So sure of death (9 page)

“They set out next to me, Andrew volunteered. “A little bit before four.

“Anybody see them after that? They exchanged glances, shrugged. “Okay. Can you give me some idea of who else was fishing in the bay yesterday?

Halstensen spoke up for the second time. “Ask the tender. They'll have fish tickets, a tender summary. They'll have the names of all the boats that delivered to them.

“What's the name of the tender?

“TheArctic Wind.

“Where do they take their fish?

“Seafood North. In Newenham.

At least he wouldn't have to fly to Togiak, which was even farther west down the coast than Kulukak. “Great, thanks. Now, did anyone see theMarybethiaafter the period was over?

A general shaking of heads.

“Did you all come back to town after six o'clock?

“Yes.

“And you didn't see theMarybethiafollow you in, or tie up in the harbor?

“No, said Ekwok. “That don't mean nothing, though. There's fifty boats call our harbor home port.

Liam frowned. “Fifty boats?

Ekwok waved an understanding hand. “Their owners don't all live here. Some live in Togiak, some in Newenham, some come up from Outside.

“They leave their boats here year-round?

Carl Andrew shook his head. “Most of them are put into dry dock in Togiak or Newenham over the winter.

“Malone kept his here, I suppose. Ekwok nodded, and Liam walked through the living room and opened the door to step out on the deck. He leaned over the railing. The tide was in, but the water was clear and he could see the timbers supporting the dry dock. He looked up. Kulukak village was hidden behind a small point of land, a rocky outcropping with spruce clustered thickly on top. He could see the rock wall of the breakwater surrounding the small boat harbor, and what he thought might be the roof of the school.

Fifty boats, with fifty crews. He thought of the Jacobsons, even now heading for an opener in Togiak. Potential witnesses were going to be scattered across hundreds of square miles of open water, and he didn't even have the consolation of knowing they'd all go back to the same home port after the summer was over. “Fifty boats? he said, hoping against hope that he'd heard wrong.

“Fifty, Ekwok said with what Liam considered to be entirely unnecessary cheerfulness. “Course, that doesn't count the skiffs. Bunch of people fish subsistence from skiffs.

The buzz of a small plane interrupted Liam's gloom, and he looked up to see a blue and white Cessna with the tail numbers “68 Kilo on the fuselage lining up for a final approach to the airstrip. His heart skipped a beat, and he made rather a production out of folding up his notebook and stowing it away. “ Gentlemen, I think my ride is here. Could someone show me the way to the airstrip?

SIX

Summertime in the Bush smelled like Off. Well, Off and salmon. Wy smelled of both, but she smelled most strongly of herself, a scent somewhere between lilac and lemon peel, half sweet, half tart, part seduction, part challenge. Liam strapped himself into the shotgun seat of the Cessna and concentrated on that smell. It was easier than thinking about hanging his ass out over a two-thousand-foot precipice for the next hour.

Liam hated to fly. He was, in fact, terrified every time he got into a plane, Super Cub or 737, single or twin, floats or wheels. It simply wasn't natural to trust your existence to two wings and the lifting properties of something as ephemeral as air. You couldn't evenseeair, as he had pointed out to Wy on innumerable occasions when she had tried to alleviate his fear with a technical explanation of the theory of aerodynamics. After a while she'd given up, and Liam continued to sweat his way through more hours in the air than many private pilots. That he had the courage to force himself into the air in spite of his fear was a tribute to his strength of character, not anything his father had ever acknowledged, but then his father, the jet jockey, had never managed to mask his disappointment that his son had not followed him into the Air Force and the elite ranks of zoomies.

However, it didn't matter what Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell thought, because Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell was safely assigned to flight training at a naval base in Florida, over a thousand miles away, about as far as you could get and still be in America, hooray. Liam, a grown man, an Alaska state trooper for eleven years, the holder of a B.A. in criminal justice and an M.S. in counseling psychiatry, the investigating officer on the Houston serial killings and the Cyndi Gordon murder, both high-profile cases resulting in convictions celebrated in headlines as far away as Boston and the latter now an illustration in the textbook of a dozen police academies nationwide, this man had no need of paternal approval.

