Fire and Ice Page 3

  Gruber nodded, watching with fascination as Liam munched steadily through burger and fries and washed everything down with the large Coke Wy produced from the truck’s cab. It was a fountain Coke, and a good one. Liam was going to have to cultivate this Bill guy.

  “Gary?” Wy said. “I need another spotter.” None of them looked at what was left of her last one, which might not have been the best incentive for accepting her offer of employment. “Can you take a day? I pay the standard percentage.”

  “I told you, Wy,” Liam said, “you can’t take this plane up. Not right now. It may be a crime scene.”

  “I’ve got another plane,” she informed him, and couldn’t hide her pleasure at his surprise. “It’s a 180, so it won’t be as good for spotting as the Cub is, but it’ll do.” She saw his expression and said, urgency back, “I’ve got to get in the air, Liam. The whole fleet’s out now, waiting on an announcement from Fish and Game to put their nets in the water. The herring season only lasts until they catch the quota, and I’m spotting for the high boat in the bay. And Cecil Wolfe didn’t get to be high boat with his spotter on the ground,” she added with feeling.

  “No shit,” Gruber said with equal feeling.

  “All right,” Liam said. “You can fly, but first let’s take another look at that p-lead.” He would have waited for the forensics team to show up and dust everything for prints, but since this wasn’t NYPD Blue there would probably be an awfully long wait.

  The two of them crowded into the open door of the Cub. “Can you unhook it or unscrew it or something?” Liam said.

  “You aren’t afraid I’m going to destroy evidence that might convict me of murder?” Wy said sarcastically.

  Liam gave her a steady, unsmiling look. “All right,” she muttered, and reached beneath the dash. A moment’s fumbling, and two pieces of thin plastic-coated wire were resting in the palm of Liam’s hand.

  “It’s been cut,” Wy said, staring.

  It was true. Normal wear and tear would not have produced the neatly severed ends of the little wire.

  “Somebody must have reached up under the control panel and pulled down the lead and nipped it with a pair of wire cutters, and then shoved it back up again,” Wy said. The tightness was back in her voice.

  Liam allowed his free hand to give her shoulder a quick, reassuring squeeze. For a moment, for a brief, halcyon moment, he felt her relax into his touch. In the next second, she had tensed and pulled away.

  He would have gone after her this time, even with Gruber watching, even if the crowd had still been there, even if somebody had been selling tickets, but a construction orange Chevy Suburban V-8 Turbo Diesel roared up to skid to a halt five feet from the Cub. The door opened and the grizzled old frowner from the Anchorage flight yelled, “You the new trooper?”

  “Bad news travels fast,” Wy muttered.

  Liam shot her an unfriendly look and said to the man, “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

  “Some drunk’s shooting up Bill’s,” the man said. “Get in.”

  Liam, out of uniform and unarmed, said, “What about the local police?”

  “We just lost two officers to the goddamned troopers,” the man said, “two more went fishing, and we’ve got two left to do a six-man job. The one on duty right now is on the other side of town trying to keep Nick Pauk from killing Johnny Wassillie, and the wife of the other one flat won’t wake him up from the first good sleep he’s had in a week. You coming or not?”

  Liam looked at Wy. He looked at the body lying on the ground in front of the Super Cub, which had no useful advice to offer. He looked at Gruber. “You stay here, watch the plane and the body, see that no one interferes with them. All right?”

  Gruber, pausing in the act of jamming a fresh wad of bubble gum into his mouth, said blankly, “What?”

  “Nobody touches that plane until I get back. When the ambulance shows up, tell the paramedic he can load the body but to wait here for me.”

  “What?”

  “I’m deputizing you for the duration. Nobody else touches anything.” Liam looked over at Wy. “Nobody. Got that?”

  She looked up at that, and said with a trace of defiance, “I’ll stay, too.”

  “I thought you had to get in the air.”

  “You just co-opted my spotter,” she said, jerking her chin at Gruber. “And the Cub is my plane. I don’t want anyone messing with her, either.”

  Good, Liam thought. Should the subject arise later, for whatever reason, Gruber could testify that Wy had gone nowhere near the Cub while Liam was gone.

  “Goddammit, get the lead out!” the grizzled man said testily.

