So Sure Of Death

by Dana Stabenow

“One.”

  “Oughtta be three.”

  “One,” Liam said firmly. “Say goodnight, Jim.”

  So, Dick Ford owned the four-wheeler Frank Petla had been riding on, and was presently nowhere to be found. Max Bayless had threatened to kill David Malone, but he'd been in jail too long to have actually done it, and it was a year-old threat, anyway.

  The phone rang and he snatched it up. “Brillo Pad, is that you, you old bastard, what took you so long?”

  “You watch your mouth, mister, or I'll come over there and wash it out with soap,” Mamie Hagemeister said primly.

  Liam sat up. “I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else. Mamie?”

  “Yes.”

  “There's nothing wrong with the prisoners, is there?”

  “No, but one of them wants to talk to you.”

  “Which one, Petla or Larsgaard?”

  “Neither. Mr. Gray has asked me to ask you to stop by when you have a moment.”

  “Gray? Who-oh. What does he want?”

  “He says he has some information for you.” She gave a discreet cough, and added in an even primmer voice, “There was some mention of a deal.”

  “It wasn't even half a lid,” Moccasin Man said.

  “Tough luck. Unless you've got a medical prescription to smoke dope, possession is still illegal in Alaska, and punishable upon conviction by time in jail.”

  “That's such crap.”

  “Hey, you're preaching to the choir,” Liam said, spreading his hands. “If I had my way, all drugs would be legalized and taxed. If I had my way, we'd buy all the coke, opium, heroin and crack there is and pile it up on street corners, free for anybody who wanted it. Next morning I'd go around with a front-end loader and haul the bodies off to the dump, a gain not only to the state but to the gene pool. Not to mention which it'd cut down on my overtime something considerable.” Liam leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “But I don't have my way. It's still illegal to be in possession of marijuana in the state of Alaska, which substance you were caught with by a sworn officer of the law.” Liam leaned forward and flipped open the file in front of him. “Officer Roger Raymo, in fact, on Saturday night. Seems he saw your truck pulled off the side of the road about halfway to Icky.”

  “The dope wasn't mine.”

  Liam smiled and closed the file.

  “It wasn't, goddamn it,” Gray muttered. “It was hers.”

  “Who is ‘her’?”

  “May Hitchcock. The broad who was with me.”

  Liam opened up the file again and perused it slowly, to Gray's increasing impatience. “She had it on her. She must have dropped it on the floor and kicked it under the seat when that dick Raymo pulled up behind us in his dickmobile.”

  Liam clicked his tongue. “Now, now, Evan, you're not going to get anywhere with me by bad-mouthing a fellow officer. So, you say the dope was May's. She buy it from you in the first place?”

  Gray met his eyes full on and lied like… well, like a trooper. “No.”

  “Of course not.” Liam closed the file again. “Tell me, Evan, how do you make your living?”

  “A little of this, a little of that.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Look, it doesn't matter how I make my living, this charge is bogus. Get May in here and I'll prove it.”

  “Officer Raymo let May go, did he?”

  Gray snorted. “It was an answer to his favorite wet dream, catching me holding.”

  “What do you want, Evan?”

  “I want out of here. I want the charge against me dropped.” His grin was cocky, as cocky as Charles's had been the night before. “I want a hot shower and my own bed and a good-looking woman in it, in that order.”

  All trace of humor had vanished from Liam's face. His eyes were cold and steady, his hands flat on the table, muscles in his arms taut as if he were about ready to get up and go. “What have you got to trade?”

  Liam sent Gray back to his cell and brought Larsgaard into the interview room. He got him a cup of coffee, heavy on the cream and sugar. Larsgaard took the first sip and looked surprised that Liam had gotten it right. “I watched how you fixed it at your house,” Liam said. He blew on his own coffee and sipped.

  The window was open and that damn raven was sitting on the branch of a mountain ash right outside the window, looking as if he had been carved from a single piece of the darkest obsidian. Liam didn't really know anything about obsidian except that it was a rock of some kind that was black and shiny, but he liked the sound of the word and it was what that black bastard looked like he was made of, from his enormous curved beak to his black beady eyes to his fat black tailfeathers. Although he didn't look so black this close up, more a mixture of green and blue and dark brown. Sort of like snow and how it wasn't really white.

