Fire and Ice

by Dana Stabenow

  Liam looked at Bill. “Did you show this to Laura?”

  Bill shook her head. “Haven’t talked to her at all.”

  “Good. Don’t.”

  “Why, what are you going to do?”

  Liam got to his feet. “I don’t know yet.” He went into the post and closed the door behind him, leaving the two women to stare at each other, puzzled.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Wy said.

  “Beats the hell out of me,” Bill said. “I’ve got to head back to the bar. Buy you a beer?”

  “Can you drop me off at the harbor first? We left my truck there.”

  “Sure.”

  Wy looked again at the door. “Hang on a minute, okay?”

  “Sure. I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  Liam was seated at his desk, frowning down at a large piece of paper with a lot of boxes on it drawn in pencil, when Wy stuck her head in. “Bill’s going to give me a lift to my truck,” she said. “If you didn’t need me for anything else?”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Charging me with first-degree murder, any little thing like that.”

  He flapped a hand without looking up. “No, go on home. I’ll talk to you later.”

  She stood there for a moment, mystified at his abstract tone. He’d been in a blind rage just moments before, which she was smart enough to know was due in large part to his fear for her. Now, he seemed oblivious, to her and to the events of the evening.

  Behind her, the ’57 Chevy’s horn gave an impatient honk. Liam didn’t look up. Wy stepped back and closed the door gently behind her.

  · · ·

  Liam didn’t look up at the sound of the door. He knew Wy was leaving, and he knew what John Barton or any other competent law enforcement officer would have said about turning her loose: Wyanet Chouinard had done everything but shove the knife into Cecil Wolfe’s back to get herself arrested for murder.

  Everything, but not that. Liam knew it for fact, but that was about all he knew, and the only reason he knew that much was because he knew Wy intimately. It wasn’t a reason he wanted to have to swear to in court.

  She’d had means—anyone involved in the fishing industry, anyone living in the Alaskan Bush for that matter, could lay hands on a knife. The wounds were big ones. Liam would bet that the weapon, when it was found, would prove to be a hunting knife, or perhaps a sliming knife of the kind cannery workers used to head and gut fish, a wide blade fixed into a plastic handle. Processors bought them by the case, and over the years sliming knives had found their way into the lives and homes of most Alaskans who lived on a coast.

  Or a river.

  And Wy had had all the opportunity in the world—he cursed her, without heat, for not staying at Bill’s, for actually accompanying that asshole to the docks against his explicit instructions, and then for having the colossal stupidity to follow him down to his boat. He thought again of coming upon Laura Nanalook too late, of how shaken and forlorn and hopeless she had seemed. He didn’t ever want to see that look on Wy’s face. If he had his choice he’d never see that look on the face of any woman ever again, but given his profession the choice was not his to make.

  At least Cecil Wolfe wouldn’t be responsible for putting that look on a woman’s face ever again. He knew a sudden, visceral pleasure at the thought.

  As for motive—he pulled the envelope from inside his shirt. He didn’t need to take the check out and look at it—it was burned into his memory. Pay to the order of Wyanet Chouinard, twenty thousand dollars and no cents.

  If it looked like a motive, and walked like a motive, and sounded like a motive, it probably was a motive. Wy had had motive, all right—twenty thousand motives.

  He swore once, tiredly, and put the envelope in a drawer, then stared at the paper with the boxes on it. He pushed it aside and began to draw a new one.

  Bob DeCreft, with a dotted line down to Laura Nanalook. Probably born Laura Elizabeth Ilutsik—why the change of name? He made a note on a pad.

  Bob DeCreft, who flew observer with Wyanet Chouinard, both of them working for Cecil Wolfe.

  Cecil Wolfe, whose first act upon hearing of the death of Laura Nanalook’s roommate—and so far as anyone knew, her lover—had been to stake a physical claim.

  Who wanted both Bob DeCreft and Cecil Wolfe dead?

  At the side of the page he began a time line.

  In 1977, Laura (Ilutsik) Nanalook was born in Icky.

