Restless in the Grave by Dana Stabenow Read Free Book Online

some cobwebs, too.”
    She knew immediately what he hadn’t said. “You mean Old Sam.”
    “Yeah.”
    Her turn to be silent as she thought back to October and November of the previous year. The lives of childhood gods should never be too closely examined, but Old Sam had been determined to leave her no choice. At last she said, “You’re right about that, too.”
    “It doesn’t change who he was, Kate.”
    “I know that,” she said. “Nothing he ever did could change my opinion of him. It’s just, sometimes I wonder…”
    “What?”
    She sighed. “How well we ever know anyone.”
    “Pedestals are dangerous things.”
    “Especially the highest ones.”
    He had no answer for her, and fell back on misdirection. “The real reason you want to take this on is because you can’t wait to tear into a real case. Your snoop’s blood is itching.”
    “Well,” she said, drawing it out. “There is that, too.” She smiled into the dark. In fact, her nose was eager to poke itself into the personal business of a bunch of people she’d never met, to sniff out the distinctive aromas of means, motive, and opportunity, to boldly go where no nose had gone before. She laughed, a deep sound that rasped against the scar, the remnant of another case, long ago and far away but never wholly forgotten.
    “Just try to wrap it up in a week,” he said, sounding a little grumpy even to his own ears. “Otherwise I might have to come down there and clear it myself.”
    “Oooh, big talk from the big trooper.” She investigated. “And getting bigger.”
    In one swift movement he rolled her over on her back, kneeing her legs apart and settling himself between them. “I’ll just mark my spot.”
    *   *   *
     
    The next morning she packed a bag and Jim drove her and Campbell to the airport. It was another clear, cold day, and the snarl of sharp peaks on the eastern horizon increased in menace with the late arctic dawn.
    The gloom dispersed as George Perry preflighted the single Otter turbo and a Beaver full of horny, thirsty Suulutaq miners came in from the mine, more than ready for their week off.
    The sun peeked over Big Bump as they boarded. Kate, having taken an extra moment for a fond farewell from Jim, was last in line, and as she put her foot on the bottom step of the airstairs she noticed another plane parked nearby. It was a small, elegant jet, twin engines, very sleek, clad in anonymous white paint, the N-number lettered in very small black letters on the engines. She couldn’t quite make them out.
    “Nice, huh?” George said, looking behind her from the doorway. “Grumman Gulfstream Two.”
    “A corporate jet?” Kate said.
    “Yeah. Some Suulutaq bigwigs. Frank took ’em over to the mine in the Beaver this morning.” George, tall, thin, a cavernous face with a five o’clock shadow present at eight o’clock in the morning, looked just a little smug. “Good thing we got the runway paved last fall.”
    Yet another example of Suulutaq’s largesse, and it grated on Kate, but only a little. Maybe when the city of Niniltna finally incorporated, they could start charging landing fees.
    “You getting in or not, Shugak?” he said impatiently.
    Kate got in and sat down across from Campbell. Mutt padded in behind her and lay down in the space between the pilot’s seat and the rest of the passengers. George put on his headset, and the turbine engine started to whine.
    The last thing Kate saw as they taxied away was the sexy little corporate jet lording it over the end of the runway. When the Otter turned for takeoff, the sun finally tore free of the clutch of the Quilaks and escaped to the sky, and a shaft of light caught the engine facing Kate, illuminating its identification number. The first letter was a C.
    Interesting, Kate thought. All U.S. tail numbers began with an N. C for Canada, maybe? Global Harvest Resources, Incorporated, was an international conglomerate, and Canada was the world’s third largest