Fire and ice (14 page)

"Bob DeCreft," she said. She sighed. "Poor old Bob." She gave Liam a sharp glance. Save for the man with his head pillowed in his arms in the front booth, the man with the Rainier bottle still pressed to his face, and the dulcet tones of Aaron Neville, they were alone in the bar. "You here to pump me for information, is that it, Liam?"

Liam smiled at her. "As much as I can get," he agreed. "That, and food--that's all I want you for."

She laughed, throwing her head back and displaying a set of teeth that were just saved from being perfect by overlapping incisors that made her look faintly vampirish.

Which, now that Liam thought about it, would explain that air of eternal youth.

"Bob DeCreft," she said, meditatively. "He moved here, oh, about five, no, six years ago now, I think it was."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "Why does anyone move to Newenham? Why did you? Starting over is a time-honored Bush Alaska tradition." Liam tried not to squirm beneath the penetrating look she shot him. "You're pissed at me, aren't you?" she said suddenly. "For blabbing your story out in the bar yesterday?"

Liam said nothing, examining the glass of Coke in his hand with an air of total absorption.

She pointed her finger at him. "Best thing I could do for you. No sense in trying to make a secret of things in the Alaskan Bush, Liam."

"Five people died on my watch," he found himself saying. "Never mind they shouldn't have been driving on the Denali Highway in February in the middle of a thirty-below cold spell with no survival gear and three little kids. Never mind they should have checked the level of antifreeze in their car before not doing any such thing. Two troopers under my command ignored two calls--not one but two --alerting our post reporting those folks missing. Maybe we could have got to them in time, maybe not. Fact is, we didn't, they died, and I was in charge." He looked Bill straight in the eye, unsmiling. "I'm about as white as you can get without bleach. So were the two troopers who missed the calls. The family that died was Athabascan, from Fort Yukon. You know how hard it is to get the villagers to trust us in the first place, Bill. How much harder is it going to be for me with the villagers around here, coming in under that kind of cloud?"

"Exactly why I told your story," she replied promptly. "You think the news didn't get here before you did? The Bush telegraph is better than smoke signals or jungle drums any day. It wouldn't have been long before everybody knew it. If you'd tried to hide it, there's some would have used it against you. Best to have it all out in the open."

Liam said nothing, and Bill heaved an impatient sigh. "Give them a chance, Liam. I meant what I said yesterday--you do your job right, that's what they'll judge you on."

"Even the villagers?"

"Especially the villagers," she retorted. "The Yupik have a strong sense of family, and an even stronger sense of community. The ones that aren't head down in a bottle, which is about half of them, are firm believers in law and order; in fact, they generally try to dispense it themselves through their village councils. When the councils fail, they'll call you in. They'll do everything they can to avoid it, but when the elders can't resolve the problem, or when the offense is just too much for the village to stomach, they'll call you in. You'll be their last hope, their last resort. They want to trust you. They want to believe that you'll do right by them."

"If you say so."

"I do say so," Bill said, "but I can tell that the only way you're going to be convinced is to see for yourself. You will. Anyway," she said, jumping back to the original subject in a way that he would come to recognize was characteristic of her conversation, "I could go outside and throw a rock and be guaran-damn-teed to hit somebody who got sick of their spouse, their marriage, their job, their home, or all of the above, and subsequently got on a plane going north and got off here, ready to start over."

She refilled Liam's Coke and drew one for herself. "Had three of 'em in the bar last night. One woman was living in Denver, Colorado, walked out on her air force husband with the clothes on her back and their daughter, and wound up sliming fish on a processor off Newenham. Now she's opening an espresso stand down to the docks. Another woman walked out on an abusive husband in Scottsdale, Arizona, and a week later was dispatching for the cop shop in Newenham."

"That'd be Molly?" Liam said, remembering the pudgy little woman, her brown hair flattened by the headset, talking nonstop into the mouthpiece, dispatching emergency services to those in need all over the town. She'd looked harried, true, but not the least bit victimized.

