So Sure Of Death

by Dana Stabenow

An awkward silence developed, broken when Maria appeared. “Uh… wine,” Wy said. “Red.”

  “Cabernet or merlot?”

  “Cabernet.” In an obvious move to make conversation, she said to the others, “Merlots are sometimes too sweet. Same reason I don't drink white.”

  Prince looked down at her glass. “I guess I like sweet.”

  Wy shrugged. “To each her own.”

  Liam drained his glass in one gulp. Everyone reordered. Silence until the new drinks came.

  Charles said, “What about-”

  Prince said, “Charles, why are you-”

  Wy said, “How is the-”

  Liam said, “When are you leaving, Dad?”

  A brief silence. “I don't know, Liam,” Charles said. “I'll be around for at least another week, I think.” There was a clear invitation in his smile when he looked at Prince, and a corresponding sparkle in Prince's eyes.

  “What are you doing here, precisely?” Prince said. “You haven't said. Where are you stationed?”

  “Florida,” Charles said easily. “Hurlburt Field.”

  Really, Liam thought. Somebody tell Hurlburt.

  “And I'm here to see what the Air Force can do about turning over some of our disused buildings to the local communities.” He ran the same spiel by them he had run by Liam the day before, and, as they were supposed to, Wy and Prince looked politely impressed by the Air Force's commitment to public service.

  Another hiatus in the conversation. Liam was trying hard not to stare across the table at Wy, was trying even harder to pretend he wasn't sitting next to Prince, although Charles had made his interest clear. For the first time in his life Liam was grateful for Charles's invariable habit of chasing the best-looking woman in every town he visited. Liam abandoned any concern for Prince's tender feelings; Charles was right, she was a grown woman, and besides, Liam was not about to appear protective of another woman in front of Wy.

  His legs, too long for the booth, cramped, and he stretched a little, bumping again into Wy's. Their eyes met. Hers widened. His mouth went dry. He alleviated the problem with single-malt scotch, but refused a refill when Maria reappeared to take their orders for dinner. Since the only thing on the menu was beef, and since the choices were New York strip, rib eye or T-bone, they all had steak. Liam and Wy chose New York and rare, Charles and Prince T-bone and well done.

  Until their salads came, Charles entertained them with an account of his tour in the Gulf, with an emphasis on sand. “It got into everything, your hair, your eyes, your mouth, your shorts, you name it. Not to mention the engines. You haven't lived until you've tried to change out the engine on an F-15 in the desert.” Prince listened, rapt, Wy said something noncommittal about engine maintenance and Liam contributed an occasional grunt and tried to remember when he'd last seen a bird colonel in the Air Force change out his own engine. He greeted his salad with relief and kept his mouth full. It seemed like a strategic decision worthy of Alexander.

  He felt a foot press against his, and he looked up sharply. The last time he'd felt her foot, it had been hard against his shin, right before she slugged him. This time, she winked at him. His fork remained suspended in midair as Maria arrived with the main course. She whisked away the salad plates and replaced them with metal plates in wooden frames loaded with red meat. Wy dropped her eyes, Liam dropped his fork and Maria, nothing loath, fetched him a new one.

  In the meantime, Charles had shifted the subject to Alaska and his experiences in the air over Elmendorf. He missed the Cold War, it seemed. He told of the time he'd taken a rubber mask in the shape of Ronald Reagan and worn it on patrol.

  “Could the pilots in the Russian planes see you?” Prince asked, grinning.

  “Hell, yes, or what was the point?” Charles laughed. “Next time we went up, one of theirs was wearing a Brezhnev mask.”

  Prince laughed, obviously enchanted. Charles wasn't sleeping alone tonight. Unlike himself, Liam thought mournfully, and looked at Wy, who was listening with every appearance of interest to Charles and Prince's conversation. Eventually Prince realized that they hadn't heard from the other two guests. “How long have you been a pilot, Wy?”

  “Since I was sixteen.”

  “When did you start your business?”

  Wy glanced at Liam and back at Prince. “The one I have now? Three years ago. I moved to Newenham and bought out an air taxi service.”

