Fire and Ice Read online

  “No.” Gruber looked at the pilot standing silently next to the trooper. Liam waited. “He was an old-timer,” she said finally.

  “An old-timer? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  She looked up, and slowly Liam turned to meet her eyes, which were as bleak as her voice. “A lot of the old-time pilots are used to the old round engines, which had a habit of leaking oil into the cylinders. Pilots would pull their props through to make sure no leaky oil had caused a hydraulic lock. If they didn’t pull it through, they could blow a jug.”

  “Blow a what?”

  “A jug. A cylinder.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  She gave a faint shrug. “I pull the prop through in the wintertime myself, just to see if it’s moving freely.”

  “It’s never done this to you,” Liam observed, and knew a momentary spear of terror. Goddamn flying anyway, it’d kill you in the air or on the ground, made no difference.

  She shook her head. “I always check the magneto twice. Always. Sometimes three times.” Her brow creased. “But so does Bob. I don’t understand this.”

  “The magneto?”

  “The switch connected to the p-lead. Controls power to the ignition.”

  Liam thought about it. “So if it’s off, the prop shouldn’t do this.”

  “No.”

  “Show me.”

  She hesitated. Her hand came out in a futile gesture.

  “Don’t,” he said, understanding.

  Her hand dropped, her shoulders slumping.

  “Mr. Gruber?” Liam had to say the airport manager’s name twice before the man could tear his eyes from the body. “Why don’t you get a tarp or something to cover him up?”

  Gruber shifted from one foot to the other. “Uh, listen, no offense, but who are you, anyway?”

  Liam glanced down involuntarily at his clothes. He was dressed much as Wy was—jeans, sneakers, plaid flannel shirt beneath a windbreaker. “Sorry. I’m a state trooper, just transferred to the Newenham post. Liam Campbell. My uniform’s packed.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the Fairchild Metroliner, one prop shut down now, the other still whirring. He fished out his badge.

  Gruber’s jaw hung open in mid-chew, the wad of gum gleaming pinkly between his teeth, pale eyes staring from the badge to Liam and back again.

  “That tarp, Mr. Gruber?” Liam said.

  Gruber flushed, nodded once, and went off, shifting the gum from one cheek to the other, the cheek muscles working like pistons again.

  The two halves of the small red and white plane’s left-side door were folded open, the top portion fastened to the wing with a quick-release latch, the bottom half left to hang. The cockpit of the plane was, to put it kindly, utilitarian. The seats were little more than plastic stretched over a metal frame, the interior was without the usual fabric covering, and the dash was held together in places with duct tape. She’d seen better days.

  Wy saw his look. “She flies,” she said.

  Liam let that pass. “Where’s the ignition?”

  Liam had spent his life in a concentrated effort to learn as little about flying as he possibly could, which was a neat trick given his profession and where he practiced it. There were roads in Alaska: one between Homer and Anchorage, two between Anchorage and Fairbanks with a spur to Valdez, and one between Fairbanks and Outside. You needed to go somewhere there wasn’t a road, you flew. Troopers needed to go everywhere, so troopers flew, some in their own planes, some that they contracted. Liam contracted.

  Wy had been his pilot, and 78 Zulu had been her plane, back in the days when there was a lot less duct tape and a lot more spit and polish about her. It was because of 78 Zulu that Liam could recognize a Piper Super Cub when he saw one. It was the only plane he could recognize, outside of a 747, and that only because of the bump on its nose.

  They stood shoulder to shoulder, staring at the inside of the little plane. He looked at Wy from the corner of his eye. To anyone else, to anyone who didn’t know her as well as he did, as intimately as he had, she would have looked calm, controlled, perhaps a little pale, understandable in the circumstances. But he knew what to look for, always had, and he relished the pulse thudding rapidly at the base of her throat, at the way her gaze avoided his.

  She pointed beneath a row of gauges that meant nothing to Liam, and he saw a knob with four settings: Right, Left, Both, Off. It was set at Off. He stared at it in puzzled silence for a moment. “Where’s the On?”

  “What?”

