Better To Rest

by Dana Stabenow

  Went to Petes for dinner when we got back. Hes a good guy knows not to talk to much. Wanted to know about Krasnoyarsk and what it looked like and how many people lived there. Told him it looked like Nome.

  FIFTEEN

  Diana Prince caught a call just as she was headed out the door at the end of the day. Someone had made a charge of child abuse against Bernadette Kusegta, who ran a small day-care center out of her home. The complainant, one Gloria Crow, accused Bernadette of interfering with her three-year-old daughter, Tammie. Kusegta, plump and attractive, with her black hair permed into a mass of large curls, looked white beneath her brown skin. She sat, unmoving, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond the large room decorated in primary colors. It was heaped with toys and books, and a small inflatable swimming pool filled with about four inches of water sat on the floor, one lone rubber duck floating in the middle of it.

  “Well, go on, arrest her!” Crow said. “What are you waiting for?” She was slender and sharp-featured and vibrating with rage.

  “When did you see the marks, ma’am?” Prince said.

  “Tonight! When my baby came home! She was crying and holding her bottom!”

  “Did she say that Ms. Kusegta had hurt her?”

  “No, but who else could have done it? Go on, arrest her! She hurt my baby!”

  “You said, ‘When your baby came home,’ ma’am. From that, I’m guessing you didn’t go get her.”

  “No! So what?”

  “Who did bring your daughter home, Ms. Crow?”

  “Leslie did; he picked her up on his way home.”

  “Is Leslie your husband?”

  “He’s my roommate.”

  “What’s his full name?”

  “Leslie Clark.”

  “And when he brought your daughter home, she was crying and holding her bottom.”

  “Yes!”

  “And then you looked and found the marks.”

  “Yes! I know she did it; she was the only one who could have! Arrest her right now!”

  “Where is your daughter now, ma’am?”

  “She’s home, of course! I came here as soon as I saw what that bitch did to her!”

  “Is Leslie there with her?”

  “Of course! Did you think I’d leave my baby all alone?”

  Diana flipped her notebook closed. “I’ll need to talk to your daughter, ma’am. Right now.”

  They made it in the door before the boyfriend started beating on the little girl again, but only just. He was now in the lockup, protesting his innocence in spite of the similarity in size and shape between his hands and the marks on Tammie’s defenseless little bottom. Bernadette Kusegta’s face had regained some of its natural color, and Gloria Crow was still insisting that Leslie could never have done such a thing, that she would have known if he could, that she would never have let him in her house or left her daughter with him if she’d known. Diana took statements and called Bill Billington for an arraignment at tenA.M. the next morning. It was almost ten before she was through, and she was tired and heartsick and wanted nothing so much as a long, hot bath. Preferably with bubbles, but if no bubbles were to be had she might pour in a bottle of Lysol.

  She had her hand on the knob of the door when the phone rang. It would have forwarded to Liam’s cell after the second ring, but she seemed to be constitutionally incapable of walking out on a ringing phone. Cursing herself, she snatched it up. “Alaska State Troopers, Newenham post.”

  The voice was loud enough to make her wince away from the receiver. “Ma’am! Ma’am! Please, calm down, I can’t understand a word!”

  There was a gulping kind of sob. “Please help me; I think my sister’s dead.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Oh, God, Karen, please, Karen, don’t do this, please don’t do this!”

  “Ma’am? Where are you?”

  “We’re at my mother’s. Please help us, please!”

  “Where is your mother’s house, ma’am? Ma’am?”

  “Oh, God, I think she’s dead.” The voice dulled and flattened. “Oh, Karen. Oh, Karen.”

  “Ma’am?” Diana clenched the phone so hard her arm ached. “I need you to tell me where you are. Ma’am?”

  After a long, silent moment, when she thought the caller might have hung up, the woman told her. Diana told her she was coming, called Liam, and called Joe Gould.

  She got to Lydia’s house five minutes after Joe and a split second before Liam. The three of them stood once again in Lydia’s kitchen, looking at another body on the same floor.

