So Sure Of Death

by Dana Stabenow

  “You mean Nelson?”

  “He was going to ruin it! Ruin it all! Destroy my thesis, negate twenty years of work, besmirch my standing in the academic community, all for what? All because he'd found a storyknife and decided that all by itself that proved that the Yupik of Kulukak were an offshoot of the lower Yukon tribes, instead of a migratory band of Chuckchi from Siberia!”

  Wy's smile faded.

  “What nonsense! Anyone with half a brain would review the evidence, the artifacts, and know the truth for what it was! Look at this! A stone lamp with a bear fetish, a classic Siberian Yupik design! Look at this!”

  “What is it?”

  “Can't you tell? It's a fragment of an armored vest! Look at the weaving! That pattern never originated on this side of the Bering Sea!”

  “If you say so.” Jo was doing her best to be soothing.

  At first, McLynn seemed to calm. “I told Nelson there was nothing in it, that it had been left behind by a much later group passing through.”

  “Certainly seems like a viable possibility. Desmond, what I really wanted to ask you was-”

  “You see my whole thesis is predicated on the movement of peoples between the Siberian Chuckchi region and the subarctic region of western Alaska.”

  “Er, yes,” Jo said. “The Aleuts used to row their kayaks-”

  “Baidarkas.”

  “-whatever, across eight hundred miles of open sea to get from one continent to the other. I remember learning that in Alaska history in high school. Very, ah, daring. Gutsy. Admirable, even. But what I-”

  “And they settled here,” McLynn said firmly.

  A barely repressed sigh. “Yes.”

  “No matter what Don Nelson said.” A contemptuous sniff. “A grad student. Really. What could he know?”

  “Less than the dust beneath your chariot wheels,” Jo agreed, “but what about-”

  “He had to be stopped.”

  “-what he says here, where- What?”

  “Nelson had to be stopped.”

  Silence.

  “I couldn't let him do it. Years of fieldwork, excavation after excavation, most of the time pulling up nothing but potsherds. The semesters teaching undergrads with minds like sieves the ABCs of anthropology. All for nothing, if I let Don Nelson tell his theory of the storyknife. I couldn't let him. I had to stop him. Now I have to stop you.”

  Before Wy could yank back the flap, she heard the sound of a dull, metallic thunk. When she finally got the canvas out of the way, she found Jo in the act of rolling into one section of the excavation, her eyes closed and blood draining from her temple.

  There was a movement to her right and her gaze shifted just in time to see McLynn, a determined frown on his face and a number two spade in his hands. The spade was already on the downswing and Wy instinctively stepped back, tripped over the Blazo box and went sprawling.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Sir! Sir!” An ungentle hand shook his shoulder. “Sir, wake up!”

  Liam swam up from a great depth. The light was dim and distant at first, steadily increasing in wattage, until it became so bright it hurt his eyes. The light resolved into a long, rectangular fixture on a ceiling somewhere. The two fluorescent bulbs behind the white plastic cover seemed to burn right through his retina, and he closed his eyes. Somebody groaned.

  “Sir! Are you okay?”

  His head hurt. No, that wasn't right, his head was thumping, pounding, hammering with pain. He felt his gorge rising. He opened his eyes again and this time saw Prince, her expression anxious. “Help me up.”

  “What?”

  “Help me up.”

  Prince helped him sit up, and he staggered to the sink and vomited. The water ran cold and clean from the faucet and he held his head under it. The water swirling in the bottom of the sink turned pink. He kept his head under the faucet until it ran clear again. She was waiting with a tea towel when he stood up.

  “Help me to a chair.”

  He propped his head in his hands. “How long have I been out?”

  “Over an hour, if you got clobbered right after we split up.”

  He explored his scalp with tentative fingers; there was an enormous lump over his right ear and his right eye felt puffy. “Am I going to have a shiner?”

  Prince regarded him gravely. “It looks like it. Who hit you?”

  “I didn't see him. Where's my cap?”

  Prince found it where it had rolled beneath the table. It no longer fit around his head. He adjusted the band to its widest extension. It perched on top of his lump at a precarious angle.

