26

The MV Fairweather is 235 feet of aluminum twin-hulled ferry, designed to carry 35 cars and 250 passengers at 32 knots. It was set to scoot up the Inside Passage from Juneau to Skagway and Haines in just two hours’ time. Once on the road system, the passengers could go wherever their desires and credit cards took them.

Kane walked aboard as the crew was securing for departure, carrying a big cup of coffee. He’d had to talk both Winthrop and Cocoa out of coming with him.

“You keep a close eye on your employer,” he said to Winthrop. “These people are idiots, but they’re violent idiots.” To Cocoa, he said, “Here’s what I want you to do,” then gave him instructions.

“What if your bad friends are on the ferry?” Cocoa asked.

Kane patted his side, where the automatic hung from his belt in its holster.

“I’ll be fine,” he said.

He walked through the car deck as the ferry left the dock, sipping coffee and looking for Alma Atwood’s license plate. He found it on a battered Subaru crammed with boxes.

“Hey,” a crewman called to him, “nobody’s allowed on the car deck while we’re under way. You’ve got to go up to the passenger deck.”

Kane nodded and waved, found a companionway, and climbed to the passenger deck. The ferry seemed to be about half full. He worked his way from the stern to the bow and found Alma sitting in the observation lounge, ignoring the attempts of a hairy young fisherman to chat her up.

“Ah, there you are,” he said to Alma.

She looked up, gave a little squeal, and swiveled her head around as if looking for an escape route. Kane stepped closer to keep her from getting to her feet.

“Thanks for keeping my daughter company,” he said to the fisherman.

The young man looked at Kane, at Alma, at Kane again. He opened his mouth to say something, stopped, shrugged, rose, and walked away. Kane sat in his abandoned chair and rested his hand lightly on Alma’s arm. She was trembling.

“We’ve got to talk,” he said.

Alma burst into tears. A couple of passengers looked her way, but Kane’s stare sent them back to their own business. He waited as the woman’s tears became sobs, then labored breathing.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not here to do anything to you. I just need information.”

Alma looked at him with skepticism in her face.

“How did you…,” she said. “How did you find me?”

“Gossip and connections,” he said. “Gossip in the Capitol put you on the ferry, and the connections gave me your license plate so I knew for sure.”

Alma nodded, dug around in her purse, pulled out a wad of tissues, dried her eyes and blew her nose.

“I didn’t know anything was going to happen to you,” she said. “He just said…he just said he wanted to get you someplace private to talk.”

“Who said?” Kane asked.

Alma looked around again, as if expecting that some way out would magically appear.

“I can’t—I can’t tell you that,” she said. “He said that if I ever told anyone, something bad would happen to me.”

Kane nodded and sat silent for a moment.

“Let me explain how things sit,” he said. “You set me up for a kidnapping. I can make a citizen’s arrest and haul you back to Juneau, where you’ll have to talk and you’ll probably go to jail. Or you can tell me what I want to know and go on your way. You decide.”

They sat for a pair of minutes. Rain began hitting the observation room windows, then turned to hail that rapped the windows like BBs. The vibration of the ship remained unchanged as it raced ahead. Kane could feel the weariness in him try to assert itself and fought it back. He didn’t have time to rest.

“It was George Bezhdetny,” Alma said.

Kane nodded.

“Tell me the whole story,” he said.

Alma dabbed at her nose, took a deep breath, and began.

“George has been hanging around the legislature now five or six years,” she said. “The gossip is that he came over from the Ukraine, where he did stuff for the Communists before the…you know, the change over there. He started out working in the lounge, of all things, like busing tables or something. He got to know some of the legislators, since most of them go in there to hide out from time to time. You know, nobody but legislators and people who work there can go in. Anyway, from there he got a staff job for one of the House members, then, after a couple of years, set up as a lobbyist.

“As a lobbyist, he was kind of a joke. He had weird clients and didn’t make much money, just hung around doing errands for legislators and more powerful lobbyists. But at the end of last session, I don’t know, he started dressing better and taking people out to fancy meals and just acting more like a player. Everybody thought he’d gotten some hot new client, but I checked his disclosure report and nothing showed up. So we all figured he was getting paid under the table. The law requires lobbyists to declare all their clients, but there’s lots of ways besides lobbying fees to pass money around.”

She stopped to dab at her nose.

“What’s all this got to do with what happened?” Kane asked.

Alma gave him an offended look.

