by Fire
"That's it! Gosh, you're smart, aren't you?"
"And that was the last time you saw him?"
"Who, Kelly? Sure." The giggle was back. "Of course, we all heard about the shoot-out at the U.s. corral."
"Tasha, do you know why Mr. McCormick would want to shoot up the U.s. Post Office?"
"Well, sure, doesn't everybody?" she said in surprise.
"I don't," Liam said hopefully.
"That's right, you haven't been around here long, have you?" she said in a kind voice. "I remember, I heard there was a new trooper coming." She paused, and said uncertainly, "There was some story about some trouble--but that can't be you, you're too nice. And anyway I can't remember it all."
Good, Liam thought. "So why would Kelly McCormick shoot up the post office, Tasha?"
"Because he doesn't want to be a born-again," she replied promptly.
Liam blinked. "What?"
He heard another voice in the background. Tasha squealed with delight. "Benny, hi! I'm so glad you could come over! What's that you got? Oly? Great! No, I'll be right there, I'm just talking with a friend." She returned her attention to Liam. "I'm sorry, Liam, I have to go."
"No, wait, Tasha, I need to know about Kelly McCormick--"
"I told you," she said, impatient with his slowness. "He shot up the post office because he didn't want to go to church."
Liam said stupidly, "Which church?"
"The Trinity Born Again Unto Christ Chapel, of course," she replied promptly. "None of us want to go, but it makes it hell on getting your mail if we don't." Liam heard a door slam and another voice. "Hey, Belle! Listen, Liam, this party's just getting started, you come on over later, you hear? I've always got house room for another good-looking man." She giggled, and then dropped her voice to a confidential murmur. "But don't wear your uniform, okay? That kinda puts people off sometimes, you know?"
There was a click and Liam was left holding a dead receiver. He replaced it carefully in the cradle.
So far, his encounters with Bush villagers were running against type. Generally speaking, you couldn't find an Alaska Native woman who would say boo to a goose. In the space of two hours Liam had interviewed two who had plenty to say and no fear whatever of speaking their minds. True, one was an airhead, the other eighteen going on eighty, but the difference between these two young women and the village women he had been briefed on in trooper school was vast.
Which only went to show that even the mighty Alaska State Troopers were prone to error on occasion. A sobering thought, which reminded Liam that while interesting, this kind of speculation wasn't getting him any forrader. Kelly McCormick had shot up the post office because he didn't want to go to church. Taking a gun to a federal building seemed to Liam an extreme reaction to an aversion to organized religion, not to mention unproductive. Why not just shoot up the church?
Liam caught himself. He'd been in Newenham for three days, and apparently the location was beginning to rub off on him. The obvious course for Mr. McCormick, if he didn't want to go to church, was simply not to go to church, rather than to get out a gun and- He paused. What had Tasha Anayuk said? Something about not going to church making it hell to get your mail?
What was the name of that church again? Trinity something? Liam got out the phone book and looked in the yellow pages. For a city of only two thousand permanent residents, there seemed to be a large per capita percentage of religious establishments. There were churches Roman Catholic and Baptist, Mormon and Moravian, Seventh-Day Adventist and Jehovah's Witness, Russian Orthodox and Assembly of God.
And there was the Trinity Born Again Unto Christ Chapel, Pastor the Right Reverend Richard Gilbert, presiding, a large boxed entry touting two separate Sunday services, Sunday school, Bible study on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, family services on Wednesday and Friday evenings, and ladies' ministry (whatever that was) on Saturday evenings.
He paged back. Newenham had nine churches, and only two bars, an interesting ratio. Most Bush towns he'd been in, it would have been eleven bars, one nondenominational chapel, and the Catholic priest would have flown in from Kodiak to conduct Mass in somebody's basement before flying on to the next town to do it all over again that afternoon. Maybe Newenham served as the religious center for the district, and people flew or boated or snow-machined in for services.
He put the book to one side and drew out the sheet of paper covered with neatly penciled boxes, each enclosing its own name.
The man with the limp he'd seen talking to Wy at the airport when he returned from Bill's that first day was Darrell Jacobson. Darrell was Larry's father, who was a friend and possibly a business partner of Kelly McCormick's. He drew another box, and added Kelly McCormick's name.
Kelly McCormick had shot up the post office, where the Right Reverend Richard Gilbert moonlighted as the postmaster.
The Right Reverend Richard Gilbert was married to Rebecca Gilbert, who had demonstrated great grief at the news of Bob DeCreft's passing, and whom Liam had last seen bolting through the front door of Bob DeCreft's house.
Bob DeCreft was Wy's observer.
Full circle.
His sheet of paper now looked like a circuit diagram for the control panel of a 747. Doing the box thing, as John Barton so elegantly put it, was not helping him on this case, as everything and everyone seemed connected to everything and everyone else, a curse of life in a small town.
He looked at the calendar. It was still Sunday. He opened the phone book again. The ad in the yellow pages had thoughtfully provided a map, showing the location of the church, so as to guide poor sinners unerringly to redemption and reclamation of the soul.
And it was right on the way to the small boat harbor.
The church was a large, traditional building, white clapboard with a steeple, a bell, a wide porch leading up to a pair of handsome double doors, and two lines of rectangular stained glass windows marching down each side. Liam pulled up across the street and parked discreetly behind a stand of alders now coming into bud.
He was just in time; Sunday evening services were letting out. The family of five Liam had seen on the plane led the way, the baby still wailing at its mother's breast. A dozen others emerged and scattered in various directions. Religion in Newenham seemed to be in good shape, as witnessed by the fond farewells the congregation took of its pastor and the warmth with which those farewells were received.
