Fire And Ice Part 20

He could wait.

But could Laura Na.n.a.look?

Wy had taxied the borrowed Cub back to its tie-down and was busy removing all traces of its most recent trip from the interior. Liam stood watching her for a moment. "You didn't ask the dentist if you could borrow his Cub, did you?"

She started and froze for a moment. "Dammit, Liam, don't sneak up on a person like that." She gave the floor of the plane a final brush with a whisk broom and folded up the door. "And I do, too, have his permission to take her up."

From her airy tone of voice, Liam guessed, "Once in awhile? Like maybe once a year? Say for a test flight just before he comes down to kill caribou?"

In that same tone of airy unconcern, Wy said, "He pretty much leaves that up to me."

"Uh-huh," Liam said. "You enter today in the log?"

Wy drew herself up to her full height and looked him straight in the eye. "Of course I did."

"Uh-huh," Liam said. He could have asked to read the log, but was unwilling to do anything so extremely foolish. About all he could hope for was that he wasn't mentioned by name. She began walking toward her own tie-down and he fell into step beside her. "You never did tell me, how much do I get paid for today's jaunt?"

As if in answer to his question, a bright red fourwheel-drive Chevy S10 long bed drew up with a flourish. Cecil Wolfe got out from one side, Kirk Mulder from the other.

Wolfe looked over her head. "Trooper Campbell."

Mulder nodded, his skeletal grin flas.h.i.+ng out to blight the landscape.

"You made good time into port," Liam said. "I figured for another hour out at least."

Wolfe waved an expansive hand. "I've got a pilot boat on the payroll, comes out to pick me and Kirk up when we get done delivering. I let the crew bring her the rest of the way in."

Of course.

Wolfe slung a careless arm around Wy and pulled her next to him, grinning down at her. Liam noticed the stiffening of her shoulders, but he also noticed that she didn't pull away. "Hear you were up in the air with my flygirl."

"I was," Liam admitted.

"Well, by G.o.d you must be our lucky charm, because we beat h.e.l.l outta the little sonsab.i.t.c.hes today!" He lifted Wy up off her feet, wrapped both arms around her in a bear hug, and kissed her, taking a long time over it. Wy dangled limply, about as responsive as a sack of potatoes, the only thing that saved Wolfe from instant and total annihilation. Liam hung on to his temper and his patience, and eventually Wolfe dumped Wy back on her feet. Liam, watching her face, recognized the moment when she realized she couldn't spit and drag a sleeve across her mouth. Wolfe saw it, too, grinned his hard, feral grin, and chucked her beneath the chin, much as Corcoran had just before he'd boarded the Metroliner. "We done good, flygirl. We done real good."

"How good?" Wy demanded.

Wolfe pulled a spiral notebook from a pocket. "Mike got twelve, Alex got thirty-six, and I got a hundred and ten. Add 'em all up, you get--"

"One hundred fifty-eight tons," Liam said, and in spite of himself felt a little light-headed.

"The percentage stay at fifteen?" Wy said.

Wolfe nodded.

"What is this percentage business?" Liam said, remembering Wy asking Wolfe that question while they were still in the air.

"The percentage of total weight in roe," Wolfe replied. "Ten percent is considered excellent."

"And we got fifteen," Wy said, a slow smile breaking across her face. "How much did we get a ton?"

Wolfe's grin widened. "Top dollar."

"How much is top dollar?" Wy demanded.

"The most we've ever got," Wolfe replied, enjoying himself. In someone less arrogant, it might have been called teasing. In Wolfe, it was a demonstration of power on the schoolyard level: I know something you don't know, I know something you don't know.

"How much is "the most we've ever got"?" Wy demanded.

"Eighteen hundred."

"Eighteen hundred a ton?" Wy's voice scaled up. "We actually got eighteen hundred dollars a ton?"

"Eighteen hundred a ton," Wolfe confirmed. "Here's your copy of the fish ticket."

Liam moved to stare over Wy's shoulder at the sheet of paper Wolfe handed her. He also had the check from the processor with him, which Wolfe flourished like the banner of a conquering hero. So many decimal places made Liam dizzy.

"This oughta pay for fixing up that plane of yours, Chouinard," Wolfe said. "Fearsome, what a crowbar can do to the fabric on a wing."

"How did you know they used a crowbar?" Liam said. "In fact, how did you know Wy's plane had been trashed?"

Wolfe gave a practiced shrug. "h.e.l.l, trooper, it was all over Newenham five minutes later, just like all the rest of the news."

"I didn't tell anyone about the crowbar," Liam said. "The only other person who knew about the crowbar besides me was the guy using it." He looked at Mulder. Mulder looked stolidly back.

He knew for sure, now, and Mulder knew he knew, and so did Wolfe. But he couldn't prove it, and they knew that, too. Wolfe gave Wy a sly nudge. "Anyway, lucky for you we did so good today."

