"Because the last time I tried she met me at the door with a loaded twelve-gauge is why. Now will you goddammit get a move on!"
Liam paused, one hand on the door of the Blazer, and looked at Wy. "Can you grab a ride back to your truck?"
She nodded.
"Okay." Still, he hesitated, while Jim Earl rolled his eyes and muttered beneath his breath. "I'll see you later."
She was silent for a moment, thinking over the implied question in his words. At last she said, "All right."
"I'll call. We have phones here, don't we?"
She recovered enough to make a face. "Of course we have phones here, Liam. We've even got cable."
"Just like downtown," he said. He let go of the door and walked back to her, ignoring Jim Earl's impatient snort. "I'll catch the bastard who did this, Wy. I promise." He put a hand beneath her chin and forced her to meet his eyes. "If you'll help me."
"You're still outta uniform, trooper," the mayor said disapprovingly through his open window.
"You're right, Mr. Mayor, I am," Liam agreed cheerfully. He climbed into the Blazer. "Lead the way," he called out the window, and waved to Wy as he drove off. In the rearview mirror, he watched Wy's figure grow smaller and smaller, standing forlornly next to the tattered remnants of her Super Cub.
The post office was a one-story building out of the same mold as every other post office in the Alaskan Bush: a shallow, corrugated metal roof, a sloping ramp leading up to the front door, the Alaska and American flags flying out front (the Alaska flag flying a little higher than the American), banks and alcoves of keyed boxes with metal doors, and a small room at one end with a counter dividing it. There were six or seven people inside. One of them greeted the mayor with relief. "Jim Earl! Dammit, when do I get to mail my package!"
It was the grandmotherly type from yesterday's flight. Today her eye shadow was forest green and her lipstick cranberry red. Her brassy blond hair was piled into a beehive and she was tapping very long, very pink fingernails against a fearsomely taped cardboard box sitting on a high table opposite the counter.
"Now, Ruby, you just hold your horses," the mayor ordered. "We've had a shooting, and we need to clear that up before we open the post office for business again."
Ruby grumbled. "I thought neither snow nor sleet nor dark of night stayed the mailman from his appointed rounds."
"That oath doesn't say anything about bullets, now, does it?" Jim Earl demanded. Ruby subsided, but not graciously.
Jim Earl led Liam through a door behind the counter. The room was an office, containing a desk, two chairs for visitors, and a row of filing cabinets. There were two people already in the room. The one window looked out on the work space of the post office, and Liam peered through it with interest.
The innards of the post office consisted of one large, continuous room full of conveyor belts and gray plastic carts overflowing with piles of white envelopes. A man in a post office uniform shirt loaded a pile of green duffel bags into one of the carts. At one counter a woman sat, running envelopes from another cart through a machine that looked like it was canceling their stamps. A second woman stood at another counter behind the side of the post office boxes the public never sees, throwing mail into the boxes so rapidly that her hands were a blur. Ruby would have felt reassured if she'd seen that it indeed appeared to be business as usual, come rain, snow, sleet, or bullets.
The rear wall had garage doors, and one of them was open to reveal the maw of a freight igloo sitting on a trailer hitched to a semi, into which the man in the post office uniform shirt, now operating a forklift, hoisted a pallet with packages strapped to it. The sun shone so brightly through the gap formed between the igloo's end and the garage door that man, forklift, and pallet seemed to vanish into outer darkness once they had rumbled across the knobby steel runners laid from building to vehicle.
The most interesting thing about the window Liam was looking through was the bullet hole in it. Two of them, in fact, neat holes that had left equally neat starbursts behind in the thick glass pane. He bent to look more closely. "Thirty-caliber, I'd guess," he said, straightening.
"Well now," Jim Earl said, "You don't have to sound so awful goddamn cheerful about it, do you?"
Developing a habit where you showed up after all the shooting was done was definitely something to cheer about, in Liam's opinion, but he kept it to himself.
"This here's the postmaster," Jim Earl said, indicating the man behind the desk. "Name's Richard Gilbert." He failed to identify the woman standing off to the side.
Richard Gilbert was a thin, short man wearing a white uniform shirt, a pair of dark blue uniform pants, and thick-soled black loafers. There was a not very bloody crease across his upper left arm, and his long, narrow face was contorted with rage.
"Mr. Gilbert," Liam said. "I'm Sergeant-I'm Trooper Liam Campbell. Do you know who shot you?"
"Of course he knows who shot him, you damn fool," Jim Earl barked.
Liam looked at Jim Earl, and back at the postmaster. "Might this person have a name?"
"Of course he's got a name-everybody's got a name," Jim Earl said.
Still patient, Liam said, "And this name might be?"
"Oh," Jim Earl said. "That'd be Kelly McCormick."
The mayor looked at Liam expectantly. To the postmaster Liam said, "Mr. Gilbert, did you see Mr. McCormick shooting at you?"
"Of course he did!" Jim Earl's bark was back. "Shot at him right through that loading door there."
Liam looked at the loading door blocked by the igloo on the trailer backed up to it. The man in postal uniform was piloting another palletful of mail on board. "Was the van there at the time?"
For once, Jim Earl seemed stumped. He looked at the postmaster for reference. The woman behind Gilbert, wearing a white uniform shirt and blue pants identical to Gilbert's, was now uttering little cries of solace as she tried ineffectually to sponge the wound with a polka dot scarf that looked as if it had recently been tied around her hair. The postmaster slapped her hands away. "Knock it off, Rebecca, you're only making it worse."
"Mr. Gilbert," Liam said, producing a pad and pencil. For some reason a pad and pencil always helped to focus people's attention, and this time was no exception. Gilbert fended off Rebecca once more and she retreated obediently back into a corner. He straightened in his chair and looked at Liam through thick-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses. "Mr. Gilbert," Liam repeated, "could you please tell me exactly what happened here this morning?"
Then an odd thing occurred. Like crumpled cotton under the heat of an iron, the rage smoothed out of the postmaster's face. Gilbert stiffened his spine and folded his hands on the desk before him, and when he spoke his voice was calm and his words were measured, studied, almost pontifical. The effect was somewhat ruined by the voice itself; it was thin and high-pitched, erring occasionally to a raspy squeak. "How do you do, officer," he said formally. "This is Rebecca."
The woman, short, stubby, and dark-haired, made a sort of curtsy in Liam's direction and offered him a timid smile. "Ma'am," Liam said, and inclined his head in lieu of touching the brim of his hat, which was back in his bag at the office. He'd responded to three calls in twenty-four hours, and not one of them in uniform. He was liable to be fined for it if his boss ever found out.
"Precisely what is it that you wish to know, officer?" the postmaster said.
Equally formal, in trooper mode at least endlessly patient, Liam repeated, "Could you please tell me exactly what happened here this morning?"
The postmaster frowned at his folded hands, formed them into a steeple, and looked to the ceiling for guidance. Next to Liam the mayor shifted, and the trooper said quickly, "Jim Earl, do me a favor? Call dispatch and see if there have been any other incidents of shooting this morning? Be a good idea to see if this guy's been practicing on more than one target." Jim Earl made a move toward the phone on the desk, and Liam said even more quickly, "Mr. Gilbert, is there a phone in the other office the mayor can use while we talk in here?"