  “Do you like it?”

  Wy smiled and said, “The worst day flying beats the best day off. To coin a phrase.”

  No one doubted the calm conviction that underlined her words. “You make any money at it?” Charles said.

  “I do all right.”

  “Ever want to fly jets?”

  “Who hasn't?”

  Charles smiled, pleased.

  “Why did you become a trooper, sir?” Prince said, who seemed to have taken on the duty of hostess.

  “Too muchHawaii Five-O,”his father said.

  “I like order,” Liam said firmly, if a bit pompously. “I like rules. We're a pretty unruly race, when you think about it. The law, imperfect as it is, is the only thing that keeps us a step ahead of the apes.”

  Prince looked at him, waiting.

  “Oh all right,” Liam said. “And I like the action. I get a charge out of bringing down the bad guys.” He looked at her. “You're going to be a good trooper.”

  She grinned and dimples flashed. “I already am.”

  “Hold that thought.”

  “So why? Really. Why?”

  It wasn't something he talked about, so it was hard to put it into words. “The first case I rolled on after my probationary period was a guy beating up on his wife.”

  “Ugh.” Prince shuddered. “Domestic disputes. Hate 'em.”

  “Don't we all. This was a bad one: her eyes were swollen shut, her right arm was broken in two places, he'd strangled her so she couldn't talk.”

  “Repeat?”

  “My trainer said it was the sixth time in two months he'd had a call to their house.”

  She looked sympathetic, or as sympathetic as someone can look with a mouthful of T-bone steak.

  “Yeah,” Liam said, “I know. This time, he went away, seven years and change. I saw her two years later, and I didn't recognize her. She was healthy, and happy, she had a job, she was the manager of the produce section of the local Eagle store. She recognized me immediately, and came right up to thank me. I knew somebody at a shelter, and had given her the number that night. It changed her life, she said. I'd changed her life. I tried to tell her that all I'd done was give her a number, she was the one who had made the call. No, she said, it was me. I'd rescued her, and I'd have to live with it.” Liam grinned. “And then she tried to give me five pounds of nectarines.”

  “Which you of course refused.”

  “Hell, yes, there must have been fifty people in the store. Didn't want anybody to see me taking a bribe.” He ate a bite of steak, and added, “I told her to put 'em in the car.”

  Charles laughed. After a moment, Prince did, too, although Liam could see she was trying to decide if Liam was joking or not about the nectarines. “How about you?” he asked her.

  She shrugged and grinned at Charles. “I always wanted my own uniform, and the Girl Scouts don't issue guns with theirs.”

  Maria bustled by, her size two jeans all but slipping off her behind, and inquired as to their needs. She brought back another glass of wine for Prince and another beer for Charles.

  “How is the case coming?” Wy said to Liam, under cover of Charles's voice.

  “Which one?”

  She shrugged. “Either. Both.”

  Liam cut a piece of steak. It was perfect, the best cut of meat this side of the Club Paris in Anchorage, the perfect ratio of exterior char to bloody interior. “Well, I've got one confession.”

  “Which?”

  “TheMarybethia.”

  “Who?”

  “Walter Larsgaard. Do you know him?”


  She frowned. “Isn't he the mayor of Kulukak?”

  “Tribal chief.”

  “Same difference.” Her brow creased. “He killed them? All of them?”

  “So he says.”

  She put down her knife and fork. “Seven people? Did he say why?”

  “He was sleeping with Molly Malone. She wanted to break off the relationship. So he killed her.”

  “Why did he kill the rest of them?”

  “Her husband, because her husband had her and Larsgaard didn't. The rest of them, mainly because they were there.”

  Wy thought about this. “You should pardon the expression, it sounds a little like overkill.”

  “It doesn't sound like it, it was,” Liam said.

  She shifted and her foot bumped his again. She didn't move it away this time. Their eyes met, and she smiled. Bewildered at this sea change-maybe he wouldn't be sleeping alone tonight after all, he couldn't help thinking-he smiled back.

  “I was talking to Tim today,” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Me, too.”

