Fire And Ice Part 1

FIRE AND ICE.

by DANA STABENOW.

for my aunt Patricia Perry Carlson - Liam looks a little like Mel Gibson just for her My thanks again to my father, Don Stabenow, always my first and most important resource, and who has certainly never ever been quoted verbatim in any of my books, goodness me, no, and to Pati, for the drunk shaman, and to Sifu Marshall V. Clymer, for his years of skill and kindness, and to John Evans of the Dillingham Police Department and Dyanne Inglima Brown of the Alaska State Troopers. They can be the cops on my beat any day.

FIRE AND ICE.

ONE.

Liam boarded first and watched the rest of the pa.s.sengers troop down the aisle. It was a full load, a disparate group that he had already typed and cross-matched with their potential for future crime.

There was the Alaskan Old Fart, short, dark, a grin one part mean to two parts pure evil, who had poacher written all over him. There was the tall man with a shock of white hair and his green-eyed daughter, who would both of them have helped the Old Fart skin out whatever he took whenever he took it, but only so much as they could use in a winter. There was the Moccasin Man, tall, loping, clad in fatigues and beaded buckskin moccasins with matching belt pouch that Liam instantly pegged for growing wholesale quant.i.ties of marijuana in his back bedroom, and the h.e.l.l's Angel, Moccasin Man's sidekick, barrel-shaped beer belly, black leather boots with a shine on them to match the one reflected by his shaved, bullet-shaped scalp with a meth lab in his spare room. The Flirt, on the other hand, should have been arrested for incitement to riot the second after she'd stepped out in public that morning: she wore a red silk shirt with no bra beneath it and a long skirt that accentuated the deliberate sway of her very nice a.s.s. Moccasin Man had demonstrated an immediate and obvious admiration for that sway, and had been granted the privilege of escorting the Flirt to her seat.

The rest of the manifest wasn't as interesting. There was the Bush couple, a nondescript husband and wife who looked like card-carrying members of the proletariat who took their seats and melted into the bulkhead. They were followed by a family of five, white father, Yupik mother, and three small children, one still nursing, a tall, spare, grizzled man who had looked long and hard at Liam and who had almost spoken to him in the terminal but then appeared to think better of it, a plump woman who just missed being grandmotherly by two streaks of ice blue eye shadow and a slash of maroon lipstick, and the airline's station manager for King Salmon, who curled up in the frontright-hand seat and promptly went to sleep, snoring loudly enough to be heard over the engines.

Liam envied him deeply. He himself was occupied with holding the fourteen-seat Fairchild Metroliner up in the air by the edge of his seat as they rose smoothly over Knik Arm and banked south down Cook Inlet. It was half past three o'clock on the afternoon of May 1. Breakup was late, temperatures still dropping to or below freezing at nights, stubborn ice ruts refusing to melt from the roads, snow clinging obstinately to the Chugach Mountains. It wasn't the only reason Liam was glad to be leaving Anchorage behind, but it would do, and it was almost enough for him to forget that he was ten thousand feet up in the air.

Almost.

Within minutes they were out of the low-lying clouds cl.u.s.tered over the Anchorage bowl, and mountains Denali and Foraker loomed up on the right. Foraker looked like a square, stolid Norman keep, and Denali like a home for G.o.ds. Susitna and Spurr were beneath them, the Sleeping Lady undisturbed beneath her lingering white winter blanket, Spurr worn down to three or four lesser peaks by an average of one eruption per decade. Redoubt, a once perfect cone blown to a shark's tooth, barely registered through the window before the plane banked right and southwest. Liam swallowed hard.

Now it was the Alaska Range, an entire horizon filled with sharp, unfriendly peaks, and no place that he could see to land safely. But there was for a miracle little turbulence, and the smooth ride and the drone of the engines eventually dulled him into an unexpected, uneasy doze, where his subconscious, that sly, slick b.a.s.t.a.r.d, was lurking, loitering with intent, just waiting to raise his viperous head and hiss a reminder that Liam had yet to call his soul his own. A jumbled ma.s.s of images fast-forwarded in front of him: laughing, loving Jenny with the light brown hair, his father's implacable eyes, Charlie's gap-toothed grin. Alfred and Rose, faces dull with grief and despair. That old black Ford sedan stuck on the Denali Highway, the bodies huddled together in the backseat for a warmth that failed them in the end. The disappointment and determination on John Barton's face. Dyson groveling on his knees, begging for his life.