"That'd be Molly," she confirmed. "One guy had two businesses, three Mercedes, and four ulcers in Missouri, threw in his hand and came up; now he's a cop for the Newenham P.d."

Liam hazarded a guess. "Roger Raymo?"

She shook her head. "Cliff Berg."

"Oh yeah. He's got the wife with the shotgun."

Bill laughed, tossing her head back, her full silver mane shaking behind her shoulders. She looked even more zaftig close up, Liam thought.

He felt a presence next to him, and turned to look up at the man who had been holding the cold bottle to his face. This close, you could see why. There was an angry-looking weal down the side of his face, beginning on his forehead, continuing over his left eye, and ending in a torn left earlobe. The man himself was tall, six-six, Liam estimated, with the shoulders and forearms of a lumberjack. His face was heavy and bluntfeatured beneath close-cropped white-blond hair, and his eyes were a light blue so pale they seemed almost colorless. His grin was a cross between the Joker's and Yorick's, wide and mirthless. He threw down a five. "Thanks, Bill."

"You're welcome, Kirk." Bill was civil but not friendly. "You met the new trooper? Kirk Mulder, Trooper Liam Campbell."

"How do, Trooper Campbell."

"Mr. Mulder." Liam inclined his head, every nerve on alert. At some visceral level, he was aware of being in the presence of the enemy.

The colorless gaze looked him over. "Where's your uniform?"

Liam, in an unaccustomed moment of bravado, pulled his badge. "Figure this is all I need."

"Maybe so." This is all I need, his mocking gaze seemed to say.

Liam took the war into the enemy's camp. "Nasty scratch you got there."

The rictus grin flashed again. "Nothing a cold beer can't fix."

Bill handed over change, Kirk shoved it back. "That's fine, Bill. See you next time."

Bill and Liam watched the young giant saunter out. "I swear to God, I think Wolfe's got some place he breeds 'em up special for his crews." She nodded at the change. "He could have left the five on the table, or even on the bar. But no, he has to stand there and wait for me to make change, so he can make the magnanimous gesture, so I have to thank him for it. They're all like that, that bunch."

"Which bunch?"

"Cecil Wolfe's bunch," she said.

"Cecil Wolfe of the Sea Wolfe?"

She sneered. "Yeah, probably the only book he's ever read in his life." She nodded at the closing door. "That's his first mate, Kirk Mulder. Arrogant little bastard."

There was nothing little about Kirk Mulder, but then Liam didn't think the reference had been to Mulder's physical size.

And he worked for Cecil Wolfe. So did Wy, Liam thought.

The scratch on his face looked like it had been left by an animal. A cat, maybe? Mulder didn't look the type to have a cat around, or the type any self-respecting cat would stay around for long. A dog? Same thing. An eagle? Eagles didn't attack humans, or not in Liam's experience.

A raven? For a moment Liam was back beneath the wing of the 206, with the rain falling on his face and a big black bird peering down at him. He shook himself. Get a grip, Campbell.

Making another of her conversational leaps, Bill got back to Liam's question. "I figure Bob DeCreft was no different than any of the rest of us. He came looking for a life with a little more freedom in it, a little more color, a little more adventure." She cocked an eyebrow at Liam. "It can still be had in the Alaska Bush, you know."

She swept both hands up over her long fall of gray hair, and Liam couldn't help noticing how the movement thrust her very nicely shaped breasts against her shirt. She noticed him noticing and flashed a flirtatious smile with no hint of encouragement in it. "Anyway, one year Bob flew in and bought himself a little house on the bluff."

"What year, exactly? Do you remember? were you here then?"

She grinned at him. "Honey, I been here forever, and I'll be here when you've been and gone." She knitted her brows. "Let's see now, when would that have been? Five years ago? No, six-he showed up the same year that prick Cecil Wolfe did. Bob got a job spotting herring for him that day. Pissed off a lot of the local pilots--for a while, anyway, until they knew what Cecil was like. Then they figured they'd been saved by a higher power."

