Fire And Ice Part 19

"One minute remaining in the opener; I say again, one minute remaining."

The Cub's circles seemed to tighten, and Liam's entire focus narrowed to five square miles of sea and air. Planes, boats, fish seemed to blur together; he heard his own voice speaking, saw his own hands moving, felt his own eyes roving back and forth, looking, watching, waiting.

"--ten seconds to closing, eight seconds, seven seconds, six seconds, five, four, three, two, one ... The herring opener for seiners for the Riggins Bay District is now closed; I say again, the herring opener for seiners for the Riggins Bay District is now closed."

Wy immediately straightened out the Cub, heading it away from the scene on a southwest course. "What's it look like, Cecil?" There was no immediate answer, and she banked right and made a relaxed sweep north to look over the situation from what Wy considered a safe distance and from what Liam, returning slowly and reluctantly to real time and s.p.a.ce, did not. He squinted at the sky as if he'd never seen it before. It had never seemed so blue. "Is it really over?"

Wy was busy going into a tight circle and didn't answer.

Directly below, one of the big processors had come alongside Cecil's fifty-twofooter. There was a widemouthed hose stuck into the bulging seine net, busily vacuuming up the herring penned there and sucking it into its own hold. The hose was transferred to Corseiner's hold, where it sucked up everything there, too. Alex was next in line with a catch a third the size of Wolfe's. Mike's catch looked smallest of all, but then he'd been busy for much of the opener fending off the encroaching gillnetter, which Liam privately thought was a little greedy of him-surely in a ball that size there was more than enough herring to go around. He knew better than to voice this thought in present company, however.

The other boats, the ones that had not fouled themselves in their own nets or had their sides stove in by someone else or whose engines had not failed them at the crucial moment--or whose crews had not mutinied--had done well, if not as well as the first three boats on the scene. Everybody had fish in their nets, including one tardy soul who failed to close up his purse in time. Over the radio for all the fleet to hear, he was commanded by the Fish and Wildlife officer in the air above to open his seine and let the fish go. It was one of the larger of the lesser catches, and it took a minute for the skipper to bring himself to do it.

"I say again," the Fish and Wildlife officer's voice said sharply, "FirstVery Bonnie Doon, you have exceeded the time allowed to fish; open up your seine."

The Bonnie Doon opened up her seine, and the teeming ma.s.s of herring boiled out into open water.

"Ouch," Wy said. "There goes about forty-five grand, swimming away. Cecil, quit sitting on your thumb and tell me how we did!" There was no answer, and she cursed. "Hang on, Liam."

"Wy," Liam said apprehensively. "What are you doing?"

"Just hang on."

"Wy!"

She waited for an opening and when it came, dived toward the big seiner, pulling up again at what Liam felt was the last possible moment. He was so terrified he couldn't catch his breath, let alone scream. "Cecil, G.o.ddammit, what have we got?"

It was with real grat.i.tude that Liam heard the radio crackle into life. "Hold your G.o.dd.a.m.n horses, flygirl. We're busy."

"Well, get the lead out, I want to know if I get new wings for my Cub!"

The other planes were standing off, no doubt conversing impatiently with their own skippers. Wy flew a lazy eight pattern over the fis.h.i.+ng ground and back around Dutch Girl Island for about ten minutes before Cecil came on again, while Liam indulged himself in fantasies of her slow and painful death, preferably at his hands. "Hold on to your drawers, flygirl. Looks like we got about a hundred sixty tons between the three of us, maybe a little less."

"What's the percentage?"

Liam could hear the grin in Wolfe's voice. "The j.a.ps say it's looking good--about fifteen."

Wy's whoop was exuberant and deafening. The stick between Liam's knees came back hard and the Cub went into a steep climb. "You buckled up, Liam?"

"Wy? Wy, what the h.e.l.l are you doing! Wy! WY! G.o.ddammitohs.h.i.+tohs.h.i.+tohs.h.i.+t!"

She took them up to 2,500 feet, and they were cruising at 125 miles per hour with all the air room in the world between them and the next plane over when she put the Cub into a shallow dive, building up speed until they hit 140 miles per hour. She pulled back on the stick and pushed in the throttle and whooped again as they sailed around in a picture-perfect loop.