She was there, too, of course, the brown-eyed, blond-haired witch. Once again she turned and walked away, down the street, around a corner, and out of his life, and once again the grief of parting jerked him up in his seat with a jolt, heart pounding, palms sweaty, the loss as sharply felt as if he had suffered it yesterday. They were descending, and the clouds had closed back in and brought turbulence with them. Liam looked out the window, where a thin line of frost was forming on the leading edge of the wing, and he welcomed the distraction the terror of the sight brought him.

He watched the line of frost attentively, until they came out of the clouds at seven thousand feet and it vanished and the Nus.h.a.gak River and Bristol Bay came into view. To Liam it looked like the approach to heaven, an image enhanced by the golden rim of sunshine shining through the gap between the clouds and the vast expanse of gray water that took up the whole southern horizon.

Ten minutes later they were on the ground, at the end of a paved runway six thousand feet in length; plenty long enough for 737's loaded with herring roe and salmon, the reason for the city of Newenham's existence, the raison d'etre of Bristol Bay, and, at least indirectly, the cause of Liam's new posting.

Congratulations, he thought. You're a trooper. Again. He'd removed his sergeant's insignia from his uniform before he'd left Glenallen, and had it cleaned twice to fade the marks where it had been. With luck, no one would know. His uniform was packed in a bag stored in the hold. All the pictures on the news had been of him in his uniform; he wanted to avoid recognition for as long as possible.

The Metroliner turned off onto the taxiway. In a voice that carried to the back of the cabin, the pilot said, "What the h.e.l.l!" and they screeched to a halt, the engines roaring a protest. Everyone was thrown forward against their seat belts, and some who had unbuckled too soon found their faces right against the backs of the seats in front of them. By the time Liam got his heart restarted, the pilot had shut down both engines and the copilot had the door open and the steps let down. Liam unbuckled his belt with shaky hands and was on the ground right behind him.

The Newenham airport was ten miles south of Newenham proper, forty miles short of Chinook Air Force Base. It was of recent construction, not five years old, and replaced the previous airstrip, which, if it had held true to old-time Bush construction, would have run either parallel to or right down Main Street, where people could step out their front doors and onto a plane. Nowadays they built Bush airstrips ten to fifty miles away from the town, forcing everyone to buy cars to get back and forth.

A series of prefabricated corrugated steel buildings of various sizes marched unevenly down one side of the runway, opposite a wide gravel area dotted with tie-downs. A third of the tie-downs were occupied by small planes of every age and make, some big, some small, most with two wings and a propeller, some with four wings, some with two propellers, some with wings made of fabric stretched over aluminum tubing, some built of aluminum from the inside out. Most of them looked neat and ready to fly and some looked like they would drop right out of the sky, providing they got up into the air in the first place.

They all looked alike to Liam. They were planes. He didn't need to know any more, thank you.

The buildings consisted of a terminal and hangars, offices for air taxis and a Standard Oil office with a tank farm looming up in back of it, and a couple of aviation parts stores and a tiny little log house that would have looked like a cache without the stilts that bore a sign proclaiming it YE OLDE GIFTE SHOPPE.

Small planes buzzed overhead on takeoff and landing. There was another small plane pulled around in front of the Standard Oil pumps, a red one with a pair of wings that looked larger than its fuselage and white identification letters down the side ending in 78 ZULU. Liam's heart gave an involuntary thump, and then his eyes dropped to the ground in front of the aircraft.

"Oh my G.o.d!" the near-miss grandmother said from the top of the Metroliner's stairs.

A body lay on the ground, a bright red circle spreading rapidly from beneath its head, or where its head used to be. The propeller of the little plane was stained the same bright red.

TWO.

For a moment, no one could move, except for the square-jawed young copilot as he heaved up his breakfast. The people on the ground, the people in the plane, the people staring in horrified fascination out of the terminal's windows all stood in frozen silence.

There was a woman kneeling in front of the body, her back to the runway. Dressed in worn jeans and denim jacket, the only clue to her femininity was the fat braid of golden brown hair that lay along her spine, strands escaping to curl madly all around her head. Liam found himself behind her without any conscious recollection of moving. It took him three tries to say anything, and when he could speak his voice seemed to come from very far away. "Wy." She refused to look around, but a visible shudder ran over her body, and he was close enough to see the sudden p.r.i.c.kling of the skin on the back of her neck. Her head came up like a deer on the scent of danger. "Who is he?"

