Though Not Dead by Dana Stabenow Page A

at her, went into the house to pack some necessaries into her daypack, and spent ten blasphemous minutes searching in vain for her cell phone only to have it drop from the driver’s-side visor halfway to Ahtna after they bumped through a particularly obnoxious pothole. She spent at least part of the journey casting anxious glances at the gray sky. If it snowed before she made it home, her pickup would remain in Ahtna until the snow had been packed down by enough snow-machine and four-wheeler traffic to sustain the drive. Which could be December, depending on how thick the snow fell, and how fast.
    At least it held off as far as the Lost Chance Creek bridge, an ex–railroad trestle seven hundred feet long and three hundred feet high and a bitch to navigate in low visibility. This milestone safely negotiated, Kate stepped on the gas and achieved pavement in record time. She drove straight to the courthouse, a massive, curving two-story building on the edge of the river, with a striking metal sculpture of Raven stealing the sun, the moon, and the stars spread across the front doors. The door opened as she came up the steps, Ben Gunn holding it open for Roberta Singh.
    “Your Honor,” Kate said, pausing. She exchanged a nod with Ben.
    “Kate, how nice to see you.” Judge Singh looked like a cross between a ballerina and a princess out of the Arabian nights, tall, slim, sloe-eyed, her black hair pulled back from a broad forehead and knotted at the nape of her neck. She had such immense dignity that she seemed always to be attired in her robes, although today she was in fact dressed with her usual panache in a smart tweed coat with a fur collar, high-heeled boots, and black leather gloves. Kate always felt like the ugly stepsister in Judge Singh’s presence, but then so did every other woman in the Park. Sartorial misery loves company.
    “I was so sorry to hear about Old Sam,” Judge Singh said.
    “Me, too,” Kate said. “But thanks.”
    “We shall not look upon his like again,” Judge Singh said.
    Kate smiled. “No. We shall not.”
    Singh nodded at the courthouse. “You’re here to begin settling his affairs?”
    “Yes, I’m his heir. I’m hoping Jane Silver can help me straighten it all out.”
    “I’m sure she can. Well, if there’s anything I can do…”
    A smile, a handshake, and Judge Singh swept down the steps, the reporter pattering behind. “Judge, I just need to know if—”
    “Mr. Gunn, you know very well I may not discuss—”
    Whatever it was Judge Singh couldn’t say on the record was cut off by the closing of the door.
    Not by so much as the raising of an eyebrow had the judge remarked on Kate’s shiners. A class act, the judge.
    The local lands office was tucked into a corner of the first floor and consisted of a single, very small room containing a desk with a bank of gray filing cabinets crammed behind it.
    At the desk sat Jane Silver, who looked like she ought to be hunched over a steaming cauldron chanting in chorus with the other two weird sisters. A large head lowered between humped shoulders, scalp shining pink through thin flyaway gray hair cut short in no perceptible style, a nose that could have been used to hook halibut, long, yellow teeth—she even had warts. Her faded polyester plaid two-piece suit was missing a button and her orthopedic shoes squeaked even while she was sitting down.
    She looked up when the door opened and fixed Kate with a piercing stare. “Kate Shugak,” she said, in a mellow soprano voice that sounded nothing at all like the cackle it should have been. “That is you, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah, it’s me,” Kate said, stepping inside, followed by her four-footed shadow.
    “What the hell happened to you?”
    Kate had been asking that same question just the night before. “Somebody walloped me with a piece of firewood.”
    Jane inspected her. “Well, they were sincere about it, I’ll give them that.”
    Kate grinned. “Keep the women and children