  Larsgaard followed his glance. “Raven,” he said. “My favorite bird.”

  “Really?” Liam gave the raven an unfriendly glance. “Why?”

  “They're smart.”

  “If they're so smart, why don't they fly south for the winter?”

  “And they're loyal.”

  Liam raised his brows. “Loyal?”

  “Sure.” Larsgaard gestured with his mug. “When one of them finds something to eat, say a moose or a caribou or a bear, anything, they wait and watch it, sometimes hours, sometimes even days to make sure it's dead, and then they call in their friends and relatives for a feast. They're like wolves with wings.” He paused. “The elders say that a raven will lead you to your moose, because he knows when you're done butchering out, there will be some left over for him.” He saw Liam's skepticism and said, “It's true. Have you heard them talk?”

  Liam thought of all the various sounds he had heard from either the one raven following him around or the hundreds of ravens living around the Bay, one of which he seemed to see everywhere he went. Each raven utterance was a different sequence of clicks and croaks and caws, each sequence in a different series of tones. “Yeah, I've heard them talk.”

  “They have different kinds of calls, and each call has a different meaning. Why shouldn't ‘Supper's on the table, come and get it’ be one of them?” Larsgaard shrugged and drank coffee. “Wolves have a language. Whales. Why not ravens?”

  Why not ravens? Liam thought. “Walter, I want you to take me through it again, step by step this time.”

  Larsgaard sighed and turned around to face Liam. “Why? I've already told you once. You already have it on tape. I'll tell Bill I'm guilty.”

  “A magistrate doesn't sit on felony cases.” Or she doesn't if I get the felon on a plane to Anchorage first.

  Larsgaard shrugged. He didn't look much the worse for wear for his night in prison. His hair had been combed and his eyes were calm, a marked contrast to the panicked expression on Frank Petla's face every time he saw Liam. “Whatever. I read about Spring Creek in the paper. I expect that's where I'll wind up?”

  Spring Creek was the state's maximum security facility in Seward. “If there's room.”

  “And if there isn't?”

  “A prison Outside until there is.”

  For the first time Larsgaard looked anxious. “I'd rather stay in the state, if I could. Close to my father. You understand.”

  Again Liam thought of Charles, whom Liam couldn't wait to put on the first plane south, but he said yes to avoid an explanation that would only get them off track. “Humor me, Walter. Run through it again. One step at a time. When was the first time you slept with Molly Malone?”

  Larsgaard flushed. “None of your business.”

  “Okay, then tell me when you decided to kill her.”

  “I told you,” Larsgaard said, his voice rising. “On Sunday.”

  “When did she break things off between you?”

  “Last week.”

  “What day?”

  “I don't remember. I-I was pretty broken up about it. I don't remember much.”

  A bad memory, always a convenient tool in the suspe
ct's cache. “The twentieth?”

  “I told you, I don't remember.”

  “The seventeenth? Maybe the twenty-first? How about the fourth of July?”

  Larsgaard drew his hands back from the mug and sat upright. He'd regained his composure, and his eyes became distant, his manner remote. “I told you. I don't remember. I'd like to go back to my cell now.”

  Liam stood up, his six-foot-three frame filling up the little room. “Well, then, let's try something easier. Do you remember what you said to Evan Gray last night?”

  “What?” Larsgaard's eyes snapped back into focus, staring up at Liam, startled out of whatever inner hiding place he'd run to.

  “Last night did you tell Evan Gray that you didn't kill Molly Malone, that you loved her, that you could never have killed her?”

  Liam watched the color drain from Larsgaard's face, and tried like hell to read the expression there. The closest he could come to was fear, which made no sense. Why would Larsgaard be afraid? Of what? He'd already confessed to seven murders, he would only ever see the sun again from behind a barbed-wire electric fence; what could he possibly fear now?

  There was a brisk knock on the door, and Liam cursed under his breath. “It's open!”

