by Fire
Liam made a heroic effort and managed to get his tongue back into his mouth. She didn't do anything to help, standing hipshot, chin down, one thumb hooked into her belt, staring at Liam with an up-from-under look designed to smelt steel. When the steam dissipated a little, his professional instincts kicked in, and something in him went on alert.
Laura Nanalook was trembling. It was a fine, almost imperceptible shaking that he wouldn't have noticed, and didn't at first, until she had cause to lean slightly against the arm of the couch to steady her knees. He looked back at her face with a cop's eye. Her lower lip was slightly swollen beneath its coat of red paint. Her wrists had the beginnings of bruises around them.
He turned to look at Cecil Wolfe and caught the man in the act of giving her a warning stare, filled with menacing promise. Liam noticed something else that he hadn't noticed before, too: Wolfe's shirt had been a little too hastily tucked into his jeans--one corner of the hem was caught between a button and a hole of his fly.
He looked at the room again. The cushions on the couch had been pushed to the floor, and the slipcover of the couch wedged deeply down into one crack, as if the couch had seen some recent rough and hasty use.
Liam took a smooth step forward, inserting himself between the two of them, and smiled down at her. "Excuse me, ma'am, we haven't been introduced. I'm Liam Campbell, the new state trooper assigned to Newenham."
"Trooper?" Her head whipped up and a panicky look came into her eyes. "Why are you here? What do you want? I didn't call you."
"Well," Liam said, and shuffled his feet, giving her his best aw-shucks, apologetic look. "I'm investigating the death of Bob DeCreft."
The panicked look faded, and her shoulders slumped infinitesimally. "Oh."
"You're Laura Nanalook, is that right?"
"Yes."
She volunteered nothing further. This was worse than pulling teeth. Liam produced what had never failed him before, his trusty pad and pencil. "And you lived here with Bob DeCreft."
She eyed notebook and pencil without interest. "Yes."
"Just what is the problem here, officer?" Wolfe said. Liam looked around and found himself nose to nose with the other man. "Little Laura here and I are friends. I'd hate to think you thought she was in any way responsible for the awful accident which befell poor old Bob."
Wolfe was crowding him, physically and verbally. Liam regarded him thoughtfully without moving, and without answering. Wolfe was unaccustomed to this kind of response, and his look intensified into a glare.
With superb indifference, Liam turned back to Laura. "I'm sorry for your loss, Ms. Nanalook, and I'm very sorry to have to bother you at a time like this, but in cases of this kind, I'm afraid there are questions that must be asked."
"Cases of what kind?" Wolfe said.
Liam, careful to keep his voice as neutral as was humanly possible, said, "Mr. Wolfe, just what is your interest here?"
He regretted the words as soon as they were out. Wolfe looked at the blonde, and smiled, slowly, a predatory smile full of anticipation and arrogant assurance. She didn't flinch away from that look, but Liam did. He said, "I understand Mr. DeCreft was spotting herring for you, Mr. Wolfe."
Wolfe's smile faded. "What of it?"
"Had he worked for you before?"
Wolfe's eyes narrowed. "This was the second year. Him and that flying dyke of his. And he wasn't working for me, he was working for her."
It didn't take an Alaska state trooper with ten years of investigatory experience behind him or a prior relationship with Wy to deduce that Wolfe had come on to Wy and been summarily dismissed. In spite of the situation Liam had to bite back a smug smile. Ah, testosterone, he thought, and this time the inner smile was directed more toward himself. He said, "I was given to understand that he had worked for you before."
Wolfe was surprised. "And how would you know that?"
Liam shrugged, and waited.
"Yeah, he worked for me, spotted for me, one season about six years ago. So what?"
The woman moved away, navigating a large, careful circle around both men, and subsided into a straight-backed chair pushed against one wall. She folded her arms, hugging herself, knees pressed tightly together.
Liam turned to find Wolfe looking at him with a speculative gleam in his eye. "When was the last time you spoke to Mr. DeCreft?" Liam said.