“You said you wanted the whole story,” she said. “That’s what I’m giving you.”

She reached down and rummaged in her purse, came up with a water bottle, and took a drink.

“Then, just before session, our receptionist quit and the senator hired Jennifer,” she said. “He told me that George had recommended her.”

Alma’s voice dropped.

“You probably heard that Senator Grantham and I were…well, we were an item,” she said. “But we weren’t here two weeks and I was out and Jennifer was in. When I asked the senator about it, he acted like it was just some sort of change in staff assignments. The bastard.”

She paused to cry a little more. Kane let her. When she stopped, he said, “Why did you do it, Alma? Why did you get involved with him in the first place?”

Alma shrugged.

“I was young,” she said. “What did I know? At first, I thought maybe he’d leave his wife for me. Then, by the time I knew that wasn’t going to happen, it was just…just the way things were. He had power, and I had power over him, and we just seemed to be kind of…kind of a team.”

The look she gave him was so forlorn that Kane decided to drop it.

“Okay,” he said, “back to you and George.”

She nodded and continued.

“George knew I was unhappy,” she said. “How could he not? Everyone did. I should have left, but I couldn’t afford it. These staff jobs don’t really pay all that well, and there’s the expense of moving back and forth and, if you are a woman, looking good. So I didn’t have any money in the bank and I was miserable.

“Then all this stuff started happening. George seemed really happy that Senator Hope was in trouble, although he tried to keep it to himself. When you showed up, he sort of asked me to keep an eye on you. Said he’d pay me for it. Then, a few days ago, he says he has to talk to you and could I get you alone so he could.”

She shook her head, drew a deep breath, and continued.

“I said I wouldn’t,” she said. “He just sort of smiled and took a fat envelope out of his pocket and handed it to me. We were in my office, the day after I got so drunk, I remember. I opened the envelope and it was full of money. It turned out to be ten thousand dollars. ‘Drop dead money,’ he called it. And…and the chance to walk away from it all, to just leave that bastard Grantham and this awful situation, just overwhelmed me and I said yes. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

Alma started sobbing again. Kane sat quietly until she finished, then said, “So George Bezhdetny paid you to help him get me out of the way? Why did he do that?”

Alma shrugged.

“I don’t know,” she said, “except that he didn’t want Senator Hope to get out of his trouble, at least not soon.”

“How about his client?” Kane asked. “Any idea who that is?”

Alma just shook her head.

“How about Jennifer?” he asked “Why did she quit?”

“Maybe she just saw through that bastard Grantham a lot faster than I did,” she said. “Maybe she was really outraged by his vote on oil taxes. I know I was.”

“Alma,” Kane said, “that vote wasn’t why you did anything. I looked at your car. You must have been already packed by the time the vote happened.”

Alma sighed and nodded.

“You’re right,” she said. “It was just a pretext to get the hell out of Juneau. But it was still the wrong thing for him to do. And I just don’t understand why he did it.”

She was silent and, when it didn’t seem like Kane was going to speak again, she said softly, “What happens now?”

Kane understood that she was really asking what would happen to her.

“I suppose that, as a good staffer, you’ve got a pen and some paper in that storage locker you call a purse,” he said. “I want you to write down just what you told me, sign it, and date it. Every page. Then, when the ferry docks, you can go wherever you want. I’ll try to not use your statement unless I have to. But don’t kid yourself. There’s nowhere you can go that you can’t be found.”

Alma nodded, took a pen and steno pad from her purse, and began writing. Kane watched the other passengers watch the scenery. They’d passed through the rain, and the sun was playing tag with the ferry through the clouds. The throbbing of the ship’s engines and the sunshine and the warmth of the woman next to him conspired to put him to sleep, but he drank his coffee and fought against his weariness until Alma finished. She handed him the statement, prepared just as he’d said.

She was probably a very good staffer, he thought.

He read the statement, tore it from the pad, folded it, and put it into a pocket. On the port side of the observation deck, people pointed over the side and talked excitedly.

“Orcas,” one of them called across the deck. “A pod of orcas.”

The other passengers hurried over to look, leaving Kane and Alma isolated in their chairs.

“I’m really sorry, Nik,” Alma said. “I never meant for anything bad to happen to you. I…I like you. A lot. It’s just, I had to get out and this seemed like the only way.”

“That’s okay, Alma, I understand,” Kane said as he got to his feet. “It was just politics.”