Restless in the Grave

by Dana Stabenow

  “You probably think I’m a slut, don’t you,” she said.

  “Lucy, I—”

  “It wasn’t like I planned it. I just … slid into it.”

  “Lucy, I don’t really care about—”

  “Roddy died, and we weren’t well off. I leased his boat and permit out to Norman and Dwayne, his two deckhands.” She reached for a Kleenex.

  “Lucy, I—”

  “Dwayne stopped by, only offering to help, you know, and I was so lonely and so frightened, and one thing led to another, and he left some money behind, and then he told Norman, and Norman—” She blew her nose, a soggy, bubbling sound that added to the miasma of general misery in the room. Liam wanted to be anywhere but here.

  “Lucy, really, that’s not why—”

  “It was so easy, you know? A lot of times men don’t want the complications, and most of them are nice to me.” And she added unexpectedly, “And I had no idea how much they were willing to pay for a half an hour of a woman’s time.”

  “Lucy,” he said loudly. She looked at him, startled, eyes red and swollen. “Finn Grant found out about you, uh, the business you were operating out of your house, didn’t he?”

  “Finn!” Her face darkened. “That bastard!”

  “He found out, didn’t he? And he was blackmailing you.”

  She called Grant some more names, some of which were new, even to Liam. “He said he’d tell my kids.”

  She was crying again, sobbing, even, this time more angry than pitiful. “My Cindi, and Roddy Jr.,” she said, sobbing and rocking back and forth. “They’re both in college, in Anchorage now.” She glared at him through her tears. “How many parents in this town can say that?”

  “Not many,” Liam said, thinking of Tim at UAA, and as always when he did so sending up a little prayer that the kid was keeping his nose in his books and not up his ass.

  “If I didn’t give Finn what he wanted, he said he would tell them how I was paying for their education. They’d drop out, I know my Roddy would for sure. Cindi, she’d be so ashamed and embarrassed, but Roddy would come home to take care of me, and he’d be stuck in this goddamn deadhead of a town for the rest! of his! life!” She punctuated the words with her fist, slamming it into the cushion next to her.

  “Lucy,” Liam said, raising his voice again.

  Her face was congested with fear and rage and her eyes were fierce. “What,” she said, or maybe spat. “Just what do you want, Liam?” Her mouth twisted. “I’ve got plenty to offer if you’ll just leave me alone.”

  With what he felt was truly commendable self-control, Liam said quietly, “All I want is to know what Finn Grant wanted from you.”

  “You mean besides the usual?” she said.

  Liam closed his eyes briefly. Of course. Finn would have loved getting something for free that everyone else had to pay for. “Yes,” he said, “besides the usual.” Because no way would Grant be looking only for the occasional free lay.

  “He wanted our spot in the small boat harbor,” she said, sitting back against the couch, exhausted. “When the Corps of Engineers opened it, Roddy won first choice in the lottery. We got the first two spaces, A-1 and A-2, right at the bottom of A Ramp. Two parking spaces went with them, in the lot next to the A Ramp dock.” Her lips trembled, and Liam was afraid she was going to start crying again, but she didn’t. “They were the best, most convenient moorings in the whole harbor, and Roddy won them fair and square.”

  “Why did Finn want them?”

  She gave him a look of utter contempt. “For his fishing charters, of course. He didn’t want his wimpy little Outside clients to have to walk too far to get on board.”

  He looked up from his ball cap, which he was now twisting in his hands. “Lucy, were you in town the day Finn Grant died?”

  She blinked at him. “I—what?”

  “Were you in town the day Finn Grant died?”

  She looked bewildered. “When was that? Last month?”

  He nodded. “The eleventh.”

  “I don’t know, Liam. Oh, wait. I went to Anchorage to visit the kids and look at a condo.” Again with that sudden ferocity she said, “Because I’ve got enough saved now for at least a down payment. I signed the paperwork over Christmas, and as soon as I’ve got a for sale sign on this house, I’m getting out of here!”

  “Good for you,” he said. “So you weren’t in town when Finn died.”

