They made it in the door before the boyfriend started beating on the little girl again, but only just. He was now in the lockup, protesting his innocence in spite of the similarity in size and shape between his hands and the marks on Tammie’s defenseless little bottom. Bernadette Kusegta’s face had regained some of its natural color, and Gloria Crow was still insisting that Leslie could never have done such a thing, that she would have known if he could, that she would never have let him in her house or left her daughter with him if she’d known. Diana took statements and called Bill Billington for an arraignment at tenA.M. the next morning. It was almost ten before she was through, and she was tired and heartsick and wanted nothing so much as a long, hot bath. Preferably with bubbles, but if no bubbles were to be had she might pour in a bottle of Lysol.
She had her hand on the knob of the door when the phone rang. It would have forwarded to Liam’s cell after the second ring, but she seemed to be constitutionally incapable of walking out on a ringing phone. Cursing herself, she snatched it up. “Alaska State Troopers, Newenham post.”
The voice was loud enough to make her wince away from the receiver. “Ma’am! Ma’am! Please, calm down, I can’t understand a word!”
There was a gulping kind of sob. “Please help me; I think my sister’s dead.”
“What happened to her?”
“Oh, God, Karen, please, Karen, don’t do this, please don’t do this!”
“Ma’am? Where are you?”
“We’re at my mother’s. Please help us, please!”
“Where is your mother’s house, ma’am? Ma’am?”
“Oh, God, I think she’s dead.” The voice dulled and flattened. “Oh, Karen. Oh, Karen.”
“Ma’am?” Diana clenched the phone so hard her arm ached. “I need you to tell me where you are. Ma’am?”
After a long, silent moment, when she thought the caller might have hung up, the woman told her. Diana told her she was coming, called Liam, and called Joe Gould.
She got to Lydia’s house five minutes after Joe and a split second before Liam. The three of them stood once again in Lydia’s kitchen, looking at another body on the same floor.
“Strangled, this time,” Joe said.
“What was your first clue?” Diana said, her voice hollow. Karen’s eyes were open and bulging, her tongue protruded from her mouth, and her throat was one livid bruise.
To Liam’s everlasting shame, his first reaction at the sight was relief. Now Wy would never know what had happened in Lydia’s bedroom.
Joe did not change expression.
This time there had been a fight. The kitchen table and chairs were knocked over, drawers had been pulled out and dumped, cupboards opened and emptied on the floor. Broken dishes and spilled rice crunched underfoot, and the body was coated with powdered chocolate. “Let’s check the rest of the house,” Liam said.
It was trashed. The bed had been ripped apart and the mattress dumped to the floor. The drawers to the filing cabinet had been opened and dumped. The shelves in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom had been swept clean, bottles of Bayer and boxes of Band-Aids and bars of scented soap winding up in the sink or toilet and all over the floor. Betsy Amakuk sat on the couch in the living room, where all the books had been pulled from the shelves. She was weeping into Stan Jr.’s shoulder. Stan Jr. patted her awkwardly. He looked angry. Jerry wasn’t there.
“Somebody was looking for something,” Diana said.
“No shit,” Liam said, and returned to the kitchen. Joe Gould was zipping Karen into a black plastic body bag. “To the airport, Joe, straight to the airport and no stopping.” He dialed Wy’s number on his cell phone. When she answered, he said, “I need you to take the Cessna to Anchorage tonight. Right now, in fact. Can do?”
“Are you coming?”
“Yes. You’ll be transporting a body.” Silence. “Wy?”
“Whose body?” she said, but he got the feeling she was only killing time.
“Karen Tompkins.”
“What?”
“Karen Tompkins, Lydia’s daughter. We just found her. I need to get her body to the ME in Anchorage tonight. Can you take it?”
Another silence. “I- All right. I’ll call Bill to stay with Tim and head for the airport to start pulling seats.”
“Meet you there.” He hung up and looked at Prince. “You know the drill.”
“I do.”
“We’ll do a turnaround and come straight back.”
“Okay.” She was straining toward the door, eager to start questioning the neighbors.
“Go,” he said, and she bolted for the door like the starter pistol had been fired.
“Give me a hand,” Joe said, and Liam went to Karen Tompkins’ black plastic-clad feet. They lifted her easily and bore her from the room. Liam glanced back at the isolated island of faded linoleum in a sea of broken crockery, spilled flatware and a layer of white flour, an eerie reverse print of the dead woman’s body.
They were in the air half an hour later, the second and third rows of seats pulled and stacked in the shed next to the tie-down. “Karen Tompkins?”
“Yeah.”
“Lydia Tompkins’ daughter?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“It looks like somebody strangled her.”
She made a noise of distress. “Why?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The night was clear and calm, and the moon rose in time to light their way through Lake Clark Pass, a narrow gorge hedged about on all sides by very tall, very steep mountains already covered with snow. They landed at Merrill seventy minutes later, to be met by the meat wagon. Brillo Pad was driving.
Brillo Pad, aka Dr. Hans Brilleaux, had a very thick, very wiry, very curly head of very black hair, hence the nickname. Brillo Pad was fifty-six years old and very proud of his hair’s continued thickness and lack of gray. “Liam,” he said, big white buckteeth flashing in a grin. His face was swarthy and his nose was large and red-veined.
“Hans Brilleaux, Wy Chouinard.”
Brillo Pad gave Wy the once-over. “Delighted. You folks staying the night in Anchorage?”
“You done with Lydia Tompkins?” Liam said.
“Who?”
“Lydia Tompkins,” Liam said, enunciating the name in careful, independent syllables. “The woman I sent you two days ago.”
Brillo Pad tore his eyes from Wy and said, “Sure. I knew that. Ah, yeah. Head injury, whacked her skull pretty good, causing internal bleeding and a clot. Bam. On the physical evidence of the body, good chance it was accidental, not intentional. She clawed him, but no skin or blood, only fibers. If I had to guess, I’d say they came from a Carhartt’s jacket.”
“Great.”
“I know, not many of those around Alaska, are there?” He helped Liam maneuver the body bag out of the 180. “Who’s this?”
“The first woman’s daughter. How quick can you look at her?”
Brillo Pad whistled long and low. “Daughter, huh? Man, you’re the reason I’ve been in business the last six months.”
“I’m figuring the same guy did both women. Any hard evidence you can find, say fibers from the same coat, would be most helpful.”
“I’ll take her straight to the lab, see what I can see. So, are you staying in town tonight?”
“We’re going home,” Liam told Brillo.
“Okay. I’ll give you a call when I’ve got something.”
He drove off, and Wy got clearance from the tower. They were back in the air five minutes later.
Liam felt a sense of relief as the lights of the big city receded behind them, and wondered at it. “It’s easier flying at night,” he said over the headset.
She looked at him in the darkness of the cabin. “You’re not as afraid to fly in the dark?”
“I don’t think I am. Or at least not as much as I am during the day.”
“It’s a miracle,” she said lightly.
“Maybe it’s just that I can’t see how far up we are.” He peered out of the window, saw a flare burning on one of the Inlet oil rigs far below, and straightened hastily.