Fire and ice (15 page)

"It's okay, Darrell," Liam said soothingly. "I'm just giving you a ride."

"Yeah, just giving me a ride to the pokey!" Darrell clawed at the door.

"No, just giving you a ride down to your boat."

"Forget it, I can get home on my own," Darrell said, but he was unable to figure out the Blazer's door handle and gave up, whimpering a little.

"Darrell," Liam said.

Darrell cringed. "Don't you hit me. Don't you hit me, I ain't done nothing wrong."

"I'm sure you haven't," Liam said soothingly. "I'm not going to hit you."

Darrell plucked up some spirit from somewhere. "Like hell. I rode with the last guy to drive this rig. He always hit. Always."

Liam met Darrell's rheumy eyes and said with all the persuasion he could muster, "I'm not him, Darrell. I don't hit." With slow, nonthreatening movements, Liam started the car. "Now, which way to the boat harbor?"

"Boat harbor?" Darrell stared around vaguely. "That way, I guess." He pointed up the street.

Liam estimated that Darrell's directions took him a good ten minutes out of their way, but he was starting to make some sense of the series of deltaic hills that held up the town of Newenham and its snakelike road system, and they did pull up at last in front of the dock that led to the ramp down into the harbor. He went around and helped Darrell out. "Which one's your boat?"

Darrell shook off Liam's hand and stood up, wavering a little. "I can get there; I don't need any help."

Liam said diplomatically, "Of course you can, Darrell. I'd sure like to see your boat, though. I hear she's a pretty little thing."

"Not so little--she's thirty-two feet," Darrell said indignantly. "I'll show you."

It was an enormous harbor, the largest Liam had ever seen, featuring row upon row of boat slips attached to row upon row of floating docks. It was full, too, jam-packed from stem to stern and fore to aft, if that was the correct terminology, with boats of every shape and size, from hundred-foot processors docked near the mouth of the two enclosing rock arms of the harbor to open skiffs clustered closest to shore. Seagulls squawked overhead, and a harbor seal surfaced and blew near the edge of the ramp, hoping for scraps.

Liam followed Darrell out onto the dock and down the ramp, and was ready with a steadying arm when Darrell tripped, lost his balance, and nearly pitched headfirst into the harbor. A passing fisherman, toting a cardboard box loaded with spindles of green mending twine, laughed and said, "I see Jacobson spent the morning up to Bill's again."

"Looks that way," Liam agreed.

The fisherman pointed. "The Mary J.'s down there--the gillnetter with the pink trim line." He grinned again. "His wife made him do it."

"And then she kicked me out," Darrell said mournfully, relapsing into melancholy.

"Thanks," Liam told the fisherman, and took Darrell by one arm. Together they made their way down the wooden slips to the gillnetter with the pink trim and the matching pink letters spelling out her name in fancy script. Liam helped him up over the gunnel and onto the deck. Darrell shoved the hatch back and tumbled down the stairs into the cabin. Liam followed him and muscled him into one of the two bunks tucked into the bow. The other bunk was already taken. The lump beneath the open sleeping bag never stirred. "You okay, Darrell?"

"Sure am," Darrell muttered. "Awfully early to be going to bed, though." He raised his head and said hopefully, "You sure you don't want a beer? There's a liquor store not a mile from the harbor."

"Never touch the stuff," Liam said. "I'm allergic."

"Allergic to beer?" Darrell said incredulously. "You poor bastard."

"Yeah," Liam said. He waited for Darrell to settle down before saying in an offhand voice, "How do you know Wyanet Chouinard, Darrell?"

"Who?" Darrell said fuzzily, already half asleep.

"Wyanet Chouinard. The pilot. I saw you talking to her at the airport yesterday."

"The pilot? Oh sure, Wy." Something, some instinct of self-preservation, shook Darrell from sleep. He sat up, banging his head on the bulkhead. "Ouch. Goddammit all, anyway."

The lump in the starboard bunk stirred and grunted.

