So Sure Of Death

by Dana Stabenow

  By the time they landed in Mentasta Lake they were old friends. How could anything be that simple? Nothing else ever in her life had been up to then.

  She followed Jo into the kitchen, and found her talking rapidly into the phone as Tim set the table. He folded paper napkins and placed them beneath the flatware, a frown of concentration on his face. He performed the simple task the way he did every household chore, as if getting it wrong meant expulsion from Eden. Compared to what Tim had come from, a place where he'd been beaten regularly and the last time nearly to death, her home probably did seem like heaven on earth.

  He stepped back from the table and surveyed it, reaching out to move a glass an inch to the left. He turned and saw Wy watching, and a faint color crept up into his cheeks.

  She hugged him, ignoring the momentary stiffening in his body. He had yet to become accustomed to casual physical affection. For that matter, she was just now learning it herself, but she was determined that Tim, by the time he was eighteen and ready to go to college, would know how to give and receive a hug, and mean it.

  Jo hung up the phone. “Where does Liam live?”

  “The last time I checked, he was still sleeping in his office,” Wy lied with determined unconcern.

  “He's bunking on a boat down at the harbor,” Tim volunteered.

  Jo pounced. “Which one?”

  Tim was startled at the ferocity of Jo's interest. “Uh, er, theDawn P,I think.”

  Wy stared. “How do you know that?”

  She cursed herself for not moderating her tone of voice, because he was immediately defensive. “I remember because it's named after this girl I go to school with.” As they spoke, he flushed a deep, vivid red.

  Wy gaped, and Jo grinned. “Is she pretty?” Jo said.

  Tim hunched a shoulder, and shot Wy a sidelong glance. “She's okay, I guess,” he mumbled. The lid on the pot on the stove gave a clatter and with the air of one rescued from the deck of theTitanicjust before the stern went under he leapt gladly around the counter and pulled it off the burner.

  The sausage was a little charred, but Wy liked her sausage crisp. They ate in silence for a few moments. “Who was that on the phone, if it wasn't Liam?” Wy said.

  Jo took a bite of sausage and washed it down with a long swallow of Killian's. Jo must have brought some with her, because Wy didn't drink beer. She stole a covert look at Tim. A strand of sauerkraut had latched on to the front of his Nike Town T-shirt; other than that, he looked reassuringly substance-free. Girls to booze in one night, she thought gloomily. Somebody was going to have to talk to Tim about birth control, THE TALK every parent dreaded, and she had a pretty good idea who that someone should be. She remembered THE TALK she'd had with her adoptive parents, two schoolteachers only slightly more uptight than Queen Victoria. Certainly she could do better than that, but she surveyed Tim with disfavor on general principles anyway. Whose bright idea had it been to adopt this kid, again?

  “Pete,” Jo said, setting the bottle down with a satisfied smack and burping without apology. “My managing editor. He wants me to check out your story. I need to talk to Liam. He didn't answer at the post.” To Tim she said, “You know which slip theDawn Pis tied up at?”

  He shook his head. “There's a map at the head of both ramps. It'll show you.”

  “You want to walk down with me?”

  He brightened. “Sure.” He looked at Wy. “Can I, Mom?”

  “Why not?”

  “Great,” Jo said, reaching for the Killian's again. She paused with it halfway to her mouth. “You could come with us.”

  Wy shook her head. “Not just now. I was going to go down the bluff to the river, see if I could catch us a few late reds or a couple of early silvers. I want to get some in the can before they all get up the river.”

  Jo waited until Tim's head was turned before mouthing the word, Coward.

  Tim groaned. “Salmon sandwiches for school again.”

  “Just for that, you little ingrate, I'm telling Moses I want ten gallons of blueberries, not five, when he brings you back from fish camp, and guess who gets to pick them?”

  Tim groaned again.

  “Life's tough all over, kid,” Jo said. “Now hurry up and finish, I want to catch up to that trooper.”

  “Are you writing a story?”

  “Sure am,” Jo said, rising to carry her plate to the sink.

  “What about?” Tim said, following her.

