Any Taint of Vice

She drove into Niniltna and hitched a ride into Anchorage on one of George’s Suulutaq Mine crew-change flights. Kurt was waiting for her when they landed at Merrill. An ex–Park rat, an ex–bear poacher and an ex drug smuggler, Kurt was these days a private investigator. Set a thief to catch a thief, and Kate was pleased to be his financial backer and silent partner. Though today, not so much. Tight-lipped, she nodded a greeting and held the rear passenger door open for Mutt before climbing in next to Kurt. The 140-pound sidekick thrust her head between them as they turned left on East Fifth, yellow eyes taking the measure of the big town with the tall buildings and the many cars. Fewer bears than the Park, but the larger per capita percentage of perps and felons filled in the predator gap. They turned south on the Seward Highway and east up into the Chugach Mountains, to a community of McMansions on broad, curving driveways lined with neatly groomed paper birches of precisely the same age. On a clear day, the view would go all the way to Iliamna. Today the clouds were thick and low and dark. The General’s aide, Oscar Square, answered the door with a cold eye and a cool greeting, but then he and Kate had met before. He twitched not an eyebrow at the half-wolf, half-husky at Kate’s side, only stepped back to open the door wide enough to let all three of them inside, and led them to the General’s study. It was a poor imitation of Henry Higgins’s library  dark oak and brown leather sitting on an expensive imitation Anatolian carpet in deep red and dull gold. Heavy curtains at the tall windows were restrained with gilt ropes, and a silver coffee set sat on a low table between a matching couch and chair."