  “Strangled, this time,” Joe said.

  “What was your first clue?” Diana said, her voice hollow. Karen’s eyes were open and bulging, her tongue protruded from her mouth, and her throat was one livid bruise.

  To Liam’s everlasting shame, his first reaction at the sight was relief. Now Wy would never know what had happened in Lydia’s bedroom.

  Joe did not change expression.

  This time there had been a fight. The kitchen table and chairs were knocked over, drawers had been pulled out and dumped, cupboards opened and emptied on the floor. Broken dishes and spilled rice crunched underfoot, and the body was coated with powdered chocolate. “Let’s check the rest of the house,” Liam said.

  It was trashed. The bed had been ripped apart and the mattress dumped to the floor. The drawers to the filing cabinet had been opened and dumped. The shelves in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom had been swept clean, bottles of Bayer and boxes of Band-Aids and bars of scented soap winding up in the sink or toilet and all over the floor. Betsy Amakuk sat on the couch in the living room, where all the books had been pulled from the shelves. She was weeping into Stan Jr.’s shoulder. Stan Jr. patted her awkwardly. He looked angry. Jerry wasn’t there.

  “Somebody was looking for something,” Diana said.

  “No shit,” Liam said, and returned to the kitchen. Joe Gould was zipping Karen into a black plastic body bag. “To the airport, Joe, straight to the airport and no stopping.” He dialed Wy’s number on his cell phone. When she answered, he said, “I need you to take the Cessna to Anchorage tonight. Right now, in fact. Can do?”

  “Are you coming?”

  “Yes. You’ll be transporting a body.” Silence. “Wy?”

  “Whose body?” she said, but he got the feeling she was only killing time.

  “Karen Tompkins.”

  “What?”

  “Karen Tompkins, Lydia’s daughter. We just found her. I need to get her body to the ME in Anchorage tonight. Can you take it?”

  Another silence. “I- All right. I’ll call Bill to stay with Tim and head for the airport to start pulling seats.”

  “Meet you there.” He hung up and looked at Prince. “You know the drill.”

  “I do.”

  “We’ll do a turnaround and come straight back.”

  “Okay.” She was straining toward the door, eager to start questioning the neighbors.

  “Go,” he said, and she bolted for the door like the starter pistol had been fired.

  “Give me a hand,” Joe said, and Liam went to Karen Tompkins’ black plastic-clad feet. They lifted her easily and bore her from the room. Liam glanced back at the isolated island of faded linoleum in a sea of broken crockery, spilled flatware and a layer of white flour, an eerie reverse print of the dead woman’s body.

  They were in the air half an hour later, the second and third rows of seats pulled and stacked in the shed next to the tie-down. “Karen Tompkins?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lydia Tompkins’ daughter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “It looks like somebody strangled her.”

  She made a noise of distress. “Why?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  The night was clear and calm, and the moon rose in time to light their way through Lake Clark Pass, a narrow gorge hedged about on all sides by very tall, very steep mountains already covered with s
now. They landed at Merrill seventy minutes later, to be met by the meat wagon. Brillo Pad was driving.

  Brillo Pad, aka Dr. Hans Brilleaux, had a very thick, very wiry, very curly head of very black hair, hence the nickname. Brillo Pad was fifty-six years old and very proud of his hair’s continued thickness and lack of gray. “Liam,” he said, big white buckteeth flashing in a grin. His face was swarthy and his nose was large and red-veined.

  “Hans Brilleaux, Wy Chouinard.”

  Brillo Pad gave Wy the once-over. “Delighted. You folks staying the night in Anchorage?”

  “You done with Lydia Tompkins?” Liam said.

  “Who?”

  “Lydia Tompkins,” Liam said, enunciating the name in careful, independent syllables. “The woman I sent you two days ago.”

  Brillo Pad tore his eyes from Wy and said, “Sure. I knew that. Ah, yeah. Head injury, whacked her skull pretty good, causing internal bleeding and a clot. Bam. On the physical evidence of the body, good chance it was accidental, not intentional. She clawed him, but no skin or blood, only fibers. If I had to guess, I’d say they came from a Carhartt’s jacket.”