  Jo dropped her voice to a deep baritone filled with terrible secrets. “Murder and mayhem on the high seas, me boy.”

  “Wow!” he said, brightening. “You mean like pirates?”

  Jo paused in the act of putting dishes in the dishwasher. “Maybe,” she said slowly. “Maybe, by god. Anything's possible on the Bay.”

  Before the door closed behind them, Wy heard Tim ask, “Jo, what's an ingrate?”

  THIRTEEN

  Back at the post, Liam assembled two piles of evidence. One pile consisted of Nelson's notebook, the pencil drawings he'd made of the scene of Nelson's death, the notes he'd made after talking to Frank Petla, Wy, Prince and McLynn. The other pile consisted of the notes he'd taken at Kulukak, the picture of the Malone family sailing in Hawaii, the notes of the conversations with the Kulukak elders, Bill, Tanya and Ballard, the tender summary, the two rolls of film he'd taken of theMarybethia.The film would have to go into Anchorage by pouch tomorrow morning for development into trial exhibits. He wouldn't need to see the photographs. The scene was etched on the gray matter of his mind for life.

  It was after eight o'clock in the evening. The day was three hours away from sunset. He thought about going over to Wy's. He had this need to see her, to breathe her air, to feel her flesh beneath his hands. It was growing stronger with every day, and half the time when he started going somewhere in the Blazer he'd find himself on the road to her house.

  He picked up the local paper and turned to the classifieds. There was an actual house for sale, south of town on the road to Chinook, two bedrooms, one bathroom, a five-acre lot. Neither price nor location was listed. He dialed the number.

  The phone rang once. The voice that answered was male and brusque. “Yeah?”

  “Hi, my name's Liam Campbell. I was calling about the ad in the paper. The house for sale?”

  “What's your driver's license number?”

  Liam blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “What, you don't understand English? I asked you what your driver's license number was. And I don't got all day.”

  Liam found himself fishing out his wallet. He read the number off, and waited.

  “Huh. You born here?”

  “Germany.”

  “Huh. Army brat, I suppose.”

  “Air Force, actually,” Liam said, struggling not to sound apologetic. “We moved to Anchorage that year.”

  “Huh.” The syllable was disparaging.

  Liam maintained a hopeful silence. Although it was heresy to admit in Alaska, he kind of liked Anchorage, but he wasn't going to say so if liking Anchorage was going to make the man on the other end of the line deem him an unsuitable candidate to purchase the house.

  “Well, you can come over and look at it, but I ain't making no promises. Somebody comes along with a lower number, I give them first consideration.”

  “Right,” Liam said. “Makes perfect sense. I understand completely.” He paused. “Okay. No, I don't. Mind telling me why?”

  “I guess you really don't understand English, do you? The lower your driver's license number, the longer you been in the state. The longer you been in the state, the more likely you are to stay. If you look like a stayer, you get the house. If you don't, forget it. When you coming over?”

  “How about tomorrow morning?” Liam said meekly.

  “Can't, I'll be out fishing. Next Monday. Nine a.m. And don't be late.”

  “Wait! I need directions!”

  There was a grunt, and then directions, grudgingly given.

  “And wha
t's your name? Sir? Sir?”

  The dial tone was his reply. He replaced the receiver, wondered what was going to happen on Monday, remembered waking up on theDawn Pthis morning and decided that if the house had working plumbing and a good roof, he would take it, no matter what kind of price had been hung on it.

  There was one other house listed for sale in the paper, in Manokotak, forty miles west by air, which, according to the ad, needed a lot of work, was ineligible for financing and was available for rent for fifteen hundred a month with an additional month's rent for a security deposit, but only until the owner found a buyer. If it had running hot and cold, Liam might have been interested.

  On the other hand, there were three boats for sale, two thirtytwo-foot drifters and a fifty-four-foot seiner. One drifter was going for fifty thousand or best offer, one for two hundred thousand if you bought the permit, too, and the seiner for eighty, although the electronics needed replacing.

