His back stiffened into one hard, inimical line. “What time?”
“Four o’clock.”
“You’ll be here?”
“Yes. Every time. Always.”
He put down the book and rolled to look at her. “I don’t want to see her.”
“I know.”
“But you’re making me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
If was the first time he hadn’t shouted the question at her in a rage, and she wanted so badly not to blow the answer. “She’s your birth mother, Tim.”
“You’re more my mother than she ever was or ever will be.”
Wy thought of the shivering, wounded scrap of humanity she had found crouched beneath his mother’s front porch on a flight into Ualik over two years ago, and said, “I can’t argue with that.”
“Then why?”
Hard as she tried, she couldn’t go straight at it. “I understand your anger at her, Tim. I share it. Anger is a good thing in many ways. Anger makes you fight back. A lot of times it’s the difference between surviving and going under.”
He looked at her.
“It’s just that, sooner or later, you have to accept what happened to make you angry, acknowledge it and move on.”
“What if I don’t want to? You bet I’m mad at her.” His voice rose. “I hate her! And she deserves it!”
“Yes, she does, but are you going to spend the rest of your life angry with her?” Without waiting for an answer, she said, “You have that choice. It’s up to you; you can live from now until you die blaming everything bad that happens to you on your lousy childhood and the awful things your mother did to you.”
“It wasn’t just her.”
It was as close as he’d come to talking about the rest of it. “I know,” she said gently, when what she really wanted to do was rip and tear. “But what I’m telling you still goes. You can’t do anything to change the past. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be angry, but you’ve got to learn to put it aside and move on. The jails are full of people who never learned to do that.” Interesting, she thought, how sometimes she opened up her mouth and Liam Campbell came walking out of it.
In that maddening way teenagers have of making logic where none exists, he said, “You saying I’m going to jail if I don’t let her visit?”
“No. I’m saying if you can learn to tolerate her company for a few hours a week, you’ll be a better person for it.” She hesitated. “She’s an alcoholic, Tim.” He shot up, knocking his book to the floor, and she held up a hand. “It’s not an excuse, I know. But it is a reason. Sober, she might have been a completely different person. A completely different mother.”
“She wasn’t sober.”
“No, she wasn’t. And she lost her chance to be that person with you. But she’s sober now, and she’s reaching out. And you have to remember something.”
“What?”
“Whatever else, she gave you life.”
“It wasn’t much of one.”
“It is now.”
His eyes held more bewilderment than rage. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this.”
She said the only thing she could say. “I love you, Tim. I will always be on your side, no matter what.”
She wasn’t sure he believed her, but she was wise enough to leave it at that.
Liam rousted every one of Lydia Tompkins’ neighbors within a ten-mile radius, starting with the one right next door, hiz-zoner Jim Earl, the mayor of Newenham.
“Lydia’s dead? Well, shit,” was Jim Earl’s response. “Son of a bitch, that was one feisty old broad. There were some tourists camping out on the river below her house last summer, making a lot of noise and mess, and she took her twelve gauge down the bluff and ran them off. And made them take their garbage with ’em, too. Hell.” Jim Earl, who was about Lydia’s age, scratched a bristly chin. “What a flirt.”
“She flirted with you?”
Jim Earl grinned. “Lydia flirted with everybody. She liked men and she made no bones about it. Didn’t matter if they were young or old or fat or skinny, she liked ’em all. Drove her kids nuts after Stan Sr. died.”
Liam remembered the overly elaborate crossing and recrossing of Lydia’s legs at the post the night she’d decked Harvey with the sun-dried tomatoes. “Did she have a boyfriend?”
“Wasn’t for lack of trying it wasn’t me.”
“Aren’t you married?”
“Not so’s you’d notice.”
Liam waited but Jim did not feel the need to explain further. “Did you see her with anyone else?”
“Nah. There’s a lot of coming and going down this road; it’s the only road along the river. Kids drive down to the end and park at Peter’s Point; there’s a lot of traffic from that.”
“Did you see anybody on the road on your way to work?”
“Well, shit, sure, everybody else on their way to work. Everybody who’s got a job. Murdered, you say? Lydia? Man, that just plain makes no sense at all.”
The story was the same all up and down the road. The good news was, fishing season was over, so everyone who lived year-round in Newenham was home. The bad news was, the smallest house sat on at least an acre, and most of that acre was thickly forested, deliberately so. People lived in the Alaskan Bush because they liked their privacy. Usually the only view was east and south, overlooking the river, the opposite bank, and the beginnings of Bristol Bay.
He woke Elizabeth Katelnikoff, a nightshift worker at AC, from a sound sleep. She was not pleased with him, but when he told her why he was there her irritation quickly changed to distress. She’d gone to school with Karen Tompkins, and had eaten her share of Lydia Tompkins’ fry bread on afternoons after school. “No, I didn’t see anyone. Or not anyone I don’t know. Jim Earl passed me going to work. So did Dave Lorenz, and Sarah Aguilar, and Mike Engebretsen. I didn’t see Eric Mollberg, but his truck was in the driveway, parked kind of crooked. Probably sleeping it off.” She paused, and frowned.
“What?” Liam said. “Anything, Elizabeth. I don’t care how silly you think it sounds.”
“There was this white pickup ahead of me when I turned off on the River Road.”
“Whose?”
“I don’t know.”
“Alaska plates?”
“Probably.” She thought. “No, definitely Alaska plates. I would have paid more attention if they weren’t, especially at this time of year.”
“The gold and blue, or the Chilkoot? A vet’s, maybe, the one with the purple heart? The University of Alaska plate?”
She closed her eyes, her face scrunched up in thought, and opened them again. “Nope. I just don’t have a clue, Liam. I’m sorry.”
“I want you to look up every white pickup registered in Newenham,” he told Prince back at the post.
“What make?”
“I don’t know.”
“What year?”
“I don’t know.”
“That narrows things down.” She caught his look and became very professional. “Magistrate Billington called. She wants to know how long she’s going to have to keep that goddamn arm in her freezer.” Prince cleared her throat. “Er, that’s a direct quote. Says it’s scaring Dottie.”
It took a moment for him to place the arm Bill was talking about. “Tell her we’ll get to it once we find out who killed Lydia Tompkins.” He picked up the phone, forestalling further comment, and called Mamie Hagemeister. “Mamie? Liam Campbell, down to the trooper post. Can you get hold of Cliff Berg or Roger Raymo and tell them I need some help canvassing a neighborhood?”
There was a brief silence on the other end of the phone.
“Mamie?”
There was a long sigh. “Liam, Roger moved back to California to join the state troopers there. He and his wife left Newenham last week.”
“What?”
“And Cliff Berg went to work for Alyeska Pipeline last month. Good job in the safety department, at about three times what Jim Earl was paying him. And you know his wife never has liked Newenham; she’s been chomping at the bit to get back to Anchorage ever since they moved here.”