Better To Rest

by Dana Stabenow

  Newenham, population two thousand, was a fishing town and regional market hub sitting on the eastern edge of Bristol Bay. It was built on a thick deposit of silt and clay washed down by the Nushugak River, and its topography consisted mostly of rolling hills covered with stands of birch and alder and fireweed and spruce clustered around houses with vinyl siding and trailers and mobile homes and log cabins with sod roofs and Quonset huts left over from World War II. There wasn’t a straight street downtown; a series of looping curves wound around that part of Newenham with delusions of grandeur, city and business buildings in all their prefabricated glory and even a town house condominium complex sitting at the edge of the river overlooking the small boat harbor. A forest of masts of varying heights crowded the slips like nursing piglets, their backs to the bay and another bad fishing season. By February only a quarter of their skippers would have filed for bankruptcy, if the town was lucky. Meanwhile, they were all drinking their misery away, and their good sense with it.

  Wy could have offered some solace, some counsel, he thought, taking a corner too fast. Instead she had withdrawn behind a façade that was as cool as it was irritating. Anyone would think she didn’t care if he went or stayed. Anyone would think that she was just waiting for him to screw up so she’d have the opportunity to kick him out.

  Not that she’d ever asked him to move in in the first place. What was her problem with that, anyway? They were single, in love, in heat, had a boy who needed two parents, had jobs that gave them financial security; just what the hellwas her problem? Was it him? Was it marriage?

  He could have asked. He could win everything or lose it all, but he feared his fate too much. What was the name of that poem? After a moment’s thought it came to him. “My Dear and Only Love.” Figured. The author, as he recalled, had wound up with his head on a pike outside London, the only proper end for anyone who dared to put that much truth into rhyme. The road straightened out and he stepped on the gas, only to send the vehicle into a protesting fishtail.

  “Did you say something, sir?” Diana Prince said, knuckles white on the door handle.

  He let up on the gas. “No.”

  Sometimes he thought he read too much poetry.

  John Kvichak’s house sat on the river’s bank, too, although too far upstream of Wy’s house for Liam to see the lights. Liam hoped she wasn’t pissed that he was late. He could have called before he left the office. But then she might have picked up instead of the answering machine, and he would have had to talk to her. Or Tim.

  Tim hadn’t exactly been a barrel of laughs lately, either. Seeing his first girlfriend shot in front of his eyes the month before had been traumatic enough. Now his adoptive mother Wy had invited his birth mother into the house. This was the same woman under whose porch Wy had discovered a broken and bleeding Tim a little over two years before. Tim’s hatred of Natalie Gosuk was fierce and visceral; he openly resented being forced to spend time with her, and the house was, to say the least, unsettled after one of her visits. Wy was allowing one a week. Today had been her third. Liam and Tim had been forging a relationship one cautious step at a time, their mutual love for Wy the impetus behind the journey. Now Tim had barricaded himself behind a wall of resentment that even Wy was having trouble getting through. Not that she would stop trying. She’d die first.

  Liam had met Wy three years before, when he’d had to fly into the Bush to investigate a murder. It hadn’t been a memorable murder, a subsistence fisherman shooting a sports fisherman over some alleged trespassing of fishing territory. He couldn’t even remember now if the investigation and subsequent arrest had resulted in a conviction.

  But he could remember every single second of the flights out and back, and for once his memories had nothing to do with his fear of flying. He remembered Wy had her hair pulled back into a ponytail, the easier to wear the headset. He remembered hearing her laugh, loving the sound of it, and trying deliberately to provoke a repeat. He remembered the feeling of instant recognition when she introduced herself as his pilot, the brief feeling of incredulous dizziness when their hands clasped for the first time in greeting, the dismayed realization of instantaneous attraction, of sharp-edged, undeniable need.