  Prince opened the door and gave an apologetic cough. “Sorry, sir, but it's almost ten o'clock. We need to get in the air if we're going to get back in time for the arraignment this afternoon.”

  “You're going back to Kulukak?” The words forced themselves from Larsgaard's throat.

  They looked at him, curious. “Yes,” Liam said.

  “Why? What for?” He saw their expression and with the same visible effort at control Liam had seen before he pulled himself together. “I said I did it. You've got the bodies. You don't need to go back there for anything.”

  Liam stared at him. “I'm beginning to think I do, Walter.”

  “I don't understand,” Prince said as she followed him the door. “We've got a suspect in custody, we've got his confession, he had means, motive and opportunity, we've even got a witness. What else are you digging for?”

  The phone rang, saving him from trying to come up with an answer. “Brillo Pad. About time. What have you got?”

  “It's Brilleaux,” the voice said, made husky by the three-packaday and two-martini lunch habits he refused to quit no matter how much his wife and his doctor nagged him. “Bril-LEAUX, how many times do I have to tell you?” He coughed heavily, and Liam involuntarily held the phone away from his ear.

  “This isn't official, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “They were shot about two hours before they were burned. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Seawater fucks up all the time-to-decay stats, and the water's been colder than normal down there this year.”

  “Who says?”

  “Jesus, the weather fairy, who do you think? I called Jim over to the National Weather Service. Oh, and one other thing.”

  “What?”

  “Molly Malone was pregnant.”

  Dr. Hans Brilleaux, having delivered his message and having no further use for the telephone in his hand, hung up.

  Liam put down the phone and looked at Prince. “Molly Malone was pregnant.”

  She stared at him. “With whose baby, I wonder?”

  “So do I. Tell me something, Prince, if you shot seven people and you wanted to cover it up, would you wait two hours before you tried?”

  He could tell Prince was making an effort to maintain her professional calm. “I wouldn't shoot seven people, sir,” she said carefully. “Do you-sir, you don't think he didn't do it, do you?”

  “No, I think he did it, all right, but he's not telling us the truth about why or how, and I don't want this case to unravel in court.”

  “It couldn't,” she said, shocked.

  “I have two words for you,” he said. “O. J. Simpson.” One word and two letters, actually, but what the hell.

  “But-”

  “Prince, we're not talking burden of proof or rule of law or even simple logic, here. We're talking juries, twelve individual people, each with their own boatload of biases and prejudices, and each as susceptible to the suggestions of the defense as they are to the evidence we hand off to the prosecutor. More so, if the judge comes down hard on reasonable doubt during instruction. I don't like leaving juries with any wriggle room.” He grabbed his cap and headed for the door. “I want all the evidence there is to get before we turn this case over to the D.A. We need a signed statement from Chad Donohoe, too, and I don't think he's going to leave in the middle of fishing season to come into town and give us one.”

  He paused, one hand on the open door. “Besides, Larsgaard doesn't want us to go back to Kulukak. I want to know why.”

  TWENTY

  “I need a ride,” Jo said.

  Steam was rising from their coffee cups as they sat around the kitchen table, watching the sun rise up over the mouth of the Nushagak and the Bay beyond. The kitchen of Wy's house was flooded in golden light, and Wy didn't have any flights scheduled to anywhere until that afternoon. She put her feet up on a chair and said lazily, “You buying?”

  “The paper is.”

  “Where to?”

  Jo added half and half to her coffee and stirred in another teaspoon of sugar. “I came out here on a story.”

  “I know, you told me, but you wouldn't tell me what it was.”

  “Yeah. The guy who contacted me about it didn't want me to spread it around.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Don Nelson.”

  Wy sat up with a bump. “The guy killed out at the dig?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know I found him? Well, me and McLynn.”

  “Yeah. I mean, not right away, I went in to say hi to Bill last night and she told me. Saw you at dinner, by the way.” Jo's green eyes watched her over the rim of her mug.

  “Oh,” Wy said. She could feel the color rising up into her cheeks. “Yeah, well. We had dinner.”