Wolfe gave a careless shrug that was a little too studied for Liam's taste. "I don't know, probably the last time they were in the air for me."
"When was the last time you saw him?"
"I don't really know," Wolfe said, still careless. He was watching Liam from beneath lowered brows, an intent, speculative gaze. "Might have been last year when I settled up with the two of them." He added condescendingly, "You see, officer, in herring fishing you don't ever have to see your spotters. They're up in the air, telling you where the fish are. You're on the water, going after the fish where they tell you."
"How do you settle up?" Liam was curious to know how Wy had been earning her living.
"What with the quotas nowadays, the seasons never last long. Chouinard usually met me at the dock. I'd show her the fish tickets"--some hidden joke amused Wolfe for a moment--"we'd add up the tonnage, multiply it by the going rate, figure her percentage, and then I'd write her a check."
"And she'd settle with Mr. DeCreft."
"That's how it works." Wolfe looked around and found his jacket, a leather bomber jacket with a fleece-lined collar that had never seen the inside of a Flying Fortress. "I'm off. Laura? Thanks for the--visit. I'll catch you later."
He emphasized the last words. Her head snapped up and he grinned at her. Her face went white.
With difficulty Liam remembered his sworn oath, and managed to refrain from taking out that grin, and the man along with it.
The door slammed shut behind Wolfe, leaving the little cabin vibrating in his wake.
Liam crossed the floor to kneel in front of Laura Nanalook. "Ms. Nanalook. Ms. Nanalook, are you all right?"
She raised her head again and smeared away a tear with the back of one hand. "Yes, of course. I'm fine." He regarded her steadily, and she added, "I'm just upset about Bob, is all."
"Uh-huh," Liam said, and waited. When she offered nothing further, he said, "What was your relationship to Bob DeCreft?"
Pausing in the act of pushing back her hair, she gave him a look that puzzled him with its sudden suspicion. "We lived here together."
"Uh-huh," Liam said, remembering the dead man's age. He wondered what attraction an older man might have had for such a young and beautiful woman. The cabin didn't show signs of affluence, and with her extraordinary looks Laura Nanalook could have sold herself to a much higher bidder.
Cecil Wolfe, for example.
"When was the last time you saw Mr. DeCreft, Ms. Nanalook?"
"Yesterday morning," she said steadily.
"About what time?"
"Late morning, around ten or so, I guess. He was headed out to the airport. Fish and Game said there might be an opener yesterday afternoon, and he and Wy were going up to do some scouting."
"Uh-huh," Liam said, making a note of the time. "Ms. Nanalook, I'm afraid there are some questions about Mr. DeCreft's death."
"What questions? He walked into a prop," she said. Her full, beautiful mouth tightened. "He walked into a goddamn prop, the stupid bastard." Tears formed in her eyes, and the anger was gone and as quickly replaced with grief. A mercurial temperament, difficult to live with. Or at least difficult for Liam to live with.
He refrained from telling her about the p-lead. A little pompously he said, "Alaska state law requires a thorough investigation of any accidental death." He folded up his notebook and stowed it. "So Mr. Wolfe just stopped by to offer his condolences?" He ended the sentence on a faintly interrogatory note.
She stared at him, brown eyes overflowing with tears. "Yeah," she said, "that's it. He wanted to comfort me in my loss." She started to laugh then, and it was an ugl
y sound, high-pitched, hysterical, uncontrolled. She must have heard how it sounded to Liam, and fought a visible battle it was painful to watch to bring herself back under control. She did it, a piece at a time. She might be volatile, but she was strong.
"I'll get you some water," Liam said, and rose to his feet before she could protest.
He went into the kitchen, a small room with an oil stove, a table with four matched chairs, and cupboards all showing signs of being lovingly crafted by hand, and ran a glass of water. There was a box of Kleenex on the counter, and he snagged a handful of them, too.
