Fire and ice (34 page)

"What did your mother want?"

Laura snorted. "She wanted to get to know me. Wanted me to get to know her. Wanted me to be her daughter."

"What did you say?"

"I told her it was a little late for her to start playing mother," she spat. "Where was she when Sally treated me like a maid, keeping me home from class to cook and clean and baby-sit her kids so that I couldn't even graduate from high school? Where was she when Harvey started coming down the hall to my room? Where was she when he turned me into his little gussuk whore?" Her voice broke.

After a moment she began speaking again, her voice filled with pain and hatred. "She wouldn't go away though. The only problem was, she said we had to keep it a secret that I was her daughter. Her husband wouldn't like it. His sacred holiness couldn't stand the thought that his congregation would look at his wife and know that she'd had carnal knowledge of another man. No, no, Becky has to be the perfect preacher's wife."

"Becky?"

She stared at him. "Becky Gilbert." She pointed at the birth certificate. "Born to Elizabeth Rebecca Ilutsik, of Ik'ikika."

"You're named for her."

She sneered, an expression that did not sit well on her angel face. "My middle name. Big deal. It's not like she gave me a home now, is it?"

"I suppose not." He leaned back in the booth. "When did you meet your father?"

"When he came here."

"Why did he come here?"

She scratched at the tabletop with one fingernail. "I made her tell me who he was. I found out he was living in Anchorage. I wrote him a letter." She looked up, her eyes full of tears. "He didn't even know about me. She hadn't even told him she was pregnant."

"That was six years ago?" She nodded. "So he moved out here to be with you?"

A tear rolled down her cheek. "He bought a house, and we moved in together. Becky begged us not to say we were father and daughter, she was afraid everybody would find out. So we promised." She wiped away another tear. "I didn't care, and Bob didn't, either." She raised wondering eyes to Liam. "It was so nice, you know? I'd never had a room all to myself before. He would have done everything if I'd let him--the cooking, the cleaning. He wouldn't let me help with the house payments or buy gas for the truck or anything. He wanted me to save my money so I could go back to school, get my GED, maybe go to vocational school or college someday."

Her shoulders began to shake. "He bought me presents. Whenever he went somewhere, he bought me presents. The last time he went to Anchorage, he brought me these." She fingered her earrings, exquisite little drops of green jade and black hematite and ivory. "I told him he was spoiling me, and he said I was beautiful, and that I deserved beautiful things. He was my from-father, and he could spoil me if he will-wanted to."

She began to sob. "Nobody ever called me beautiful before. They just took whatever they wanted, made me do whatever they wanted me to do. Nobody ever called me beautiful before, and nobody ever, ever gave me presents. At least not without expecting me to pay for them."

Bill arrived at the booth with a handful of Kleenex and a glass of water. "You okay, Laura?" she asked, with a hard glance at Liam.

Laura fought back a sob and nodded, used three Kleenexes to mop her eyes and blow her nose, and drank the glass of water down. She looked drained. "I guess I better get back to work."

"Just a couple more questions," Liam said. He hesitated. "Look, Laura, there's no nice way to ask this. That day, the day I came out to your house."

"The day my father died," she said, and fresh tears welled up.

"Yes. Did you call your mother that day?"

"No, she just came over," she said dully. "She'd heard about Bob." She looked up, surprised. "How did you know she was there?"

"She drove up as I was leaving," he said, and hesitated again. This woman had been through enough in her young life, but he had to ask the question, there was no way around it. "Laura, did you tell her about Wolfe?"

Her face shut down. "What about him?"

Liam gave up and went for the jugular. "Did you tell her that he raped you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. I have to get back to work now."

He caught her hand as she stood. "Cecil Wolfe is dead, Laura."

She stared down at him. "What?"

"Wolfe is dead. Somebody murdered him on his boat a couple of hours ago."

"Cecil is dead?" she repeated.

"Yes, Cecil is dead."

Liam hadn't exactly expected a cartwheel, which was good because he didn't get one. She stood in front of him, staring blankly into space, mute, uncomprehending. He squeezed her hand for emphasis. "He'll never bother you again."

She looked at him then, and he was saddened by the dead expression he saw in her eyes. "It doesn't matter. There's always another one just like him a little farther down the road."

He watched her walk back to the bar, saw her dismiss Bill's concern with a shrug. She picked up her tray and walked over to bus a table and take an order for refills with the bright, flashing smile he had seen her use before, the smile that was so full of warmth, and meant less than nothing.

FIFTEEN

The Gilberts lived in a small white house a few feet from the church. Richard Gilbert opened the door. "Oh." He cast a nervous look over his shoulder. "Trooper Campbell."

"Hello, Mr. Gilbert. I'd like to talk to your wife. Is she in?"

"Well, I, uh, no, she isn't, she's--"

Liam took a not very big chance and said, "I think she is here, sir. I have to talk to her. May I come in?"

"Let him in, Richard," a voice called from the back of the house.

Liam pushed on the door. Richard Gilbert fell back.

"In here, Mr. Campbell." Liam followed the voice into a back bedroom, where he found Becky Gilbert calmly folding clothes into a small suitcase. "I expect you'll want these," she said, and handed him a brown paper grocery bag.

He opened it and looked inside to see a shirt and slacks, both stained with blood. "I was wearing them when I killed him," she said. "Richard insisted on washing the knife. It's in the dish drainer next to the kitchen sink." She went to the dresser and collected some underwear.

Liam judged that the flight risk presented by Becky Gilbert was minimal and went into the kitchen. Sure enough, the dish drainer held a large skinning knife with a yellowing bone handle, still wet from washing. He wrapped it in a paper towel and placed it in the brown paper bag along with the clothes.