  “So I saw.”

  “It was just… it was dinner, okay? His father was there, the new trooper, it was just dinner. The ingestion of food in return for a caloric warming of cell tissue.”

  “Uh-huh. With a little footsie on the side.”

  Wy drank coffee. “I went to see him at the post afterward.”

  “Did you?”

  Wy glared. “Oh, stop being so fucking smug, Dunaway.”

  “Then stop being so fucking evasive, Chouinard. Jesus, you're worse than Bill Clinton when it comes to talking about your sex life. It's true what they say, denial is not just a river in Egypt.”

  “It's not sex.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  Jo's smile was wide and salacious. “I want to, I want to.”

  Wy fiddled with the sugar spoon, raising spoonsful of sugar and letting it fall back into the bowl. “Maybe you weren't wrong, some of those things you said the other night.”

  For once, Jo maintained a prudent silence.

  “I told Liam what you said. Some of it, anyway.”

  “What'd he say?”

  “Not much.” Wy let the spoon fall. “He just wants me, Jo. Just flat out wants me, all of me, marriage, kids, for better or worse, so long as we both shall live, until death us do part, everything, the whole nine yards.”

  “Kids?”

  Their eyes met. “I haven't told him.”

  “You'll have to.”

  “Not yet,” Wy said, a plea in her voice.

  “I'm not your mother, Wy, or your conscience.” Jo drained her mug. “I don't have to be, you've got enough conscience for any ten people I know. You want to be happy with him for a little while before you lower the next boom, okay, I get that. But not telling him now means you don't trust him enough to understand and accept. He won't like that. And it is a lousy way to start any relationship, let alone this one.” She stood up. “In the meantime, I want to take a look at that archaeologica
l dig-what did you call it?”

  “Tulukaruk.”

  “Everything around here starts or ends with ak,or both,” Jo said, grumbling. “Tulukaruk, Kulukak, Manokotak, Stoyahuk, Koliganek, Egegik. Anyway, I want to see the place with thek's where Nelson died.”

  “What did he write to you about?”

  Jo hesitated. “He said he'd found something that would make a great story. It had to do with a government cover-up.”

  “Government?” Their eyes met. They both knew what kind of government institution was closest to Tulukaruk.

  Wy was silent until they got to the airport. As they were strapping into the Cub, she said, “When did Nelson first contact you?”

  “I got his letter four days ago.”

  She pulled the throttle, adjusted the mixture and started the prop. The headsets crackled into life. Wy got clearance to taxi and the Cub rolled off the apron and down the runway. Just before they took off, she looked around at Jo. “Colonel Campbell has been here almost a week.”

  “I know,” Jo said.

  The flight to Kulukak was uneventful, not so much as a bump of clear-air turbulence to mar the journey. As usual, Kulukak was fogged in and, as usual, not enough to abort an approach and a landing. Liam noticed that Prince didn't take the care that Wy did in a landing; they came down hard, smack, so that the plane shuddered and water washed over the floats. She didn't let up on the throttle, either, taxiing flat out to the float slip and running the plane well up onto the boards.

  “Thought you were going to take us right up the gangway and into town,” Liam said, dry mouth forming the words with difficulty.

  “Just get her down,” Prince said, switching off the mag and opening the door in the same motion. “Just get her down in one piece, and in good enough shape to get her back in the air again, that's all that's important.”

  Liam wondered what the maintenance bills were like for the Cessna, and decided it was something he didn't need to know. That was the difference between flying your own plane and someone else's. Sort of like driving a rental car. A rental car three thousand feet up.

  It was the twenty-forth, a Thursday, and judging by the number of boats idle in the harbor, the Fish and Game had not counted enough salmon going up the various rivers and streams. Men were hanging and mending gear, scrubbing down decks, working on engines, readying themselves and their craft for when the Fish and Game renewed their contact lens prescriptions and could see well enough to count fish. It was probably Liam's imagination but it seemed like a silence fell as they approached, and gathered in strength behind them as they passed. Prince put it into words. “I feel like I've got a bull's-eye painted on my back.”