  “One minute.” Liam buttoned the severed p-lead into an inside pocket and went to the terminal to find his bag. Another police officer would have carried his weapon on board, but Liam was always afraid it might accidentally discharge in the cabin and blow up the plane. He located his bag—the rest of his stuff was being shipped—strapped on his regulation Smith & Wesson automatic, and went back outside to find that the old man had pulled up to the door. Liam climbed into the passenger seat and the old man slammed the Suburban into first and they pulled forward with a jerk. Liam slapped a hand on the dash to brace himself against the man’s careless shifting, not improved by the many and deep potholes on the road between the airport and town. It was a jolting, bouncing ride. “They ever grade this road?” he said above the noise.

  The man grunted. “Every week.” He thrust out a ham-sized right hand. “Jim Earl. I’m the mayor of Newenham.”

  “Oh.” Liam took Earl’s hand. Hizzoner had a firm, callused grip. “Liam Campbell.”

  “I know. Thought that was you when I saw you in the Anchorage airport. We heard you were coming.”

  “Oh,” Liam repeated, and wondered what else they had heard. A crater the size of Copernicus loomed up in front of them. Jim Earl drove right through it. When he came down off the ceiling Liam wedged himself into the corner as firmly as he could, one hand gripping the back of the seat and the other pressing against the glove compartment. “What’s the situation with the local cop? Should we maybe detour over there first, see if he needs backup?”

  “Shit no.” Earl spit out the window, fortunately rolled down. In retaliation, a large blast of wet, cold air flooded the cab. “The way I hear it, Amy Pauk thought Nick was safe out fighting for his share of herring, so she invited Johnny Wassillie over for the morning. Johnny and Amy got this thing going,” Earl added parenthetically. “They think nobody knows about it.” He snorted again. It seemed to be his favorite expression. “Fine, fine, most of us could give a shit who’s screwing who, and I’m all for a quiet life anyway. Only trouble is Nick’s boat broke down and he had to limp back into the harbor early. Goes home to grab some grub, catches Johnny and Amy in the sack, goes for his rifle, starts a little ventilating. Dumb bastard.” The mayor shook his head. “It’s too early in the day for that shit.”

  Liam checked his watch. It was just coming up on six-thirty. As casually as he could, he said, “So it’s a hostage situation? Are there any children involved? What kind of gun does Pauk have? Did he shoot his wife? Did he shoot Mr., uh, Mr.—”

  “Wassillie, Johnny Wassillie, and hell yes, he shot him. Only winged him, though.” Jim Earl seemed regretful to report this. He tapped the scanner hanging beneath the dash. “On the way over to get you, I heard Roger Raymo report in to the dispatcher. That’d be our day shift officer, the one we got left,” Earl added with some bitterness. “He said he’d managed to disarm Nick before he got around to shooting Amy.” Earl grinned. “Scared her, though, I bet.” He thought about it. “Maybe. Amy’s pretty scary herself, when she’s of a mind to it.”

  Liam’s hand slid from the holster, and he let out a long, slow breath. “Okay,” he said, he hoped mildly. He hadn’t been on the ground for—he checked his watch—three hours, and already there had been two and possibly three attempts at murder.

  Maybe four, once he got his hands on Wy
.

  “No, we’re headed for Bill’s,” Earl said with grim satisfaction. “Local watering hole, open from six a.m. until midnight, two a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Best burgers in town.” He shot Liam a sardonic look. “Only burgers in town.”

  “Uh-huh,” Liam said, dragging his attention back to the situation at hand. “You said there’d been shooting?”

  Jim Earl snorted. “No shit, Sherlock.”

  Liam waited. “So, who got shot?”

  “Not who, what.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  The Suburban bottomed out over another pothole. Liam winced at the resulting tortured scrape of metal. Jim Earl didn’t seem to notice. “Teddy Engebretsen’s boat broke down just about the time the gun went off for herring. He and Nick limped back into the harbor together; Nick went home to see if he could bag hisself a Wassillie, Teddy went on up to Bill’s to drown his sorrows. Reasonable response,” Earl added parenthetically. “Hell of a thing to miss out on, herring. Enough money in one set for the boat payment and the insurance payment and a new engine and a trip to Seattle. If you make the right one in the right place.”