  “Yeah. He told me.” She toyed with one of the crisp, golden fries, what Bill deemed appropriate for a steak side. “He said he knew Mike Malone.”

  “He told me that, too. Played guard opposite him, he said.”

  “Did he tell you that Mike Malone got benched for one game for fighting with some boy who called his mother a whore?”

  “No. Did Tim know who it was? Who Molly was sleeping with?”

  “No.”

  “Walter Larsgaard says it was him. Alta Peterson down at the hotel says Molly used to stay there once a month, and that she didn't sleep alone, but that Alta never saw who it was.” He stared down at his plate. “I'm thinking it's an awful long boat ride from Kulukak to Newenham. Even if it's only once a month.”

  Wy shrugged. “I didn't fly him in, but then I'm not the only air taxi around. Unless… does Walter Larsgaard fly?”

  “I don't know.” He turned to Prince, who was giggling like a fifteen-year-old-or so it seemed to Liam-at some joke Charles was telling. “Did you run Larsgaard through the system?”

  In midgiggle she shifted from lovestruck girl to officer of the law. “Yes, sir.”

  “Does Larsgaard have a pilot's license?”

  “No, sir.”

  Liam turned back to Wy, and raised his shoulders.

  Maria came to clear away their plates and tempt them with dessert, Alaska Silk Pie, one of which Bill air-expressed in from Anchorage on Alaska Airlines every day she was open. She charged about a third of what the entire pie cost per slice, so it was worth it, and there was never anything left when the bar closed at night.

  Liam was full of steak and Glenmorangie and the hopeful promise of Wy's foot pressed warmly to his when he became aware of Prince speaking. “You should have seen him. Dropping his coffee mug, stumbling into things, banging his head against the overhead, all the time hopping around on one leg trying to get into his pants. He acted like he thought he was about to be raped.”

  Charles laughed, and Prince was encouraged to elaborate. “It was everything I could do not to start unbuttoning my uniform shirt. I think he might have gone right over the side.” She put her cup down and smiled at the man across the table, unaware that the man next to her was stiffening in outrage, not to mention fear. “In the end, I decided against it. He is the senior officer on the post, after all. It might have made working together in the future, well, difficult.”

  Charles laughed out loud, looking at Liam to share the joke. Prince looked, too, and for the first time became aware that she might have overstepped the bounds of propriety. She flushed and frowned down at her wine glass as if it were all its fault.

  Wy, watching him, saw the irritation and the fear. Both delighted her. She knew they shouldn't have, she knew only a lesser person than she was practicing to be would rejoice in the discomfort of someone else, but there it was. She put down her coffee mug and said, “Well, I'd better be going.”

  “Me, too,” Liam said instantly, rising to his feet. “I-ah, I need to get back to the post.”

  Scared sober, Prince started to get up, too. Liam waved her back with a frigid, “As you were. I'll see you in the morning. We'll start putting the case paperwork together then.”

  “Sir-”

  “Goodnight, Dad,” Liam said, directing a nod in his father's direction. Charles's gaze was full of knowing mockery. Liam directed his eyes to somewhere over his father's left shoulder. “Will I be seeing you again before you leave?”

  “Certainly,” Charles said jovially, and smiled at Prince. “I'll be here awhile yet. No, it's on me,” he said when Liam and Wy reached for their wallets. “My pleasure.”

  He watched them walk to the door, a careful foot of distance between them. “They got something going?”

  Prince was watching them, too. “It looks like it.”

  “I think so, too.” Satisfied, he turned his attention back to her. “Now, where were we?”

  She fluttered her eyelashes. “You were just trying to talk me into a dance.”

  “I was?” Charles looked around and saw a half-filled dance floor swaying to the strains of “That's What Living Is to Me.” “I guess I was,” he said, and led her out onto the floor.

  “Cocky bastard,” Liam muttered in the parking lot.

  “He's a pilot, Liam,” Wy said. “We invented cock.”

  “That's not what it's about, Wy. Ever since my mother ran off, he's been screwing everything in skirts just to prove to himself and everybody else how fucking irresistible he is.”

