This thought had the effect of drawing her up short. She was thinking about Newenham as if it were home, instead of a stepping stone. This would never do.
She wiped her mouth and turned to survey the bar in search of miscreants. Evan Gray, one of three local drug dealers, held court in a back booth. He saw her looking at him and sent her an impudent grin. He was a tall, good-looking devil, and he knew it.
Two months before Diana had sat in that same booth with Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell of the United States Air Force, and, coincidentally, Corporal Liam Campbell’s father. The two men didn’t get along. She smiled to herself. It wasn’t that Charles was incapable of getting along with anyone, as she had extensive personal knowledge that he could.
Across the room, Evan Gray mistook the smile and excused himself to the plump little brunette sitting within the curve of his arm. She pouted as he sauntered to the bar and ordered another round for his booth. He smiled at Diana. “Hey, beautiful.”
“Hey, handsome,” she replied.
Gratified, he said, “Join us for a drink when you get off duty?”
She smiled at him. “Not in this lifetime, Evan.”
He laughed. “Haven’t you heard? Marijuana is legal in the state again.”
“Haven’t you heard?” she countered. “Only for medicinal purposes.”
He shook his head, smile in place. “There’s a lot of sick people out there,” he said sadly. “Somebody’s got to help them.”
“Yeah, Evan, you’re a real humanitarian.”
Her tone stung, just a little, and his eyes dropped to her mouth. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Three to five, with time off for good behavior?” she suggested.
It surprised a laugh out of him.
Dottie slapped his drinks down on the bar. “Eighteen-fifty.”
He tossed her a twenty. She glared, but she kept the tip.
“See you around, officer,” he said as he left.
“Yes, you will,” Diana said.
Dottie was glaring at her now. Diana toasted her with the last of her Coke. “Keep your friends close, Dottie, and your enemies closer.”
Dottie’s glare did not lessen. “Sleeping with the enemy is about as close as you can get.”
Diana Prince had been in Newenham less than two months, but two months was plenty of time to learn that it was never wise to attempt to match wits with the bartender at Bill’s, whoever she happened to be that day. Meekly, the trooper paid her tab and returned to the post.
Waiting on the doorstep was Natalie Gosuk. “Ms. Gosuk,” Prince said, and held the door for the woman. She took off her hat and settled in behind the desk. “How may I help you?”
In the custom of the country, Gosuk kept her eyes and her voice low in response. “I want to see my son.”
“Yes,” Prince agreed, “so you said when you were in here yesterday. You still have the court order?”
Natalie displayed it.
“Is the foster parent denying you access?” Natalie looked confused, and Prince elaborated. “Won’t she let you see him?”
“She is not there. He is not there.”
Prince looked up and said sharply, “Do you mean she has taken him somewhere else? Have they moved? Left town?”
Natalie looked confused again, and Prince remembered the class in Native relations taught at the academy, which had stressed patience and courtesy when dealing with Alaskan citizens who spoke English as a second language. This was a Yupik woman, the product of a culture where a woman seldom raised her voice, where a problem was always resolved within the family. The fact that Natalie Gosuk, alone, was looking for help from a state trooper spoke volumes about how seriously she regarded her complaint. “Let’s start over, Ms. Gosuk,” she said. “Please. Have a seat.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Gosuk sat on the extreme edge of one of the two armchairs across the desk. Prince pulled an incident report from the file. “As I understand it, your son was placed with foster parents.”
“A woman.”
“Here in town.”
“Yes.”
“What is her name?”
“The woman who flies.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The woman who flies,” Natalie Gosuk repeated.
Diana Prince looked up from the form. “Do you mean Wyanet Chouinard?”
A nod.
“Your son is living with Wyanet Chouinard.”
Another nod.
Prince thought back to the morning before, to Natalie Gosuk’s first appearance at the post, of Liam’s subsequent distracted air, and identified the child in question for the first time. “You’re Tim’s mother.”
A third nod.
“One moment, please.” Diana looked up Gosuk, Timothy, on the computer, and her initial irritation at Liam not telling her the truth about Natalie Gosuk abated a little. “Ms. Gosuk, Tim was removed from your custody nearly two years ago.”
“I’m sober now,” Gosuk said, still staring at the floor. “I want to see my son.” She raised her eyes for the first time and held up the court order. “The judge says I can. She says the woman who flies must let me see him.”
Prince looked at the court order. “Did you go to the house?”
“Yes.”
“And did Ms. Chouinard refuse you entry? Would she not let you in?”
“The woman who flies is not there.”
“And your son is not in the house?”
“They say no.”
“Who says no?”
Gosuk gave an infinitesimal shrug. “The people who are there. I don’t know them.”
Prince looked at the clock. One-thirty. Of course the woman who flies was not there, she was at present providing air transportation for one Corporal Liam Campbell to Nenevok Creek. How very convenient. “Have you tried the airport?”
“I have no car.”
“How about a cab?”
“I have no money.”
Prince thought again of Liam’s description of Tim when Chouinard flew him out of Ualik, the bleeding wounds, the broken bones, the doctor’s warning that the boy might not regain his hearing in one ear, mercifully proved wrong by time and care. There is a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, Campbell had said. Natalie Gosuk had the might of the law on her side, and the court order in hand to prove it. Moreover, she was Tim’s mother.
On the other hand, babies should not be, should never be, hit. According to the official report, even one as sloppily filled out as this one by Sergeant Corcoran, the woman sitting in front of her had hit her baby. Repeatedly. Over a period of many years. She was also a drunk. Because she was sober now didn’t mean she would be tomorrow, or even tonight. Whatever genetic, societal, geographical, historical or financial pressures had combined to make this happen did not matter, only the result and the way Prince dealt with the result.
And then there was the boy. Liam Campbell said he had no wish to see his mother. He had rights, too.
Diana Prince was a trooper. She had sworn to uphold the constitutions of the United States and the state of Alaska. She held out her hand for the court order. “We’ll serve it this evening,” she said, “when everyone comes home.”
Newenham, September 3
“Hi,” Jim Wiley said without enthusiasm.
“Hi, yourself,” said Jo Dunaway, with even less.