by Fire
"Sparky's Pilot Shop."
"Hi, this is Officer Liam Campbell of the Alaska State Troopers, calling from Newenham, Alaska. I'd like to talk to someone about radios."
"What kind of radios?"
Liam picked up one of the radios lying in front of him and examined it. "Battery-operated handheld radios. Uh, like walkie-talkies, you know?"
"What brand?"
"One says it's a King, the other says it's an Icom."
Amused, the voice said, "One moment, please."
Neither music nor Muzak was played at him while he waited, which made Liam think even better of Sparky's Pilot Shop.
Another voice, raspy and irascible, barked, "What?"
Liam went through his spiel.
"Whaddya wanta know?"
"Ah, um, well, first of all, do you know what kind of radios are used for herring spotting?"
"Scrambled marine VHF."
"Uh-huh. And I suppose the receiving radio would have a descrambler to translate incoming messages."
"You suppose correctly. What else you want, I'm busy."
Liam remembered the radio bolted to the dash. "Are spotters' radios usually handhelds?"
"No."
"Why would a spotter be carrying handhelds?"
"Backup for main radio breakdown, why do you think?"
"I wouldn't know, that's why I'm asking," Liam said. "How much do these radios sell for?"
"Six hundred apiece minimum for the good ones. What else?"
"Uh-huh," Liam said, dutifully scribbling this down. "Is there some way you can tell if you sold these particular radios, sir?"
"Gimme the serial numbers."
Liam did so.
"Gimme your phone number."
Liam complied.
"I'll get back to you."
Click.
For the third time Liam set the receiver down in its cradle. He looked down at the yellow legal pad. Six hundred apiece. Not chump change. And probably the one bolted to the dash, being bigger and fancier, would be even more pricey.
The yellow pad was the same one he'd written the Cub's inventory down on the day before, and he flipped idly back through the pages and read over the list, comparing it with the items on the desk.
He sat suddenly upright in his chair, went to the top of the list, and ticked off the items one by one, beginning to end, comparing the list with what was spread across his desk. He did it twice, because he didn't believe his eyes the first time.
When he was done he sat back in disbelief and gathering rage. "Son of a bitch," he said. "Son of a bitch."
* * *
SEVEN
It was almost one o'clock, and Bill's was riding out the lull between the draft beer crowd that came in for lunch and the evening party-hearty bunch. One man was asleep, head down in a front booth. Another man held a cold bottle of Rainier to the side of his face. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be praying. Four older women played Snerts at a corner table, slapping down cards and knocking back Coors Lights with equal enthusiasm.
Bill herself was taking the break as an opportunity for a little self-enrichment. "Did you know that the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans is the oldest building in North America?" she said to Liam.
"Uh, no, I didn't," Liam said.
"Of course, once the nuns built it up and made it nice the priests moved in and booted the nuns out," Bill said.
"Of course," Liam said obediently. The air was redolent of wonderful things deep-fried, and his stomach growled. Bill cocked an eyebrow. "Cheeseburger and fries do you?" She laughed at Liam's expression. "Pull up a stool," she said hospitably. She closed her book and went into the kitchen, and fifteen minutes later Liam was attacking a heaping plate. "Like to see a man enjoying his food," Bill said, gratified. Like any good hostess, she knew enough not to bother a hungry customer with conversation, and so retreated behind her book once more.
Liam mopped up the last of the salt on the plate with his last fry and let out a long, satisfied sigh. Taking this as a signal to resume their conversation where it had left off, Bill lowered her book and said, "Not bad, huh? Bet it's a while since you had a burger that dripped that much juice down your chin."
"You'd lose that bet," Liam said, swallowing. "I had one just as good yesterday." Bill bristled, and Liam held up one hand, palm out. "From here, Bill, takeout."
Still suspicious, Bill said, "Takeout? I don't do takeout."
"You don't?" Wy had told him she'd gotten the burgers at Bill's.
"Hell no. Too much trouble, and I hate those plastic containers--they take a million years to decompose, and we've fucked up the environment enough for one lifetime as it is. 'Course," she added, "you bring your own bag, I'll wrap your order up in tinfoil." She rubbed her chin and added meditatively, "Although I've been thinking about charging a fee for the tinfoil." She fixed him with a severe look. "Tinfoil ain't cheap."
