Fire And Ice Part 3

The Old Fart was a foot shorter than the trooper, which he rectified by hoisting himself up on a stool. He turned to Liam and stuck out a hand. "Moses Alakuyak, shaman."

His beer and Liam's single malt arrived. Moses held out his bottle of beer and Liam clinked his gla.s.s against it. "To women," Moses said. "Not all of them leave, you know."

"I beg your pardon?" Liam said.

Moses drained his bottle in one long, continuous swallow. "Barkeep! Do it again! Not that it matters," he said, turning back to Liam. "Pretty soon there'll be nothing left of this G.o.dd.a.m.n planet but a garbage dump and a grave."

Ten years of practicing law enforcement with the Alaska State Troopers was an excellent way to hone one's survival skills. Liam murmured something that could have been agreement, and sipped cautiously at his gla.s.s, but it was the real thing all right: Glenmorangie single malt scotch. He swirled the liquid around in his gla.s.s and inhaled with reverence.

"People think survival of the fittest is all right for animals but not for people," Moses explained expansively. "We're not culling the human herd the way we oughta. We're saving the weakest: the ones with AIDS, the folks in Africa who can't figure out how to feed themselves, them Serbs who can't stop shooting at their neighbors. We're gonna rescue 'em all, and wipe out the human race doing it." The old man snorted, a comprehensive sound issuing forth from his snubbed nose. "By G.o.d," he said, voice rising, "we're living in the best of times right now, because it sure as h.e.l.l ain't gonna get any better."

The scotch slid down Liam's throat like melted b.u.t.ter. He set the gla.s.s down. "Thanks for the drink, Moses," he said, and paused. "Wait a minute. How did you know I drink single malt scotch?"

"I know a lot of things about you," Moses said, knocking back his second beer and waving for a third. Bill brought it, and set it down gently in front of him. There was none of the condemnation in her expression Liam had seen there for Teddy Engebretsen. Of course, Moses had fixed the jukebox and returned Jimmy Buffett to his natural setting, a bar, so Bill was no doubt inclined to look kindly upon him.

Bill stretched out a hand and cupped Moses' cheek. "Going to be one of those nights, huh?" she said in the softest tone Liam had yet to hear her use.

"Don't worry about it," Moses said gruffly, but he didn't turn away when she leaned over the bar and kissed him. It wasn't the kiss of a friend, either; it went on for a while, and Moses hooked a hand around the back of Bill's head and cooperated with enthusiasm, to the vocal approval of the bar's other customers.

Bill pulled back and gave Moses a sweet smile. "Later, lover."

He caught at her hand before she could move down the bar, and kissed it. "Later."

There was a wealth of promise in both word and kiss. Liam was trying to read the fine print of the labels on the line of bottles on the opposite wall when Moses dug an elbow into his side. "Okay to look now, trooper." The Old Fart grinned up at him, and now that he was looking for it, Liam could see the Alakuyak in him, in the barely perceptible slant of his eyes, the high, flat cheekbones, the snubbed nose. Come to think of it, his height should have been a dead giveaway--most Yupik men ranged between four-eight and five-five. But his skin was olive, not golden, his hair a grizzled brown, not the sleek black cap found in the villages, and his eyes were a startling gray, a gray so light they had almost no color at all. They were looking at Liam now, clear, cool, a.s.sessing, and Liam could not shake the uncomfortable feeling that they could see right through him.

Moses didn't help when he said, "Yeah, I know a lot of things, about everything, but right now I want to know why you're keeping a girt as fine as Wyanet Chouinard waiting on you."

The accusation took Liam aback, and he fumbled around for an acceptable answer. "Well, I--everything's happened so fast, I didn't know --the mayor came and--"

"I don't mean this bulls.h.i.t." An allinclusive wave of one impatient hand took in Teddy Engebretsen, still bound and gagged. "Why didn't you come after her?"

Liam felt disembodied. "I'm married," he heard someone say.

"Like h.e.l.l you are." Moses stared at him, not without sympathy. "That's no kind of way to live, boy."

"It's my life," Liam said, and the anger came back again, anger at himself, at Wy, at Jenny, at fate.