  A need that a four-day weekend in Anchorage had only whetted. A weekend that, due to Wy’s uncomfortable conscience, constituted the main portion of their affair, before she sent him back to his wife and son. They had parted in grief and in anger, and the first time they had seen each other again they had coupled in the front seat of her truck like a pair of randy teenagers.

  Oh, yeah, the need was still there, as strong and as certain as it had ever been. Need wasn’t enough, though. Sometimes even love wasn’t enough. He used to know what was, but he was no longer as sure of himself as he had once been.

  It was with relief that he pulled up in front of John’s house, where, to judge from the lack of parking spaces, there appeared to be a monster truck rally in progress, and consigned his personal life to a folder in the back of his mind markedLater. Wy would be there when he was ready to open it again.

  John Kvichak’s house had started life as a dugout, a pit with sod walls and roof, and over the intervening hundred and fifty years had migrated up and out. One wall was log, another plywood with tar-paper shingles, the third and widest of round river rock that rose into a chimney that, however unsteady in construction, appeared to be functional, if the smoke pouring out of it was any indication. The fourth was a bright blue vinyl siding Liam tried to convince himself wasn’t the same shade as the new siding Seafood North sported across from the small boat harbor. On a drive-through of the dock area the day before, Liam had noticed that part of one wall of the cannery was still bare except for the Tyvek house wrap. Probably, he told himself, Seafood North had ordered short. Probably.

  “Don’t look now; it’s Delinquentville,” Diana Prince said. “That’s Teddy’s Ranchero, isn’t it? And Kelley MacCormick’s Dakota? And Paul Urbano’s Cherokee Chief. What’s with those tires, anyway? He could drive over a moose without grazing the rack, the body sits so high.” She released her seat belt and looked at Liam. “The gang’s almost all here. You think they’re planning their next heist?”

  “I hope not,” Liam said, and he meant it. He didn’t know Paul that well, but Teddy and John were the sole support of their families, and pretty good at it so long as they stayed sober. Mac MacCormick was fresh out of the hospital and was in no shape to do more time. “Might as well get it over with.”

  He got out of the Blazer just in time to see Brewster Gibbons haul his Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer to a halt and bounce out. Gibbons must have been behind them the whole way and Liam had been so preoccupied that he hadn’t spotted him, which did not improve his temper. “Brewster,” he said, his voice very different from the irritating drawl he had used before, “what are you doing here? We don’t need you. Go home.”

  “I didn’t think you were going to do anything.” Gibbons panted up, full of righteous wrath. “I came to warn them to stay away from my bank.”

  “As you can see, it’s not necessary. We’re here, and we’ll handle it. Now go home.” To underscore his command, he stepped forward to take Gibbons’ arm and escort him back to the SUV. He even went so far as to open the door. With bad grace, Gibbons climbed in.

  Liam caught Diana as she reached the porch, which along with the stairs up to it and the overhang looked brand-new, the wooden planks neatly lined up and not yet gray from weathering. Liam wondered who next would be pounding on the trooper post’s door to report a theft.

  The door swung open.

  “Hi, John,” Diana Prince began.

  She didn’t have time to say anything else. The man standing in the door took one look at her uniform, another at Liam’s blue-clad bulk looming up behind her, said, “Oh, shit,” and vanished.

  From behind him there was a panicked yell and some shouts and a lot of swearing and a rush of footsteps. Something crashed inside the room and the lights went out. There was a
thump and a moan and some more swearing.

  “Okay, guys, we’re coming in,” Diana Prince said, pushing the door wide and feeling for a wall switch. She found one. An overhead light revealed a terrified Teddy Engebretsen with something in his hand and that hand pulled back to throw. “What’s- Teddy? Teddy, what the hell is that? Teddy, don’t- Christ! Look out, sir!”

  She ducked, and on instinct Liam followed suit. Something pale and elongated sailed over their heads.

  There was a loudsmack! followed by a howl of outrage and the thump of a butt hitting the ground, hard.

  Still crouching, Liam turned to look.