  He folded the paper and put it down. Bristol Bay was looking at a fifty percent bankruptcy rate for fishermen these days, what with the vanishing salmon runs and the rise of farmed salmon everywhere but Alaska, where farmed salmon was out-lawed. A lot of people were making career-changing decisions, including sons and daughters whose families had made their livings on the Bay since back before engines were legal and all the Bay drifters operated under sail. It was anybody's guess what would happen next.

  It didn't mean the availability of real estate was going up, or its price coming down, though.

  His stomach growled. One of Bill's burgers sounded about right, but Bill's Bar and Grill was a public place. You never knew who you might run into there. He decided he was more in the mood for the deli takeout at the NC market, and a cozy evening at home with a couple of fingers of Glenmorangie and a good book.

  Even if that home was slowly sinking into the boat harbor, one inexorable inch at a time.

  An hour later, he'd settled back with a porcelain mug half full of single-malt scotch and a copy ofPillar of Fireby Taylor Branch, a historian who managed to combine scholarship with a talent for writing. Liam liked reading history, and it wasn't often he came across the two skills in the same package. He piled pillows in back of his head and paged through the preface to chapter one. He always read prefaces and prologues and introductions after he'd read the book. Partly he was impatient to get on with the story, partly he didn't want anything in the book spoiled for him, partly he didn't care how many people the author wanted to thank and partly he just wanted to get on with it.

  He got on with it, and the scotch was down by half when he reached page 26 and first mention of Eugene T. “Bull” Connor, police commissioner in Birmingham, Alabama, whose actions in the late fifties and early sixties were still being lived down by police departments all over the nation. Liam had seen videotapes of the Birmingham police using fire hoses and German shepherds to quell demonstrators, most of them black, most of them nonviolent. They hadn't needed quelling, but then that hadn't been the point. Liam thought of Rodney King and wondered when America was going to get it right.

  The boat shifted suddenly and he almost rolled out of bed. The rest of his scotch got away from him, which put him in no good mood to answer the knock on the hatch. “Who the hell is it?” he barked.

  The door opened, and Trooper Diana Prince ducked her head inside. Her uniform was still immaculate, although she did look tired. Curious, as well. She took in the cramped quarters, the minuscule galley, consisting of two gas burners and a sink the size of a teacup, the marine toilet tucked into an alcove, and with a heroic effort managed not to wrinkle her nose at the dank smell. “Sir.”

  Liam, dressed for bed in T-shirt and jockey briefs, sat abruptly upright and smacked the same part of his forehead against the same section of bulkhead that he had that morning. “Shit! Son of a bitch! Goddamn it to hell!”

  He held his head and swung his legs over the side. “Damn, damn, damn.” He stood up, feet squishing in the damp carpet.

  “I'm sorry, sir. Are you all right?”

  He felt her hand on his arm, and yanked it free. “I'm fine,” he said, retreated a step. His heel came down on a church key previously secreted beneath the lip of his bunk. “Ouch!” He hopped into the air, clutching his foot, and whacked his head on the bulk-head again.

  “Sir, let me-”

  “No!” he roared. “Don't help me, for crissake please don't help me!” Vision blurred, he pawed for his pants, draped over the opposite bunk. Helpfully, she put them into his hands. “Go outside and wait, goddamn it,” he growled, and heard the hatch slide open behind him.

  “Oh hello,” he heard her say, and whirled around on one leg to meet the startled gazes of Jo Dunaway and Tim Gosuk.

  His pants legs developed a reluctance to fit over his legs heretofore unknown in their history as his pants. He drew himself up, necessarily stooping some because of the level of the ceiling, and said with awful politeness, “Could you please wait outside while I get some clothes on? Thank you.” Without waiting for an answer, he hopped forward on one foot, herding Prince in front of him, and slid the hatch shut in their faces.

  A minute later, a scowl on his face that dared any one of them to comment on the prior scene, he reopened the hatch. Very gruff and businesslike, he said to Prince, “Did you have something to report, Trooper?”

  “Yes, sir, I did, but it can wait,” Prince said from a brace that looked as rigid as the expression on her face.