  “Who do you think hit you?”

  “I don't have a clue,” Liam said. “How about you?”

  Head trauma often resulted in short-term memory loss. Prince pulled out a chair and sat down. “I got Chad Donohoe's statement.”

  “Good.”

  “He saw the skiff pass him that night, he thinks around three a.m. Monday morning.”

  “You told me that two days ago.”

  “He signed his statement.”

  “Good.”

  “So did Fred Wassillie.”

  Liam squinted at her through his one good eye. “You didn't say Donohoe had somebody with him.”

  “He didn't.”

  Liam sighed and shifted carefully in a tentative attempt to sit upright. His head didn't fall off, so he was more patient than he might have been. “Look, Prince, you've obviously discovered some new evidence that you think is important, and any other time I'd be willing to let you lead me to it a piece at a time, but I've just been sucker-punched by an unknown assailant, I'm sitting here with a lump on my head the size of Denali, I've just lost my breakfast and most of last night's dinner, I can only see out of one eye and NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO GET CUTE!” Yelling hurt. He dropped his voice. “Talk. And keep it short and to the point. Who's Fred Wassillie, and what'd he say?”

  Prince looked hurt. “He saw the skiff coming out of Kulukak Bay, too,” she said stiffly.

  “So we've got two witnesses. All the better.”

  “He saw it three hours earlier.”

  A short, charged silence. Liam wanted to lay his head- carefully-in his arms and close his eyes for the next month. “At midnight.”

  “Right around.”

  “He's sure of the time?”

  Prince cleared her throat. “He was-ah-trysting with Edith Pomeroy on the deck of his boat at the time.”

  “And-ah-trysting with Ms. Pomeroy was such a memorable event that he was looking at his watch?”

  “Mrs. Mrs. Edith Pomeroy. Ralph Pomeroy's wife. Ralph is a local fisher.”

  Liam looked at Prince, who was looking prim as a Victorian spinster. Maybe his father had slept alone the night before after all.

  His father… Something nagged at the back of his mind. What was it, his father and-his father and… he couldn't remember. The walrus head on the opposite wall seemed to be laughing, head raised, ivory tusks ready to strike. “And he was persuaded to share this information-how, exactly?”

  “I-ah-overheard him telling a couple of his friends about it. On my way back to theSnohomish Belle.About seven friends, actually. It seems Mrs. Pomeroy had been pretty elusive, and Mr. Wassillie was-er-collecting debts now owed him.”

  “I'm surprised he noticed the skiff.”

  “Apparently Mr. Wassillie thought it might be Mr. Pomeroy in search of his wife.”

  In spite of the throbbing of his skull, Liam had to smile. “You know, there sure were a hell of a lot of boats wandering around out there in the fog that night.”

  “It moves in, it moves out.” Prince shrugged. “We keep finding holes to land through.”

  Liam repressed a shiver. “Don't remind me. Who was it? In the skiff? Who did Wassillie see?”

  “He described a skiff-a dory, excuse me, a New England dory, a big skiff about twenty feet long. If not the twin, then very similar to the one Donohoe saw.”

  “Did he see who was in it?”

&nbs
p; Prince didn't even try to hide her triumphant smile. “A man very similar to the one Donohoe saw.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, digesting this. “So he went out twice?”

  “It would explain the two hours between the shootings and the fire.”

  “Yes, but why? Why go out twice?”

  With some asperity, Prince said, “This is a man who can kill one woman for leaving him, one man for having her and three men and two kids for being there when it happened. I don't think we can expect rational thought from someone like that. I don't think we have to.”

  Mike Ekwok skidded in the door. “Sheriff!” he cried.

  “It's Trooper,” Liam said tiredly.

  Ekwok saw Liam's shiner and the lump that was giving his cap a rakish tilt and his eyes widened. “What happened, Sheriff?”

  Liam gave in. “Somebody coldcocked me when my deputy wasn't watching my back.”

  Prince looked offended, but Mike Ekwok's round face hardened into determined lines. “I'll back you up, Sheriff.”