  She smiled, a fearsome sight with her red eyes and dripping nose and blotched cheeks. “I heard the news when I got off the plane. It’s all anyone was talking about in the terminal.” She clenched her hands. “I was glad,” she said in a low, intense voice. “Glad, do you hear me? That bastard made my life a living hell. All I could think about was the kids finding out.” She slumped. “And if everyone found out, the men would stop coming, and how could I ever make enough money to pay their school bills?”

  Liam had had about as much as he could take. He stood up. “One last question, Lucy. Are you a pilot?”

  “What?” she said. “No. God, no.”

  “You know anything about airplanes? Ever worked around them? Any family members pilots?”

  “No, no, and no,” she said. “All I know about airplanes is they get us places quicker. And tickets on them get more expensive every day. And you get felt up when you have to get on the big ones.” Her mouth turned down. “And you don’t get paid for it, either.”

  “Okay,” Liam said, and made for the door.

  “Wait!” she said, coming after him before he could get off the porch. “Liam, wait!”

  He turned to see her standing in the doorway. “What are you going to do?”

  “Do?” he said. “About you, you mean? Nothing. Nothing, Lucy,” he added when she looked disbelieving. “Nothing at all. I’ve never had a call out here. So far as I know, you live a quiet life. Your, ah, social life is not a subject of police interest.”

  He was at his vehicle before she spoke again. “Liam?”

  He paused with the door open.

  She smiled at him, a pathetic effort. “You’re welcome back,” she said. “Anytime.”

  * * *

  His next stop was Willie Wassillie’s house, a large split-level ranch south of town with a two-car attached garage set on five acres on the river. Willie had a shop on a dock, with a boat ramp leading down to the river and a set of stairs leading up to the house. A dry dock on the edge of the beach would be accessible only at spring and fall high tides. He was a fisherman, the high boater Finn Grant had referred to in his files, and on the evidence of Liam’s own eyes a very successful one.

  His wife, Emily, answered the door. Liam was ready with a story of a minor altercation. Willie might have witnessed down at the docks the previous summer, and she sent him down to the shop, where he found her husband mending nets in the loft.

  Willie Wassillie was more Yupik than Lucy, short, bowlegged, thick chested, with a broad brown face, black hair in a buzz cut that hadn’t changed since he’d gotten out of the marines, and a gaze that seldom met Liam’s own, so he couldn’t tell what color the eyes were. He would have been raised to believe that that was rude, and unlike Lucy, he spoke little, another village trait.

  After Liam’s last interview, this was something of a relief. He took advantage of Native custom and after sharing some of Willie’s coffee and a few of the excellent sugar cookies Emily had sent to work with Willie that morning, came to the point. Willie Wassillie hadn’t paid federal income taxes in his life, which amounted to at least forty years of income he was liable for. Finn Grant knew it, and now Liam knew it. “What did he want, Willie?”

  Wassillie passed a worn flat mending needle made of what looked like ivory through the green line of the net he was mending, formed what to Liam’s fascinated eyes was a complicated construction that when pulled tight resolved itself into a mesh opening exactly the size of the ones on either side of it, and knotted it off. He put down the needle and reached for his thick white porcelain
mug.

  Liam knew stalling when he saw it, Yupik or white. “If it makes you feel any better, you weren’t the only one Finn was blackmailing.”

  Wassillie looked up. His eyes were an unexpected blue. “I know.”

  “How?” Liam said bluntly.

  Wassillie shrugged. “Word got out. People talking to people they shouldn’t. You hear about Joe Griggs?” At Liam’s nod, he said, “No one ever knew if it was an accident, or suicide. Course, that trooper they had before you wasn’t much use. But right after they buried Joe, Finn bought his business from Joe’s wife.”

  “She still around?”

  Wassillie shook his head. “Sold her house, left town. No one’s heard from her since.” He picked up his needle again.

  “What did he want, Willie?”

  Wassillie looked for the next hole in his net, taking his time. There was a potbellied woodstove on the first floor and all the heat from the fire within had migrated to the loft. Liam was in no hurry.