  In 1992, Bob DeCreft moved to Newenham, and he and his daughter moved in together.

  He remembered the two bedrooms in the DeCreft house, the feminine clutter of the first, the spartan maleness of the second. “I must be slowing down or something,” he said out loud. “Of course they were sleeping in separate bedrooms. How the hell could I have missed it?”

  Bob DeCreft and Laura Nanalook, father and daughter.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. I’ve known him since I was a kid, Wy had said. Wy had been a kid in Newenham, when her adopted parents had been teachers for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, back before the state had started building rural schools. Bob DeCreft had been flying in and out of Newenham about the time Laura was conceived. He looked back at the time line he’d drawn. Laura’s mother could have been from Newenham. Laura’s mother could still live here.

  He thought about the cars he had seen in Bill’s parking lot that evening, and what was that story Charlene Taylor had told him—six years ago on the river, Bob with some woman? He stared hard at the unrevealing countenance of a fire extinguisher mounted on the opposite wall.

  He reached for a phone book and looked up a number. A sleepy voice answered, and belatedly he realized it was almost midnight. “It’s Liam Campbell,” he said. “I’m sorry: I didn’t realize it was so late.”

  There was a yawn. “It’s all right, Liam, we just hit the sack.” There was a murmur in the background. “It’s okay, honey, go back to sleep, it’s that new trooper I told you about.”

  There was another murmur, and the mouthpiece was covered, but not before Liam heard a male voice say, “Oh, the one with the wife?” He set his teeth and waited.

  The voice came back. “Okay, Liam, what did you need?”

  “Charlene, you told me you’d seen Bob DeCreft up the river with a woman.”

  The Fish and Wildlife Protection officer was amused. “What is this, Cherchez la Femme Day? God, Liam, that was five years ago. Six.”

  “I know, and I know you said you didn’t recognize her. But you did say she was dark.”

  There was a pause. Taylor said finally, “Yeah, I remember that much.”

  “Was she Yupik?”

  “Yes,” Charlene said immediately.

  Liam was taken aback by her immediate certainty; he’d thought he’d have to coax it from her. “How can you be sure?”

  He could hear Taylor’s shrug over the phone. “She was short and very dark and kind of thick through the middle. She looked the same general shape as most every Yupik woman I’ve ever met. Some of them are skinnier, some of them are taller, but the skin and the hair and the eyes and the general stockiness pretty much stays the same all up and down the river; you don’t need to be an anthropologist to see that. Kind of like most Scandinavians are tall and blond and blue-eyed. She was Yupik, Liam. Or at the very least Alaska Native.”

  “Okay, Charlene, thanks.”

  “Sure, but what’s this all about?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Thanks again.”

  He hung up.

  He had to talk to Laura Nanalook.

  · · ·

  He found her at Bill’s. Wolfe’s crew had vanished, and for all that it was a Sunday night the place was subdued. People were clustered in small groups, talking in low tones. Gary Gruber wasn’t holding down his usual place, either, gazing upon Laura with the hopeless adoration of a pet dog, a pet dog one wanted frequently to kick.

  Nobody seemed to be drinking much, because Laura Nanalook was taking a break at the bar
.

  Moses looked at Liam from his usual stool and said, “All history is personal.”

  “What?” Liam said.

  “One American congressman kept the war going in Afghanistan because he was still pissed over Vietnam. Hitler killed twelve million people, not counting soldiers, trying to prove he wasn’t the Austrian version of poor white trash. Closer to home, Red Calhoun spearheaded the fight for d-2 because it created a national park around his homestead in Prince William Sound. All history is personal.” Moses leveled a finger at him. “All of it, and don’t you forget it.”

  “I won’t,” Liam promised.

  “Good,” Moses said, satisfied, and turned back to his beer.

  “Could I talk to you for a minute?” Liam asked Laura.

  She shrugged indifferently. “Sure.”

  “Let’s grab a booth.”

  “Okay.”