  “If there’s an Off, there ought to be an On.”

  Seemed simple enough to Liam, but Wy shook her head. “Magnetos are little generators, their own power source. There are two of them, and they’re always on. This isn’t really an on-off switch, like a”—she cast about for a comparison to something he might understand—“like a light switch. It’s a kill switch. Either their power is available to the engine, one or the other or both of them, or it isn’t.”

  “And according to this switch, power from this one wasn’t on when Mr. …”

  “DeCreft.”

  “When Mr. DeCreft pulled the prop through.”

  “No. But it must have been, or—” She stopped, and added, almost against her will, “I don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “This.” She waved a hand, inclusive of the deceased, the Super Cub, the dash. “Bob was even more careful than I am. He never would have pulled the prop through with the mag on.”

  Liam regarded the knob in frowning silence. “How old was DeCreft?”

  “Sixty-five.”

  “Sixty-five?” He raised an eyebrow and looked at her, something it was getting easier to do.

  “Sixty-five going on thirty,” she said. “He passed his flight physical every year, including this one.”

  Liam let that pass, too. The Cub contained two green headphones with voice-activated microphones attached, one hanging from a hook over each seat, and two expensive-looking handheld radios sitting on the backseat, as if carelessly tossed there on the way out of the plane. He looked back at the dash, stooping to examine the switch more closely. “Hey. What’s this?”

  “What?” She peered around him and reached between him and the doorjamb to slap his hand as it stretched toward the dash. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Again his skin burned where it had grazed hers. Their bodies had been forced very close together in the open doorway of the little plane. He took a deep breath and said, pointing from a safe distance, “What’s that wire?”

  “What wire?”

  “That wire coming from out of the bottom of the dash.”

  “What?” All self-consciousness gone, she elbowed him aside and bent down, breast against the forward seat, nose inches from the bottom of the dash. Her braid slid forward to fall between the seat and the right-side door, and he resisted an impulse to pull it back. “What the hell?” She reached out, and it was his turn to reach over her and slap her hand aside, leaning against her back as he did so. She jumped. So did he. His voice was gruff. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  There was a brief silence, just long enough for him to imagine everything she wasn’t saying. “The p-lead’s off.”

  “The p-lead?” He wasn’t thinking all that clearly, and it took him a moment to follow. “Oh, yeah. The wire connected to the ignition, I mean the mag switch.” He did look at her then, eyes all cop. “You mean it’s not connected to the switch?” he said sharply.

  She nodded dumbly.

  “So the switch was …”

  “It was on,” she said. She jerked her chin toward the front of the plane. “It was on when Bob thought it was off. When he pulled the prop through.”

  There was a stir in back of them, and a bluff voice calling out, “What the hell’s going on here? Get the hell outta the way, Gruber, let me see.” Heavy feet slapped to a halt against the pavement, followed by a long, drawn-out, “Jeeeesus H. Key-riiiiiist.”

  Liam turned. Gary Gruber had returned wi
th a blue plastic tarp. He was holding up one end for the perusal of an Alaska state trooper in full-dress blue and gold glory, a square red face beneath the badge pinned to the center of the black fur cap, earflaps tied neatly together over the crown, bushy black eyebrows over deep-set dark eyes. He wore sergeant’s stripes.

  The new arrival took in the body, the silent crowd, Liam and the pilot standing next to the Cub. His eyes, their look of surprise fading into the professional assessment of the practicing policeman, narrowed on Liam’s face. “Well, well, well. Liam Campbell, isn’t it? Sergeant Liam Campbell?” he added, emphasizing the first word.

  Face wiped clean of all expression, Liam replied in a neutral voice, “Trooper Campbell now, Sergeant. Roger Corcoran, isn’t it?” He held a hand out. “I believe I’m relieving you.”

  “You’re out of uniform, trooper,” Corcoran said.

  Wy looked from the trooper to Liam and back again, a frown puckering between her brows. Gary Gruber let the tarp fall and stepped out of range to join the crowd, which was following along with a curiosity they didn’t bother to hide. Liam nodded at the Metroliner, still sitting where it had slid to a halt fifty feet away. “Just got in. Haven’t had time to change.” He kept his hand out.