Moses regarded him impatiently. "Ain't never going to be a good time to make the break, boy. Your situation, painful though it is, aggravating though it is, is familiar to you. You've become comfortable in it. You don't want to make a mess, create fuss and inconvenience. Tell you something." The shaman, if that was what he was, snorted a laugh. "Tell you a lot of things, because I know a lot of things, but right now listen to this." Moses drained his fourth beer, and pointed to it for emphasis. "Life isn't neat. Know why? Because it's run by imperfect people who make messes, who then have to go around cleaning up after themselves." Moses gave Liam a severe once-over. "You're not much of a cleaner-upper, are you, boy?"

Liam could feel the heat rising up beneath his skin. All he could think of to say was "You don't talk like someone raised in Bush Alaska. Where did you go to school?"

"Hah!" Moses said, triumphant. "I can't talk like this because I was raised in a village, is that it? You got a lot to learn, boy, and I'm just the one to teach you. Stick around." He drained his gla.s.s with a satisfied smack of his lips, followed by a resonant and contented burp. "But not tonight. Bill! Hit me again!"

"In a minute." Bill took Liam's gla.s.s, drained it, and used the thick end to rap the bar, twice, sharp, quick raps, bringing everyone to momentary attention. She bent a severe eye on Teddy Engebretsen, still bound and gagged. He quailed. "Teddy Engebretsen, in my capacity as magistrate of the state of Alaska, I charge you with being drunk and disorderly in public, discharging a firearm within the city limits, and just generally being a pain in the a.s.s. I find you guilty of same. Court's adjourned." She thumped the bar with the gla.s.s twice again. "He's all yours, trooper. Legally, anyway."

"What am I supposed to do with him?" Liam said.

Now it was Bill's turn to regard him with impatience. "Toss him in the hoosegow. What the h.e.l.l kind of trooper are you?"

A magistrate for the state of Alaska didn't need a law degree, didn't need much more than a high school diploma or its equivalent and some standing in his or her community. Official arrest procedures called for the swearing out of a warrant, a reading of rights, an arraignment, a grand jury, a trial, a conviction--all those nitpicky little due-process things required by the Const.i.tution of the United States and affirmed by the Bill of Rights, not to mention two hundred and twenty years of Supreme Court case law. Belief in those things made Liam the kind of trooper he was, but they didn't seem to count for much here and now. "Where exactly is the, er, hoosegow?" he said meekly.

"At the cop shop. Jim Earl'll show you."

"How long do I leave him there?"

"Long as I say so," Bill said.

"Oh."

Moses grinned at him.

It could be worse, Liam thought. At least Newenham's magistrate had taken the Sixth Amendment to heart, if no other. Teddy Engebretsen's trial had been speedy, and it sure as h.e.l.l had been public.

A dimension beyond sight and sound, he thought, going down the stairs and out to the construction orange Suburban. A dimension known as the Twilight Zone.

FOUR.

Teddy Engebretsen was freed from bondage and deposited safely, if a bit tearfully, in one of the six cells available at the local jail. The dispatcher, a leathery middle-aged woman with a hara.s.sed look on her face, tossed Jim Earl the keys while talking nonstop through her headset, something about a joust between two dueling snow machiners on the Icky road. The Icky road? It was the first week of May, and Liam hadn't seen any snow on the ground either from the air or Jim Earl's truck. He decided not to inquire if the Icky road was munic.i.p.al, state, or federal. Some things it was better he should not know.

Afterward, Jim Earl dropped Liam at his office, where the trooper discovered the door unlocked and the keys in the ignition of the white Chevy Blazer with the Alaska State Troopers seal on the door. Mindful of the scene still waiting at the airport, Liam did little more than toss his bag behind the desk and lock the office door before climbing into the Blazer. The engine turned over on the first try, and he didn't get lost more than two or three times on his way back to the airport.

He arrived at the same time as the ambulance, and made a resolve then and there never to be shot in the line of duty during his posting to Newenham. He checked his watch. It was eight-thirty. Unbelievably, it was only three hours since his plane had touched down. Surely too much had happened to fit into that small a s.p.a.ce.

