Free Any Taint of Vice: A Kate Shugak Story (Kate Shugak Novels) by Dana Stabenow Page B

The house they were watching was kitty-corner from their vantage point, an old two-story clapboard building held upright with crossed fingers and a new coat of paint. The front yard was a paved lot with eight marked spaces. Blackout shades covered all the windows, with very little light leaking through. Traffic in and out was steady but decorous, no revving of engines, no squealing of tires. The sign on the wall, small and discreetly lit, read THE RIGHT TOUCH MASSAGE .
    A gentle snore came from the backseat, where Mutt had discovered the advantages of a comfortable back seat all to herself. Kate stuck her nose in the cup of coffee Kurt had just handed her and inhaled deeply. “Thanks,” she said, and took a long, luxurious swallow.
    “We deliver,” he said.
    “You don’t have to stay.”
    “A couple minutes,” he said. “I can take over if you’re tired.”
    “I am tired, but no thanks.”
    “So, the General,” he said, and waited, creating a silence that must be filled. She admired his technique.
    “He was the president of the University of Alaska–Fairbanks when I was a student there,” she said. “So was Cal.”
    “Not Vic?”
    “He must have been out by then,” she said. “Never met him.”
    “What happened?”
    “I was studying late one night in the library. Somebody screamed. I went looking for who, and found Cal Boatwright trying to rape a freshman.”
    Kurt whistled beneath his breath.
    “Pretty ineptly, I might add, but she looked like she could use a little help, so I helped her. And then I helped him to his feet and up the hill to his father’s house.”
    “You recognized him, then?”
    “Oh yeah, everybody knew Cal. The stories were legion, especially among the women undergraduates. He might have pioneered the use of Rohypnol at UAF.”
    “Charming.”
    “As in prince,” Kate said, and drank more coffee. She glanced at the clock in the dashboard. Almost 3 A.M. Evidently Gohegan believed in working shoulder to shoulder with her employees right through the night shift.
    “I take it the General wasn’t pleased?”
    “No.”
    “With Cal for the attempted rape? Or with Cal for getting caught?”
    “I’d say more with me for catching him,” Kate said.
    But he tapped you for this job, Kurt thought, and kept his inevitable reflections to himself. “That the only time you and the General, ah, met?”
    Kate turned her head. “Your interrogation skills need work..”
    Kurt refused to be intimidated. “You seemed a little more familiar with each other than one meeting—what, fifteen, sixteen years ago?—would indicate.”
    She faced forward again. He waited hopefully, but confidences had ended for the evening. He drained his cup. “Sure you don’t want me to take over?”
    Kate flapped a hand. “Get outta here.”
    “Getting,” Kurt said. The door closed soundlessly behind him and he cast only the merest shadow down the street and around the corner.
    Another car pulled into the only vacant space in front of The Right Touch Massage. Kate slouched down in her seat and drank coffee.
    It was coming on five o’clock, the dawn delayed by the cloud cover and a light drizzle, when the white Subaru Forester registered to Andrea M. Gohegan pulled out of the driveway that led around the back of the house and turned left. Kate waited until it was a block down before pulling out into the street behind, lights off until they both turned right on Spenard. Gohegan turned right again on Minnesota. Traffic was light and Kate kept her distance. Gohegan got off on 100th and turned on Maritime, following it about halfway around before pulling into the driveway of a split-level home, much newer than her office premises, painted gray with white trim and a meticulously groomed yard. Very suburban. Kate’s determinedly upwardly mobile cousin Axenia lived on Compass Circle. She grinned at the thought of Axenia’s reaction to living a street away from the madam of a flourishing brothel.
    She waited half