  “Great.”

  “I know, not many of those around Alaska, are there?” He helped Liam maneuver the body bag out of the 180. “Who’s this?”

  “The first woman’s daughter. How quick can you look at her?”

  Brillo Pad whistled long and low. “Daughter, huh? Man, you’re the reason I’ve been in business the last six months.”

  “I’m figuring the same guy did both women. Any hard evidence you can find, say fibers from the same coat, would be most helpful.”

  “I’ll take her straight to the lab, see what I can see. So, are you staying in town tonight?”

  “We’re going home,” Liam told Brillo.

  “Okay. I’ll give you a call when I’ve got something.”

  He drove off, and Wy got clearance from the tower. They were back in the air five minutes later.

  Liam felt a sense of relief as the lights of the big city receded behind them, and wondered at it. “It’s easier flying at night,” he said over the headset.

  She looked at him in the darkness of the cabin. “You’re not as afraid to fly in the dark?”

  “I don’t think I am. Or at least not as much as I am during the day.”

  “It’s a miracle,” she said lightly.

  “Maybe it’s just that I can’t see how far up we are.” He peered out of the window, saw a flare burning on one of the Inlet oil rigs far below, and straightened hastily.

  “Or maybe you’re just tired of being scared and your little monkey brain has decided enough is enough.”

  “Maybe,” he said, unconvinced. He was glad, though, to be spared some of the usual terror. He wasn’t relaxed enough to doze, but at least he wasn’t holding the aircraft up by the edge of his seat.

  It was dark and warm in the cabin. Outside the stars were very bright, competing with the new moon, and both lit every rugged peak and every hanging glacier of the pass in bold relief. The moonlight reflected off the snow and lit the cabin of the aircraft with enough light to read by. He was very conscious of Wy’s shoulder brushing his, of her strong hands, relaxed and competent, resting on the yoke, of her long, jeans-clad legs stretched out in front of her, the soles of her feet just touching the rudder pedals. He turned a little in his seat so he could watch her.

  She glanced over. “What?”

  “Nothing. I just like watching you work, is all.”

  Her teeth flashed in the dim light. “Since when?”

  “Since tonight, I guess.”

  She held up a hand and turned a knob on the tuner. A woman’s voice gave a recorded weather report. When it began to repeat, she turned it off.

  “I love you, Wy.”

  She reached for his hand and brought it to her lips. “Same goes.”

  He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm. They flew on steadily for a few moments, content.

  “Liam?”

  “What?”

  It was odd, but the question she had been dreading to ask came out more easily than she had imagined. Maybe everything was easier at five thousand feet. “Are you going to take that job that John Barton offered you?”

  “I don’t know.” His answer, too, was much less tense than it might have been.

  “Do you want it?”

  Did he? Did he want to go back to the fast track, to being John Dillinger Barton’s fair-haired, handpicked successor, well up on the ladder to the top?

  He remembered the answer he’d given Brillo Pad when the ME had wanted to know if they were staying the night in Anchorage.We’re going home. It was natural now, or so it seemed, for him to call Newenham home. He thought of the people he would never have met if not for his fall from grace and his transfer to Newenham. Bill Billington, a magistrate unlike any other he had ever encountered. Moses Alakuyak, that not-quite-dried-up little demon. Charlene Taylor. Newenham had given him Wy back. Newenham had given him Tim.

  He thought then of the mighty river flowing past their deck, of the great bay it emptied into, of the rolling muskeg and the hundreds of lakes and the ragged peaks and glaciers and hidden valleys beyond. Of the little herd of caribou that he had been told wandered into town in the early spring when they overran their calving grounds. Of the walrus hauling out in herds on the beaches of an island just miles down the coast. Of the hundred tiny towns and villages, cabins and fish cabins and lodges sprinkled across this vast area with a lavish hand, each one housing some gem of a person like Leonard Nunapitchuk, who refused to be a victim, who remained stubbornly in his own house even after his wife had been murdered in it by the same man who had kidnapped and murdered his daughter.