  “Thanks, Deputy.” Liam got to his feet, carefully avoiding Prince's gaze. “Are Wassillie and Donohoe somewhere around?”

  “They're waiting on board theCheyenne.”

  Liam spoke more sharply than he intended. “They're not in the same room, are they?”

  “There's an old guy watching them. I snagged him off the dock and told him to stand guard, not let them talk.”

  The walrus leered at him from the wall. “The old man,” Liam said suddenly. That's what he'd been trying to remember. “ Walter Larsgaard's father. Is he here? In the house?”

  “I… don't know. I didn't look.”

  “Well, look. Mike, help her.”

  Ekwok sprang into action. Five minutes later they were back. “House is empty, Sheriff.”

  “Did you check everywhere? Closets, basement, attic?”

  “It's a crawl space, not a basement, and there is no attic.” Prince's expression was quizzical. “Why?”

  “I don't know, I…” Again Liam thought of his father. “Damn it, there's something I'm missing-wait a minute.”

  “What-”

  Liam silenced Prince with a wave of his hand. His father. Don Nelson's father. Frank Petla's ancestral fathers, tribal fathers, his real father, his adopted father. Walter Larsgaard's father. Fathers and sons. Sons and their fathers, and what they did to each other, and what they did for each other. He remembered something he'd read in Don Nelson's journal, and his own reaction to it, and suddenly he understood. “Mike?”

  “Yessir?”

  “Are you a good friend of Walter Larsgaard, Senior?”

  Mike's face showed his bewilderment. “I guess so. I've known Old Walter since we were kids.”

  “That's not what I asked. Were you friends?”

  “We've lived in the same village all our lives.”

  Liam sighed. “Never mind. Did he drink?”

  Ekwok shuffled his feet and looked at the floor.

  “Mike-Deputy,” Liam said sternly, “this is important. Was Old Walter a drinker?”

  Ekwok shuffled some more and looked everywhere but at Liam. “I guess he'd been known to knock back a few Olys,” he muttered finally.

  “He do it often?”

  “No more than anybody else.”

  “Does he or his son own a big skiff? A New England dory, a twenty-footer?”

  Relieved to be off the hook, Ekwok gave an eager nod. “Sure. Nice big dory, new last summer. Twenty-one feet long. You could get to Togiak in it if you had to.”

  “Is it in the harbor?”

  “I guess.”

  “Did you know Walter Junior was sleeping with Molly Malone?”

  Mike Ekwok's face showed first surprise, and then envy. “No kidding? That lucky-” He turned whatever he'd been about to say into a cough. “No, Sheriff, I didn't know that.”

  “How would Walter Senior have felt about that?”

  “I-hell, I don't know. He didn't poke his nose into much, Old Walter. He minded his own business, and he let people mind theirs. He was a good neighbor.” Mike Ekwok sounded as if he had only just learned this fact, and was surprised that it was so.

  “Sir-” Prince said.

  “Did Wassillie say if the guy was rowing the dory, or if he had the outboard going?”

  Prince consulted her notes. “Rowing.”

  “That matches the Jacobsons' statements. But Donohoe said the dory he saw had the kicker running.”

  Comprehension dawned. “Two different boats.”

  Liam shook his head. “The same boat. Two different men.” He leaned his aching head on one hand. “I'm in his house,” he muttered, staring at the walrus head. It wasn't leering now. “Who else would hit me?”

  “Who do you think did?” Prince said, but she knew. So did Ekwok if his open mouth and staring eyes were any indication.

  “Old Walter, that's who. He was in the first skiff, the one Jacobson saw going out, the one Wassillie saw coming in. He shot the crew of theMarybethia,and then he came home and either told his son what he'd done or his son guessed. Young Walter went out to destroy the evidence, and that's who Donohoe saw.”

  Prince stared at him, mouth slightly open.

  “Young Walter must have been frantic to get rid of the evidence. He set fire to the boat, but it wouldn't burn, so then he tried to sink her. He must have been pretty sure he'd succeeded because he left to go back into town.”