He raised the watch to his ear. The ticking should have rea.s.sured him that time was pa.s.sing with its usual, inexorable forward motion, but it didn't.

Wy was still there, sitting in the cab of her truck. It was drizzling. An older man, unshaven and wearing salt-stained clothes, was talking to her through the open driver's-side door. Wy caught sight of Liam over the man's shoulder as he pulled up next to her. By the time Liam had gotten out the older man was walking away, a p.r.o.nounced limp in his gait. "Who was that?" Liam said.

She shrugged. "Just another fisherman. Wanted to know what happened."

She couldn't quite meet his eyes, and he regarded her for a speculative moment.

Gary Gruber was still there, too, shivering beneath the eaves of the terminal and gnawing at what might have been a candy bar. People came and went, planes taxied to and fro, and barely a glance was spared for the mound beneath the blue tarp, which seemed to have shrunk since Liam last saw it. It looked very lonely lying next to the little red and white Super Cub, which looked more than a little forlorn itself.

The ambulance was under the command of a single emergency medical technician, a slim, intense young man who introduced himself as Joe Gould. He knelt to inspect DeCreft's body. "Not much to be done here," he observed. "Okay to take the body to the morgue?"

"We've got a morgue?" Liam said.

"We've even got a hospital," Gould said with a cool smile.

"Hold on a second," Liam said, and went to search the Blazer for an evidence kit. It was in a case behind the backseat, and, typically, Corcoran had left no film in the camera inside and no spare rolls in the case. Liam found a yellow legal pad and a pencil he had to sharpen with a pocketknife, andwiththe evenly s.p.a.ced halogen floodlights around the airport casting long, faint shadows in the dim light drew a rough sketch of the scene, pacing out the distances between terminal, plane, and body before helping Gould zip DeCreft into a body bag and load it into the ambulance. "Have we got a pathologist, too?" Liam asked Gould.

"Not forensic," Gould said, "but cause of death is obvious, and time of death was witnessed, so--"

"It was?" Liam said. "Who by?"

Gould had thin, self-sacrificial features that would not have looked out of place beneath a tonsure, belied by a pair of satanic eyebrows and a sly smile. "Somebody was yelling about it on the radio. The dispatcher picked it up, and pa.s.sed it on to me."

"When was this?"

"Right about the time it happened, I guess. Ask the dispatcher."

"And you rushed right on over to help out," Liam observed.

The EMT slammed the doors of the ambulance and paused to give Liam a level, considering stare. "Guy walked into a propeller," Gould said. "The initial report from the scene, as conveyed to me by the dispatcher, indicated that the victim was dead before he hit the ground." He had been leaning on the ambulance. He straightened now. "I was delivering a breech baby in Icky at the time." He went around the ambulance, climbed into the cab, and drove off.

"Icky?" Liam said to the air. As in the Icky road?

n.o.body answered him, so he fetched a flashlight and a garbage bag from the Blazer and went to inventory the contents of the Super Cub.

There were a handful of candy wrappers, two maps of Bristol Bay, five small green gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s Liam recognized as j.a.panese fishing floats, a walrus tusk broken off near the root, a survival kit, two firestarter logs, two parkas, two pairs of boots, a liter-sized plastic Pepsi bottle half full of yellow liquid, a clam gun, a bucket, three mismatched gloves, and three handheld radios, which to Liam seemed a bit redundant. He put everything into the garbage bag and tied the neck into a firm overhand knot, then set it to one side on the tarmac.

He stuck his head back inside the airplane to make sure he hadn't missed anything. He reexamined the control panel. To his deliberately uneducated eye, it sported the usual array of dials, k.n.o.bs, bells, and whistles. He pointed. "What's that?"

Next to him he felt Wy start, and smiled grimly to himself. Good. She should know by now that he was still as acutely aware of her presence as she was of his, that he could have told her the instant she stepped from the truck, that he had known to the inch how close she was standing next to him now.

"It's a radio," Wy said.

"I can see that much," Liam said. "Why is it bolted to the bottom of the control panel instead of being built in like the other one"--he pointed--"and why does it look so much newer?"