Religion didn't interest Liam; he'd neither felt that leap of faith nor envied it in others. As far as he was concerned, faith was just a euphemism for confidence, as in confidence game, an attitude he'd inherited from his father, who had told him early on, "Never mind praying; make your own luck and don't go whining to some invisible creator when you don't work hard enough to get it."
This opinion was manifestly not shared by Newenham's mayor, the Honorable Jim Earl, the last one out of the church. He paused at the top of the stairs and his voice came clearly through the open window of the Blazer. "I don't know that I ever looked at Leviticus that way before, Reverend. It's always so hard to get through, all them damn, uh, darn laws. Doggone it, and we were just talking about chapter five, verse one, too. Shoot. I'm sorry."
Pastor Gilbert patted Mayor Jim Earl's shoulder consolingly. "It takes time, Jim Earl."
"I guess." Jim Earl paused at the foot of the stairs to grin up at Gilbert. "At least we don't have to go round cleansing no lepers no more!"
Well now, Liam thought. Jim Earl's excessive interest in the post office shooting could not have been made more plain. Liam, who liked to understand the people he was working withandfor, was grateful for this illumination of the mayor's motives.
"Where's Rebecca?" Jim Earl said, looking around as if just missing her for the first time.
"She wasn't feeling well." Even from across the block, Liam noticed the wooden quality to Pastor Gilbert's voice.
It missed Jim Earl by a mile. "Say, that's a shame. Tell her I was asking after her, will you? Good night."
Jim Ea
rl clattered briskly down the steps and was off.
Liam checked his watch. Nine o'clock. The sun, two hours away from setting, was casting long shadows across the street. His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn't eaten anything but salami and cheese and candy bars all day. Well, he knew where there was a burger with his name on it. He could stop by the boat harbor afterward.
Halfway there the radio crackled into life. It was Molly, the dispatcher, reporting an assault. "Why are you telling me?" Liam said.
"Officer Berg thought you might be interested," she said, and when she told him the name of the victim, he was.
Make that two stops before hitting the harbor: Bill's and the hospital.
Bill's place was packed to the rafters and Bill herself was a fast-moving blur behind the bar. A party of herring fishermen who had either done very well or very poorly that day were either celebrating their hard work and good fortune or drowning their sorrows, and pounded the table in a demand for more beer.
When he caught her, Liam told Bill, "I'll have a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke to go."
She scowled at him. "You bring your own takeout bag?"
"On second thought, I'll eat in this evening," he said, and grinned.
"Yeah, Campbell, bite me." She bellowed his order into the pass-through and went back to opening bottles and filling glasses.
Cecil Wolfe was present, in the same booth he had been the day before, a booth overflowing with the crews of all three fishing vessels under his command. Kirk Mulder sat at Wolfe's right hand.
Bill was right--the crew looked as if Wolfe hired by the pound: a group of big, beefy bruisers with pugnacious attitudes and scarred knuckles, some of the scarring fresh. Like Liam's head wound, the swelling beneath the scratch down Mulder's face had subsided. Liam was sorry to see it. Mulder lifted a bottle of beer in one fist, and Liam saw fresh blood on his knuckles. One of the other men noticed and said something, and stoic as ever, Mulder dabbed at the bleeding with a bar napkin.
Wy was there as well, sitting in a chair a little to one side. She was nursing what looked like a very warm beer, and she looked sober and more than a little tense, by which Liam deduced that Wolfe had yet to pass out the paychecks.
Oh so casually, Wolfe stuck out a foot, hooked it around one of the legs of her chair, and pulled her next to him. Over her head he met Liam's eyes, and smiled.
Wy turned her head and saw Liam at the bar. She set her beer down and got up to greet him. Over her head, Liam smiled back at Wolfe, who scowled darkly until Laura Nanalook appeared with a loaded tray. He put the same hand on the same hip he had the day before. She ignored him, unloading her tray with quick, deft movements. When she turned to go his grip tightened.
The other men at the table watched avidly, waiting to pounce on the first trace of embarrassment or fear. She displayed neither, meeting Wolfe's eyes with the same flashing smile she served every other patron in the bar. Wolfe didn't like it much, but when Bill yelled at Laura to pick up her order, he said only a few words, inaudible to Liam over the noise of the bar. The men in the booth laughed with an edge of excitement and anticipation, and when Laura turned to walk back to the bar Liam thought her face was paler than it had been before.
"Son of a bitch," Wy said, standing next to Liam. "Wolfe just can't believe there's a woman around who can resist him. Poor little Laura. She was okay as long as Bob was alive. I don't know what's going to happen to her now."
Laura had been less than okay under Bob DeCreft's dubious protection, but Liam wasn't in the habit of betraying confidences and he said nothing. Laura returned to the bar and began loading her tray. Gary Gruber sidled up, and under the noise of the bar Liam heard him say awkwardly, "Hi, Laura."
"Hello, Gary," she replied, hands not pausing in her task.
He fiddled with the zipper pull on his jacket. "Uh, I was sure sorry to see--I mean, hear--I mean, it's awful about Bob."
She flashed another of her patented smiles. "Thanks, Gary. I appreciate that." She picked up her tray.
"Uh, Laura?"
She paused and said, a little impatiently, "What, Gary? I'm kind of busy here."
"Of course," he mumbled. "I was just wondering if you'd like--if sometime you'd want to--" Beneath her patient stare his words died away. "I'm sorry, Laura, excuse me. It was nothing." He gave a vague flap of his hand and turned back to the bar to bury his nose in his glass.
Not for the first time Liam marveled at how opportunistic his own sex could be. Bob DeCreft wasn't cold and the sharks were already circling.
His eyes traveled beyond Gruber to Wolfe. Some weren't bothering to circle. "You stay away from Wolfe, do you hear?" Liam said harshly.
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."