  Liam made a small noise that could have meant assent. He knew even less about herring fishing than he did about aviation, although in the case of the former it was distance and inexperience, not terror and intent that kept him ignorant.

  “So, Teddy gets a little liquored up.” Earl paused. “Well, okay, maybe a lot liquored up, and he takes exception to what’s on the jukebox.” A small shudder seemed to ripple up Jim Earl’s spine. “Bill keeps a thirty-ought-six behind the bar in case of trouble. Teddy grabbed it and shot out the jukebox. Right in the middle of ‘Margaritaville.’ Dumb bastard.” He shook his head. “Poor, dumb bastard.” He spit out the window again and added, “Poor dumb dead bastard is what he’s going to be if we don’t get there in time.”

  They were in town now, a confused mass of buildings built on a series of small rolling hills that reminded Liam of sand dunes in shape and size, sand dunes covered with a thick encrustation of pine and spruce and alder and willow and birch. The town’s buildings varied in construction from prefabricated corrugated metal to rickety two-story wooden plank to split log, lining the sides of a labyrinthine arrangement of streets. Paved streets, both Liam and Jim Earl’s truck were glad to notice. They passed two grocery stores, one with its corrugated metal siding painted an electric blue and a small front porch that was crowded with a group of teenage boys.

  As the Suburban passed the store, the group of boys spilled down the steps and into the street. Jim Earl leaned on the horn. The boys looked around, mimed astonishment at this appearance of a wheeled vehicle in the middle of the road, and one by one and as slowly as was humanly possible drifted to the curb.

  One boy in particular, shorter and younger than the others, was even more obvious than the rest. He wore jeans that bagged out down to his knees and a baseball cap on backward. He stooped to fuss with a cuff, which although rolled three times, was still dragging the ground, and barely twitched when Jim Earl’s horn gave another impatient blast. He took his time straightening up, adjusted his cap, and gave Jim Earl a sideways glance that bordered on insolence. He was short and stocky, with straight black hair and the classic high cheekbones, tilted eyes, and golden skin of the upriver Yupik. “Goddammit, kid, move outta the goddamn way!” the mayor bellowed out the window, and hit the horn again.

  The other boys had retreated to the porch and were whistling and hooting and catcalling. The boy looked from them to the truck and back again, held a brief, internal debate, and then with an almost imperceptible shrug moved ever so slowly to one side of the street. “About goddamn time,” Jim Earl bellowed again, and trod on the accelerator.

  Liam twisted his head to watch the boy swagger up the steps to the porch, where he was greeted like a conquering hero, with a lot of back- and hand-slapping, shoulder-shaking, and fist feints to the jaw. The boy turned suddenly and caught Liam’s eye. He smiled, slowly, arrogant satisfaction sitting on his young face like war paint, and then the Suburban went around a corner and the boy was lost from view.

  The potholes had given way to pavement, but the streets were a warren of sudden rises and dogleg curves. Jim Earl swooped down one such rise and around one of the doglegs, whipped past a large group of buildings on a wooden dock that could have been a cannery or the local fuel dock or the SeaLand warehouse—they were going too fast for Liam to be sure—and pulled up with a jerk at a sprawling, one-story building that featured a shallow-peaked tin roof and green vinyl siding. It sat in the middle of a large parking lot, about three-quarters filled.

  The sight did not fill Liam with joy, who had visions of all the vehicle owners being held hostage at gunpoint. “Mayor—” he began.

  “Call me Jim Earl,” the mayor said, turning off the ignition without bothering to throw out the clutch. The Suburban lurched and gurgled. “Everybody does.” With a protesting diesely rattle, the engine died.

  “Hold on a minute,” Liam said, raising a hand. “You’re saying there’s a man in there with a gun, right? How many other people are in there? Is he holding them hostage? What kind of gun does he—”

  Jim Earl snorted again, spit again, and slammed open the driver’s side door. “Shit, Liam, Teddy don’t got no gun. Bill done took it away from him.”

