Fire and ice (31 page)

Wy looked at him in surprise. "I'm hanging until he forks over my paycheck, and then I'm outta here," she said, adding incredulously, "Are you jealous or something?"

He closed one hand around her arm, pulled her around to face him, and said with all the conviction he could muster, "Stay away from him, Wy. Stay as far away from Cecil Wolfe as you can get. The man's dangerous. Don't ever be alone with him."

She pulled free. "You are jealous," she said, but she wasn't certain.

"He's dangerous," he repeated. "Don't be alone with him, not ever."

She stared. "What aren't you telling me?"

Bill appeared with a loaded plate and a glass of Coke. Liam turned back to the counter and waded in. "Sit down," he said, kicking out the stool next to him. "Have a fry."

She cast a look over her shoulder, and then took the stool.

He picked up the salt shaker. Bill rematerialized. "Fries aren't salty enough for you?" she inquired frostily.

Liam put the shaker back down. "The fries are perfect."

"I thought so," Bill said, and disappeared again.

"Jesus, that woman," Liam muttered.

Wy laughed. "I like her."

Liam looked Wy straight in the eye. "If I'd seen her first, I'd be in love with her."

Wy flushed and didn't reply.

Liam finished off his fatburger in half a dozen big bites, mopped up the last of the juice with the last of the fries, and licked his fingers. "I mean it, Wy. Get your check from Wolfe and get out of here." He stood up and pulled out his wallet. "I've got to go; I've got a couple of stops I have to make."

"Where?"

"One's the harbor, the other's the hospital. See you later."

He left her staring after him as he went out the door.

Outside, the raven croaked at him. He ignored it, heading for the Blazer when he caught sight of a white Ford station wagon. He walked over to look inside, but it was empty. He looked around the parking lot and didn't see anyone, other than a couple steaming up the windows of a bright green Toyota Tercel. And he would surely have noticed her if she had been inside Bill's, as would have everyone else, something devoutly to be avoided by a minister's wife-especially, from what Liam had seen and heard, this minister.

The hospital was a three-story building painted a soft white with dark green trim. It had wings leading from either side, and as instructed Liam entered through the emergency door into the right wing. A nurse in a white two-piece pantsuit sat behind a counter. She was short and dark, with a round face and almond-shaped eyes. She spoke English slowly, with a heavy Yupik accent, but she was perfectly understandable. He followed her directions down a hall and into a treatment room, where behind a curtain he found the prone figure of Kelly McCormick.

McCormick had been beaten severely about the face and head. His eyes were swollen shut, his nose broken and bleeding, his lips split over his teeth. His clothes had been cut from his body to display defensive wounds up the undersides of both arms and great purple and yellow bruises on his chest and belly. One hand looked as if it had been stamped on by a heavy boot, the index finger sticking up at an odd angle.

He was conscious, however. He peered up uncomprehendingly at Liam through slitted eyelids. He grunted something, his mouth too damaged to articulate his words.

"I'll be damned," Liam said. Recognition came hard but it did come. "You're the guy at Bill's. The one who helped to get the rifle away from Teddy Engebretsen."

Larry Jacobson was standing on the other side of the bed. "Don't try to talk, Mac." He stared at Liam, hostility warring with fear in his face. Hostility won. "What do you want?"

"I heard Mr. McCormick had been brought in to the hospital," Liam said. "Thought I'd stop by." Yes, there was one of the dimples sported by Mac honey. He'd have ditched the barfly, too, if he had someone like Candy Choknok waiting on him. And Candy had said that Kelly had started out at Bill's on Friday, before going on to Tasha's party and first prize in the flatfooting contest.

Liam gave an inward sigh. All unknowing he had encountered Kelly McCormick twice in the past three days, the first time on Friday at Bill's, the second time on Saturday, on board the Mary J. He wasn't sure what that said for his powers of observation. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"We've already talked to Cliff Berg," Larry Jacobson said belligerently. "He took our statement."