  “My white grandfather homesteaded Jackknife Pass.”

  Liam waited.

  “He left it to me.”

  Liam waited some more.

  “Finn said if I sold it to him, he’d keep quiet about the taxes.”

  “What kind of a price?”

  Wassillie admired a section of newly mended net. “Borough assessment.”

  Liam winced. Borough assessments were notoriously lower than fair market value. “Ouch. When was this?”

  “Five years ago.”

  “You remember where you were, the day he died?”

  Wassillie was a lot quicker on the uptake than Lucy Nick had been. “Why would I? Kept his word. Took the lodge and never told anyone what he knew. Never asked for anything more.”

  “Didn’t answer my question,” Liam said. “Do you remember where you were that day?”

  The ivory mending needle went to work, creating a graceful pas de deux between twine and net. “It was your wife had the fight with him the day before he died.”

  Liam bit back the first, second, and third things he wanted to say. “Willie. Do you remember where you were that day?”

  After a while, Wassillie answered. “Hawaii. Wife and the kids with me. We always go to Hawaii in January.”

  Being blackmailed out of his grandfather’s fishing lodge notwithstanding, Wassillie was definitely a high boater, all right. Of course, if he wasn’t paying federal taxes, he had more walking-around money than most.

  “Mind if I check with Emily on the Hawaii trip?”

  Shrug.

  Time for Liam to go. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said, and got to his feet.

  “Hey.” Liam paused at the top of the stairs, one hand on the railing.

  “You gonna tell anyone?”

  Liam pulled on his ball cap, settling it firmly over his head. “Tell who what? I’m a state officer, not a federal one. Although, personally, I think you’re an idiot. The IRS doesn’t fool around. You’ll do federal time when they catch you.”

  There was the barest gleam of a smile on Wassillie’s taciturn face. “They haven’t yet.”

  Emily confirmed the Hawaii trip. She even showed him digital pictures, with date stamps. They had three kids and seven grandkids, a healthy-looking bunch with white teeth gleaming against tanned faces. Everyone looked happy and relaxed, standing in front of a bungalow with a screened porch that ran the full length of the house. “So nice to have the family together once a year,” Emily said, looking fondly at the photographs. “Good that we built a place big enough to hold them all.”

  Liam drove away thinking that if Wassillie was dodging taxes, at least he was putting the money to good use elsewhere.

  * * *

  He spent the day checking the rest of the names on Finn Grant’s thumb drive. One had died, the aforementioned Joe Griggs. Two had moved away, one five years before and the other two years before. A few of those who remained tried to deny the evidence, until Liam quoted them chapter and verse. No one could say Finn Grant wasn’t thorough.

  None of them made any bones over their relief at Finn Grant’s death, and all of them were perfectly appalled at the idea that the local trooper had inherited Grant’s files. A few of them, more wearily than resentfully, wanted to know what they had to do to keep him quiet.

  And one and all, like Lucy Nick, like Willie Wassillie, were able to demonstrate conclusively that they hadn’t been anywhere near Finn Grant’s Super Cub during the time in question.

  Liam drove back to the post. Tenth on the list was the priest. The local Catholic church was closed between visits by the priest who made the rounds of all the villages between and including Pilot Point, Newenham, and Togiak. Liam had met Father Dougal on occasion and had found him tolerable, for a member of an institution that hadn’t had a new idea since Alfred the Great united the Saxons against the Danes. He called the Anchorage archdiocese and asked for him. Only three more phone calls and he tracked him down in Manokotak.

  “Father Tom?” Father Dougal said, and Liam noted the drop in temperature from one sentence to the next. “What did you want to know about him?”

  “First of all, where is he?”

  “He’s, ah, taken early retirement,” Father Dougal said.

  Unseen by Father Dougal, Liam’s eyes hardened. Early retirement in terms of priestly vocation had lately come to mean only one thing. “You haven’t answered my question, Father Dougal.”

  “You haven’t told me why you’re asking, Sergeant Campbell.”

  “His name came up in connection with a case.”