  “What?” Liam got out and slammed shut his own door. “Then what the hell am I doing here?” Ten miles from what might be a real murder scene, and farther than that in space and time from Wy. Suddenly he was furious. “Now, look, Jim Earl”—it was difficult to separate those two names—“I just set foot in Newenham, and I know, because you’ve told me, that your local force is shorthanded, but I’ve got some real work to do out at your airport, and—”

  Mayor Jim Earl snorted, spat, and swore all in the same breath. “Shit, boy, I didn’t haul your ass all the way in from the airport to take Teddy into custody.” The tall, grizzled man walked around the hood of the car and poked Liam in the chest with a bony finger. “You’re here to save his ass. You don’t understand: Teddy shot the jukebox in the middle of ‘Margaritaville.’ He’ll be lucky to get out of there alive.” He grinned for the first time, displaying a set of large, improbably white teeth. “I wouldn’t care but he’s my son-in-law, and I don’t want the raising of his kids. Hellions, every one of them. You might be arresting me for murder my own self, should I be fool enough to take on that job.”

  And with that he vaulted the faded gray wooden steps and disappeared inside the building with the sign on it that said in unprepossessing black block letters, BILL’S BAR AND GRILL.

  From the top of a nearby streetlight, an enormous raven surveyed the situation with a sardonic eye and croaked at the mayor’s receding back. When Liam looked around to meet the black bird’s steady gaze, the raven clicked at him, a series of throaty cackles that sounded somehow mocking.

  It was the last sound Liam heard before he went in the door of the bar, from which he promptly came staggering out backward, falling down the stairs and landing with a thump on the pavement, fanny-first. “What the hell?” He looked up just in time to see a tangle of bodies roll down the steps and right over the top of him, to hit hard against the already bruised bumper of the construction orange Suburban. The tangle resolved itself into three people, two men and one woman. One of the men had a rifle and the second man and the woman dove on top of him and the resulting scuffle looked like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

  He fumbled to his feet, brushed off the seat of his jeans, and tried out his trooper voice. “Now, just hold it right there!”

  The scuffle paused, looked him over, saw a tall man with an authoritative frown but nothing much else to recommend they obey him, and resumed the scramble. The man with the gun managed to get his finger on the trigger and the gun fired, bang! The bullet glanced off the windshield of the Suburban but there were already so many cracks in it Liam couldn’t really tell if it had left a mark.

 
Enough was enough. He waded into the fray and grabbed someone by the scruff of the neck and someone else by the seat of the pants. “Hey!” a voice said indignantly, and he looked down to see that he had the woman by the seat of the pants.

  “Sorry,” he said without apology, dropped her and the unarmed man, and grabbed for the rifle, which went off again just before his hand closed around the barrel. The bullet sang past his ears and clipped the branch the raven was sitting on. The bird rose up in the air with an affronted squawk and a tremendous flapping of wings to hover over the shooter and unload a large helping of bird shit down his cheek and the front of his shirt. He squawked again, a somehow menacing sound that promised more of the same should he be disturbed a second time, and went back to the spruce tree to land on a branch a little higher up the trunk.

  “Eyaaaagh!” said the shooter, and the woman, glaring at him, snapped, “Serves you goddamn right, you nearsighted little bastard! If you’d just buy some glasses maybe once in a while you could hit what you aimed at!” She hauled him to his feet by the collar and hustled him up the steps.

  “Wait a minute—” Liam said, standing still with the rifle in one hand.

  The second man followed the first two up the steps.

  Liam stared at the door. “What the hell?”

  From his new branch, the raven croaked at him. “Who asked you?” Liam retorted.

  He climbed the steps again, keeping to one side this time. The door opened inward, and he hooked a cautious eye around the edge.

  Inside, it was a bar like any fifty other Alaskan bars he’d been in, from Kenai to Ketchikan, Dutch Harbor to Nome, Barrow to Anchorage. He stood in the doorway, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light. A bar ran down the left side of the room; booths and the jukebox lined the right side. There was a stage the size of an end table against the back wall with an even smaller, imitation parquet dance floor in front of it. The rest of the floor was covered with tables and chairs. There was a window into the kitchen through the back wall, and the air was filled with the tantalizing odor of a deep fat fryer on overdrive. The floor was gritty beneath his feet, and the rafters were unfinished timber festooned with caribou racks, lead line, cork line, green fishnets, and various animal pelts. Neon beer signs glowed from every available inch of wall space. There were two windows overlooking the parking lot, grimed with years of condensed fat. More signs blinked on and off in them.