  “You know, Wy, I don’t know the answer to that one, either. Three years ago I wouldn’t have hesitated; I would have grabbed it and ran. I had a wife, and a son, and a career where there was nowhere to go but up. And then I met you. Wy?”

  “What?”

  “If I take the job, will you come with me? You and Tim?”

  There was a brief silence. “I don’t know, Liam. This is honest. I don’t know.”

  He laughed then. “Yeah, well, we’re not the most decisive couple on the block, now, are we?”

  “I guess not.” She laughed, too, a little. “Liam.”

  “What?”

  She took his hand, and his curled around hers in a comforting grip. “There is Tim.”

  “There certainly is. I wasn’t thinking we’d leave him behind.”

  “I know.”

  “I like him, Wy. I like him a lot. And without sounding too egotistical, I think he likes me. I’d like to be his father. And,” he added pointedly, “I’d like to make it official.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said. “Man, I never knew anyone more hot to get married than you.”

  He leaned over to kiss her. “ ‘Hot’ doesn’t even come close,” he said with his best sexy growl, and then his mike got tangled up with hers and they both started to laugh.

  “Tim can’t get into any more trouble in Anchorage than he has in Newenham,” he said, sitting back. “Same cliques, same drugs, same joysticks. He can go to the malls and the movies, and it’ll be harder to keep tabs on him if he finds a friend with a car, but otherwise it’s not that different.”

  “It’s a lot bigger than Newenham. The school’s bound to induce big-time culture shock. And then there is Natalie.”

  Liam shook his head. “I never would have thought to hear you using Natalie Gosuk as a reason to keep Tim in Newenham.” He was gentle but inexorable. “Are you sure she isn’t just an excuse to keep you there, too?”

  She was silent. They were out of the pass and were losing altitude, on approach across the Nushugak into the Newenham airport.

  “Do you know the words in the wedding service, Wy? ‘Forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live.’ That’s what I want. ‘Forsaking all others.’ And all other places. We don’t have to move to Anc
horage; that’s not what I’m saying.”

  She didn’t sound angry. “It kind of sounds like that, Liam.”

  He was exasperated. “Do you get anything about me at all, woman? I love you! I’ve always loved you! I would have walked out on my wife and my child if you’d asked me! But you didn’t ask!”

  She stared at him. “Don’t you get anything about me?” she said at last. “I wouldn’t have wanted you if you’d been able to do something like that. One of the reasons I love you, that I’ve always loved you, is that you’re an honorable man. I knew all I had to do was drive to Glenallen and knock on your door. I always knew that.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “So I didn’t love you enough to? Is that what this is about? I let you back into my life, Liam, into Tim’s life. You’re important to both of us now.”

  “I want to be essential.”

  “You are. You were then.” She was silent. “Or…”

  “What.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know, Liam. Love is supposed to be unselfish. If you love, you’re supposed to want what’s best for the person you love.”

  “And?”

  “And if I’d loved you enough then, I shouldn’t have asked you to choose between me and Jenny and Charlie. If I’d loved you enough, I should have bought the house next door to yours, so you’d never have to be far away from your son.”

  His feeling of comfort vanished. The plane seemed very high in the air and nowhere near as steady beneath his butt as it had been a moment before. “You’re telling me you didn’t love me enough.”

  The silence that followed seemed to him to be very long. “I guess I didn’t.”

  The next question was as difficult but came much more quickly. “Do you now?”

  If he hadn’t been listening so intently for her answer he might have missed it. “Wy?”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The engine seemed to miss a beat.”

  “What?” Liam sat up, peering at the prop, instantly focused on where they were.

  “There! It happened again!”

  She was adamant so he listened. A high-pitched drone whined past the outside of the aircraft. The Cessna seemed to shudder, although it might have been Wy’s hands clenching on the yoke. “What the hell?”