  Waiting just long enough for his hesitation to become obvious, Corcoran took Liam’s hand in the briefest of grasps and immediately released it. “How’s Glenallen these days? Arresting any drunk drivers up there lately?”

  Next to him Liam heard Wy draw in a sharp breath. “Like always,” he said, his voice steady.

  There was a tiny pause. Then Corcoran, evidently abandoning the effort of trying to get a rise out of Liam, nodded at the body lying in front of the plane, the rain keeping the blood a rich and vivid red. “Walk into the prop?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Corcoran’s brows rose. “Oh?”

  Liam jerked his head, and Corcoran came over to stand next to them. Dropping his voice, Liam said, “The p-lead was disconnected.”

  “What the hell’s a p-lead?” Corcoran was no pilot, either.

  Liam let Wy explain.

  The tufted brows disappeared into the fur edge of the hat. “Really. Excuse me.” They stepped aside, and Corcoran bent over the seat to examine the dash, poking at the wire with one gloved finger.

  They waited. The crowd shifted and muttered, and began to drift away. “Hold on a minute,” Liam said, and began collecting names and phone numbers, although to a man and woman they protested they had seen, heard, and said no evil. Moccasin Man pulled up in a gunmetal gray Isuzu Rodeo with PITBUL on the license plate and a tiny Stars and Stripes flying from the antenna. Could have been worse, Liam thought, could have been the Stars and Bars. The Hell’s Angel and the Flirt climbed in and the Rodeo pulled out with an ostentatious screech of rubber on pavement, just as Liam was approaching with pad and pencil. The airline crew began loading luggage into the Metroliner. A small plane took off down the strip, another taxied up to the fuel pumps. The pilot got out and stood for a moment, watching, before he fetched the hose and began fueling his plane. Business as usual.

  Liam walked over to Wy. “What were you doing up?” She looked blank and he said impatiently, “What work? What job were you on? Who were you flying for?”

  “Oh. Spotting. We’d been spotting.” She looked up and caught his expression. “For herring. Bob was my observer.”

  Liam felt a chill run down his spine. Spotting—using a small plane to find schools for the fishing boats in the water below—was like playing Russian roulette, only with five bullets in the gun instead of one. Kind of like glacier flying in and out of Denali, he thought, and she used to do that, too. “Still living dangerously, are you, Wy?” he said tightly, every muscle under control, every cell in his body humming with what might have been rage.

  Wy didn’t answer him. Corcoran looked around, one speculative eyebrow raised as he took in the strained expressions on both their faces. “You two know each other?”

  Liam was silent. Wy took her cue from him.

  “Well, well, well,” Corcoran said, a sly smile spreading across his face. “I think I’m kind of sorry to be leaving after all. Things might finally be getting interesting in this shithole of a town.”

  “Sergeant?” The copilot tapped Corcoran on the shoulder. He was still pale and he kept his gaze rigidly averted from the body on the ground. “We’re leaving.”

  “Okay. I’ll be right there.”

  “What?” Liam said.

  “Trooper, you relieve me,” Corcoran said, giving his hat an unnecessary adjustment. “I’m outta here.”

  “Bullshit,” Liam said, forgetting their comparative ranks. “We haven’t had any kind of a handover, I don’t know anything about this posting, who the local cops are…You haven’t even shown me where the office is!”

  “It’s not that big a town, Campbell. You’ll manage.” Corcoran’s grin was a taut stretch of skin, bare of humor or good feeling. “And if you don’t, it’s not my problem. My time is up, and I am history. Got me a posting to Eagle River, which is close enough to Anchorage to suit me just fine. Got me three girls lined up already, one in Wasilla, one in Spenard, and one in Girdwood, far enough apart not to find out about each other and close enough together for an easy commute between beds.” Corcoran winked and touched his fingers to the brim of his hat. “So long, Ms. Chouinard. It’s been real.” He reached out and gave her a chuck under her chin before she could move out of the way. “Should have been nicer to me. I could have stuck around to help you out of this.”

