| |
(Sitka. Present day. Tuesday.)
The doorbell rang.
Elizabeth started toward it, but Seth held her back.
“Look out the window first,” he advised. “See who it is.”
She looked wounded but did as he advised. “Two men. I’m pretty sure one is Captain Wyckoff, Paul’s boss. I’d guess the other is Lanky Purdue, Dace’s boss.”
She looked up the street. “Yes, that’s my nephew’s car driving away. He was sent to get them.”
Seth nodded. He picked up Elizabeth’s pistol from the table near the door and stepped out of sight. “Go ahead,” he said.
“Seth, you’re being silly,” she hissed at him.
He shrugged. “Probably. But something was off about that visit last night. Until we know what’s going on, it’s OK for us to be a bit cautious.”
She bit her lip, turned to the door. “Who is it?”
“Dr. Kitka, it’s Thomas Wyckoff,” a man said. “I have Lanky Purdue with me.”
She raised an eyebrow at Seth, and when he nodded, she let the two men in. They had to have seen Seth put the weapon back on the small table, but they said nothing.
“Would you like some coffee?” Elizabeth said. “Or maybe something to eat? Did you have lunch? It’s 2 p.m.”
“Don’t mean to trouble you,” Wyckoff demurred, but Purdue interrupted. “Breakfast was a long time ago,” he said, more at ease with women than Wyckoff would ever be. If you couldn’t feed them, letting them feed you helped everyone relax. Besides he was hungry.
Delores jumped up from the table. “Is it that late?” she exclaimed. “No wonder my stomach is growling.” She headed toward the kitchen. “Sandwiches coming up for everyone.”
Thomas Wyckoff smiled at Elizabeth. “If it isn’t too much trouble.”
She smiled, shook her head. “We haven’t eaten either. I’ve been telling stories.” She gestured toward the table. “A lot of history is piled up there.”
“Stories?” he said, moving toward the table. “Have you gotten to the part about your husband’s death? Because I’d like to hear about that.”
“After we eat,” Angela called out. “And I think Karin has a story to tell first. Some of those papers are things she and Jonas have pried out of the DA’s office. I want to hear about her father, too. I think he’s key to this.”
“Your father?” Wyckoff asked as he moved to take a plate of sandwiches from Karin’s hands. “I didn’t think you were from here.”
“I’m not,” she said, turning back toward the kitchen for another plate of stacked sandwiches. Apparently, Angela was used to feeding a small army. “But my Dad was up here 30 years ago and never came back. He was killed here.”
“By whom?” Wyckoff asked.
“Good question. Duke Campbell, I think,” Karin said. “Or at least, he ordered it done.”
There was another knock on the door. With a role of her eyes, Elizabeth looked out the window before going to open the door.
“Father,” she said, with obvious delight. “You honor us.”
The old Native Alaskan man touched her hands lightly and smiled.
“Come in,” Elizabeth said. “I want you to meet some people.”
When she reached Captain Wyckoff, the old man Luke Kitka, Sr., shook his hand. “We’re going to get justice for my son,” Luke Kitka, Sr., said.
“Yes,” Thomas Wyckoff agreed. “It’s long past due.”
“And for the others,” Luke persisted.
Wyckoff closed his eyes briefly, and sighed. “Do you know how many others?” he asked. “Your son. Karin’s father I’m just hearing about. Others?”
“Not too many other deaths. Karin’s father had a companion with him. There have been a couple of others who disappeared mysteriously during the labor union battles. Many more have been injured, some permanently. The biggest injustices have been to those who have been incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit, for assaulting a police officer when they were the victims. It is time for reconciliation, and for justice. We will not be silent any longer.”
“Father, why have you been silent so long?” Elizabeth asked with pain making her voice tremble.
“Because we would not be believed,” Luke Kitka, Sr., said. “There was no one to hear us. But things have changed. In the Lower 48, and in Alaska. We will be heard now.”
He smiled gently at his daughter-in-law. “And because of Paul. Paul Kitka is the future. And we will not let him suffer the fate of his father without a fight.”
He looked back at Wyckoff and the other men in the room. “We will tear this town apart if we have to, in order to find our justice. The young men of the tribe are not as ...,” he paused, looking for the right word.
“Isolated?” Elizabeth suggested. “Separated?”
Luke Kitka, Sr., considered the suggestions. “You are kind, when I haven’t always been kind to you,” he said. “Yes, we were separate. We saw white men as another force of nature to be endured. We were fierce fighters once. But there are so few of us left. But the younger men? They’ve been to schools. Taken courses from professors like you, Elizabeth,” and he openly grinned at her. “They’ve gone away to serve in the military. And they know they don’t have to allow white men to treat us this way. The Tribal Council has listened to them.”
He paused, then looked at Elizabeth, and nodded. “We will have justice.”
And for a moment, he looked like the fierce warriors he had descended from — the ones who had once chased the Russians with their cannons and superior weapons out of Sitka, if only for a brief time.
Elizabeth returned his nod.
“We have been telling stories of the past, Father Kitka,” she said, after a period of respectful silence that he was due for his announcement — of war really. He had just declared war on the Sitka police. She wondered if Captain Wyckoff knew that. His face gave away little. Lanky Purdue’s face was a bit more expressive, and she saw that he did understand. Good. “I was going to tell them about the 1980s. And then I think Karin has a story to tell us. It may not be easy to hear.”
He nodded. “I will listen. There has been too much pain because I did not listen in the past.”
Someone snickered. It wasn’t any of her children, thank God, Elizabeth saw. One of the cousins then, as she thought of them. Although at least one of the men in the room was actually an uncle to her children. He had helped raise the boys, in particular, to the ways of the tribe when their grandfather had rejected them as worthy of learning them. She would always be grateful.