  “Oh.” She was silent for a moment. “Do you remember her at all?”

  “No. She left before I was six months old.”

  Wy winced. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. I always figured he was probably screwing around before she left and that was why she did.” He shrugged awkwardly. “Anyway. Well, goodnight, I guess.”

  Just as awkward, Wy said, “Yeah.”

  The door to the bar banged opened and a couple staggered down the stairs. They weren't drunk, really, just flushed with laughter and good food and good times. They paused at the foot of the stairs for a passionate embrace. When they pulled apart the man whispered something and the woman, trying to be haughty, said, “What makes you so sure?” The man snatched her up into another kiss, and when he put her down again they raced each other to see who'd make it to their truck first. Liam was fairly certain he could have followed them home and enriched the state's coffers with a hefty fine for speeding.

  “The state's got enough money,” he said out loud, and turned to find that Wy had gone.

  He drove to the post in no very good temper, slammed into the office and punched out a number on the phone in the manner of someone wielding an ax. When the voice at the other end protested his request, he said, “Just do it, okay? Leave a note for the M.E., asking him to take a tissue sample, run a test and get back to me. How long could it take and how hard could it be?” He hung up without waiting for an answer and dialed another number. A voice answered, yawning. “Yeah.”

  “Jim?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It's Liam.”

  “Liam.” Another yawn. “Jesus Christ, man, it's not even ten o'clock.”

  Once upon a time, Jim Wiley and Liam Campbell had been college roommates, Liam majoring in criminal justice with a minor in sociology, and Jim majoring in girls and Rainier beer with a minor in computer science. Upon graduation, Liam magna cum laude and Jim with the exact amount of credits and grade-point average required and no more, Liam had gone on to study for a master's degree and Jim had moved into a house in Muldoon, in Anchorage, and gone into business selling information. He had acquired, legally or otherwise, the names, addresses and Social Security numbers of every single citizen of the state of Alaska. He knew where they worked, how much they made, where they lived, if they voted and where, their phone numbers, listed or not. He knew if they had a license to hunt, to fish, to shoot ducks
, to dig clams, to fly a plane, to drive a car, a taxi, a bus or a semi. He knew if they had parking spots at Lake Hood and how much they paid for them each year-“I'd sure like the concession on that racket,” he told Liam-and if they were rated to fly floats. He knew if they owned a car, a plane, a boat, an RV, a snow machine, a four-wheeler, a dog or a cat, and he knew all the numbers, from the tags on their cars to the tags on their cats. He knew how much they spent at Nordstrom, how much they owed Visa, how often they flew Outside to visit their parents, he knew what cable channels they subscribed to, he knew where they ate out and once theaters started accepting credit cards he'd know what movies they preferred.

  He organized all this information into tidy little packets; everyone who lived on Hillside, say, with homes worth more than $350,000, a combined income of six figures, two children, three dogs and a bow-hunting permit. He would turn around and sell their names and addresses to a real estate agency looking to market property in the area, or to the state senator from their voting district who was soliciting funds for his next reelection campaign, or to the gourmet pizza parlor that had just opened at the corner of O'Malley and Old Seward. It made him a very good living, which he spent immediately, having moved into his own graduate program, from girls to women and from Rainier beer to French champagne.

  Wiley Jim could get to more information quicker than any state computer Liam had ever turned on. Prince had run Larsgaard and Petla through the trooper database; now they would face a real search. “I need you to run a couple of names.”

  Another yawn. A voice murmured in the background, something feminine and seductive. “If you've got time,” Liam added.

  “Gosh, we sound like we're in a good mood tonight,” Jim observed. “Who?”

  “Walter Larsgaard, Junior. Frank Petla.”

  “Spell them.” Liam did. “Hang on a minute. Honey?” This apparently not to Liam. “Could you get another bottle out of the fridge?” Rustling sounds, followed by nuzzling sounds, followed by kissing sounds. “Thanks.” Another murmur, followed by low laughter.

  “Should I call back later?” Liam said, with awful politeness.

  “Jesus, Liam, go get laid.”