  She was listless, unalarmed. On the way over Liam had been thinking about the best way to approach this subject, and had at last decided to send out the shock troops. “I wanted to talk to you about your father.”

  She was startled, at least momentarily, out of her apathy. “My father?” she said warily.

  He said gently, “Bob DeCreft was your father, wasn’t he, Laura.” He nodded at Bill. “The magistrate went through your father’s papers and found this.” He pulled out the birth certificate.

  She studied it for a moment.

  “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

  Her mouth trembled. “Yes. I guess so.”

  “Why the change of name? Ilutsik to Nanalook?”

  “I was adopted.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “No you don’t,” she said wearily. “My mom got knocked up, and had me, and gave me away, like a puppy she was too lazy to raise herself.” Her lovely mouth twisted into an ugly line. “To the Nanalooks. She didn’t even care what kind of people she gave me to. She didn’t care what they did to me, she didn’t care if they—”

  “Who is she, Laura?” Liam said. “Who is your mother?”

  She dropped her head. “I’m not supposed to tell.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because her husband’s a preacher, and he can’t have his wife acknowledging any bastards she might have had before she met and married him.”

  “I see.” Liam was careful to keep any sense of satisfaction from his voice. “When did you meet her?”

  She raised her head, and there was a kind of sick triumph in her eyes. “She came looking for me. She couldn’t have any children with her husband, so she came looking for me.”

  “When?”

  “When I was sixteen. I moved out from the Nanalooks’ as soon as I was old enough. Bill gave me a job in the kitchen until I was twenty-one and could serve booze.”

  “What did your mother want?”

  Laura snorted. “She wanted to get to know me. Wanted me to get to know her. Wanted me to be her daughter.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her it was a little late for her to start playing mother,” she spat. “Where was she when Sally treated me like a maid, keeping me home from class to cook and clean and baby-sit her kids so that I couldn’t even graduate from high school? Where was she when Harvey started coming down the hall to my room? Where was she when he turned me into his little gussuk whore?” Her voice broke.

  After a moment she began speaking again, her voice filled with pain and hatred. “She wouldn’t go away though. The only problem was, she said we had to keep it a secret that I was her daughter. Her husband wouldn’t like it. His sacred holiness couldn’t stand the thought that his congregation would look at his wife and know that she’d had carnal knowledge of another man. No, no, Becky has to be the perfect preacher’s wife.”

  “Becky?”

  She stared at him. “Becky Gilbert.” She pointed at the birth certificate. “Born to Elizabeth Rebecca Ilutsik, of Ik’ikika.”

  “You’re named for her.”

  She sneered, an expression that did not sit well on her angel face. “My middle name. Big deal. It’s not like she gave me a home now, is it?”

  “I suppose not.” He leaned back in the booth. “When did you meet your father? ”

  “When he came here.”

  “Why did he come here?”

  She scratched at the tabletop with one fingernail. “I made her tell me who he was. I found out he was living in Anchorage. I wrote him a letter.” She looked up, her eyes full of tears. “He didn’t even know about me. She hadn’t even told him she was pregnant.”

  “That was six years ago?” She nodded. “So he moved out here to be with you?”

  A tear rolled down her cheek. “He bought a house, and we moved in together. Becky begged us not to say we were father and daughter, she was afraid everybody would find out. So we promised.” She wiped away another tear. “I didn’t care, and Bob didn’t, either.” She raised wondering eyes to Liam. “It was so nice, you know? I’d never had a room all to myself before. He would have done everything if I’d let him—the cooking, the cleaning. He wouldn’t let me help with the house payments or buy gas for the truck or anything. He wanted me to save my money so I could go back to school, get my GED, maybe go to vocational school or college someday.”

  Her shoulders began to shake. “He bought me presents. Whenever he went somewhere, he bought me presents. The last time he went to Anchorage, he brought me these.” She fingered her earrings, exquisite little drops of green jade and black hematite and ivory. “I told him he was spoiling me, and he said I was beautiful, and that I deserved beautiful things. He was my f-father, and he could spoil me if he w-wanted to.”