She didn't turn, but then she didn't have to. Wyanet Chouinard was a brown-eyed blonde, thirty-one years old, five feet five inches tall, with full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, a small waist, and lush, full hips that looked better in denim than any figure had a right to. Her voice came out low and husky, but that could have been stress and shock. From what was lying on the ground in front of her, or from what was looming up in back of her? Both, Liam hoped, with a sudden ferocity unknown to him until that moment. It surprised him, andwiththe surprise came a hot rush of sheer pleasure. He hoped he threatened her. He wanted to strangle her.

He pulled himself together. First, the job. "It's Liam, Wy."

"I know who it is," she said without moving.

"Who is he?" he repeated.

"Bob." A long, shuddering sigh. One hand reached out as if to touch the still shoulder closest to her, dropped. "Bob DeCreft."

The deceased was male, taller than average with well-defined shoulders and large, scarred hands. He'd dressed that morning in faded Levi's and a blue plaid Pendleton shirt with both elbows threadbare. He had a black leather knife sheath fastened to his belt, the flap still snapped, and Sorels, the ubiquitous Alaskan Bush boots, on his feet. The hard rubber heels were close to being worn flat. Liam forced himself to look, but it was impossible to see the dead man's features or the color of his hair. The plane's propeller had done a thorough job.

He looked up at it. Both blades stained dark red. A faint cry came from near the plane, and Liam turned his head to see the Flirt being enfolded in Moccasin Man's comforting and by now distinctly proprietary embrace. He looked back at the crowd, beginning to come to life, muttering and shifting. A breeze had come up off the river, and people were starting to get cold but didn't feel quite right about leaving. Either that, or were too curious to go. Liam understood both reasons.

He slipped easily into investigatory mode. "Did anyone see what happened?"

No one said anything. A few people looked at another man standing to one side, a thin man of medium height in his mid-thirties with dishwater blond hair and a pallid face. He was chewing something steadily, cheek muscles moving without pause, like a cow chewing a cud. "Who are you, sir?"

The man opened his mouth and almost spit out a large wad of pink gum. His face turned the same color. He sucked the gum back in and said, "Uh, Gary Gruber. I'm the manager."

"Of what?"

"Oh. Uh, of the airport?"

It didn't sound as if Gruber were all that certain just what he was managing, but then sudden, violent, proximate death had a way of casting everything in one's life into question. Liam waited with that outward attention and patience cultivated by an Alaska state trooper, at the same time completely and overwhelmingly conscious of the woman standing at his side.

After a moment Gruber, apprehensive and fl.u.s.tered, continued. "I make sure the planes are parked in the right s.p.a.ces, advise about the scheduling, watch for theft, sub for ATC and weather and the fueler when they go on break." His voice trailed off.

"Did you see the accident?"

Gruber shook his head violently, chewing hard at his gum, jaw moving like a piston. "No. No no no. I was in the terminal. I only came out when I heard people shouting. And then I saw--" His voice failed him again.

Liam raised his voice. "Did anyone else see what happened?"

No one had, or weren't saying if they had. "Does anyone know how it could have happened?"

Wy said, "He must have primed the prop by hand."

"What?" Liam still couldn't look at her directly. He looked at Gruber instead.

Gruber swallowed again, Adam's apple bobbing in the open throat of his shirt. "I guess she means Bob must have pulled the prop through by hand."

Liam looked again at the prop. At his height it was nearly eye-level. Despite the rays of the early evening sun peering through the break in the clouds, a light rain was falling. The blood on the tips was beginning to run, coalescing into fat red drops that fell with audible plops to the mangled flesh of the man beneath. "Huh?"

"You reach up, grab a blade, and rotate the prop a couple of times," Wy said.

"Oh, you mean like--"

Gruber choked on his wad of gum, and Wy said, "Don't do that!"

She grabbed his half-raised hand. Her touch seared right through the surface of his skin. She let go, a brief flush of color in her cheeks. "Sorry," she said gruffly. "I haven't checked her out since I got back and found Bob. Whatever was wrong with her still is."

"Oh." Liam, feeling suddenly warm, unzipped his jacket and turned his face up to catch a little of the cooling drizzle on his overheated skin. "Why would he do that? What did you call it, "pull the prop through by hand"? I take it that isn't standard procedure." He looked at Gruber because he wasn't sure what his face would show if he looked at Wy.

"No." Gruber looked at the pilot standing silently next to the trooper. Liam waited. "He was an old-timer," she said finally.

