"All I know about New Orleans is that in 1814 we took a little trip."
Bill wrinkled her nose. "Johnny Horton-good God. He ain't the Neville Brothers, I'll tell you that for nothing."
"Really?"
Bill's blue eyes narrowed. "You ever hear of the Neville Brothers?"
"No," Liam admitted.
Bill muttered something uncomplimentary under her breath and marched over to the jukebox, the very set of her shoulders indicating she was on a mission from Jelly Roll Morton his own self. A coin rolled into a slot and the sweet, sad strains of "Bird on a Wire" rolled out.
"Nice," Liam commented when the song was done.
Bill rolled her eyes and heaved an impatient sigh at his lack of enthusiasm. "Nice, the man says. Nice."
Liam liked classical music, its intricate melodies and rhythms, its careful crafting, its honest passion. Jenny had called him a throwback, displacing Beethoven for the B-52's on their stereo whenever he turned his back, and Wy-he pulled himself together. He hadn't come to Bill's for a walk down memory lane or a lesson in contemporary pop rock. He'd come for lunch and for information, in that order.
Short of a parish priest, who was bound to an inconvenient confidentiality by oath, a local bartender was more privy to more information on the native population than anyone else. Liam had cultivated bartenders in other towns, and had found them to be a source that never failed, and a much quicker route to the information he needed than going through more conventional channels. Not to mention the added advantage of Bill's position as magistrate. She'd know all the repeat offenders, would be able to fill him in where Corcoran hadn't. "Bill," he said, "what can you tell me about Bob DeCreft?"
"Bob DeCreft," she said. She sighed. "Poor old Bob." She gave Liam a sharp glance. Save for the man with his head pillowed in his arms in the front booth, the man with the Rainier bottle still pressed to his face, and the dulcet tones of Aaron Neville, they were alone in the bar. "You here to pump me for information, is that it, Liam?"
Liam smiled at her. "As much as I can get," he agreed. "That, and food-that's all I want you for."
She laughed, throwing her head back and displaying a set of teeth that were just saved from being perfect by overlapping incisors that made her look faintly vampirish.
Which, now that Liam thought about it, would explain that air of eternal youth.
"Bob DeCreft," she said, meditatively. "He moved here, oh, about five, no, six years ago now, I think it was."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "Why does anyone move to Newenham? Why did you? Starting over is a time-honored Bush Alaska tradition." Liam tried not to squirm beneath the penetrating look she shot him. "You're pissed at me, aren't you?" she said suddenly. "For blabbing your story out in the bar yesterday?"
Liam said nothing, examining the glass of Coke in his hand with an air of total absorption.
She pointed her finger at him. "Best thing I could do for you. No sense in trying to make a secret of things in the Alaskan Bush, Liam."
"Five people died on my watch," he found himself saying. "Never mind they shouldn't have been driving on the Denali Highway in February in the middle of a thirty-below cold spell with no survival gear and three little kids. Never mind they should have checked the level of antifreeze in their car before not doing any such thing. Two troopers under my command ignored two calls-not one but two -alerting our post reporting those folks missing. Maybe we could have got to them in time, maybe not. Fact is, we didn't, they died, and I was in charge." He looked Bill straight in the eye, unsmiling. "I'm about as white as you can get without bleach. So were the two troopers who missed the calls. The family that died was Athabascan, from Fort Yukon. You know how hard it is to get the villagers to trust us in the first place, Bill. How much harder is it going to be for me with the villagers around here, coming in under that kind of cloud?"
"Exactly why I told your story," she replied promptly. "You think the news didn't get here before you did? The Bush telegraph is better than smoke signals or jungle drums any day. It wouldn't have been long before everybody knew it. If you'd tried to hide it, there's some would have used it against you. Best to have it all out in the open."
Liam said nothing, and Bill heaved an impatient sigh. "Give them a chance, Liam. I meant what I said yesterday-you do your job right, that's what they'll judge you on."
"Even the villagers?"
"Especially the villagers," she retorted. "The Yupik have a strong sense of family, and an even stronger sense of community. The ones that aren't head down in a bottle, which is about half of them, are firm believers in law and order; in fact, they generally try to dispense it themselves through their village councils. When the councils fail, they'll call you in. They'll do everything they can to avoid it, but when the elders can't resolve the problem, or when the offense is just too much for the village to stomach, they'll call you in. You'll be their last hope, their last resort. They want to trust you. They want to believe that you'll do right by them."
"If you say so."
"I do say so," Bill said, "but I can tell that the only way you're going to be convinced is to see for yourself. You will. Anyway," she said, jumping back to the original subject in a way that he would come to recognize was characteristic of her conversation, "I could go outside and throw a rock and be guaran-damn-teed to hit somebody who got sick of their spouse, their marriage, their job, their home, or all of the above, and subsequently got on a plane going north and got off here, ready to start over."
She refilled Liam's Coke and drew one for herself. "Had three of 'em in the bar last night. One woman was living in Denver, Colorado, walked out on her air force husband with the clothes on her back and their daughter, and wound up sliming fish on a processor off Newenham. Now she's opening an espresso stand down to the docks. Another woman walked out on an abusive husband in Scottsdale, Arizona, and a week later was dispatching for the cop shop in Newenham."
"That'd be Molly?" Liam said, remembering the pudgy little woman, her brown hair flattened by the headset, talking nonstop into the mouthpiece, dispatching emergency services to those in need all over the town. She'd looked harried, true, but not the least bit victimized.
"That'd be Molly," she confirmed. "One guy had two businesses, three Mercedes, and four ulcers in Missouri, threw in his hand and came up; now he's a cop for the Newenham P.d."
Liam hazarded a guess. "Roger Raymo?"
She shook her head. "Cliff Berg."
"Oh yeah. He's got the wife with the shotgun."
Bill laughed, tossing her head back, her full silver mane shaking behind her shoulders. She looked even more zaftig close up, Liam thought.
He felt a presence next to him, and turned to look up at the man who had been holding the cold bottle to his face. This close, you could see why. There was an angry-looking weal down the side of his face, beginning on his forehead, continuing over his left eye, and ending in a torn left earlobe. The man himself was tall, six-six, Liam estimated, with the shoulders and forearms of a lumberjack. His face was heavy and bluntfeatured beneath close-cropped white-blond hair, and his eyes were a light blue so pale they seemed almost colorless. His grin was a cross between the Joker's and Yorick's, wide and mirthless. He threw down a five. "Thanks, Bill."
"You're welcome, Kirk." Bill was civil but not friendly. "You met the new trooper? Kirk Mulder, Trooper Liam Campbell."
"How do, Trooper Campbell."
"Mr. Mulder." Liam inclined his head, every nerve on alert. At some visceral level, he was aware of being in the presence of the enemy.
The colorless gaze looked him over. "Where's your uniform?"