of money during the golden days of commercial salmon fis.h.i.+ng in the seventies. Like Meany, he put his family to work for him, to such good effect that within eleven years his sons had taken over boat and business for their own.
Bill never forgave them, and came up with the perfect revenge, starting a professional sport-fish guiding operation and agitating in the legislature at every session for reductions in the commercial catch. Over the past ten years, and with the influx of tourists into the state, he had graduated from being a petty annoyance to the commercial and subsistence fishermen to a very real threat. It didn't help that he was smart, informed, articulate, and charming when he wanted to be.
He wasn't bothering today.
”What are you talking about?” the trooper said.
”I've got prior business here,” Lamar replied, and turned to Auntie Joy. ”Joyce, Bill's brought it to our attention that you've been violating the federal prohibition on fis.h.i.+ng Amartuq Creek. I'm here to serve you with a cease-and-desist order.”
”Now wait just a minute” Jim said.
”You're a little late, aren't you, Lamar?” Kate said.
”I don't know what you're talking about, Kate,” the fish hawk said, trying and failing to look like it.
”Then permit me to enlighten you. She's been fis.h.i.+ng this creek for the last five years.”
The tall, gray-haired man bristled. ”The main reason the sport fishermen's quota gets cut every year!”
Jack snapped, ”Right, Bill, like there aren't commercial fishermen scooping up entire schools of fish the other side of the marker every period the whole friggin' summer.”
”That's a G.o.ddam lie,” Lamar said, his pink skin flus.h.i.+ng scarlet to the roots of his blond hair.
”Not to mention a couple hundred trawlers with mile-long nets sucking up every living thing off the bottom of the north Pacific Ocean. Somehow I doubt that one piddly little fish wheel on Amartuq Creek counts for much in the grand scheme of things.”
”Especially when the Fish and Game cut the catch on the creek and don't bother cutting it in the bay,” Kate said hotly. ”Like hauling entire schools of fish out of Alaganik doesn't have anything to do with the decline of reds up Amartuq Creek.”
”Dammit, Kate!” Lamar said, his baby cheeks going pinker. ”We don't have any numerical proof of that!”
”Now look,” Jim said, trying to reestablish his authority with a deep, carrying voice, ”Joyce is my witness, and I”
”You subsistence fishermen think the world revolves around you. It's time the sport fishermen got a crack at the take, and by G.o.d, I'm going to see to it we do!”
”You only think you will, you fly-fis.h.i.+ng son of a b.i.t.c.h,” Kate snapped.
”I know I will, you” His gaze encountered Jack's and he derailed that train of thought just in time. ”We've got interests in this area,” he said tightly. ”Vested interests, and financial backing. We can generate more money in licenses and guiding and food and lodging than a piddly little fish camp that ain't good for nothing but providing dog food for a bunch of old-timers that'd be better off in the Pioneer Home anyway!”
Auntie Vi said something in Aleut that sounded distinctly uncomplimentary.
The old fart reddened. ”You've got your orders, Lamar, from the commissioner himself. Serve her.”
”Over my dead body!”
”That can be arranged, Shugak!”
”Quiet!” Chopper Jim bellowed out the command with all the authority of twenty-five years of experience.
It didn't silence the Amartuq Creek Debating Society, but it woke up a peacefully slumbering grizzly male in a clump of diamond willow across the creek, who had been sleeping off the stupefying effect of a dozen early silvers gulped for brunch. Jim's bellow startled him to his feet, where he tripped over a branch, somersaulted down the bank and into the creek with a tremendous splash, followed by an even more tremendous bawl of outrage that flushed birds from every tree in sight, startled a yearling moose out of a thicket and caused a family of otters to vacate their fis.h.i.+ng hole for less boisterous habitation downstream.
The party on the opposite sh.o.r.e stared, finally and mercifully dumbstruck, as the grizzly, grousing and whining and generally indicating his displeasure with rude awakenings in general and this one in particular, shook himself off and lumbered up the bank, cras.h.i.+ng through the brush in high dudgeon.
The noise of entire trees being felled seemed to go on forever, until the watching group began to realize that something else was cras.h.i.+ng through the brush on the opposite side of the stream, something coming toward them. Jim put his hand on the flap of his holster. It was the first time in their acquaintance that Kate had seem him reach for his weapon. Just as his hand closed over the pistol b.u.t.t, Johnny burst from the enveloping alders about twenty feet down from where the grizzly had disappeared. He and the grizzly must have pa.s.sed each other like semis on an interstate, Kate thought, watching as the boy seemed to race across the top of the water in their direction. He was yelling something inarticulate at the top of his voice. His face was red, his hair on end, and he looked frightened out of his wits.
Mutt barked once and launched herself into the water, which quickly became too deep for walking. She paddled, inches ahead of Jack, who had moved smartly into the water a second behind her. Father and son and dog met at midstream, dog grabbed at son's sleeve and held him steady until father arrived and plucked son out of the water, tucked him beneath his right arm and plowed to sh.o.r.e, dog bringing up the rear. They collapsed heavily on the sand, panting and soaked to the skin. Mutt waded ash.o.r.e and shook herself vigorously, which got everybody else wet, too, and went to Johnny to poke at him with her nose, an anxious whine rising up out of her throat.
The boy rested his forehead on her neck for a moment. ”I'm all right, girl.” He looked up. ”I'm all right, Dad. Really.”
When Jack got his breath back he yelled, ”Then what the h.e.l.l was that Charge of the Light Brigade all about!”
Johnny winced at the volume. ”I found a body,” he said, and his face contorted. ”It's her, Dad!”
”You what!”
”Shut up, Jack,” Kate said rudely, and shoved him to one side, Jim breathing down her neck. ”Johnny, take a couple of deep breaths. Auntie, bring a blanket, and something hot to drink. Come on,” she said to the boy, ”get up out of the sand, sit on this log.” She knelt before him in the sand and started untying his boots. He uttered an inarticulate protest and she brushed aside his fumbling hands. ”Let me. You need to warm up,”
Jim paced around in the background while blankets and hot tea were fetched and Johnny was stripped and swathed and dosed. ”Okay,” he said finally, ”enough. Johnny, tell us about this body.”
The boy huddled inside the blanket, shaking hands clutching the mug. ”It's her, Dad,” he repeated.
”Who her?” Kate said sharply.
Johnny didn't hear her, his eyes fixed painfully on his father. ”The girl you saw the other night?” his father said. ”Are you sure?”
The boy nodded, teeth chattering as much from shock as from exposure, and then he shook his head. ”It's her hair, Dad,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears. ”I could see her hair.”
”Did you see her face?” Kate said sharply.
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