  She began to sob. “Nobody ever called me beautiful before. They just took whatever they wanted, made me do whatever they wanted me to do. Nobody ever called me beautiful before, and nobody ever, ever gave me presents. At least not without expecting me to pay for them.”

  Bill arrived at the booth with a handful of Kleenex and a glass of water. “You okay, Laura?” she asked, with a hard glance at Liam.

  Laura fought back a sob and nodded, used three Kleenexes to mop her eyes and blow her nose, and drank the glass of water down. She looked drained. “I guess I better get back to work.”

  “Just a couple more questions,” Liam said. He hesitated. “Look, Laura, there’s no nice way to ask this. That day, the day I came out to your house.”

  “The day my father died,” she said, and fresh tears welled up.

  “Yes. Did you call your mother that day?”

  “No, she just came over,” she said dully. “She’d heard about Bob.” She looked up, surprised. “How did you know she was there?”

  “She drove up as I was leaving,” he said, and hesitated again. This woman had been through enough in her young life, but he had to ask the question, there was no way around it. “Laura, did you tell her about Wolfe?”

  Her face shut down. “What about him?”

  Liam gave up and went for the jugular. “Did you tell her that he raped you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have to get back to work now.”

  He caught her hand as she stood. “Cecil Wolfe is dead, Laura.”

  She stared down at him. “What?”

  “Wolfe is dead. Somebody murdered him on his boat a couple of hours ago.”

  “Cecil is dead?” she repeated.

  “Yes, Cecil is dead.”

  Liam hadn’t exactly expected a cartwheel, which was good because he didn’t get one. She stood in front of him, staring blankly into space, mute, uncomprehending. He squeezed her hand for emphasis. “He’ll never bother you again.”

  She looked at him then, and he was saddened by the dead expression he saw in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. There’s always another one just like him a little farther down the road.”

  He watched her walk back to the bar, saw her dismiss Bill’s concern with a shrug. She picked up her tray and walked over to bus a table and take an order for refills w
ith the bright, flashing smile he had seen her use before, the smile that was so full of warmth, and meant less than nothing.

  Fifteen

  The Gilberts lived in a small white house a few feet from the church. Richard Gilbert opened the door. “Oh.” He cast a nervous look over his shoulder. “Trooper Campbell.”

  “Hello, Mr. Gilbert. I’d like to talk to your wife. Is she in?”

  “Well, I, uh, no, she isn’t, she’s—”

  Liam took a not very big chance and said, “I think she is here, sir. I have to talk to her. May I come in?”

  “Let him in, Richard,” a voice called from the back of the house.

  Liam pushed on the door. Richard Gilbert fell back.

  “In here, Mr. Campbell.” Liam followed the voice into a back bedroom, where he found Becky Gilbert calmly folding clothes into a small suitcase. “I expect you’ll want these,” she said, and handed him a brown paper grocery bag.

  He opened it and looked inside to see a shirt and slacks, both stained with blood. “I was wearing them when I killed him,” she said. “Richard insisted on washing the knife. It’s in the dish drainer next to the kitchen sink.” She went to the dresser and collected some underwear.

  Liam judged that the flight risk presented by Becky Gilbert was minimal and went into the kitchen. Sure enough, the dish drainer held a large skinning knife with a yellowing bone handle, still wet from washing. He wrapped it in a paper towel and placed it in the brown paper bag along with the clothes.

  Becky met him in the living room, suitcase in hand. He got a good look at her face for the first time.

  She had been transformed. He’d seen her at work with her husband, toadying and subservient. He’d seen her submerged in grief at the death of a man he now knew was greatly loved. He’d glimpsed the urgency of a woman on a mission on the way into her daughter’s house.

  This was a different person altogether from the previous three. She held herself erect, her chin high with pride, and looked Liam straight in the eye in a manner that most women raised in Bush villages did not do. “Let’s go.”

  “All right,” Liam said, and opened the door.

  “What are you doing?” Richard Gilbert said in a panic.