Liam remembered the greasy brown paper shopping bag Wy had produced, and breathed again. If Wy was buying burgers at Bill's, she wasn't anywhere around when Bob DeCreft walked into the prop of the Cub. He wanted Wy's alibi to be ironclad, impenetrable, intact. More than that, he didn't want to think that she'd lied to him within minutes of seeing him for the first time in over two years.
Although everybody lied, he knew that. It was the first rule any cop learned on the job. And it would have been easy enough for Wy to cut the p-lead and leave Bob DeCreft to his fate. It was what someone had done, after all. Yes, Wy had had all the opportunity in the world, and since she did most of her own mechanical work, the means as well. And motive? No. He didn't, wouldn't, couldn't believe it. He said, "Bill, do you know Wy Chouinard?"
"Of course. Pilot. Nice gal. She's Moses'--" She paused. "She's one of Moses' students."
Liam wondered what she had been going to say. "Did she order a couple of burgers yesterday?"
She eyed him. "What is this, an interrogation? Yeah, she was in, ordered two cheeseburgers, two fries, two Cokes; she brought an NC shopping bag with her. We visited some over the bar while she waited. She told me there was still a chance Fish and Game was going to declare an opener so they were going back up, and I told her all about the Mystic Crewe of Barkis." She cocked an expectant eyebrow, but he didn't bite, and she sighed. "Anyway, that New Orleans sure is one hell of a party town. Christmas, Mardi Gras, Strawberry Festival, Jazz Fest. The Neville Brothers come from New Orleans, did you know that?"
"All I know about New Orleans is that in 1814 we took a little trip."
Bill wrinkled her nose. "Johnny Horton--good God. He ain't the Neville Brothers, I'll tell you that for nothing."
"Really?"
Bill's blue eyes narrowed. "You ever hear of the Neville Brothers?"
"No," Liam admitted.
Bill muttered something uncomplimentary under her breath and marched over to the jukebox, the very set of her shoulders indicating she was on a mission from Jelly Roll Morton his own self. A coin rolled into a slot and the sweet, sad strains of "Bird on a Wire" rolled out.
"Nice," Liam commented when the song was done.
Bill rolled her eyes and heaved an impatient sigh at his lack of enthusiasm. "Nice, the man says. Nice."
Liam liked classical music, its intricate melodies and rhythms, its careful crafting, its honest passion. Jenny had called him a throwback, displacing Beethoven for the B-52's on their stereo whenever he turned his back, and Wy--he pulled himself together. He hadn't come to Bill's for a walk down memory lane or a lesson in contemporary pop rock. He'd come for lunch and for information, in that order.
Short of a parish priest, who was bound to an inconvenient confidentiality by oath, a local bartender was more privy to more information on the native population than anyone else. Liam had cultivated bartenders in other towns, and had found them to be a source that never failed, and a much quicker route to the information he needed than going through more conventional channels. Not to mention the added advantage of Bill's position as magistrate. She'd know all
the repeat offenders, would be able to fill him in where Corcoran hadn't. "Bill," he said, "what can you tell me about Bob DeCreft?"
"Bob DeCreft," she said. She sighed. "Poor old Bob." She gave Liam a sharp glance. Save for the man with his head pillowed in his arms in the front booth, the man with the Rainier bottle still pressed to his face, and the dulcet tones of Aaron Neville, they were alone in the bar. "You here to pump me for information, is that it, Liam?"
Liam smiled at her. "As much as I can get," he agreed. "That, and food--that's all I want you for."
She laughed, throwing her head back and displaying a set of teeth that were just saved from being perfect by overlapping incisors that made her look faintly vampirish.
Which, now that Liam thought about it, would explain that air of eternal youth.
"Bob DeCreft," she said, meditatively. "He moved here, oh, about five, no, six years ago now, I think it was."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "Why does anyone move to Newenham? Why did you? Starting over is a time-honored Bush Alaska tradition." Liam tried not to squirm beneath the penetrating look she shot him. "You're pissed at me, aren't you?" she said suddenly. "For blabbing your story out in the bar yesterday?"