"Oh shut up, Mac," Darrell told it. He rubbed his head and said almost tearfully, "You'd think a man would get used to sitting up careful in a bunk he'd slept in off and on for ten years, now wouldn't you?"

"You'd think," Liam agreed. "How'd you come to be at the airport yesterday, Darrell?"

Darrell rubbed his head some more and avoided Liam's eyes. "Oh, I guess I heard about all the commotion when I got into port and wandered on up. Damn, my head hurts."

"You out fishing for herring yesterday, too?"

"Well, yeah, sure, wasn't everybody?"

"How'd you do?"

"Lousy, same as everybody--there wasn't no opener. Goddamn Fish and Game, they say the roe ain't ripe. My ass. Look, I'm tired, I want to go to sleep now." Darrell flopped back on the bunk and pulled the blanket up over his head.

Liam regarded his recumbent form. "Okay, Darrell," he said after a moment. "I'll see you around."

"Sure," came Darrell's muffled voice. "See you around. And thanks for the ride."

"No problem," Liam said cheerfully. He went forward and climbed the steps to the aft cabin. Sink, stove, table, chemical toilet, and bunks were in the forward cabin; the controls were in the aft cabin, including the steering wheel, what looked to Liam's inexperienced eye like a throttle, and a bunch of unidentified knobs and levers and gauges set into a control panel. There was a marine radio bolted above the panel; the receiver locked into a hook fastened to its side, with a small black plastic handheld radio lying next to it. A fathometer and a compass were bolted to the overhead. A lot of tattered charts were rolled and tucked into a rack that was also bolted to the overhead.

"Who the hell are you?" a voice said.

Liam turned to see a young man dressed the same as Darrell watching him suspiciously from the open hatch. "Liam Campbell," he said.

"What are you doing here?"

Liam examined the young man's face. "You must be Darrell Junior."

"It's Larry; Darrell's my dad. Who are you, and what are you doing on my boat?"

"I thought this was Darrell's boat."

The young man snorted. "Yeah: his, mine, and the bank's."

"I'm Liam Campbell. Your father was up at Bill's, needed a ride home." Liam jerked his head toward the forward cabin. "He's lying down."

"Shit. Is he drunk again?"

"I wouldn't say drunk," Liam said tactfully. "He's feeling no pain. He ought to sleep it off in a couple hours or so." He stuck his hands in his pockets and cocked his head. "You fish with your dad?"

"Yeah, I fish with him. What of it?"

"You go out with him yesterday?"

The young man looked suddenly wary. "Yes."

"Fishing herring?"

"Yes."

"How'd you do?"

"Lousy, like everybody," Larry said, echoing his father's words. "There weren't no fishing, since Fish and Game couldn't make up its mind to declare an opener. Guess they want to let all the goddamn fish spawn before we can get a crack at them." Larry came the rest of the way down the steps. "Why all the questions?"

Liam figured he'd taken things about as far as he could without revealing his identity and turning this into an official interview. He shook his head and smiled. "No reason. Just making conversation. Well, gotta go. Nice meeting you, Larry." He went past him and up the steps.

"Yeah, sure," Larry said, and added, almost reluctantly, "and thanks for giving Dad the ride."

Liam gave him a cheery wave. "No problem. Anytime." He stepped from boat to slip and walked away.

It wasn't until he was fifty feet down the float that he realized he was going in the wrong direction. He paused next to a dapper white thirty-six-footer with a swooshy red trim line that looked like the detailing on a hot rod, which rejoiced in the intoxicating name of Yukon Jack. He looked around, getting his bearings, and excused himself to a man with a coil of new line over one shoulder and a seven-pound Danforth dangling from one hand. "Could you point me toward the gangway?"

The man jerked his chin in the opposite direction. "Don't matter, though," he said, changing the anchor from one hand to the other. "There's another gangway up ahead. Just keep on straight; you'll see it on your right."

He thanked the fisherman and found the second gangway leading to the second dock. Made sense in a harbor this big to have two docks, Liam thought, but then he had to walk all the way back to where he'd parked the Blazer.

One way or another, he'd been lost since he got off the plane.

