Since he seemed interested, she obliged. “Not until recently. Around 1960 the state government declared the area off limits to everyone, Native or non. Pissed off a lot of people, because it was sort of a ukase from the czar, they did it without any hearings held in the area. It was pretty drastic, but there was some justification.”
“Why? The walrus go the way of the otter?”
“Pretty much. It had been hunted nearly to extinction, not by Natives but by Yankee whalers in the 1800s, and not for their meat or hides but for their ivory.”
Liam thought again of the walrus head, the long, curving tusks of smooth, glowing ivory. A tempting target, all right.
“The population has come back since then; you can see thousands of walrus hauled out on this one particular beach alone.”
Liam thought of what Ekwok had told him about Larsgaard Senior. “So the state was forced to reopen the area to hunting.”
“Depends on how you define hunting.” Wy's voice was very dry. “Native hunters only, of course, and no hunting at all until a ten-page agreement had been drawn up and signed between state and villagers, detailing where the boats could go ashore, how the animals could be shot and allowing for tissue samples to be collected from each kill. Observers from both federal and state governments were on hand to witness the event, hand out permits and videotape the results.”
With a smile, Liam said, “You flew some of them in.”
She nodded. “A whole plane full of observers and equipment. So. You want to go?”
“No first dates that involve flying,” Liam said firmly. “I'm better at making my moves when I'm not airsick. How about you cook me dinner tomorrow night? I'll bring a movie to watch after.”
“Tim will be there.”
“I know.”
She smiled, this time a sweet smile full of promise. “It's a date.”
Liam rose early, stood post and practiced all sixty-four movements of the form with what he was sure was exquisite grace and superb style, showered briskly and was at his desk, whistling while he worked, by seven-fifty-nine. He called the medical examiner's office in Anchorage and left a message on the machine for Brillo Pad to call him. He went through the evidence he'd collected from the archaeological dig at Tulukaruk. Don Nelson's journal made very interesting reading, but there was nothing in it that Liam identified as pertinent to his murder. He reviewed his notes on the interview with Alta. Molly and Larsgaard's last meeting had been the previous Monday. One week alive and loving, the next dead and buried. Sounded like a line from a country-and-western song.
He got Bill out of bed at eight-thirty, and heard an irritated Moses complaining in the background. Everybody got some last night but him, but the thought did not depress him as much as it might have.
“Dick Ford?” she said. “Nice guy. Good fisherman, too, but he's such a soft touch that he never hangs on to any money. A four-wheeler? I don't know, Liam, he's never driven it into the bar.”
He called Dick Ford's phone number. No answer. He saddled up the Blazer and galloped purposefully down to the harbor, pulling up in front of the office door for Seafood North. Tanya paled when he walked in the door, and then looked relieved when he said, “Is Dick Ford a fisherman of yours?”
“Yes.”
“What's the name of his boat, and do you know its slip number?”
Of course she did. She even accompanied him out to the dock to point out the boat. “Right there, theSelina Noel,slip number one-eighty-seven. Pretty name, isn't it?”
“Thanks.” He waited until she had turned to go and said, “Oh, one more thing.”
Her back was almost as nice as Wy's, slender, straight and at the moment vibrating with tension. “Yes?” she said, looking over her shoulder and narrowing her eyes against the still-rising sun.
“You were meeting David Malone at the Bay View Inn, weren't you, Tanya.” He made it a statement, rather than a question.
For a moment, one very brief moment, her shoulders slumped. She turned to face him fully, looking naked and defenseless in the bright morning light. “Yes.”
“Once every couple of weeks for the past three months.”
“And last summer. Yes.”
She offered no apologies and no explanations, and he admired her for it. “You don't have to worry, I'm not going to tell anyone, and if Alta Peterson down at the hotel hasn't by now, she won't be, either. The fact that you were having an affair with David Malone had nothing to do with his or his family's death, and it doesn't matter to the investigation.”
“It matters to me,” she whispered.
She looked very young and very defenseless, and he had a sudden vivid memory of Wy's face the day she'd walked away from him in Anchorage. Pain, loss, guilt, shame, more than he could put a name to, all of it reflected in the young face before him now. “Move on,” he said.
“I can't,” she said.
“You can't do anything else,” he said, and went down the gangway, leaving her standing on the end of the dock, staring out at the Bay.
Dick Ford wasn't on board theSelina Noel.Well, shit. Well, then, how about Max Bayless? He knew what Prince would say, that he was tracking down useless leads, that they already had a confession in one case and an alibi with holes big enough to drive a truck through in the other. He should be in the office, doing paperwork, wrapping things up.
Instead he went to the only other bar in town, the Breeze Inn, which sat on the exact opposite edge of town from Bill's Bar and Grill. It was half the size of the other bar and twice as noisy, mostly because there was a television hanging from every corner of the room and two over the bar, all of them on at once. The bartender was a fat man with three strands of black hair stretched carefully across his otherwise bare scalp. He didn't say much. He shook his head when Liam asked him if he'd seen Max Bayless. He shook his head again when Liam asked him if he knew Max Bayless. The two guys nursing Bloody Marys while they watched ESPN didn't know Max Bayless and hadn't met him lately, either. Nobody'd seen Max Bayless, not Tanya, not Bill, not anyone; Max Bayless was the original invisible man.
He went back to the office and dialed Wiley Jim's number. It rang eleven times before Jim picked up. “I don't know who this is and I don't care, if you want to live you'll let me go back to sleep.”
“One more name, Jim,” Liam said. “I'll fix your next ticket.”
Jim drove a white Desert Rat Porsche convertible around Anchorage, even in winter, at no known and certainly no legal speed limit. A feminine complaint could be heard in the background but it didn't grate as much on Liam as it had the night before, and he grinned at the opposite wall. “Max Bayless. Come on, Wiley, I know you never turn that computer off. Just stagger into the office and type in the letters. M-A-X-”
“I got it, I got it,” Jim said, “and fuck you.”
“Thanks, Jim, I knew I could count on you.”
He waited. Five minutes later Jim said, “He's in jail. Cook Inlet Pre-Trial.”
“What for?”
“Selling cocaine.”
“Where was he arrested?”
“Anchorage. Wait a minute.” Click, click, click. “Fourth Avenue, the Hub, if you can believe it.”
“How long's he been in custody?”
“Eleven days. Can I go back to bed now?”
“With my blessing.”
“One ticket?”
“One.”
“Oughtta be three.”
“One,” Liam said firmly. “Say goodnight, Jim.”
So, Dick Ford owned the four-wheeler Frank Petla had been riding on, and was presently nowhere to be found. Max Bayless had threatened to kill David Malone, but he'd been in jail too long to have actually done it, and it was a year-old threat, anyway.
The phone rang and he snatched it up. “Brillo Pad, is that you, you old bastard, what took you so long?”
“You watch your mouth, mister, or I'll come over there and wash it out with soap,” Mamie Hagemeister said primly.