  They left Ekwok behind in their run for the boat harbor. In spite of his aching head and the accompanying slight sense of disorientation, Liam was first down the gangway when they arrived, and first to step on board theCheyenne.So it followed that he was the first to see the bodies.

  “Son of a bitch!” Prince's voice rang out across the harbor. She leapt first to one downed man, then the other. “Mother-fucking son of a BITCH!”

  “Donohoe and Wassillie?” Liam said.

  Prince's face was red with rage. “Yes,” she said tightly, regaining her poise. Mike Ekwok, looking scared, edged away from her. She knelt, felt for pulses. “Both dead. Looks like shot.”

  “Tell me this, Prince,” Liam said. “Did the little old guy you set to guard them look anything like Walter Larsgaard?”

  She stared at him, confused. “I don't know, I-he was Native,” she said. “He was short, and he had black hair, and dark skin with wrinkles, and-”

  “And besides, they all look alike,” Liam said.

  She flushed.

  “They better stop all looking alike if you want to get ahead in this job,” he told her. “I don't suppose you noticed if he had a rifle?”

  “He was wearing a big coat,” she said. She looked down at the sprawling forms of the two fishermen. There is no attitude as awkward as death. It didn't matter if you were a ballet dancer; death took pride in the ungraceful splay of limbs, the disjointed twist of the neck, the ungainly looseness of hands and feet. To look at death and know some carelessness of your own had caused it was not pleasant.

  “Where's the… what was his boat's name?” Liam asked Prince. She looked at him, mute. “Young Larsgaard. Where is his boat?” She remained silent. “Prince, snap out of it! Where's Larsgaard's boat?”

  He felt a timid touch on his elbow. “I know where it is, Sheriff.”

  But of course by then theBay Roverwas long gone.

  The shovel came whistling down. Wy rolled. It smacked into the dirt next to her head and she scrambled to her feet just in time to catch the business edge of the shovel against her shoulder. She looked down for a stunned moment to see blood welling from the cut. The shovel was coming at her again, McLynn amazingly calm, still with that determined frown on his face, as if he were in the process of deciding where the shovel would do the most good and estimating range and trajectory to target. Time seemed to slow down, as if she were in a dream. Only the blood was real.

  The blood was in fact very real, staining the sleeve of her shirt, and the sight propelled her to her feet, just in time to
catch the shovel on her shoulder. She turned, managing to deflect its edge, but the force of the blow sent her staggering into the other tent. The wall collapsed. The rest of the tent, unaccustomed to this kind of abuse, collapsed with it, and canvas engulfed her.

  For a panicky moment she thought she couldn't breathe. Blows came at her from every direction, one catching her foot, another her thigh, a third her elbow, as she rolled and twisted and fought, the canvas as much as McLynn. She rolled into an object that fell over with a crash, probably one of the tables on the inside of the tent. Other crashes followed as she blundered through the folds of canvas. She had a gun in her plane, part of the survival gear required by law of any Bush pilot. If she could just get to the Cub and get the gun… Another blow caught her squarely between the shoulder blades.

  “Goddamn it!” Suddenly, gloriously, she was angry. The hell with the gun, she was going to clean this little bastard's clock right here and right now with her bare hands. She caught a glimpse of daylight and dove for it, squirming out into the fresh air, a half step ahead of the maniac with the shovel. The shovel hit the opening in the fold of canvas a second after she had exited it, and she reached down to grab the canvas and yank it as hard as she could, pulling it out from under his feet. McLynn lost his balance and fell heavily. He was back on his feet almost at once, never dropping the shovel. All those years digging ditches in old graveyards had toughened him up.

  The shovel came up again, and this time something happened, something deep inside her. Her feet were parallel, a shoulder's width apart, and without volition her hands and arms moved into Ward Off Left, right hand cupped and down, left hand cupped and up, most of her weight forward on her left knee. Of its own will her left hand shifted so that her forearm caught most of the blow, yielding but not giving way before it. Her right foot stepped forward and her right arm came around and up into Right Push Upward, her right hand grasping the shovel handle. She went into Pull Back and McLynn was jerked off balance and he lost his grip on the shovel and then lost the shovel.