The buzz on Wy's employer was not encouraging. "Did DeCreft have another job? Other than herring spotting, I mean?"

"He had about twenty of them, like everybody else in the Bush. He fished some, he hunted, might maybe even have done a little prospecting up in the Wood Mountains. He did the finish work on the bar when I remodeled it last year." Her hand stroked the polished oak surface lovingly. "He was a good craftsman. And reliable. If he gave you a bid he stuck to it, and if he said he'd show up at eight, he was here and had the hammer in his hand at eight oh-one. Unlike some people I could name," she added with bitter emphasis.

"Did he have any enemies?"

She shook her head.

"Any friends?"

She shook her head again. "Not particularly. Bob kept himself pretty much to himself."

"Was he married?"

Bill shook her head. "Nope."

"Oh." Well, hell. If Bob DeCreft had been murdered, Liam needed to know a lot more about the man than this.

"Had a live-in, though," Bill said, and in her turn enjoyed the way the rangy, wellmuscled body went on alert.

"He lived with a woman?"

Bill pursed her lips. "Best you go see for yourself." She leveled a threatening forefinger. "You go easy on Laura, you hear? She's had a lot to bear in her life, one way and another, and now this. She didn't take the news well. I won't have her harassed."

Liam drew himself erect. "Alaska state troopers are not in the habit of harassing witnesses."

Bill's features relaxed into an infuriating grin. "Now, don't get on your high horse, Liam Campbell. Go on, you're liable to miss her--she's due at work at five, and it's after two o'clock now."

She tried to shoo him out of the bar then, saying she had to make ready for the serious spenders of the evening. Her shooing woke her sleeping patron. He rubbed his face with rough hands, stretched until his bones cracked, and limped to the bar for a refill. The limp identified him; this was the older man Liam had seen talking to Wy at the airport the day before. "Hi," he said as the man leaned on the bar next to him.

The man stared at him blearily. "Hi. 'nother beer, Bill?" He waved a generous hand at Liam. "And for my friend, too."

Bill's voice was gentle but firm. "I think you've had enough for today, Darrell."

Darrell drew himself upright, wavering a little on his feet. "Sennonse. It's the evening of the shank. We're getting started just here."

"It's after two o'clock in the afternoon," Bill said dryly, "and we're getting finished just here."

Darrell said craftily, "My leg's paining me something fierce, Bill."

"I know, Darrell. Why don't you go home and take a couple of aspirin?"

Darrell's face crumpled. "Ain't got no home. Mary threw me out."

"Never knew she had that much sense," Bill said beneath her breath, and in a louder voice said, "How about the officer gives you a ride down to your boat, then?"

Darrell squinted. "Officer? Don't see no officer around here."

Bill was about to introduce them when Liam said smoothly, "My name's Liam, Darrell. I've got a truck; how about I give you a ride down to the harbor?"

Darrell leaned across the bar. "You sure about that beer, Bill?"

"I'm sure, Darrell."

Darrell heaved a sigh. "Well, okay then. Might's well go hit the bunk, I guess."

Moses Alakuyak came in as they went out, and they paused on the doorstep. "How long'd you stand post after I left?" Moses asked.

"Too goddamn long," Liam said.

Moses grunted. "Not long enough to teach you respect for your teacher, obviously."

He went inside, not slamming the door behind him exactly, but certainly closing it firmly.

A croak sounded from the top of a tree, and Liam looked up to see the enormous raven looking down at him with a knowing black eye. He croaked again. "Oh shut up," Liam said.

"What'd I say?" Darrell asked in dismay.

Darrell more or less folded up on the Blazer's front seat. Liam went around the other side and got in, to find his passenger blinking at the upright shotgun locked against the dash between the front seats. "What the hell?" Darrell asked, looking around. "I'm in a police car?"