Fire and ice (28 page)

"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 assault. 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 God 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 fishing-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.

He could wait.

But could Laura Nanalook?

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 flashing 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 God you must be our lucky charm, because we beat hell outta the little sonsabitches 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. "Hell, 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 cocky arrogance, not his cool assumption of intimacy with Wy, not his relationship, if you could call it that, with Laura Nanalook, 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 fishing 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 coldcocked 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 relationship 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 hell 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."