He turned to look down at her, and again surprised that look of fear on her face. It vanished, but he had seen it, it had been real, and he knew a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"It's a special radio. I installed it at the request of the skipper who heads up the consortium I spot herring for."

"What's so special about it?"

"It's scrambled. So if anybody stumbles across our channel, and I'm telling the skipper where I spotted a big ball of herring, n.o.body else can understand what I'm saying."

"I see. I suppose there's a descrambler on the skipper's end."

"Yes."

Liam pointed at the garbage bag that held the Cub's inventory. "Then why these other three radios?"

"Backups."

Again, she couldn't quite meet his eyes. Liam waited, but she didn't volunteer any further information. He looked at Gruber, who had materialized on the other side of the strut and who was engaged in wiping his runny nose on the sleeve of his brown jacket, jaws champing again at a wad of bubble gum. He blew a bubble that broke with a splat against his nose, and he slurped it back into his mouth.

"Want me to take that?" Wy said from Liam's other side, and he turned to see her indicating the garbage bag.

"No problem," he said, "I've got it."

He walked over to deposit the bag in the pa.s.senger seat of the Blazer, and as an afterthought locked the doors. It was evidence of a sort, after all, although he didn't have a clue yet as to just what it was evidence of, other than a serious sweet tooth and bad housekeeping. Back at the plane, he said to Wy, "Can you lock this thing up?"

"She should move it out of here," Gruber said. "It's kind of in the way."

"Have you got a tie-down?" Liam said. Wy nodded at the ap.r.o.n. "Okay, let's do it."

Wy walked around him to the tail of the plane, picked it up, and began towing the Cub toward the section of the ap.r.o.n she had indicated. Liam and Gruber caught up to help, but the little plane was so light it wasn't really necessary.

Wy's tie-down was some distance down the commercial side of the Newenham strip, off the main taxiway and behind three rows of other small planes. The tiny square of tarmac was at the very edge of the pavement, with a building the size and shape of an outhouse placed on the gravel directly behind it. Looking around, Liam saw other little houses lining the strip like so many miniature garages. Wy's was painted powder blue, and Wy towed the Cub to the tie-down in front of it.

The tie-down itself consisted of two small hoops of bent metal rod set into the pavement. A length of manila line, black electrician's tape sealing the ends, was fastened to each hoop by an eye sealed with more electrician's tape. Liam threaded one length of line to the matching fastening on the right strut, Wy elbowing Gruber aside to do the other.

Liam ducked out from beneath the wing. "At least I can do that much," he said, and smiled at her.

She almost smiled back, and he rejoiced silently. This time he wouldn't back down, he wouldn't walk away. Not this time.

She gestured at the prop. "Can I wipe that down?"

Liam turned. The rain had pretty much washed the prop clean. "You sure it's okay?"

"I disconnected the mags."

"I thought I told you not to mess with it while I was gone," he said in a long-suffering voice. He looked at Gruber. "I thought I told you to keep everyone away from it."

Gruber shifted his gum. "Well, yeah, but, you know. I mean, it's her plane."

Liam suppressed a sigh. "So, can I clean the prop?" Wy said.

"Sure," Liam said. "You can steam-clean the interior if you want. Doesn't much matter now." He hung back, Gary Gruber a silent ghost at his elbow, watching as she fetched a rag from the powder blue shack and carefully cleaned the propeller blades. "Wy?"

She stiffened. "What?"

"What and where is Icky?"

He could almost see the tension leaving her body. "It's what the locals call Ik'ikika. It's a village about forty miles north, on the sh.o.r.e of One Lake."

"You can drive there?"

She nodded. "It's a dirt road, but it's pa.s.sable. Mostly."

Thinking of the roads he had traveled in Newenham made him think that this was a matter of opinion.

"I've got to get home," she said, and turned abruptly to walk back to her truck.

"Me, too," Gruber said, and made a vague gesture with one hand. "Anything you need, officer."

"Yeah, thanks," Liam said, eye on Wy's retreating back. "If you could come into the office tomorrow, we'll type out your statement and you can sign it."

By the time he caught up with Wy, she was almost to her truck. He caught her elbow. "What's your rush?"

She pulled away. "I have to get home. I'm late already."