In the meantime, he stared straight ahead through the windshield, eyes fixed on the distant horizon, and concentrated on slow, deep breaths. His concentration was not what it should have been, given that he was sitting next to Wy, the closest he'd been to her in three months. Her hands were strong and capable on the yoke, her feet quick and deft on the rudders. Her dark blond hair was bound into a loose French braid, her jeans and plaid shirt clean and neat. A blue billed cap advertising Chevron fuel topped the ensemble. A headset with a voice-activated microphone was strapped on over the cap, and sunglasses in gold aviator frames hid her eyes. The ultimate in Bush chic.

She reached up and unhooked a second headset. “Put it on.

He put it on.

She taxied to the end of the runway and turned, adjusted the flaps, pushed in the throttle, pulled back on the yoke and they were airborne. Liam helped her, holding 68 Kilo up in the air by white-knuckled hands wrapped around the edge of his seat.

Not by word or deed did Wy betray how very awkward she must be feeling. A fair man, Liam figured she had to be at least as uncomfortable and tongue-tied as he was. “Your new trooper sent me out to pick you up, she had said briefly when she climbed out of the plane.

“Why didn't she come herself?

“You've got yourself another murder.

“What!

She nodded, holding the door for him, all business. “I'm supposed to get you back ASAP.

“Who? And where?

“Don Nelson. He's been working for Professor McLynn at that archaeological dig on the Snake River.

He thought for a moment. “Yeah, an old Yupik village site or something. Some archaeologist has been digging up things there, right? About ten miles west of the base?

She nodded, still brisk, waiting for him to get the hell on the plane.

“Who foundwhat was his name? Nelson?

There was a brief hesitation. “I'm on contract to the state to support McLynn's project. We flew out this morning. That's when we found him.

“Son of a bitch, was all he could think of to say.

Her eyes met his for the first time, with the merest trace of perceptible humor. “My sentiments exactly.

He had turned to Ekwok, standing pretty much at attention at Liam's elbow. “I left the boat taped off. I'd appreciate it if you'd make sure that no one goes on board.

Ekwok glowed. “You mean I'm your deputy? Like John Wayne and Dean Martin?

“Close enough, Liam said.

The climb to two thousand feet took maybe ten minutes, followed by the comparative bliss of level flight. The fog dissipated as soon as they were out of Kulukak Bay, and the sun chased cumulus clouds around the horizon. Liam's stomach took another five minutes to settle, at which time Wy's scent came back with a vengeance, teasing his nostrils, reminding him of the last time he'd seen her, and before, the last time he'd slept with her, that rough, hurried coupling in the front seat of her truck, the memory of which alone had been enough to let him live on hope for the last three months. It wasn't going to stay enough for much longer.

Maybe it was being in the air, maybe it was being in the air with her, but he found his body reacting to that memory. He shifted his legs, hoping she wouldn't notice, and then saw her wipe her palms down the legs of her jeans, changing hands on the yoke in a manner too studied to remain unobserved. A rush of heat suffused his body and pooled in his groin. “Wy, he said.

“We'll be there in forty-five minutes, relax, she said.

He looked at the back of that obdurate head, and a wonderfully welcome burst of anger washed away every other feeling he had, including fear of flying. He grabbed her braid and pulled her head around. “Set her down, he said.

“What?

“Set her down! he roared, and shoved the yoke forward with his right hand.

The Cessna took a nosedive.

“You son of a bitch! She grabbed the yoke. “All right, you want down, you get down!

The Cessna went into a shallow spiral, down, down, down, and Liam felt all the blood rise from his groin to pool just beneath the top of his skull. His lungs stopped working at fifteen hundred feet, his heart at a thousand, his sphincter muscle at five hundred. The needle on the altitude gauge backed off until the number one, one hundred feet, and Liam risked a look out his window to see the gear about to skim the tops of trees, growing ever larger in his terror-stricken eyes. “Wy!