Liam said nothing, examining the glass of Coke in his hand with an air of total absorption.
She pointed her finger at him. "Best thing I could do for you. No sense in trying to make a secret of things in the Alaskan Bush, Liam."
"Five people died on my watch," he found himself saying. "Never mind they shouldn't have been driving on the Denali Highway in February in the middle of a thirty-below cold spell with no survival gear and three little kids. Never mind they should have checked the level of antifreeze in their car before not doing any such thing. Two troopers under my command ignored two calls--not one but two --alerting our post reporting those folks missing. Maybe we could have got to them in time, maybe not. Fact is, we didn't, they died, and I was in charge." He looked Bill straight in the eye, unsmiling. "I'm about as white as you can get without bleach. So were the two troopers who missed the calls. The family that died was Athabascan, from Fort Yukon. You know how hard it is to get the villagers to trust us in the first place, Bill. How much harder is it going to be for me with the villagers around here, coming in under that kind of cloud?"
"Exactly why I told your story," she replied promptly. "You think the news didn't get here before you did? The Bush telegraph is better than smoke signals or jungle drums any day. It wouldn't have been long before everybody knew it. If you'd tried to hide it, there's some would have used it against you. Best to have it all out in the open."
Liam said nothing, and Bill heaved an impatient sigh. "Give them a chance, Liam. I meant what I said yesterday--you do your job right, that's what they'll judge you on."
"Even the villagers?"
"Especially the villagers," she retorted. "The Yupik have a strong sense of family, and an even stronger sense of community. The ones that aren't head down in a bottle, which is about half of them, are firm believers in law and order; in fact, they generally try to dispense it themselves through their village councils. When the councils fail, they'll call you in. They'll do everything they can to avoid it, but when the elders can't resolve the problem, or when the offense is just too much for the village to stomach, they'll call you in. You'll be their last hope, their last resort. They want to trust you. They want to believe that you'll do right by them."
"If you say so."
"I do say so," Bill said, "but I can tell that the only way you're going to be convinced is to see for yourself. You will. Anyway," she said, jumping back to the original subject in a way that he would come to recognize was characteristic of her conversation, "I could go outside and throw a rock and be guaran-damn-teed to hit somebody who got sick of their spouse, their marriage, their job, their home, or all of the above, and subsequently got on a plane going north and got off here, ready to start over."
She refilled Liam's Coke and drew one for herself. "Had three of 'em in the bar last night. One woman was living in Denver, Colorado, walked out on her air force husband with the clothes on her back and their daughter, and wound up sliming fish on a processor off Newenham. Now she's opening an espresso stand down to the docks. Another woman walked out on an abusive husband in Scottsdale, Arizona, and a week later was dispatching for the cop shop in Newenham."
"That'd be Molly?" Liam said, remembering the pudgy little woman, her brown hair flattened by the headset, talking nonstop into the mouthpiece, dispatching emergency services to those in need all over the town. She'd looked harried, true, but not the least bit victimized.
"That'd be Molly," she confirmed. "One guy had two businesses, three Mercedes, and four ulcers in Missouri, threw in his hand and came up; now he's a cop for the Newenham P.d."
Liam hazarded a guess. "Roger Raymo?"
She shook her head. "Cliff Berg."
"Oh yeah. He's got the wife with the shotgun."
Bill laughed, tossing her head back, her full silver mane shaking behind her shoulders. She looked even more zaftig close up, Liam thought.
He felt a presence next to him, and turned to look up at the man who had been holding the cold bottle to his face. This close, you could see why. There was an angry-looking weal down the side of his face, beginning on his forehead, continuing over his left eye, and ending in a torn left earlobe. The man himself was tall, six-six, Liam estimated, with the shoulders and forearms of a lumberjack. His face was heavy and bluntfeatured beneath close-cropped white-blond hair, and his eyes were a light blue so pale they seemed almost colorless. His grin was a cross between the Joker's and Yorick's, wide and mirthless. He threw down a five. "Thanks, Bill."