On his way back into the living room he took the opportunity to peek into the other rooms. Two small bedrooms and a bathroom. Both bedrooms sported twin beds, one each, both neatly made up. The closet in one room was lined with Blazo boxes stacked on their sides and filled with jeans, shirts, shoes, shorts, T-shirts, and socks, everything neatly folded. The closet in the second room was a riot of color and fabric and there was nothing neat about it. This room had a dresser, too, plus a mirror festooned with necklaces and a large stand hung with dozens of pairs of earrings. The dresser looked handmade, and matched the headboard of the bed and the small nightstand next to it, all three smooth as silk and gleaming with polish.
When he got back into the living room, Laura Nanalook had her head back against the wall. Her eyes were closed.
"Here," Liam said.
She opened her eyes and blinked up at him. In her grief and confusion, she looked about ten years old. So long as he kept his eyes above her chin.
He held out the glass. "Some water for you," he said.
"Oh," she said, looking bewildered as he pressed the glass into her hand, but she drank obediently.
He took the glass back and set it down on an end table. On the table was a homemade picture frame made of light oak, as carefully crafted and polished as the furniture in the kitchen and the second bedroom. It held a picture of Laura Nanalook and an older man Liam realized must be Bob DeCreft. He picked it up.
Bob DeCreft was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick blond hair that had resisted aging along with the rest of him. His eyes were narrowed against the sun, so that Liam couldn't see what color they were. He had crow's-feet but no laugh lines, a broad brow, a firmlipped mouth, a strong chin. His smile was tentative, and he had an arm around Laura's shoulders, resting somehow gingerly on them, as if he couldn't quite believe his luck. Between them Liam could see over the bank of the river and down into the river itself. Laura had her arms folded across her chest, standing hipshot, chin up, staring straight into the camera with an I-dare-you look in her eyes.
DeCreft reminded Liam of someone, but he couldn't remember who, so he put the picture down. He knew it would do no good, but he couldn't stop himself from saying, "You could press charges against Wolfe, Ms. Nanalook." He held out the Kleenex.
She blew her nose ferociously. "I've got to get to work--it's after four o'clock. Bill'll skin me if I'm late."
"You could press charges," he repeated. "I'm a witness, at least after the fact."
"He'd kill me," she whispered.
"No he wouldn't." Liam's voice rose slightly, as if volume alone could banish her demons. "I wouldn't let him."
"You don't know him," she said. "You couldn't stop him."
"I can take you to the hospital, where you can be examined, pictures taken, evidence gathered. And then I will arrest him. He won't be able to hurt you again."
She shook her head, slowly at first and then faster, her hair tumbling wildly around her face. He didn't make the mistake of offering any gesture of physical sympathy; he had interviewed rape victims before. "You don't know him," she repeated.
"By God," Liam said, realization breaking over him. "This isn't the first time, is it?"
"You don't know him," she said for the third time. She looked exhausted. "He'd kill me."
Liam tried his only remaining shot. "Ms. Nanalook, you know if you don't press charges against him, he'll come back."
A shudder ran over her. She wouldn't look up, glorious golden hair still hiding her face.
"I know." She squeezed the Kleenex into a tight little ball. "They always do."
Liam left the house in a simmering rage and slammed the door to the Blazer hard. It didn't relieve his feelings, and it didn't do the Blazer door any good.
Sighing, he started the engine and shifted into reverse. A white station wagon came barreling down the game trail that passed for a driveway to DeCreft's cabin and nearly rear-ended him. He stamped on the brakes, slapping his head into the headrest on the rebound.
The station wagon went around him, clipping a slender birch in the process, and slid to a halt in front of the cabin. Without wasting a glance on the Blazer, Rebecca Gilbert shot out of the driver's seat and ran through the front door of the house without knocking.
Liam stared at the house for a moment, but it didn't yield up any secrets. He sighed. So what else was new. He was a stranger in a strange land.
The white station wagon, a little Ford Escort, was idling in park. Liam got out to turn off the ignition and close the driver's side door, and then he went on his way.
