Dana Stabenow - A Night Too Dark: A Kate Shugak Novel (Kate Shugak Novels)

A
NIGHT
Too
DARK

ALSO BY DANA STABENOW

THE KATE SHUGAK SERIES

Whisper to the Blood

A Deeper Sleep

A Taint in the Blood

A Grave Denied

A Fine and Bitter Snow

The Singing of the Dead

Midnight Come Again

Hunters Moon

Killing Grounds

Breakup

Blood Will Tell

Play with Fire

A Cold-Blooded Business

Dead in the Water

A Fatal Thaw

A Cold Day for Murder

THE LIAM CAMPBELL SERIES

Better to Rest

Nothing Gold Can Stay

So Sure of Death

Fire and Ice

NOVELS AND ANTHOLOGIES

Prepared for Rage

Blindfold Game

Powers of Detection

Wild Crimes

Alaska Women Write

The Mysterious North

At the Scene of the Crime

Unusual Suspects

THE STAR SVENSDOTTER SERIES

Red Planet Run

A Handful of Stars

Second Star

A
NIGHT
Too
DARK

DANA STABENOW

MINOTAUR BOOKS
NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in
this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

A NIGHT TOO DARK. Copyright 2010 by Dana Stabenow. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. For information, address
St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

[http://www.minotaurbooks.com] www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stabenow, Dana.
A night too dark : a Kate Shugak novel / Dana Stabenow.1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-55909-0
1. Shugak, Kate (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. Women private investigatorsAlaskaFiction. 3. AlaskaFiction. I. Title.
PS3569.T1249N54 2010
813'.54dc22

2009039815

First Edition: February 2010

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Pati Crofut
about time,
considering how many of her experiences
Ive stolen for my books

Acknowledgments

Grateful thanks to Quinsey Jorgenson,
who knows far better than I do
what Vanessas wearing these days.

Even more grateful thanks to her brother,
Cale Jorgenson,
who went to college so
I could have his room on overnights.

Thanks again to Gary and Jeanne Porter,
who I swear keep doing stuff
just so I can use it for my books.

And thanks to Mayhem in the Midlands
for making me Zoe Sharps crash test dummy
so Kate could knock that little weasel on his butt.

A
NIGHT
Too
DARK

Gold.
Number 79 on the periodic table. Au, from the Latin aurum.
The most precious and prized of metals, used for currency beginning with the Egyptian pharaohs in 2700 B.C. and down through the ages by all nations as the metal of choice in the manufacture of those coins of highest value, the aureus, the solidus, the ducat, the guilder, the sovereign, the double eagle, the Krugerrand.
A malleable and forgiving metal, an ounce of pure gold can be beaten into a sheet large enough to gild the roof of a small home, although it is more dense than lead. It doesnt corrode, which makes it perfect for jewelry, although in its pure state it is too soft to stand up to repeated use and so is alloyed with other metalscopper, silver, nickel, or palladiumso that a wedding ring will last through a golden anniversary.
Gold is tasteless, although in the 1500s a Dutchman invented a liqueur called Goldwasser in which he sprinkled gold flakes. Medieval chefs used gold to garnish sweets before sending them up to the high tables.
Gold is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, and resistant to oxidation and corrosion, making it useful in electronics and dentistry. It was used to plate the copper disk of recorded greetings on board Voyager 1, a hundred astronomical units out and counting. It is included in speculative designs for solar sails for spaceships and solar collectors for space habitats. Scientists have built gold nanospheres to work with lasers on a cure for cancer.
Gold is rare. Of all the noble metals, only mercury is more infrequently found in the earths crust.
Mythological gold is as seductive as gold manifest. Midas asked Dionysus for the gift of turning everything to gold with his touch, only to discover a mixed blessing when gold food and drink proved to be indigestible. Jasons fleece, Kidds treasure, Pizarros El Dorado, Sutters Mill, Siwash Georges Rabbit Creek, Yamashitas Buddhain any reality, in any century gold enthralls, enchants, intoxicates, and is the downfall of many an otherwise sensible man or woman who succumbs to its siren song.
Gold.
At last report, $940.48 per troy ounce on the world market....

One

MEMORIAL DAY

Father Smith was the proud proprietor of a forty-acre homestead in the Park, along with a wife and seventeen children, all of whom still lived at home.
Not that he would ever have admitted it, even to himself, this registered as nothing compared to the fact that he was the sole owner of the subsurface mineral rights to his forty acres, and that said forty acres abutted Beaver Creek.
Beaver Creek hosted a very nice run of king salmon in the summer, its many small feeder creeks offering narrow, shallow gravel beds for the salmon to lay and fertilize their eggs. It also supported a healthy population of beaver. It was one of the Parks larger creeks, a fifteen-mile tributary of the Kanuyaq River that rose in the northernmost foothills of the Quilaks, drained south-southwest, and in high water was navigable to just above the Smith homestead. The creek formed the homesteads eastern lot line.
The homestead had been previously owned by an Alaskan old fart who had staked a gold claim on Beaver Creek and had proved up on the homestead by building a cabin there and living in it. Thirty years later, on the other side of a bad divorce, hed been in a hurry to vacate the premises before his ex-wife, also known as Rebecca the Raptor, nudged her lawyer into investigating the property title with a view toward adding it to her rapidly accumulating pile of marital assets.
Father Smith had furnished the capital and Park rat Louis Deem the insider knowledge, and together they had gone equal partners on the purchase. Things became complicated when Louis was murdered, but now, at long last, Judge Singh in Ahtna had ruled on his petition and granted Father Smith clear title and sole ownership. Joint rights of survivorship was a fine, statutory phrase. Father Smith had Ahtna attorney Pete Wheeler draw up his own will immediately afterward. Seventeen heirs, eighteen if you counted Mother Smith, could prove troublesome to each other and to the courts, but that, Lord willing, was a long time off and not to be worried over at present. Man proposes, God disposes.
Judge Singh had arrived at her verdict despite a feeble and barely legal protest from Louis Deems roommate, sycophant and de facto coheir Howie Katelnikof, and a more ably argued but equally futile complaint by the Parks Service. Father Smith did not consider Howie as a future problem. The Parks Service was another matter, their proprietrary regard for all lands within their boundaries well known to Park rats, whether the property had been grandfathered in or not. Father Smith had no doubt there were legal challenges from the Parks Service in the future. God tested the faithful in many ways.