"Luck had nothing to do with it," Wy said, lost to anything but the numbers on the fish ticket.

"Yeah, you earned your keep," Wolfe said, grin widening. "Well, I'm going to go deposit this check, clean up, and get the book work out of the way," Wolfe said, "and then I'm buying at Bill's. I'll be handing out paychecks there."

"See you then," Wy said.

Wolfe's grin widened even farther. "I just bet I will."

Master and man climbed into the Chevy and drove off. Liam liked nothing about Wolfe--not his c.o.c.ky arrogance, not his cool a.s.sumption of intimacy with Wy, not his relations.h.i.+p, if you could call it that, with Laura Na.n.a.look, and most especially not his air of knowing something Liam didn't. He didn't like Mulder, either, but that was personal, and would be settled personally, at a time and place of Liam's choosing. Alaskan fis.h.i.+ng seasons were long, and so were the summer days. As with Wolfe, time was on Liam's side.

John Barton would not have approved, but then John Barton had not been coldc.o.c.ked with a crowbar on a rainy airfield in the middle of the first night of his posting. In law enforcement, your reputation was even more important than your badge and your gun, and Liam had no intention of beginning his career in Newenham with the word getting around that he could be whacked with impunity. And if he read Wolfe right, word would get around.

He looked over at Wy, who was staring again at the fish ticket. Wy felt his stare and looked up. A tear slid down her cheek. She didn't notice. "You can't know what this means."

Liam remembered John Barton's call that morning. "I can guess." He gestured in the direction of the Cub. "Especially now."

She held the fish ticket up. "Ten percent of this is yours, don't forget." He started to say something, and she waved his words aside. "You earned it. You watched the sky and you didn't throw up down the back of my neck. Believe me, that's not bad for a first-time observer."

"Ten percent?" Liam said.

She smiled. It was a pale imitation of the real thing. "Ten percent. I've got to go--I want to clean up, too. See you later."

She walked off, no spring to her step, and for the first time since he had landed in Newenham no consciousness of their relations.h.i.+p coloring her demeanor, either. She wasn't thinking of him or of her or of them, she was thinking about her bank balance. Given what he knew of her situation, and the tattered wings of the plane parked a row up, he could hardly blame her.

She had mistaken his response. He had not been overwhelmed by his percentage; he had in fact been dismayed by it. Four thousand two hundred sixty-six dollars. That would have been Bob DeCreft's share, had he lived to earn it.

Say for argument's sake a lawyer billed at $100 an hour. It was more than that nowadays, but $100 was easy to divide into $4,266. Fortytwo hours. Liam wondered how many attorney-hours the standard adoption case averaged.

He'd investigated murders committed for the loose change in a man's jeans. Four thousand two hundred sixty-six dollars was a lot more than pocket change.

There were public showers at the harbormaster's. Liam got in at the tail end of a long line and ran out of hot water halfway through. It was after seven before he got back to the post, and when he did, he found Jim Earl pacing up and down the office in an obvious snit. "Where the h.e.l.l have you been?" hizzoner barked. "I been trying to track you down all day."

"Working on the DeCreft murder case," Liam replied, which was the truth, if not all the truth. He could have added, Not that I'm accountable to anyone except my boss for my actions, but he didn't.

That slowed Jim Earl up a bit, and Liam realized why with his next words. "Oh. Jesus, I forgot. Poor old Bob." By now, everyone Liam had spoken to had called DeCreft "poor old Bob." He hadn't been that poor or that old. Liam wondered what it had been about the man that made people pity him in retrospect. Other than his sudden and violent death.

Jim Earl rallied to his cause. "I wanted to talk to you about Kelly McCormick."

"Who?" Liam said, caught off guard.

Jim Earl glared. "Kelly McCormick, the guy who shot up the post office."

"Oh. Of course. I knew who you meant, the name just slipped my mind for a moment. Press of business and all."

It was a weak defense, and both men knew it. "You even talked to him?"

"Jim Earl," Liam said, a trifle impatiently, "I've been on the ground here in Newenham for"--he checked his watch--"not quite three days. I walked into the middle of a murder and two shootings, and I haven't had time to find someone to press my uniform, much less a place to stay. No, I haven't talked to Kelly McCormick. I've asked around about him. I haven't found out much, and I haven't found him."

With awful sarcasm, Jim Earl inquired, "Did you think of looking for him on his boat? Or at his girlfriend's?"

"I didn't know he had a boat. Or a girlfriend."

"Of course he's got a girlfriend," Jim Earl snapped. "Every girl in this town is looking for a way out of it from the time she reaches p.u.b.erty on, and the fastest way to get out of it is to waggle their tail feathers in front of some young rooster with a boat and a permit."

"And Kelly McCormick qualifies?"

