Bad Blood by Dana Stabenow Page B

Tyler?”
    The other man gave a short laugh. “We were all related to Tyler.” He ran a hand through a crop of shaggy hair. He was medium height and built like a wrestler without being muscle-bound. There was a sureness when he was in motion that was not quite grace. That certainty reminded Jim a little of Kate.
    “You take his body to Anchorage?”
    Jim nodded.
    “We’ll want it back.” Dale Mack nodded toward the back of the little town, where Jim had seen Kushtaka cemetery from the air. “He’ll rest here with his family.”
    “Of course.”
    “Don’t know why you had to do an autopsy. Uncle Pat said Tyler tripped over his own damn feet and fell in and got stuck under the fish wheel.” He met Jim’s eyes steadily.
    “It’s state law in the case of every accidental death,” Jim said. “And until we get the medical examiner’s report, we won’t know exactly how he died.”
    Dale Mack scowled.
    “Where is Pat?” Jim said. “I’d like to talk to him.”
    “What do you need to know?”
    Jim allowed himself to be diverted, for the moment. “More about Tyler, for starters. Did he have a job? Friends? A wife or girlfriend, maybe?”
    Dale Mack looked at the old man sitting at Jim’s side. The old man gazed into the distance with a bland expression. “I knew him about as well as anyone in Kushtaka. His only job that I know of here was to clean out the fish wheel holding pen, and half the time he couldn’t be bothered to do that. I hear tell he was working up at the Suulutaq Mine now and then. He hung out a lot with Boris Balluta up in Niniltna.”
    Freely translated, Why don’t you go talk to Boris and leave us alone? Jim nodded at the village. “He have a cabin here?”
    Dale Mack hesitated, and then gave a surly nod. He led the way to the end of the street and pointed. It was less a cabin than a shed, a lean-to without another structure to lean against. The slanted roof was covered with asphalt shingles themselves covered with moss, and the exterior was T1-11 that had never been painted and was now weathered to a lifeless gray. The homemade door was reinforced with chicken wire and fastened with a hasp and a brass padlock that dangled open. Jim contemplated the padlock for a moment, before removing it and opening the door.
    Very little light was admitted through the single very small window on the back wall. Jim pushed the door wide and ducked his head to step inside.
    He was surprised at how neat it was. A single bunk carefully made with army surplus blankets on the left. On the opposite wall, a counter made of two-by-fours and a slab of plywood, topped with a sheet of Formica in a faded green pattern. On it sat a Coleman two-burner propane stove and a square blue plastic washbasin. On the shelf beneath, canned goods were stacked with labels facing out. Jim looked, and looked again. Also sorted by kind, peaches, pears, and cherries, green and black and pinto and kidney beans, tomato sauce and tomato paste. Next to them dishes, glasses, flatware, utensils, a cast iron frying pan and a saucepan, all scoured clean.
    There was a recliner of venerable vintage against the back wall. Next to it a Coleman lantern hung from a stand handmade from a piece of angle iron welded to what looked like an old brake shoe for a base and what might have been a wrought iron plant hanger welded to the top. A plastic bucket on the floor next to the chair was filled with Playboy s, Penthouse s, and Hustler s. Jim flipped through them and found an ad torn from a month-old Anchorage paper for the Brown Jug Warehouse in Anchorage.
    Behind him Dale Mack sighed and shifted from one foot to the other. Jim ignored him.
    Several items on the ad were heavily circled in pencil—whiskey, bourbon, tequila, all hard liquor. Evidently Tyler hadn’t been into beer or wine.
    Two plastic bins with snap-on lids under the bed held clothes, most notable of which were a pair of Guess jeans and a couple of Ralph Lauren knockoff shirts. They had