"An old-timer? What's that got to do with anything?"

She looked up, and slowly Liam turned to meet her eyes, which were as bleak as her voice. "A lot of the old-time pilots are used to the old round engines, which had a habit of leaking oil into the cylinders. Pilots would pull their props through to make sure no leaky oil had caused a hydraulic lock. If they didn't pull it through, they could blow a jug."

"Blow a what?"

"A jug. A cylinder."

"Oh," he said.

She gave a faint shrug. "I pull the prop through in the wintertime myself, just to see if it's moving freely."

"It's never done this to you," Liam observed, and knew a momentary spear of terror. G.o.dd.a.m.n flying anyway, it'd kill you in the air or on the ground, made no difference.

She shook her head. "I always check the magneto twice. Always. Sometimes three times." Her brow creased. "But so does Bob. I don't understand this."

"The magneto?"

"The switch connected to the p-lead. Controls power to the ignition."

Liam thought about it. "So if it's off, the prop shouldn't do this."

"No."

"Show me."

She hesitated. Her hand came out in a futile gesture.

"Don't," he said, understanding.

Her hand dropped, her shoulders slumping.

"Mr. Gruber?" Liam had to say the airport manager's name twice before the man could tear his eyes from the body. "Why don't you get a tarp or something to cover him up?"

Gruber shifted from one foot to the other. "Uh, listen, no offense, but who are you, anyway?"

Liam glanced down involuntarily at his clothes. He was dressed much as Wy was-jeans, sneakers, plaid flannel shirt beneath a windbreaker. "Sorry. I'm a state trooper, just transferred to the Newenham post. Liam Campbell. My uniform's packed." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the Fairchild Metroliner, one prop shut down now, the other still whirring. He fished out his badge.

Gruber's jaw hung open in mid-chew, the wad of gum gleaming pinkly between his teeth, pale eyes staring from the badge to Liam and back again.

"That tarp, Mr. Gruber?" Liam said.

Gruber flushed, nodded once, and went off, shifting the gum from one cheek to the other, the cheek muscles working like pistons again.

The two halves of the small red and white plane's left-side door were folded open, the top portion fastened to the wing with a quick-release latch, the bottom half left to hang. The c.o.c.kpit of the plane was, to put it kindly, utilitarian. The seats were little more than plastic stretched over a metal frame, the interior was without the usual fabric covering, and the dash was held together in places with duct tape. She'd seen better days.

Wy saw his look. "She flies," she said.

Liam let that pa.s.s. "Where's the ignition?"

Liam had spent his life in a concentrated effort to learn as little about flying as he possibly could, which was a neat trick given his profession and where he practiced it. There were roads in Alaska: one between Homer and Anchorage, two between Anchorage and Fairbanks with a spur to Valdez, and one between Fairbanks and Outside. You needed to go somewhere there wasn't a road, you flew. Troopers needed to go everywhere, so troopers flew, some in their own planes, some that they contracted. Liam contracted.

Wy had been his pilot, and 78 Zulu had been her plane, back in the days when there was a lot less duct tape and a lot more spit and polish about her. It was because of 78 Zulu that Liam could recognize a Piper Super Cub when he saw one. It was the only plane he could recognize, outside of a 747, and that only because of the b.u.mp on its nose.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, staring at the inside of the little plane. He looked at Wy from the corner of his eye. To anyone else, to anyone who didn't know her as well as he did, as intimately as he had, she would have looked calm, controlled, perhaps a little pale, understandable in the circ.u.mstances. But he knew what to look for, always had, and he relished the pulse thudding rapidly at the base of her throat, at the way her gaze avoided his.

She pointed beneath a row of gauges that meant nothing to Liam, and he saw a k.n.o.b with four settings: Right, Left, Both, Off. It was set at Off. He stared at it in puzzled silence for a moment. "Where's the On?"

"What?"

"If there's an Off, there ought to be an On."

Seemed simple enough to Liam, but Wy shook her head. "Magnetos are little generators, their own power source. There are two of them, and they're always on. This isn't really an on-off switch, like a"--she cast about for a comparison to something he might understand--"like a light switch. It's a kill switch. Either their power is available to the engine, one or the other or both of them, or it isn't."

"And according to this switch, power from this one wasn't when Mr. ..."

"DeCreft."

"When Mr. DeCreft pulled the prop through."

"No. But it must have been, or--" She stopped, and added, almost against her will, "I don't get it."

"Get what?"