They regained level flight at precisely 142 miles per hour at 2,010 feet. "There," Wy said, and turned to grin at Liam. "We done good, Campbell. G.o.dd.a.m.n, but we done good!"

Liam spoke between clenched teeth and meant every word. "I am going to kill you, Chouinard."

She laughed, the sound full of triumph. "Let's fuel up and head for home, stud! We are rich!"

TWELVE.

Back in Newenham, Liam unfolded himself carefully from the little Cub and stood erect to blink in the sunlight. He felt strangely lightheaded, elated, possibly even erring on the side of euphoric. He'd spotted herring and survived. You are feeling your immortality, he thought, and grinned involuntarily.

"What?" Wy said, pausing in the act of tying down the plane.

"I'm just feeling my immortality," he said.

She stared at him. "What?"

He waved a hand. "Never mind. Where's the Fish and Game tie-down?"

Her gaze sharpened. "Why?"

He shrugged. "She's a fellow officer. Figured I should introduce myself."

"Oh. Okay. That way." She pointed. "That's their office, that little blue building between the Era hangar and Ye Olde Gift Shoppe."

The Fish and Wildlife Protection officer was unloading her cameras. Liam tapped her on the shoulder and stuck out a hand. "Hi, I'm Liam Campbell."

She straightened and squinted at him. "Right, the new trooper, my opposite number. Charlene Taylor. I heard you were out there with us."

"You did? How? I didn't know I was going myself until last night."

She grinned. "Never underestimate the power and scope of the Bush telegraph." She raised a quizzical eyebrow. "I thought that was my job."

"It is," he said, fervently enough to make her laugh. "It's all yours. I ain't doing that again never nohow not ever."

"I don't blame you," she said with a twinkle. "It does get a little hairy during herring."

She was about fifty, a stocky brunette with laugh lines radiating from the corners of her eyes and mouth. She didn't look even the least little bit wound up, whereas Liam's legs were still shaking from the effects of the loop and he could feel the strain and stress of the past hours humming through the very marrow of his bones. Adding insult to injury, her uniform s.h.i.+rt wasn't even sweated through, the brown fabric holding its neat creases and sporting the requisite number of badges and patches and nameplates and insignia. Liam formed a silent resolve to have the blue s.h.i.+rt of his branch of their mutual service pressed and on before another day pa.s.sed, if he had to force someone to get out their iron and ironing board at gunpoint.

"What were you doing up there, anyway?" Taylor said, bending back over the camera.

"Partly a favor to a friend, partly an ongoing murder investigation on Bob DeCreft."

She stood erect again, startled. "Bob DeCreft? I hadn't heard that was murder, I thought he just walked into his own prop."

"Does that happen a lot?"

"I wouldn't say a lot," the fish hawk said thoughtfully. "It happens. Not very often, but it does happen, even with old-timers who know better. Especially during breakup, when everyone's working twenty-six hours out of the twentyfour to get ready for fis.h.i.+ng season. What makes you think it was murder?"

"His p-lead was cut."

She stared at him, shocked. "What?"

"His p-lead was cut," Liam repeated. "And cut while the power was on, so that when DeCreft switched it off the power was still connected when he walked the prop through. It killed him."

She thought this over, frowning. "You sure it was cut? You sure it wasn't just frayed?"

Liam shook his head. "It was cut."

"Well, h.e.l.l," she said, and shook her head. "Who would want to kill poor old Bob DeCreft?"

"Did you know him?"

She bent back over the camera. "As well as anyone did around here, I guess. He hunted and fished, so we had some conversation over moose and caribou and salmon seasons, like that. I never had cause to haul him in, although I expect he did his share of poaching."

"What makes you say so?"

She shrugged, her back to him. "Most of the old guys out in the Bush pretty much figure that their right to fish and hunt when and where they please was grandfathered in with statehood."

Liam had to smile. He couldn't see Moses Alakuyak waiting for a clock to tick down to put his net in the water, if he was up a creek and that creek was filled with fish. Of course as an Alaska Native Moses had subsistence rights, so long as he didn't abuse them by selling the fish he caught commercially, which he probably did the first chance he got.

"I did run into old Bob up a river off the Nus.h.a.gak one time," Taylor said reflectively. "Years ago, that was." She popped a roll of film out of the camera and replaced it with another.