  Dread flattened the priest’s voice. “What kind of case?”

  “Murder,” Liam said bluntly.

  “Murder?”

  Coming from anyone else, the relief in Father Dougal’s voice would have sounded comic, but Liam was not amused. “I need to know when Father Tom was last in Newenham.”

  “Is he a witness?”

  “I am not at liberty to say.”

  Father Dougal’s tone sharpened. “Is he a suspect?”

  “I may not comment on an ongoing investigation, Father Dougal,” Liam said, rather enjoying himself. “Will you put me in touch with Father Tom, please?”

  “Yes, well, I’m sorry, Sergeant Campbell, but Father Tom is on retreat.”

  “I thought you said he’d retired.”

  A good liar’s most important asset was a good memory. Evidently, Father Dougal wasn’t the first and lacked the second. It was the best thing Liam knew about him, so far. “Uh, yes. Of course.”

  “Which is it?” Liam said. “Retired, or on retreat? And regardless, I need to speak to him.”

  In that age-old refuge of those lower down the ladder, Father Dougal decided to pass the buck. “I’ll forward your request to Father Tom’s superiors.”

  “You do that,” Liam said, and hung up.

  He put his feet up and folded his hands over his belt buckle and regarded the toes of his boots with a gloomy expression. He didn’t hold out a lot of hope that Father Tom was the perp in Grant’s murder, but he sure as hell didn’t mind trying to hang it on him, just for the sheer satisfaction of nailing him for something. He knew a trooper who had been an investigating officer on the case that had uncovered the ring of Catholic priests stationed in tiny parishes in the Yukon River district. It transpired that many of them had been transferred there from parishes in the Pacific Northwest, where they had been found to be molesting and raping altar boys. No measures had been taken to correct their conduct or to punish them for it, oh no, Liam’s friend had said. They’d just been moved, to isolated communities of indigenous people that were too small to have running water, let alone a local cop.

  Liam’s friend had then gotten very, very drunk. Liam had helped him. Later, the friend had retired the day after he became eligible for retirement, and went to work as a guard on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, where the worst he had to deal with was imported hookers, bootleggers, dope dealers, power thieves, and disappearing D9 Caterpillar t
ractors. The last time Liam had seen him, he had looked ten years younger.

  He plugged the thumb drive back into his computer and scrolled down through the folders. Other than Father Tom, he had accounted for all the names on the list save Leon Coopchiak’s.

  The door opened and he looked up, only to be turned into a pillar of salt.

  Ex-trooper Diana Prince, his onetime subordinate, was back.

  And by the look of the medicine ball–sized belly that preceded her through the door, not alone.

  “If it isn’t the Wicked Stepmother,” he said.

  His cell phone rang, lately an unusual occurrence. Newenham’s local populace had pretty much given up on expecting a uniformed response for anything less than murder.

  But this time he knew who it was without even looking at the display. Eyes on Diana Prince, who looked untidy, overweight, irritable, and oddly out of uniform, he answered. “Hi, Dad,” he said.

  There was a rich chuckle in his ear. “Hey, son.”

  “Let me guess why you called,” Liam said. “My status as an only child is about to change.”

  He hung up without waiting for a reply. “The last person I expected to fall for my father’s bullshit was you,” he said.

  Prince, a onetime lithe, black-haired beauty with electric blue eyes, waddled to a chair and didn’t sit so much as fall into it. “Don’t rub it in.”

  “Oh, I think I will,” Liam said.

  “I need a job, Liam,” she said. “And a place to stay.”

  * * *

  He drove back out to Leon’s house. Nobody was home this time, which at least saved him from another beatdown by a Newenham woman, who seemed to be collectively honing their skills in the art today.

  He sat in his truck, tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel.

  He’d dropped Diana off at home, where at least she’d have a comfortable chair with a place to put her feet up, which looked like they needed it. The sides of her shoes had been slit to allow for expansion. “Your feet look like they belong to Henry the Eighth.”

  She cast him a look of acute dislike.

  He brought her a glass of ice-filled orange juice.