"That'd be the local police?" Larry nodded and Liam wondered if he was ever going to meet the mythical local police. He stepped up to the bed and leaned over so McCormick wouldn't have to strain to see him. "Mr. McCormick, I'm Liam Campbell. I'm the new state trooper assigned to these parts. Do you know who beat you up?"

It was hard to read any expression on that battered face, but the head turned away and one maimed hand clawed at Jacobson's arm. "He doesn't want to talk to you," Jacobson said. "He's too hurt, anyway. I told you, we already talked to the police."

"Mr. McCormick, do you know who beat you up?" Liam repeated. "Tell me."

The maimed hand stilled, the slit in the eye closed, but Liam didn't think McCormick had gone to sleep or passed out on him. "Mr. McCormick? Whoever did this to you, he shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. I won't let him. Tell me who did it."

Nothing. "Did it have anything to do with your shooting up the post office yesterday?"

The slit opened again and a fragment of blue eye looked up at him in alarm. Liam smiled. "Yes, I know about that. I've been looking for you to ask you some questions."

"You got any witnesses?" Jacobson demanded hotly.

"About ten, all together," Liam said dryly.

The blunt answer squelched Jacobson for the moment. "Oh."

Neither McCormick nor Jacobson would be missed by the gene pool if either disappeared off the face of the earth, Liam reflected. "Why'd he do it?"

"Shoot up the P.o.?"

Liam nodded.

Jacobson glanced at McCormick. They seemed to commune telepathically for a moment or two, and then Jacobson looked back up at Liam. "I'm not saying he did do any such thing," he said.

"Uh-huh," Liam said.

"But if somebody," Jacobson said, stressing the last word, "if somebody took a gun and shot up the post office, then somebody might have had a really good reason."

Liam maintained an expression of polite interest. "And that really good reason might be-what?"

Again there was an exchange of looks. "That Gilbert guy, he's the postmaster."

"Yes."

"He's also the minister for the Trinity Church."

"Yes."

Jacobson shuffled his feet, then blurted out, "He won't give you your mail if you quit going to his church."

"Ah." It was about what Liam had expected, and it was yet another instance of how far out of his jurisdiction he was wandering in his new posting. My kingdom for a United States postal inspector, he thought. There's never a federal cop around when you need one. "So Kelly here thought he'd get the Right Reverend Mr. Gilbert to hand over his mail at gunpoint."

"Hell," Jacobson said, suddenly irritated, "the only reason we ever went to that damn church in the first place was because those babe daughters of Walter Sifsof's started going. Couple of stuck-up broads they turned out to be," he added in disgust. "So we quit, and then Gilbert starts holding our mail back."

The slit of one imploring blue eye looked up at Jacobson, reminding him to be cautious. "Anyway, I'm not saying Kelly did or he didn't. But if somebody did, that might may be how it went down."

Liam sighed. "I don't suppose it occurred to either of you to file a complaint with Gilbert's boss? Tampering with the United States mail is a federal offense. You can go to jail for it."

Jacobson stared at him. "But his boss is in Anchorage!"

"Of course he is," Liam murmured. "Okay. We'll come back to this, but right now I've got another question for you."

"Oh yeah?" Jacobson's relief at getting away from the incendiary topic of shooting up federal buildings was almost palpable. "What's that?"

"Did you fish the opener this afternoon?"

Jacobson glanced down at McCormick. "Yeah."

"Your dad with you?"

"Yeah."

Liam nodded at the figure on the bed. "Your friend, too?"

"Yeah, we were on our boat and he was on his." Jacobson was wary but as yet unsuspicious. "Why?"

"Where were you fishing? What area?"

Liam noticed that the figure in the bed had become very still.

"Dutch Girl Island," Jacobson said readily enough.

"Where Cecil Wolfe and his bunch were fishing."

Jacobson shrugged. "There were a lot of boats in a lot of places."

"I was up in the air today, observing for the Sea Wolfe. Flying with Wy Chouinard."

McCormick clawed again for Jacobson's arm, but Jacobson had already stiffened. "So?"