"What, was he poaching?"

She shook her head and stood upright, rubbing the small of her back. "No. Not that time, anyway." She c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at Liam and grinned. "He had a girl with him."

"A girl? Oh, the little blonde? Laura Na.n.a.look?"

"Oh, you know about her?"

"We've met," Liam said.

She gave him a sympathetic look. "Yeah, that's right, you would have. One reason I've always been glad to stay on my side of the service, I don't ever have to tell anybody their people are dead. Anyway, it wasn't Laura."

"It wasn't?"

"No."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know." She grinned again. "He was awful anxious to get rid of me, old Bob was, and I thought for sure he had a bunch of king fillets in his cooler he didn't want me to see. King season not being open for another day," she added. "But it wasn't fish he was hiding, it was a woman."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know. I only saw her from a distance. We were on the sandbar and she was on the bank. Guess she'd waded across to tinkle or something, or maybe he'd waded back across for a beer."

"What did she look like?"

"Like I said, I didn't get all that good a look. She was short, kinda thick through the middle, dark hair." She looked at him. "One thing I know for sure."

"What's that?"

"She was somebody's wife."

"Why do you say that?"

Taylor spread her hands. "Why hide otherwise?"

Why indeed? Liam pointed at the film. "You got everything that went down out there?"

"Pretty much. Something always slips through, but I think I got everything I need. Why?"

Liam thought it over. He didn't want to mess up Wy's paycheck, but he knew a powerful wish to see Cecil Wolfe get a little of his own back again. "I saw an awful lot of boats running into each other out there."

"Yeah?"

She wasn't going to help him any. Liam said doggedly, "Some of it looked deliberate."

"That a fact," she said placidly. She saw his look and gave a snort of laughter. "Let me tell you a story, Liam. Last year during herring, season was on time instead of early like this year so it was, oh, second week of May, I guess, we had an opener down in Togiak. There was a collision between a couple of boats which involved the sinking of one of the boats' skiffs. The guy who lost the skiff filed a complaint, and Corcoran--you know Corcoran?" Liam nodded. By the very absence of emotion in her voice he could tell what Fish and Wildlife Protection Trooper Taylor thought of Public Safety Trooper Corcoran. "Corcoran arrested the other skipper for a.s.sault. It came to trial last November. Guess what the verdict was." She paused expectantly.

He thought for a moment. "Who testified?"

"Oh, the whole kit and caboodle--both skippers, the deckhands on both boats, the guys on the skiffs, both spotters, and me. We all told the same story, with slight differences of opinion on whether the ramming was deliberate." She waited.

"Where was the trial?"

Her smile was approving. "Right here in Newenham."

"Acquittal," he said.

"You got it. Just like the last six cases where anyone could be bothered to bring charges. Probably one out of every two jurors from a panel generated from this judicial district is thinking, There but for the grace of G.o.d go I. So we get acquittals, now and then a hung jury. Sometimes," she said reflectively, "sometimes, in my more cynical moments, I think they've got it worked out beforehand, before they ever go into deliberation. But that's only in my more cynical moments. Most of the time I'm a regular Pollyanna when I look at our judicial system. Innocent until proven guilty, I always say."

"And everybody out there today qualifies."

"That's right," she said cheerfully. "You just have to understand, being found not guilty in Newenham of any fis.h.i.+ng-related crime is not exactly the same thing as being innocent."

Liam had to laugh.

She grinned, satisfied. "And if there is one thing our local state attorney hates worse than an acquittal, it's a hung jury. Both are a waste of the judge's time, both cost the state money, and both get him grief from his boss in Juneau. Makes him hard to live with."

Liam raised an eyebrow. "How would you know?"

The grin widened. "He's my husband." She pulled a small grip from the back of the Cessna and closed the door firmly. "No one will be filing charges anytime soon for anything that happened out on the water today, Liam. That's just the way it is."

Liam got the feeling she was telling him this particular story for a reason. He took her implied advice and his leave.

It didn't matter all that much. Moses was right--sooner or later Cecil Wolfe would get his. His very arrogance would cause him to cross the line again and again, until one day he did it when all the lights were on and everyone was looking.

On that day, Liam would be watching, too.