"You bet your a.s.s he does," Jim Earl said. "In fact the only good thing I can find to say about that boy is that when he's sober, he's one h.e.l.l of a worker. He catches himself one h.e.l.l of a lot of salmon. 'Course he immediately drinks it all right down, so that don't mean one h.e.l.l of a lot."

"What's his boat's name?"

"h.e.l.l, I don't know. He called it after some kinda booze or other, the Wild Turkey or the Sloe Gin, something like that."

Liam sighed. "Who's his girlfriend?"

Jim Earl eyed him. "Oh, so I'm supposed to do your work for you, is that it? Listen, boy, I don't expect one h.e.l.l of a lot out of the Alaska State Troopers, considering the last three to occupy your spot."

The last three? Liam thought. So far he'd only heard about two. Was John holding out on him? What other horror in the Newenham trooper post's past was he responsible for living down?

"Well, h.e.l.l, all that's past praying for, and at least you can't get knocked up." Jim Earl fixed him with a steely eye. "You can do your job, however, and I expect you to, and one part of your job is to find and arrest the man who fired on our postmaster. The Reverend Gilbert is a fine, good, upstanding, moral man, who never--"

"Reverend?" Liam said.

Jim Earl was momentarily thrown off his stride. "Oh. Ah. Well. Yes. Our postmaster is also the minister of one of our local churches." He brushed this aside brusquely. "But we're getting off track. Yes, one of our young women has set her sights on Kelly McCormick, and yes, he's keeping company with her."

"Does this young woman have a name?"

"Of course she has a name. Oh. Candy. Candy Choknok."

"Where does she live?"

"With her parents, of course."

"Fine," Liam said patiently, "and they live where?"

"Mile 5 on the Lake Road, you can't miss it. The local Native a.s.sociation has a subdivision going in there; Carl Choknok's the chairman of the board, he got the first house. First house on the right as you turn right, big blue mother."

There was still plenty of light for a drive out the Lake Road, also known as the Icky road. Not to mention which, it was always good for a trooper stationed in the Bush to curry favor with whatever local authorities there were. Liam combed his hair and then immediately ruined the effect by pulling on the gimme cap with the state trooper insignia on the crown. The lump on his head had almost vanished, and the band of the cap settled over it comfortably.

It took him longer to find the Lake Road than it did to drive to the Choknoks' house. The road was a high, level pile of gravel packed firm and flat, with no potholes to speak of and wide turns you could take a bulldozer around in perfect confidence that you would not sideswipe any oncoming traffic. Liam got to the five-mile marker in less than ten minutes. On the right side of the road was a large sign proclaiming, THE ANGAYUK NATIVE a.s.sOCIATION PRESENTS THE ANIPA SUBDIVISION: AFFORDABLE HOMES FOR NATIVE SHAREHOLDERS. A HUD PROGRAM.

That portion of the Lake Road that continued on beyond the sign deteriorated significantly; from where he sat Liam could see washboarding, soft shoulders, and a dozen potholes of a size to compete with the ones on the road from the airport. He turned off it with grat.i.tude.

The first house on the right was big and it was certainly blue, an electric blue that looked as if it might glow in the dark. It was all blue, too--the porch and the steps that led up to it, the window frames, the door, the eaves. The only thing that wasn't blue was the roof, and that was because it was neatly s.h.i.+ngled with black asphalt tiles. Liam got the feeling that if it had been at all possible, they would have been blue, too.

As he got out, a raven backwinged to a landing in a nearby tree and was scolded by a squirrel who had thought that it was his spruce. They yelled at each other while Liam went up and knocked on the door of the blue house. A young woman answered. She was short, stocky, and dark-haired, with a round face, clear skin, and intelligent dark eyes. She looked first at the badge on his cap and then at his face. "h.e.l.lo."

He doffed his cap. "h.e.l.lo, ma'am. I am State Trooper Liam Campbell. I'm looking for Candy Choknok."

"I'm Candy Choknok," she said.

Someone called from inside the house. "Candy? Who is it?"

"It's all right, Dad, it's for me. We can talk on the porch," she said, stepping outside and closing the door behind her.

"All right," Liam said. They leaned back against opposite sides of the railing and regarded each other in unsmiling silence. "Nice house."

She unbent a trifle. "Thank you."

He tried to break the ice, and gestured at the sign. "I'm new in Newenham, Ms. Choknok. Is "anipa" Yupik for something?"

"Owl," she said.

"Owl," Liam said. "You get a lot of owls hereabouts?"

"A few." She regarded him steadily and without expression.

"I haven't seen any owls myself, at least not yet." The raven clicked at them from the tree. "On the other hand, I have been seeing a whole h.e.l.l of a lot of ravens."

"Yes."

"Mmm." Enough small talk. "I'm really looking for Kelly McCormick, Ms. Choknok. I need to talk to him about an investigation I am conducting. I have reason to believe that you might know where he is."