* * *
EIGHT
The phone was ringing as he walked into the office. "About goddamn time," a voice barked at him.
Liam sat down. "Hello, John."
"Where the hell have you been? I've been calling all day. Don't you have someone to answer the friggin' phone down there?"
"Not in the office," Liam said. "I guess the dispatcher takes all the calls."
"Goddammit," Barton said, "how the hell am I supposed to practice goddamn law and order if I can't even talk to my goddamn officers?"
It was a rhetorical question, and Liam didn't bother trying to answer.
Barton went on. Barton always went on. "What's this I hear about you stepping off the plane into the middle of a murder?"
Liam sighed, leaned back to prop his feet on the desk, and rubbed his eyes. "Don't tell me, let me guess. Corcoran."
"Hell yes, Corcoran," Barton said, adding with awful sarcasm, "and a good thing, too, since my own officer on the scene can't be bothered to phone in a report."
"Lay off, John," Liam said. "I haven't been here two days, I got no handover from Corcoran, I don't know the territory or the locals, and already I've responded to two shootings and a possible murder. Not to mention which I don't have a place to sleep and I can't find anyone to press my uniform."
Barton was outraged. "You're out of uniform?"
Liam had to laugh, but under his breath and out of John Barton's hearing.
Lieutenant John Dillinger Barton was a twenty-five-year veteran of the Alaska State Troopers. An air force brat like Liam, his family had moved all over the world during his childhood, ending eventually at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage in 1957, when his father, under pressure from his mother, retired to sell and service Xerox copy machines. He attended Seattle University with the goal of joining the Jesuit brotherhood, elected a philosophy class in which a Washington state trooper came to lecture on the ethics of criminal justice, and on that day gave up the priesthood forever. Upon graduation he returned home to be promptly accepted into that year's trooper academy class. They'd done away with the height requirement by then, which was a good thing since he topped out at five feet four. Barton was gorillian of build, all of it muscle, and Churchillian of jaw, all of it stubborn, but for all that amazingly good at not trampling over the authority of village elders. He rose high and fast in the department.
He was now the outpost supervisor for Section E, which included Liam's previous post of Glenallen as well as his new one, Newenham. He was Liam's boss, and had been for seven years. He had spotted Liam's potential early on, had mentored his swift rise through the ranks, and had marked Liam as someone who would always make him look good. It was tacitly understood by both men that this would always be in a subordinate capacity, and if Liam had his own ideas about that he was smart enough to keep them to himself.<
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Barton had also orchestrated Liam's recent and rapid fall from grace, and his transfer to Newenham.
"So what have you been doing?" Barton said, voice rich with sarcasm.
Liam thought. "Well," he said, "I had my first tai chi lesson." He had to hold the phone away from his ear when Barton, predictably, erupted again. Liam waited patiently, smiling to himself. When he thought about it later, he was amazed that he still remembered how.
When he got a chance, he told Barton of the scene he had stepped into at the airport.
At the end of it Barton grunted. "Ninety people milling around and nobody sees a thing. Bullshit. What about the pilot?"
"Out getting lunch."
"Check the alibi?"
"Yes."
"Well, shit." Barton always preferred the easy answers, and on every case but this one so did Liam. "Who didn't like him?"
"No one, apparently, but then no one seemed to know him all that well. No wants or warrants, no record of him having been tanked for anything so much as a parking ticket. Good reputation with the local magistrate."
John interrupted him. "That Bill Billington?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"No reason." But Barton chuckled, a full, rich, knowledgeable sound.
Uh-huh, Liam thought, and said, "I called the bank, he had two thousand and change in a checking account, no big withdrawals recently. No mortgage on his house; I guess he paid cash. He owned a pickup and a Super Cub, both free and clear, too."
"I'll run a check on him from here, see if we come up with anything."
"Thanks."
Barton cleared his throat, and when he spoke again his voice was gruffer. "Thought you'd like to know. The wife and I visited with Jenny this weekend. Her folks were there, and they said to say hi when I talked to you."