  Brewster Gibbons was sitting on his fanny in the snow at the foot of the stairs, staring at the thing lying half on the bottom step and half on his lap. As Liam watched, he let out a yell and scuttled backward on his hands and feet. The thing slid from his lap and skidded across the icy path to bounce off the berm on one side and back off the other. “Keep it away from me! Keep it away from me!”

  “What the hell?” Liam said, and went to investigate.

  On closer inspection, he didn’t blame Brewster for yelling.

  The object was a human arm, the left, severed above the elbow.

  Its hand was clenched into a tight fist.

  FOUR

  They were having a great time until Liam walked in.

  Tim was a math whiz, and Gary, a building contractor, was showing him how to calculate how many trusses were needed to hold up the roof of your average split-level house. Jo was not helping by telling the story of the time Gary had made the family of a burned-out home wait through three tries before he got the truss size right.

  “It wasn’t me; it was the fabricator,” Gary said in protest. “And in the interest of full disclosure,” he told Tim, “it took four tries for them to get it right. I was downtime thirteen days on that job.” He shook his head and drained his beer. “Plus the granite for the kitchen counter kept breaking. Hard to get quality work done right and on time in this state.”

  “Unless they get you to do it,” Jo said, regarding him with a sister’s sapient eye.

  Gary grinned and did not deny the accusation.

  “So you build people’s houses,” Tim said.

  “And remodel them.”

  “Remodel?”

  “Yeah, rip ’em apart and start over.”

  “Like?”

  Gary tucked into his New York strip. Wy had always appreciated an enthusiastic appetite, being a feeder herself. “I just finished up the remodel of a split-level home in Spenard. The owner has had the house for three years and she’s just getting around to correcting everything the previous owners did to it.”

  “Like?”

  Gary cut off another piece of steak and used it for punctuation. “Like, they put up teak paneling, and stained all the trim mahogany and took down the old kitchen shelves and put the new ones up wrong. In the bathroom, they walled off the window and put in a six-hundred-dollar wall-hung toilet, which leaked. Lucky there wasn’t any insulation between the floors.”

  “Why lucky?”

  “Man, I’m going to be able to hire you on as an apprentice, you keep this up. Lucky because instead of pooling near and rotting the floor joists-”

  “What’s a joist?”

  “Same thing as a truss, only under the floor instead of the roof.” Gary reflected. “Well. Sort of. Same principle, anyway, supporting the structure. So, the water from the leak migrated down and only ruined the Sheetrock in the downstairs bathroom.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I gutted it right down to the studs, renewed all the plumbing. I closed off the door to the hallway, made it a master bath. I put the window back in-I love glass brick-and took out the wall-hung toilet and replaced it with a floor-mounted one. I built new cabinets-maple slab, looks great, if I sez it who shouldn’t-and laid down new linoleum. Now it looks about twice as big and feels ten times as light as it did before, and everything’s new and done right. That bathroom’s good for thirty years.” His grin was not modest. He cut another piece of steak and inserted it into his mouth as if he were receiving the Year’s Best Contractor award.

  “You like doing that?”

  Gary chewed while he thought. “Yeah,” he said, swallowing. “It’s fun to take something that’s messed up and straighten it out, make it right again. You should have seen this woman; you’d have thought I was some kind of magician. She acted like she hadn’t had to pay for it, like I’d given her a gift. Like I said, it’s fun. Except I’m allergic to mahogany,” he added, shaking his head, “and I sneezed all the way through the remodel. But other than that. It was fun.”

  “What’s your next project?”

  Gary let his gaze drift ever so slowly toward Wy. “I’m between projects at the moment.”

  Wy felt heat rise up into her face. Tim looked from one to the other with a gathering frown. Jo grinned, and if she’d been part Yupik and forty years older you’d have sworn she was Moses Alakuyak’s twin sister.

  At this auspicious moment, Liam walked in.

  He didn’t see them at first, walking straight to the bar and pulling off the ball cap that seemed suddenly too tight for his head. “I need a warrant.”