"So I spotted the Mary J. from the air. Cecil ran over your skiff, didn't he?" A sullen look settled in on Jacobson's young face. "You always fish where Wolfe fishes?"

"A lot of people do," Larry said defensively. "He's high boat, he's got a reputation for finding fish. Sure, we follow him around. Us and fifty other boats."

"Uh-huh. Anybody spotting for you?"

Jacobson and McCormick exchanged a quick look. "We don't need no spotter," Jacobson said, thrusting out a pugnacious jaw. "We got sonar, we got crow's nests, and today was clear, you could see the herring balling up from miles away."

"Of course you could," Liam agreed cordially. "That's why you followed Cecil Wolfe around, because it was so easy to spot the herring on your own."

Jacobson flushed a dull red.

"How about the last opener? Anybody spotting for you then?"

"No," McCormick said loudly, making both his friend and Liam start. "Nobody spotting for us."

Liam sighed. "Figured you'd say that." He went to the edge of the curtain and paused, looking back. "Nice to meet you finally, Mr. McCormick. We'll be talking again, about that business at the post office." He pulled his cap on. "Right now I've got to go down to the small boat harbor. I got a call from the dispatcher on the way to the hospital. Seems that a boat has sunk at its moorage. Little gillnetter by the name of Yukon Jack." He settled the cap just so. "Looks like somebody opened her sea cocks and left her to sink."

He couldn't have sworn to it, but he thought McCormick's eyes filled with tears. "Since the harbormaster says the local police are busy, I'm going to go down and take a look."

"That son of a bitch!" Jacobson's face was now as red as it had been white. "That motherfucking son of a bitch!"

He was trying to shake McCormick's grip loose. "No," McCormick said in a harsh whisper. "No, Larry, don't. He'll kill you. He'll kill you." He managed to haul himself up into a sitting position, groaning with pain at the effort. "No, Larry. No."

"The hell with that!" Jacobson raged. "Look what he did to you, and now he's sunk the Jack! How far does he get to take this? Who's next? What's next? Does he blow up the Mary J. with Dad passed out in his bunk? Does he burn down the house with Mom in it?"

McCormick wouldn't turn him loose. "They would have killed me if he'd told them to. There's too many of them, and they're too big. We can't go up against them. He'll sic them on all of us if we talk, if we say or do anything. Your dad wouldn't survive this kind of beating. Don't, Larry. Don't." McCormick was almost weeping with the last word.

Liam waited as the red faded from Jacobson's face, leaving a drained and despairing expression behind. "Goddamn him. Goddamn him to hell."

Liam met the harbormaster on the slip next to the little gillnetter. Liam remembered catching a brief glimpse of her when he'd helped Darrell down to the boat harbor; she'd been a tidy little craft, neat and clean. Today she was awash up to her jaunty red trim line and then some, listing up against the slip, her crow's nest tilted at a drunken angle. Sort of made her look like her skipper after a rough night, Liam thought. She was stern-heavy and one of her hatch covers had floated away. Some kind soul had fed a hose attached to a pump into her hold, and water gushed forth from the other end in fits and starts. A rainbow sheen covered the water from leaking oil and fuel stores.

There is no more pathetic sight than a once proud vessel reduced to hanging on to the slip of a small boat harbor to keep her bow above water.

From the proximity of the Yukon Jack to the Mary J. he could make a pretty good guess as to what had happened the day before. Fresh from his armed assault on the might and power of the United States government, as exemplified by its postal system, Kelly McCormick hadn't had enough oomph to get himself all the way home, and had passed out in the nearest friendly bunk. He had been the comatose lump opposite Darrell Jacobson that afternoon. Fishing partner to Jacobson pere et fils, and boon companion to Larry Jacobson, he probably saw the Mary J. as a second home.

The harbormaster, a rotund little man with rosy cheeks and a bouncy step, didn't have much to tell him. "Somebody opened up the cocks and walked away," he said sadly, or as sadly as his cherubic little Father Christmas face would allow.