  It couldn't have waited until morning, when he wouldn't be caught with his pants down by Wy's best friend and son? To Jo he said with unbending courtesy, “What can I do for you?”

  One thing about Jo, she wasn't afraid to come right to the point. “I heard about the killings on theMarybethia.”

  “How?” Liam waved a hand in his own reply. “Never mind. Doesn't matter. Is this on the record?” She nodded. “All right, get out your recorder.” She produced a tiny black Sony. Click. “My name is Trooper-” Remembering, he corrected himself. “My name is Corporal Liam Campbell, of the Alaska State Troopers, assigned to the Newenham post.” He caught Prince's quick, surprised glance at this sudden elevation in rank. Jo's steady eyes didn't waver, but she caught it, too, and he cursed himself for the slip. “My associate is Trooper Diana Prince. This morning we responded to a call from Kulukak, which reported a fishing boat named theMarybethia,adrift in Kulukak Bay. It was reported to have been on fire. We went to Kulukak, where the boat was towed. All crew members, seven in number, were dead. We are not releasing the names of the victims pending notification of next of kin. Investigation into the incident is continuing.”

  Jo waited until it was obvious he was going to say no more and shut off the recorder. “That it?”

  “That's it for now.”

  “Did the fire kill them or not?”

  “Cause of death will be determined at time of autopsy.”

  She pointed the recorder at him. “If you won't say cause, I'm thinking maybe they died from something other than the fire.”

  He said nothing, arms folded, face expressionless.

  She looked at Prince. “Anything to add?”

  Prince, face wooden, said, “No, ma'am.”

  “Look at that,” Jo said to Tim. “If you're going to be a reporter-”

  “Over my dead body,” Liam said involuntarily.

  Tim looked at Liam, at first startled, and then gratified. No one, before Wy, had ever taken enough of an interest in him to be proprietary about his future.

  “-then you need to be able to recognize that expression. It's called stonewalling.” To Liam, Jo said, “I'll be in touch.”

  “I'll be around,” he said blandly, regaining his composure. “Now if you'll excuse us, I have some business to discuss with my associate.”

  He saw them to the deck. Tim hopped to the slip, followed by Jo. She paused, looking up at Liam. “Nice legs, by the way,” she said, and winked at him before following Tim down the slip to the ramp.

  He waited until
they were mounting the ramp and safely out of earshot before returning to the cabin. He wouldn't put it past Jo to sneak back and eavesdrop. “You want some coffee?” he said to Prince.

  “I could use some,” she admitted.

  Water boiled rapidly on one of the gas burners, and he poured it through a two-cup cone filter. She picked up the package of coffee. “Tsunami Blend? Never heard of it.” She sniffed. “Smells good. Dark roast?”

  Nowadays everyone was a coffee snob. “Yeah. Captain's Roast. I order it direct from-”

  “Homer, yeah, I've been. In fact, I completed my FTO program there.”

  “Is that right? Who were your field training officers?”

  “Portlock, Wosnesinski and Doroshin.”

  Liam grimaced. “Talk about dropping you in at the deep end.”

  “They were all right,” she said stoutly, although the undercurrent of surprise that this should be so was unmistakable to Liam's trained ear. “Tough, but fair.” She hesitated, and said with a burst of candor, the first totally nonprofessional expression he'd heard from her, “I don't mind saying I was a little nervous going in. At the academy I heard a story about a recruit washing out on report writing because of a personality clash with his FTO.”

  “I heard that same story,” Liam said, turning, mugs in hand. “That's why a recruit has to satisfy three separate officers that he or she is a ready and worthy candidate. That way, if one of the officers has bad chemistry with the recruit, the other two can cancel him-or her-out.”

  There wasn't enough room for both sets of long legs beneath the tiny galley table, so he sat on the bunk and sipped his coffee.

  She shifted her feet out of his way, looking at the imprints her shoes left behind in the carpet. “Uh, sir-you do know that the floor is wet in here?”

  “It's Liam in private, Diana, and yes, I do know the floor is wet in here. This boat is sinking.”