Free Bad Blood by Dana Stabenow Page B

broke, don’t fix it. Maybe bringing back the flying pastor was the thin end of the wedge.
    Kate stared at Erland’s jet as if trying to see through the fuselage, and wondered who had really bankrolled Anne Flanagan’s Tri-Pacer.

 
    Act III

 
    Seven
    THURSDAY, JULY 12
    Anchorage
    At the same moment Anne Flanagan’s Aviating Evangelist Piper Tri-Pacer was taking off from Niniltna, Jim Chopin was landing his Alaska Department of Public Safety Cessna 180 in Anchorage, where he unloaded Tyler’s body into the back of an ambulance. He spent the night at the Merrill Field Inn, had pie for breakfast at Peggy’s Airport Cafe, called the ME to make sure the body had arrived at the right lab, and was leveling off on a northeasterly heading, adjusting for drift under the influence of a twelve-knot tailwind, when his cell phone played a short burst from Lenny Kravitz’s “Lady.”
    Where are you?
    He texted back.
    Ten minutes out of Anchorage. OTG Niniltna in a couple of hours. You?
    Her:
    Home. Who died?
    He was only surprised she hadn’t heard yet.
    Tyler Mack.
    Seconds passed.
    Accident or on purpose?
    On purpose.
    Sure?
    Pretty sure. Waiting on the ME.
    Coming home?
    Going straight back to Kuskulana.
    Crap. Later then. Horny.
    He laughed.
    Me, too.
    He was in a much better mood when he landed in Kuskulana than when he had departed the day before. It didn’t last long.
    Kuskulana was a lot like Niniltna in structure, albeit higher in elevation. There was, incredibly at any time of year but particularly in summer, an air of bustle about it, two new houses going up at opposite ends of the village, an extension going onto the two-year-old store that would double its size. It didn’t have a hotel yet, but Jim saw five B and B signs between the airstrip and the creek landing, and Kuskulana hosted one of the brand-new cell towers that had sprung up overnight like mushrooms between Ahtna and Cordova.
    The landing, at one time nothing more than a wide spot on the river, now boasted a mooring slip, a twenty-five-foot wooden float topped with open metal grating. Pilings had been driven through open squares in the four corners so that the slip would rise and fall with the rise and fall of the water on the river. It sat lengthwise against the bank and was reached by a metal gangplank, attached to a flight of wide, sturdy stairs made of treated wood posts and more metal grating, attached to more pilings that climbed the cliff to the plateau. The wood of the pilings gleaming with tar that had yet to turn brown from time and weather, and a pile of construction material, two-by-fours, twelve-by-twelves, angle iron, rebar, a couple of leftover Permafloats, some broken concrete blocks, were piled neatly beneath the gangplank out of the reach of the river. This far upstream, the Gruening River was too shallow for fishing boats, but every second Kuskulaner had his own skiff, and that de facto presupposed the existence of the upriver equivalent of a small boat harbor.
    There was a cluster of young men at the landing when Jim stepped off the gangplank. In their late teens, dressed in T-shirts and jeans, most of them looked familiar enough that Jim knew he’d seen them in aggregate at a basketball game or a potlatch in the Niniltna gym, but none of them were so familiar that he’d ever arrested them for vandalism or underage drinking.
    They were piling backpacks, folded tents, sleeping bags, and cardboard cartons into two big skiffs. They paused when they saw him. The tallest stepped forward. “Sergeant Chopin?”
    “That’d be me,” Jim said, pulling off his ball cap and pushing his fingers through his hair to let the breeze dry off his scalp. It was a warm day, welcome after all the rain. “And you are?”
    “Ryan Christianson.”
    Roger’s son. They both had the sharp Kuskulana cheekbones, although Ryan was whipcord lean in comparison to Roger’s comfortably padded frame, and his son was maybe two inches taller. His brown hair was