It was after three o'clock when he pulled up in front of the deceased Bob DeCreft's log house on the bluff. He stopped the engine and got out. It was very still but for the occasional inquiring chirp of a bird and the distant rumble of fast-moving water. Liam looked up and caught the steely blue flash of a tree swallow as it swooped and dived in the aerial hunt for mosquitoes, although it seemed far too early for either and the thicket of alder, birch, spruce, and willow appeared much too dense for such acrobatic maneuvers.

He turned to survey the yard. Newenham must be the banana belt of Alaska. There was no snow or ice left, and the sun glittered off the river and through the bare limbs of the trees like a benediction. It was most definitely spring.

He climbed the front steps and knocked on the door.

At first there was no answer. He looked around at the two cars parked next to his. One was a rusted-out mint green Ford pickup, an '81 Super Cab F250 short bed with four-wheel drive. It looked like it had been rode hard and put away wet more than once, or in other words in about as good a shape as any primary vehicle was in the Alaska Bush. The second car was a study in contrasts, a bright red Chevy S10 long bed with an extended cab, also with four-wheel drive, that was so new Liam was surprised to see it had tags.

Somebody had to be home. He turned to knock again.

He sensed rather than heard the movement from behind the door, and cocked his head. There was a sound like a muffled cry, filled with pain. He raised a fist and hit the door three times. "Alaska state troopers, open up! Now!"

There was an exclamation, male this time, a curse perhaps, and then a scraping sound, as if someone had bumped into a piece of furniture and shoved it a couple of inches across the floor. Liam was in the act of raising his fist again when the door opened.

A man stood in the center of the living room, hands on his hips, surveying Liam with irritation. "Well?" he said. His voice was hard-edged and impatient, the set of his chin arrogant and too self-assured. He looked like a man accustomed to giving orders.

Liam had never been a man who liked taking them. "I'm looking for Laura Nanalook."

"And you are?"

"State Trooper Liam Campbell, Mr.--"

"Cecil Wolfe," the man said without hesitation. He didn't hold out his hand, making it manifestly obvious he felt it unnecessary to curry favor with the police by displaying even the rudiments of good manners.

Well, well, Liam thought. The prick himself.

Wolfe surveyed him. "You don't look much like a trooper. Where's your uniform?" He grinned, a wolfish grin, hard and hungry. "Your Smokey the Bear hat?"

Liam produced his shield. He offered no explanation for his lack of uniform.

Cecil examined the shield carefully, and handed it back with a grunt that was an offense in itself. He waited, arms folded.

Liam, like all good police officers, knew the value of an expectant silence, and did not rush to fill it, instead looking over the cabin.

The logs had been Sheetrocked inside, and taped, mudded, and painted a soft eggshell white by an expert hand. The floor was linoleum, a close match in color for the walls, and probably more practical for a Bush lifestyle of skinning out game and tanning hides than a carpet. There was a brown overstuffed couch and matching love seat and a cheap oak veneer coffee table. An entertainment center featuring a twenty-five-inch television and a library of videotapes dominated one wall. A gun rack with one rifle and one shotgun on it hung from a second, and several painfully amateurish gold pan oil paintings of caches and cabins in the snow beneath the Northern Lights were mounted on a third. One door led into a kitchen, another down a hallway.

A toilet flushed and water began to run into a sink, which explained where Laura Nanalook was. It might have been his imagination, but he thought Wolfe started a little at the sound. He covered it up by saying in a too hearty tone, "Women. Always primping."

Since Liam had scored a tactical victory by not speaking first, he could now ask pleasantly, "What are you doing here, Mr. Wolfe?"

Wolfe's eyes narrowed. "Bob DeCreft was one of my spotters. I came out to offer my condolences to his next of kin." He grinned his wolfish grin again. "Such as she is."

He was daring Liam to comment. Liam said, "And how has the herring season been for you this year, Mr. Wolfe?"

"When the fish hawks let me put my nets in the water, high boat," Wolfe said, adding, inevitably, "as usual."