  Liam gave Wy a sharp look, but her expression gave nothing away.

  Corcoran turned and began walking toward the plane, and Liam was abruptly recalled to his situation. “Wait a minute,” he said, “wait just a goddamn minute! What about this mess?”

  “Like I said,” Corcoran called over his shoulder. “Your problem. Airport’s outside the city limits, so this baby’s all yours. Depends on whether the p-lead fell off on its own or got yanked off with intent. I’d look into that if I were you.” He stooped to pick up his bags without missing a step and followed the copilot, pausing long enough at the top of the Metroliner’s stairs to give a cheery wave. “Good luck, Campbell!” He added something else that might have been, “You’re going to need it,” but the wind had picked up by then and Liam couldn’t be sure.

  Three

  “Liam,” Wy said in an urgent undertone.

  He watched the Metroliner line up on final as if his life depended on its pilot’s perfect takeoff. “What?”

  “I have to fly. It’s how I make my living. Herring seasons don’t last that long. Fish and Game could announce an opener at any moment. I’ve got to get back in the air. Can I take my plane up?”

  He was looking at the plane in question, the red and white paint job, the faded red fabric of the wings, the worn white call letters down the side. If he looked hard enough, he was sure he would find a scratch in the right-side door that he himself had put there while loading a cooler with Pete Petersham’s severed head inside into the plane. Two years and a lifetime ago. Seven-eight Zulu. The lines of the little plane were almost as familiar to him as the laugh lines at the corners of its pilot’s eyes. “No,” he said. “You can’t take her up. Not yet.”

  A variety of expressions crossed her face: anger, frustration…fear. Why fear? A cold knot grew at the pit of his stomach. “Wy, where were you when this happened?”

  The anger was back with a vengeance, then. “Oh, so I sabotaged my own plane to kill a guy I’m not going to be able to spot without, just so I won’t make my loan payment and my insurance payment and my tax payment, not to mention attorney fees for—” She bit the rest of her words off with an effort.

  He waited patiently. Better than most, she knew the drill.

  After a moment she said curtly, “I was getting us lunch at Bill’s.”

  “Who’s Bill?”

  “Bill’s Bar and Grill. It’s a bar and a restaurant in town. There isn’
t one out here at the airport.” She walked over to her truck and wrenched open the door, producing a grease-stained brown paper shopping bag. Making an elaborate show of it, she opened it and displayed the burgers and fries inside, both wrapped in foil and exuding a heavenly aroma.

  Liam’s stomach growled. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was almost six o’clock. He’d had a McDonald’s sausage biscuit for breakfast and an apple for lunch, but then he hadn’t been hungry lately. He was now. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so hungry. Yes he could—the last time he’d been really hungry he’d been sitting down to dinner across from the brown-eyed blonde glaring at him now.

  Well. No point in letting the food go to waste, especially if it tasted anywhere near as good as it smelled. He reached for one of the burgers, unwrapped the foil, and bit in. It was lukewarm but juicy and had just the right ratio of onion to meat. The fries were good, too; real potatoes, heavy on the salt and greasier than the bilge of a boat.

  Wy looked startled, and then, fleetingly, amused.

  There were one or two exclamations of disapproval from the remainder of the crowd, as if there was something intrinsically profane in ingesting nourishment in the presence of the dead, but after some hesitation, a little muttering, and a few pointed glances at the mound beneath the blue tarp, they began to drift away, to their homes and kitchens. It was dinnertime, after all.

  Liam took another bite of burger and motioned to Gary Gruber, still hovering indecisively around the periphery. Liam couldn’t decide if Gruber had remained because the death had happened on his watch on property for which he was responsible, or out of a perverse fascination with the act itself. From his expression, half appalled, half inquisitive, it was probably a combination of both. “Have you called an ambulance?” A thought struck him and Liam swallowed a mouthful of burger. “Newenham does have an ambulance, don’t they?”

  Gruber nodded. “Yes. I called the dispatcher and she said she’d find him and send him on.”

  “Only one?”