  “I’ll give you a warrant,” Bill said, “if you’ll move this lush out of my bar.”

  Liam craned his head. “Oh. Eric.”

  “Yes. Again.”

  “Poor old bastard.”

  “What is it with you guys,” Bill said, disgusted.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Never mind. Who’s the warrant for?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly.”

  “Arrest?”

  “Yes. At least I think so.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m not sure about that, either.”

  “You’re not helping me much here, Liam.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. The damnedest thing.”

  “What?”

  “I got something I need you to keep in your freezer until I can get it on a plane to the lab.” Liam opened up the white plastic garbage bag he’d carried into the bar with him.

  Bill peered inside. “Sweet Jesus!” she yelled, turning heads all over the bar, which was when Wy saw Liam for the first time. “What the Sam Hill hell is that!”

  Since Bill didn’t seem to be in any hurry to take custody of the bag, Liam, who was even less thrilled to be carrying it around, set it on the floor at his feet. “It’s exactly what you think it is.”

  “Where the hell did you get it?”

  “I first saw it coming out of John Kvichak’s house on a fly pitch that nearly brained me.” He shook his head. “At first I thought it was a prosthetic. That clenched fist looked like somebody’d forgotten to throw the switch on the circuits.”

  Bill’s face began to regain some of its natural color. “For crissake. Where the hell did he find that? I mean, I know John and Teddy are scavengers, but…” Her hands were shaking a little when she poured out two fingers of Glen-morangie, neat. She frowned down at them and they steadied as she put the glass on the bar. “Oh. I forgot. You on or off?”

  Liam sat down next to Eric Mollberg, who stirred and moaned a little, and turned his face to Liam in a preliminary attempt to surface from the sea of alcohol in which he had been submersed for going on three months. “I,” said Liam, “don’t give a damn if I’m on duty or off at the moment.” He drank and felt the heat and flavor of the single-malt seep straight into his bloodstream. Comfort food, he thought, and finished it. Bill held up the bottle. He shook his head. “No. That did it. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had.”

  Bill cast a surreptitious glance over his shoulder at the group in the booth, one of whom was staring back with an undeniably guilty look all over her face, and thought, And it’s not over yet. Because she was a woman, too, and had her own men problems-for starters the Alaska old fart sitting in the corner knocking back enough beer to fell Paul
Bunyon and whooping it up with his pals-she bought Wy some time. “Where’d it come from?”

  “You’ll love this.”

  Bill ran a couple more margaritas down to the end of the bar for Moccasin Man, who was putting the moves on Susie Akiachak. Susie was a smart girl and knew better, but her defenses had been weakened by a nasty breakup with Jimmy Koliganek, and Evan Gray was first and foremost an opportunist. On the way back up the bar Bill hooked her foot beneath the bottom rung of the bartender’s stool and sent it sliding into place across from Liam. “Okay,” she said, settling in for the duration, “let’s hear it.”

  “John Kvichak and Teddy Engebretsen were hunting.”

  “They’re always hunting when they get into trouble. When they’re not in town and getting into trouble. Or out fishing and getting into trouble.”

  “All too true.” Liam rolled the glass between his hands as if the heat of his palms would evaporate anything left of the scotch and he could inhale the fumes. “So they were hunting, up around Bear Glacier, and they found it.”

  “Found what?”

  “A plane wreck.”

  “What? What plane wreck? Did somebody go down?”

  “Evidently.”

  “I haven’t heard a thing.”

  “Neither have I, and neither has anybody at the airport. I called Anchorage Flight Service to see if anybody had gone missing and they said not to their knowledge. I called Elmendorf, to see if the air force was missing a mission. Nope. They checked with Eilson. Still nothing. So then I ask Teddy and John what are they talking about a plane wreck. And they say it was a plane wreck they found, and they found that”-he jerked his head at the bag, on the floor between him and Eric-“in the wreckage. So I take another look at it.”