Her face was tight but she said coolly enough, “You're paying the freight. You wanted down, you get down, and in the next second the trees ended and a gravel runway appeared. The Cessna set down on a surface that was more root than rock and bounced to a lurching halt. Wy slammed her headset into its cradle and baled out to march up and down, swearing at him, swearing at herself, swearing at the strip, just generally laying a pretty good curse on life, the universe and everything.

Liam waited for his heart and lungs to resume normal function and his stomach to settle, and climbed out on shaky legs.

Wy wheeled around and poked him in the chest with a furious finger. “Of all the goddamn dumb things for you to do, that took the cake! You want to land, we can land, but I'll do it! You want to talk, we can talk, but on my terms! Don't you pull something like that in one of my planes ever again, do you hear?

“I hear, Liam said, a bit light-headed and very glad to be back on terra firma. The strip, made of gravel and sand, seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, with no reason for its existence, a not unheard of occurrence in the Bush. The rustle of the black cottonwood and the balsam poplar in the gentle breeze, the tumble of water down a creek, the distant cry of an eagle were all that broke the silence. “What is this place?

“Some oil company built it to drill a test well for natural gas, she said curtly, still steaming.

“Was there any?

“No.

“Wy, he said.

Her head snapped up, but whatever she'd been about to say died on her lips when she met his eyes.

“I think three months is enough, he said. “You were angry. So was I. We said some things we shouldn't have. It hasn't changed how I feel about you. His smile was brief and painful. “ Sometimes I wish it had. Sometimes I think you're more trouble than you're worth, Chouinard.

“You should talk, she replied automatically, but her hackles went down. She pulled off her cap and shook back her braid. There was a downed tree to one side of the runway and she walked over to sit on it.

He walked over to sit next to her, carefully maintaining a discreet distance. He wanted her right down to his fingernails, but the words were important, and came first. Before him, he thought with a inward grin, and almost laughed out loud.

“What? she said, eyes on the cap she was pulling through her fingers. “What was so all-fired important you had to nearly wreck my plane to tell me?

All impulse to laugh faded, and he sorted through what he'd been planning to say for three months, if not quite in this fashion or in this setting.

“You live awhile, he said slowly, feeling his way. He wanted to get this right. He wasn't as confident as he used to be of his ability to do that, not anymore. There were a lot of things he wasn't as sure of as he used to be. “You live awhile, he repeated, “and you gain some knowledge, and you hope a little wisdom, and you build this picture of yourself. You have sense, and integrity. You know what you will do, and what you won't. You draw a line, a line you know you won't cross, because you're a better person than that.

He glanced at her. She was staring hard at the opposite side of the runway.

“And then something happens, something you never expected, something you never imagined, and you find yourself doing something you never thought you'd do. You cross that uncrossable line, and that picture you had of yourself shatters. If you ever want to be sane again, you have to pick up the pieces and try to put the picture back together. But now it's flawed, cracked, out of focus. It'll never be the same.

He stopped, unable for a moment to go on.

“I know. Her voice was soft. “I know everything that you're saying. I know because I went through the same thing. But there is more to it than that.

He turned to look at her. “What?

“I could have lived with the loss of my integrity, Liam, she said. “I could even have lived with the loss of your love. But I missed my friend.

He closed his eyes briefly.

“My integrity was gone, that picture of myself was gone, my lover was gone. And my friend was gone. We were friends first, Liam. I knew you were married. I knew about Charlie. Left to myself, I wouldn't have pushed it beyond friendship, not ever, no matter how much I was attracted to you. I don't do that! I've never done that, ever.

“And I did, he said, his voice wooden.

“Yes, she said. “You did. But I let you. I'm not blaming it all on you. We did it together. That's part of it, too. I'm not a homewrecker. She paused, and added painfully, “And then I was one.