"You're welcome, Kirk." Bill was civil but not friendly. "You met the new trooper? Kirk Mulder, Trooper Liam Campbell."
"How do, Trooper Campbell."
"Mr. Mulder." Liam inclined his head, every nerve on alert. At some visceral level, he was aware of being in the presence of the enemy.
The colorless gaze looked him over. "Where's your uniform?"
Liam, in an unaccustomed moment of bravado, pulled his badge. "Figure this is all I need."
"Maybe so." This is all I need, his mocking gaze seemed to say.
Liam took the war into the enemy's camp. "Nasty scratch you got there."
The rictus grin flashed again. "Nothing a cold beer can't fix."
Bill handed over change, Kirk shoved it back. "That's fine, Bill. See you next time."
Bill and Liam watched the young giant saunter out. "I swear to God, I think Wolfe's got some place he breeds 'em up special for his crews." She nodded at the change. "He could have left the five on the table, or even on the bar. But no, he has to stand there and wait for me to make change, so he can make the magnanimous gesture, so I have to thank him for it. They're all like that, that bunch."
"Which bunch?"
"Cecil Wolfe's bunch," she said.
"Cecil Wolfe of the Sea Wolfe?"
She sneered. "Yeah, probably the only book he's ever read in his life." She nodded at the closing door. "That's his first mate, Kirk Mulder. Arrogant little bastard."
There was nothing little about Kirk Mulder, but then Liam didn't think the reference had been to Mulder's physical size.
And he worked for Cecil Wolfe. So did Wy, Liam thought.
The scratch on his face looked like it had been left by an animal. A cat, maybe? Mulder didn't look the type to have a cat around, or the type any self-respecting cat would stay around for long. A dog? Same thing. An eagle? Eagles didn't attack humans, or not in Liam's experience.
A raven? For a moment Liam was back beneath the wing of the 206, with the rain falling on his face and a big black bird peering down at him. He shook himself. Get a grip, Campbell.
Making another of her conversational leaps, Bill got back to Liam's question. "I figure Bob DeCreft was no different than any of the rest of us. He came looking for a life with a little more freedom in it, a little more
color, a little more adventure." She cocked an eyebrow at Liam. "It can still be had in the Alaska Bush, you know."
She swept both hands up over her long fall of gray hair, and Liam couldn't help noticing how the movement thrust her very nicely shaped breasts against her shirt. She noticed him noticing and flashed a flirtatious smile with no hint of encouragement in it. "Anyway, one year Bob flew in and bought himself a little house on the bluff."
"What year, exactly? Do you remember? were you here then?"
She grinned at him. "Honey, I been here forever, and I'll be here when you've been and gone." She knitted her brows. "Let's see now, when would that have been? Five years ago? No, six-he showed up the same year that prick Cecil Wolfe did. Bob got a job spotting herring for him that day. Pissed off a lot of the local pilots--for a while, anyway, until they knew what Cecil was like. Then they figured they'd been saved by a higher power."
The buzz on Wy's employer was not encouraging. "Did DeCreft have another job? Other than herring spotting, I mean?"
"He had about twenty of them, like everybody else in the Bush. He fished some, he hunted, might maybe even have done a little prospecting up in the Wood Mountains. He did the finish work on the bar when I remodeled it last year." Her hand stroked the polished oak surface lovingly. "He was a good craftsman. And reliable. If he gave you a bid he stuck to it, and if he said he'd show up at eight, he was here and had the hammer in his hand at eight oh-one. Unlike some people I could name," she added with bitter emphasis.
"Did he have any enemies?"
She shook her head.
"Any friends?"
She shook her head again. "Not particularly. Bob kept himself pretty much to himself."
"Was he married?"
Bill shook her head. "Nope."
"Oh." Well, hell. If Bob DeCreft had been murdered, Liam needed to know a lot more about the man than this.
"Had a live-in, though," Bill said, and in her turn enjoyed the way the rangy, wellmuscled body went on alert.
"He lived with a woman?"
Bill pursed her lips. "Best you go see for yourself." She leveled a threatening forefinger. "You go easy on Laura, you hear? She's had a lot to bear in her life, one way and another, and now this. She didn't take the news well. I won't have her harassed."