Becky met him in the living room, suitcase in hand. He got a good look at her face for the first time.

She had been transformed. He'd seen her at work with her husband, toadying and subservient. He'd seen her submerged in grief at the death of a man he now knew was greatly loved. He'd glimpsed the urgency of a woman on a mission on the way into her daughter's house.

This was a different person altogether from the previous three. She held herself erect, her chin high with pride, and looked Liam straight in the eye in a manner that most women raised in Bush villages did not do. "Let's go."

"All right," Liam said, and opened the door.

"What are you doing?" Richard Gilbert said in a panic.

"Telling the truth," she said.

"But you can't!" Richard Gilbert said in anguish. "What will people say?"

His wife looked at him and replied, "I guess they'll say a mother killed the son of a bitch who hurt her daughter." She paused, and added with a smile, "And they'll be right."

She sat across the desk from Liam, perfectly composed, hair neatly combed, gray knit pantsuit freshly pressed (liam knew a wistful thought for her obvious ironing skills), her words calm and precise.

"When I was very young I had a daughter. The circumstances don't matter, but I gather you have already guessed who her father is, or was."

"Bob DeCreft."

She inclined her head. "Yes. I was traveling with the Ilutuqaq Native Association Board, as a board member." Her chin raised. "I was the youngest person ever elected to the association board. I wanted to keep my seat after I married, but Richard said ... well, it doesn't matter what he said. This all happened long before I met him. The board had chartered a plane. Bob was our pilot." She smiled, a wide smile rich with memories. "I was the youngest, so I always got to ride shotgun. My auntie Sada was supposed to be looking out for me, but she would get airsick and take pills to go to sleep." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "We had some fine times in the front of that plane. I'll never forget them."

Liam remembered the first few months he'd flown out to crime scenes with Wy as his pilot. Sometimes her Cub; sometimes, when there was a body to bring back for autopsy, a chartered Cessna. Sometimes four seats, sometimes only two, him sitting behind her as he had today, or yesterday, now. The smell of Ivory soap on her skin, the quick crinkle of flesh at the corners of her eyes when she laughed, the rub of her shoulder against his. It was a long way between places in the Bush, and they'd talked, nonstop it seemed in hindsight, about everything: his cases, her flights, books, music, movies, politics, religion.

It was a hothouse environment, forcing relationships to rapid fruition, with no time-outs to cool down or reconsider. He'd never understood anyone so well or so quickly, and just the memory of it now was so powerful that it took a serious effort to draw himself back to the present, to Newenham and the woman looking over his shoulder with a dreamy smile on her face.

She sighed. "We, well, we were together constantly over a period of three months, flying around the state, talking to legislators and businesspeople and shareholders and boards from other Native regions, finding out how they were managing their ANCSA funds, how they were administering their land grants. We were coming into our share of the ANCSA settlement, and we wanted to do a good job for all the shareholders, not waste the money or give away the lands."

"Like the Anipa Subdivision?"

She bestowed an approving smile on him. "Yes, exactly like that. Native investors funding Native projects with federal backing, built by Native workers for Natives to live in. We were all so charged up and full of purpose. We were like the Blues Brothers."

"I beg your pardon?"

She smiled faintly. "On a mission from God."

"Oh." It had been a long time since Liam had seen the movie, but eventually he got the joke, and returned her smile. "I see."

"And then there was Bob. I saw him almost every day, sat next to him everywhere we flew. He was funny, and nice, and smart--he was a pilot, after all--and the color of my skin and the shape of my eyes weren't the only things he saw about me. I liked him right away. He was twenty years older than I was, but I didn't care." Her smile was rich and warmly reminiscent. "And then I loved him, and he loved me, and for a month we were happy. So very happy." She paused.

"What happened?"

Her smile faded. "Auntie Sada saw what was happening and called my parents. My parents came and took me home."

"And you went?" Liam said involuntarily. It was almost impossible to reconcile this strong, composed woman with the subservient, submissive wife he had seen at the post office, or for that matter with the picture she drew of the idealistic young board member of twenty-two years before.

"Yes," she said soberly. "I went. They were my elders. It wasn't that easy, Mr. Campbell, not in the seventies; it isn't that easy even today to disobey your elders in the village. And Bob was white. That didn't help. They were horrified that I would consider marrying a gussuk, let alone sleep with him. So I went home, hoping that I could change their minds."

"And when you found out about the baby?"

All the life drained from her face, leaving it a mask with nothing alive behind it. "They sent me to Anchorage to have her, and then they took her from me. They wouldn't allow a half-white child to be raised in the Ilutsik home. They took her from me and gave her to the Nanalooks in Newenham, or so I found out later."

Her fists clenched on the arms of the chair. Liam had not cuffed her. It wasn't necessary. Elizabeth Rebecca Ilutsik Gilbert had already committed her murder. She would not kill again.

"I take my commandments seriously, Mr. Campbell, but if I'd known where Laura was and what the Nanalooks were doing to her, you'd have had to arrest me for murder a long time before this."

Liam didn't doubt it for a minute. "Off the record?" he said.

She was curious. "Off the record," she agreed.

"I'd have held your coat."

She smiled at him then, the same wide, warm, transforming smile of before, with an extra dollop of approval added. Liam would have wagged his tail if he'd had one, and for the first time saw the woman Bob DeCreft had been attracted to so many years before. "Thank you."

"How did you come to marry Richard Gilbert?"

The smile faded. "My parents wanted me off their hands and out of their house, and they figured I was already tainted anyway. He was a missionary who needed a link to the community he was trying to convert. They arranged it between them. I didn't much care one way or another, so I went along with it. I thought I could have more children, that that would help. But I didn't."