A Taint in the Blood

“We hide a key outside,” the older one said as the younger one slid from the Subaru. “Mister?”

“What?”

“Could you… could you maybe call us when you find her?”

The forlorn little voice pierced Jim’s self-absorption the way nothing else could have, and he looked at the kid, really looked at him for the first time since he’d gotten back from Brendan’s. “Yes,” he said. “I will. Better, I’ll bring her here so you can talk to her yourselves.”

“Thanks,” the kid said, and trudged after his brother.

Jim watched them for a second, and then he got out of the car. “Hey,” he said.

The boys stopped and looked back at him.

“You did good, getting that license plate number,” he said. “You’re the reason I’m going to find her.”

The kids’ faces lightened a little, and he climbed back in the car and drove downtown, where he found a parking space within walking distance of Oliver’s building. He got out to case it. It had an underground parking garage, so he would have to do it the hard way. He went back to the Subaru and waited with hard-won patience for the clock to read 8:00 a.m.

At 8:01 A.M., Oliver Muravieff arrived, his silver Miyata disappearing into the underground parking lot.

At 8:05 a.m., Jim dialed Oliver’s office number from Kate’s cell phone. “Yes,” he said in a voice from which any trace of impatience or worry had been completely erased. “I’m an old friend of Mr. Muravieff’s from law school, and I’ve got an eight-hour layover before I head for Barrow. I just wanted to know if he was in his office. I’d like to drop in and say hello… He’ll be there for the next couple of hours? Splendid, I’ll see you soon.” He dropped his voice to what he’d been told was a sexy baritone. “Listen, do me a favor. Don’t tell him I’m coming. I want to surprise him. Thanks.”

He disco

She wasn’t having any.

“I mean it, goddamn it,” he said. “Get back in that fucking truck!”

A couple of young attorneys who hadn’t been practicing long enough to take such scenes in their stride scurried by, not making eye contact.

Jim squatted down on his haunches and took Mutt’s head in his hands. She was alternately whining and growling. “She’s not here,” Jim said, trying to shake some sense into her. “She’s not here, damn it, but the guy I’m going to see will know where they’ve got her, and that’s when I’ll need you. Mutt, please, get in the truck.” He stood up and held the door open. “Get in, and stay,” he said.

She eyed him narrowly. It was her choice, and they both knew it. There was no way he was going to bundle 140 pounds of snarling, snapping half husky, half wolf unwilling back in the truck if she didn’t want to go there on her own. “I’ll need backup, girl,” he told her, painfully conscious of seconds ticking away. “Best they don’t know I’ve got it yet. Get in. Please. Get in.”

She whined, she snarled some more, she even nipped at his calf on her way by, but she got in. He heaved a sigh of relief, and as a sign of trust, he rolled down the window halfway. “I know you could take this out if you wanted to-hell, you could probably take out the door if you wanted to-but I’m trusting you to stay here and wait for me. Stay,” he repeated.

She looked at him, ears a little flattened, lips slightly drawn back, teeth gleaming in the morning sun. She did not look friendly.

“Well, for sure no one’s going to steal that Subaru,” he said.

“Hello, darling,” he said to Oliver’s receptionist, affecting the slow drawl he had used earlier on the phone. “Which way is that old boy’s office?”

The receptionist fluttered her eyelashes and said, “I’m afraid Mr. Muravieff has someone with him just now-oh, no, I believe he’s just leaving,” and she turned to smile as her boss came through the door behind her desk.

Oliver Muravieff’s client barely registered on Jim’s peripheral vision. “Ollie!” he said in his biggest, boomiest voice. “How the hell are you!” And he steamed forward, hand extended.

Oliver’s hand came up either in greeting or in self-defense. “I’m sorry?” he said, his brow creasing, “I’m not sure I-”

Jim pushed him back into his office before he could finish the sentence. He stumbled a little over his cane, and when he got his balance back, he looked at Jim with the begi

“All right, you little motherfucker, where is Kate Shugak?” Jim said.

“Who?” Oliver said. But he took just a little too long to say it.

Jim kicked the cane out of Oliver’s hand. “Where is Kate Shugak?”

Oliver fell awkwardly, and Jim heard a sound that might have been the crack of a bone. Oliver yelled.

The door started to open, but Jim slammed it shut and raised his voice. “Ollie, old buddy, you’re just as clumsy catching that ball as you were in college. Ifs okay, honey. He’s just taken himself a tumble, but we’re fine!”

Oliver stared up at him in pain and disbelief. “Who the hell do you think you are,” he said, “barging into my office, assaulting me verbally, assaulting me physically? Do you know what a felony is?”

Jim took a step forward. “If I commit one, I’ll hire you to get me off. Just like you got Paul Cassanovas off. It’s what you do.”

“Paul Cassanovas? What’s he got to do with anything?”

“He’s a client of yours.”

“So? I’ve got a lot of clients.”

“This client hangs out with a guy name of Ralph Patton.”

Oliver was recovering a little of his sangfroid. He looked at his cane as if to pick it up. Jim took another step forward, and Oliver abandoned the idea for the moment. “Again,” he said, “what does any of this have to do with you barging in here and assaulting me?”

“Paul Cassanovas just had his van stolen.”

Oliver rolled his eyes. “Look, Mr.-whoever you are-I-”

“Yesterday,” Jim said, “about eight hours before somebody coldcocked Kate Shugak and tossed her into the back of it.”

There was a moment of silence. Oliver appeared to be thinking deeply. “There’s no way you can know that.”

“There were two eyewitnesses. How do you think I traced the van?”

“I knew nothing of this,” Oliver said. His face had paled and he was breathing a little faster.

“Yeah,” Jim said, “you did, and you’re going to take me to her.”

“Is that so?” a voice said, and Jim looked around to see Fred Gamble of the Federal Bureau of Investigation step into the room.

She woke to a dull, throbbing ache that seemed to take up the whole left side of her head. She couldn’t see and she could barely breathe through the covering over her face. For a moment, she panicked, and then she forced herself into deep, shallow respiration, one breath at a time. She tried to move her hands, her feet, couldn’t. She could barely feel them.

There was a narrow concave surface beneath her. She tried to roll and hit an edge. She rolled back to the center. A cot perhaps. She could smell wood smoke, or the residue of it. She was in a cabin, maybe?

She was also hearing voices.

Was there pain in heaven? Certainly there were voices. Joan of Arc had heard them; it stood to reason Kate Shugak would hear them, too. Of course, Joan had been given directions. Maybe the Woman Who Keeps the Tides or Calm Waters’ Daughter would give Kate a sign.

She moved again and her head fell off. She couldn’t stop a low, agonized groan.

Maybe it was hell. Definitely pain in hell, according to the preachers, lots and lots, and Kate had si

That wasn’t right. Jim, that was it, Jim in that enormous bed and her having her way with him.

Was he one of the voices?

“I only hit her once,” someone said.

“You shouldn’t have hit her at all,” another voice said coldly and clearly.

Nope. Not Jim, neither one of them. But the voice did sound familiar.