When he got back into the living room, Laura Nanalook had her head back against the wall. Her eyes were closed.
"Here," Liam said.
She opened her eyes and blinked up at him. In her grief and confusion, she looked about ten years old. So long as he kept his eyes above her chin.
He held out the glass. "Some water for you," he said.
"Oh," she said, looking bewildered as he pressed the glass into her hand, but she drank obediently.
He took the glass back and set it down on an end table. On the table was a homemade picture frame made of light oak, as carefully crafted and polished as the furniture in the kitchen and the second bedroom. It held a picture of Laura Nanalook and an older man Liam realized must be Bob DeCreft. He picked it up.
Bob DeCreft was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick blond hair that had resisted aging along with the rest of him. His eyes were narrowed against the sun, so that Liam couldn't see what color they were. He had crow's-feet but no laugh lines, a broad brow, a firmlipped mouth, a strong chin. His smile was tentative, and he had an arm around Laura's shoulders, resting somehow gingerly on them, as if he couldn't quite believe his luck. Between them Liam could see over the bank of the river and down into the river itself. Laura had her arms folded across her chest, standing hipshot, chin up, staring straight into the camera with an I-dare-you look in her eyes.
DeCreft reminded Liam of someone, but he couldn't remember who, so he put the picture down. He knew it would do no good, but he couldn't stop himself from saying, "You could press charges against Wolfe, Ms. Nanalook." He held out the Kleenex.
She blew her nose ferociously. "I've got to get to work-it's after four o'clock. Bill'll skin me if I'm late."
"You could press charges," he repeated. "I'm a witness, at least after the fact."
"He'd kill me," she whispered.
"No he wouldn't." Liam's voice rose slightly, as if volume alone could banish her demons. "I wouldn't let him."
"You don't know him," she said. "You couldn't stop him."
"I can take you to the hospital, where you can be examined, pictures taken, evidence gathered. And then I will arrest him. He won't be able to hurt you again."
She shook her head, slowly at first and then faster, her hair tumbling wildly around her face. He didn't make the mistake of offering any gesture of physical sympathy; he had interviewed rape victims before. "You don't know him," she repeated.
"By God," Liam said, realization breaking over him. "This isn't the first time, is it?"
"You don't know him," she said for the third time. She looked exhausted. "He'd kill me."
Liam tried his only remaining shot. "Ms. Nanalook, you know if you don't press charges against him, he'll come back."
A shudder ran over her. She wouldn't look up, glorious golden hair still hiding her face.
"I know." She squeezed the Kleenex into a tight little ball. "They always do."
Liam left the house in a simmering rage and slammed the door to the Blazer hard. It didn't relieve his feelings, and it didn't do the Blazer door any good.
Sighing, he started the engine and shifted into reverse. A white station wagon came barreling down the game trail that passed for a driveway to DeCreft's cabin and nearly rear-ended him. He stamped on the brakes, slapping his head into the headrest on the rebound.
The station wagon went around him, clipping a slender birch in the process, and slid to a halt in front of the cabin. Without wasting a glance on the Blazer, Rebecca Gilbert shot out of the driver's seat and ran through the front door of the house without knocking.
Liam stared at the house for a moment, but it didn't yield up any secrets. He sighed. So what else was new. He was a stranger in a strange land.
The white station wagon, a little Ford Escort, was idling in park. Liam got out to turn off the ignition and close the driver's side door, and then he went on his way.
EIGHT
The phone was ringing as he walked into the office. "About goddamn time," a voice barked at him.
Liam sat down. "Hello, John."
"Where the hell have you been? I've been calling all day. Don't you have someone to answer the friggin' phone down there?"
"Not in the office," Liam said. "I guess the dispatcher takes all the calls."
"Goddammit," Barton said, "how the hell am I supposed to practice goddamn law and order if I can't even talk to my goddamn officers?"
It was a rhetorical question, and Liam didn't bother trying to answer.
Barton went on. Barton always went on. "What's this I hear about you stepping off the plane into the middle of a murder?"
Liam sighed, leaned back to prop his feet on the desk, and rubbed his eyes. "Don't tell me, let me guess. Corcoran."
"Hell yes, Corcoran," Barton said, adding with awful sarcasm, "and a good thing, too, since my own officer on the scene can't be bothered to phone in a report."
"Lay off, John," Liam said. "I haven't been here two days, I got no handover from Corcoran, I don't know the territory or the locals, and already I've responded to two shootings and a possible murder. Not to mention which I don't have a place to sleep and I can't find anyone to press my uniform."
Barton was outraged. "You're out of uniform?"
Liam had to laugh, but under his breath and out of John Barton's hearing.
Lieutenant John Dillinger Barton was a twenty-five-year veteran of the Alaska State Troopers. An air force brat like Liam, his family had moved all over the world during his childhood, ending eventually at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage in 1957, when his father, under pressure from his mother, retired to sell and service Xerox copy machines. He attended Seattle University with the goal of joining the Jesuit brotherhood, elected a philosophy class in which a Washington state trooper came to lecture on the ethics of criminal justice, and on that day gave up the priesthood forever. Upon graduation he returned home to be promptly accepted into that year's trooper academy class. They'd done away with the height requirement by then, which was a good thing since he topped out at five feet four. Barton was gorillian of build, all of it muscle, and Churchillian of jaw, all of it stubborn, but for all that amazingly good at not trampling over the authority of village elders. He rose high and fast in the department.
He was now the outpost supervisor for Section E, which included Liam's previous post of Glenallen as well as his new one, Newenham. He was Liam's boss, and had been for seven years. He had spotted Liam's potential early on, had mentored his swift rise through the ranks, and had marked Liam as someone who would always make him look good. It was tacitly understood by both men that this would always be in a subordinate capacity, and if Liam had his own ideas about that he was smart enough to keep them to himself.
Barton had also orchestrated Liam's recent and rapid fall from grace, and his transfer to Newenham.
"So what have you been doing?" Barton said, voice rich with sarcasm.
Liam thought. "Well," he said, "I had my first tai chi lesson." He had to hold the phone away from his ear when Barton, predictably, erupted again. Liam waited patiently, smiling to himself. When he thought about it later, he was amazed that he still remembered how.
When he got a chance, he told Barton of the scene he had stepped into at the airport.
At the end of it Barton grunted. "Ninety people milling around and nobody sees a thing. Bullshit. What about the pilot?"
"Out getting lunch."
"Check the alibi?"
"Yes."
"Well, shit." Barton always preferred the easy answers, and on every case but this one so did Liam. "Who didn't like him?"
"No one, apparently, but then no one seemed to know him all that well. No wants or warrants, no record of him having been tanked for anything so much as a parking ticket. Good reputation with the local magistrate."