The sick feeling in the pit of Wy’s stomach increased.
“What’s bothering you, Wy?” Liam said. “You see something when you were out there today? Come on, I can use all the help I can get.”
“Oh shit,” John Kvichak said when he opened the door.
She was so beautiful, in her own way as beautiful as Elaine, so rounded and so feminine. She was frightened at first, of course, but as soon as she realized she had no choice, she calmed right down.
Women were like that. They were a lot smarter than most men gave them credit for, they knew how to survive. They were the weaker sex, certainly, but that didn’t mean they were any less intelligent. She knew the instant she looked into his eyes what survival would entail.
He had nothing but contempt for her husband. The cabin was poorly built, there wasn’t enough food to last more than a month, the man hadn’t done any hunting to take up the slack when the food ran out. A poor provider.
And she didn’t weep when she saw her husband’s body. Her eyes were fixed on him. Poor little woman, she needed rescuing. Lucky for her he happened along.
Or was it? Was it instead part of God’s holy plan? She was a gift to him as much as he was to her; could one argue with any conviction that such things were the product of simple fate? No, it could not be so. She was a gift, and he would guard her and treasure her accordingly.
He told her that he was hungry. She cooked for him, noodles with green onions sliced into them at the last moment before serving and a few drops of sesame oil added, a dish new to him but which he liked very much. He said he was thirsty. She made him coffee, good coffee, too, the best he had had in many years.
She fussed a little when it came time to take off her clothes, but that was only due to the natural modesty of women.
She lay still beneath him, like Elaine, Elaine-fair, and kept her eyes closed, the way Elaine had at first. Her skin was so soft to the touch. He told her to open her eyes. They were so large, the pupils expanded almost to the edge of the blue irises. Her breath came in soft expulsions of air that touched his face in quick pants. Her hands lay at her sides until he told her to place them on his back. It was fine, so very fine, to be held within those arms again.
She was weak and he was strong. It was his duty to protect her, it was her duty to submit. Where he led, she would follow. Their roles had been laid down by God and the Church many years ago.
At last, at last, Elaine had come back to him.
Newenham, September 3
“Far as I know, they slept the night through,” Mamie said. “I wasn’t surprised, since they both smelled like they fell off the back of a beer truck when you hauled them in last night. And if you don’t mind, it’s about my bedtime now.”
“Why did you switch to the night shift?” Prince asked.
“It’s almost time for school to start. This way I’ll be awake in the morning to see the kids off.”
Mamie Hagemeister was a short, very well-fleshed woman with bad skin and short, thin, fine brown hair that stood on end from its own self-generated static electricity. With her round, protuberant brown eyes, she looked like a long-haired koala plugged into a wall socket. She was also the single mother of five children ranging in age from three to ten, which explained her constantly harried air.
She was the officer in charge of the local jail, one of the four officers belonging to the perpetually short-handed local police department Liam had met. “Any chance of seeing Raymo or Berg today?”
She paused for a precious moment in her headlong flight. “I don’t think so. Roger’s still in Anchorage at that damn trial, and I just dispatched Cliff down to the harbor.”
“What’s happening at the harbor?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? Somebody called and said Jeff Saltz was cutting his boat in half with a chain saw.”
She said it nonchalantly, like cutting boats in half with chain saws was an everyday occurrence in the Newenham small-boat harbor. “I asked the guy,” Mamie said, impatient to be gone, “I said to him, is he carving up anything besides his boat? Like a person? Guy said no. I said to the guy, then why do you need the cops?”
“Why did he?”
“The guy with the chain saw’s boat was tied to the boat belonging to the guy who called. Anyway, I told Cliff and Cliff went down to see what he could do.”
“Mamie?” A voice came up the corridor.
“You hush up, Lorne, I’m trying to get off shift here.” She jerked her chin in the voice’s direction. “Lorne Rapp. Roger brought him in at three-thirty for beating up on his family. Drunk and disorderly, and he tried, I say he tried, to assault an officer.”
“I trust he didn’t get away with it,” Liam murmured.
Mamie gave the trooper an indignant look. “Not on my shift he didn’t. He’s got a lump on his head the size of Gibraltar to remind him not to if he ever gets the yen again. The nerve!”
Any woman who could single-handedly raise five children and still string words together in a coherent sentence commanded Liam’s respect and admiration, and he held the door for Mamie on her way out.
“We want to talk to Engebretsen and Kvichak,” he told Nick Potts, a skinny young man who barely looked old enough to vote. Nick was working day shift. Nick didn’t look like he could punch his way out of a paper bag, let alone keep order among the Newenham criminal element. He knew this, and compensated by trying to grow a mustache, which after two months still looked like something applied with a number 2 pencil. “You want the interview room?”
“Please,” Liam said. Prince smiled at the young man, who blushed hotly and dropped his keys.
The interview room was a narrow rectangle with one barred window, a table and four chairs. Liam and Prince sat on one side, Teddy and John on the other.
Teddy and John still smelled faintly of beer, but after a night in jail they were stone-cold sober. John was tight-lipped and angry, Teddy terrified. “You never charged us with anything,” John said. “You never even told us why you were locking us up.”
“Legally, I’ve got twenty-four hours to charge you with anything,” Liam said soothingly, “and as for telling you why I was locking you up, I was afraid if I left you at home you’d get drunker and I wouldn’t be able to talk to you at all.”
“We didn’t do anything,” Teddy said.
“Shut up, Teddy,” John said.
“But we didn’t do anything,” Teddy repeated.
“Let them tell us all about it,” John said. “Don’t you say a word unless I say so. Cops always twist everything you say to make it fit how they want. Don’t say a word, okay?” He glared at Liam and Prince.
Prince waited long enough to see that Liam was giving her the lead, and opened the folder in front of her.
“You’ve got a history with us, gentlemen.”
Teddy shifted in his chair. John stilled him with a glance.
“Most of it regarding the Nuklunek Bluff, which you seem to regard as your personal, private property.”
John snorted. “Ain’t no such thing as private property out here.”
As if she hadn’t heard him, Prince said, “You’ve been questioned regarding several incidents involving campers and hunters in the area, resulting in, at minimum, destruction of private property and, at most, the threat of bodily harm.”
“Yeah, well, shit happens in the Bush. If you don’t know how to handle yourself, stay the hell out.”
Prince closed the file and folded her hands on top of it. She looked at John, ignoring Teddy. “You hunt the Nuklunek Bluff every year, don’t you, John?”