“But why, Liam?”
“Molly Malone was pregnant.”
Wy raised her head. “I don't see why-”
“It was her husband's baby, or so she told Young Walter. It was David's baby, and she was going to have it and be a good mother and a good wife and that was why they had to break things off. Young Walter didn't believe her. He made the mistake of telling his dad so.”
“Still, why-”
“Wy, never try to understand a drunk. Young Walter says that when he came home that night, Old Walter told him his son's son was free of hisgussukmother, that his spirit had been released to return when Young Walter took another wife, a proper daughter of the walrus this time.”
“A ‘daughter of the walrus’?”
Liam thought of the walrus head mounted on the wall of the Larsgaard kitchen, of the lack of remains of Old Walter on that gray sand beach. “Apparently Old Walter had something of a fetish for walruses.”
“Oh.”
“Like I said, don't try to make a drunk make sense. It'll drive you crazier than he already is.”
“Still…” She pressed against him, seeking comfort. “To shoot seven people-”
“Eight, if you count the baby.”
“Eight-I-Liam, I can't imagine ever getting that drunk.”
“Not many people can, and we should be grateful.” He ran his hand down Wy's spine. A boat went by, but it was far enough off-shore and the driftwood log they were lying behind was high enough that they were hidden from view. He noticed Wy hadn't bothered to check, and smiled to himself. “Max Bayless saw Molly Malone and young Walter together last summer. I talked to him on the phone last week. Bayless won't come right out and admit it, but young Walter says he tried to blackmail him. He told Bayless to shove it. I think he was hoping that Bayless would tell David, that it would force a situation so Molly would leave David for him. Well, Bayless told him, all right, but all David did was fire him.”
And start an affair with Tanya Bernard, he thought. The dates were about right, and she was ripe for the picking. Poor little Tanya.
“Luckiest thing that ever happened to Max Bayless,” Wy said. “If he'd still been David Malone's deckhand, he'd be dead today. What about Frank? What's going to happen to him?”
“Frank is another matter. He assaulted a state trooper. Frank's going away for a while.”
“And McLynn?”
“McLynn will never take another free step in his life, not so long as I have breath in my body.” Liam's hand strayed to rub lightly at the bandage on her arm. “I'm sorry for this, Wy.”
She raised her head. “What? Why? You had nothing to do with it.”
“Yes, I did,” he said. “Yes, I did. I should have taken McLynn's personality into account. Every sentence he started began with ‘I’ or ‘My.’ ‘Artifacts I have excavated over the summer,’ remember? ‘I was going to stop him.’ Nelson didn't help him on the dig, Prince wasn't with him when he tried to stop Frank. A guy who can see only himself in any picture is someone you don't turn your back on. And I should have listened to you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You're very observant, Wy. You'd have made a good cop.”
“Thanks, I'll stick to flying.”
“You told me exactly what McLynn did when you landed at the dig. Something about that bothered me, but I was paying more attention to you than I was to the case. As the calypso poet says, I've got to learn to play all of my hunches. McLynn went to the camp tent first, not the dig tent like he usually did, you said.”
She sat up. “I didn't even think-he meant me to find Nelson's body, didn't he?”
“Let's say he didn't want to be the one who did find Nelson's body. And the dig tent flap was tied, wasn't it?”
“From the outside!” She was indignant. “That prick!” She looked down at him. “Did I tell you how I got the shovel away from him?”
His chest shook with a laugh. “About fourteen times.”
“Oh.” Silence. “I was standing facing him, see, and I went into Horse Stance, hands at-”
She squealed when he rolled over on her and started tickling her.
The voice came to them from the top of the bluff. “Wy! Wy?”
“It's Jo, Liam, let me up.”
“Jo and me have got to talk,” he mumbled, disgruntled.
“Jo?” Wy called. “What do you want?”
“There's somebody here who wants to talk to you. He's coming down.”
“Wait a minute!”
“Too late, he's coming down.”
“Shit!” Wy said, scrambling for her clothes. She got one leg into a pair of jeans, realized they were Liam's and threw them at him. “Get dressed!”
Getting naked with Wy Chouinard had been a cherished goal for a very long time and Liam wasn't ready to get dressed. Grumbling, he did so, because he didn't know who this visitor was, and there wasn't anyone besides Wy he wanted to be naked with anyway. “Who is it?”
A log shifted on the fire and the flames blazed up as the man took the last step down in one big jump and landed with a thump in the sand. He was of medium height, with well-defined shoulders, a thick pelt of dark blond curls and a pair laughing green eyes.
“Oh my god,” Wy said.
Liam squinted at the man coming up the beach. “Who's that?”
Wy got to her feet. “Gary? Gary, is that you?”
The man saw her and broke into a grin. “Wy!” He sprinted forward, kicking sand up behind him, and grabbed Wy in his arms to swing her around in a circle. “Wy!” He kissed her, an exuberant and enthusiastic smack you could have heard on the other side of the river.
Liam stood up, at first astonished and then annoyed. He was afraid that anything that came out of his mouth would make him sound like a jealous fool, so he contented himself with brushing the sand off of his jeans, which he was suddenly very glad he had on.
After what seemed an inordinately long time Gary put Wy down and looked at Liam over her shoulder. “Gary Dunaway,” he said, and stuck out a hand.
Liam accepted it with reluctance and a nameless, nagging fear. “Liam Campbell.” Dunaway's handshake was firm and dry. Liam hated it.
“I figured. My sister told me about you.”
“Jo Dunaway? Jo's your sister?”
Gary nodded, grinning. It wasn't a humorous grin, Liam noted that right off, it was hard-edged and challenging and not very friendly at all. “Yeah, my sister the muckraker. Lincoln Steffens lives.”
Wy chuckled. She was flushed and smiling, Liam noted. “I always knew she was possessed by someone.”
“So that's how you know Gary,” Liam said to Wy, determined to relegate this guy into a safe, brotherly role.
Her smile faded. “Sort of. I went home with Jo for Thanksgiving, the first year we were in Anchorage. That's where we met.”
“And I followed her all the way to college,” Gary said, still grinning, still with that edge, still with that challenge.
Wy's laugh was weak and unconvincing.
Liam felt himself bristle, and told himself to knock it off. It wasn't like there weren't any women out there before Jenny.
Gary's grin widened.
In an instinct that went back to the caves, Liam stepped next to Wy and settled his hand at the base of her neck. He could feel the muscles tense beneath his palm, and he waited with a curious kind of fatalism for her to shrug him off.
She didn't. She looked Gary straight in the eye and said, every inch the polite hostess, “It's great to see you again, Gary. How have you been?”
Overhead, the raven stretched out his neck and gave a long, mocking croak.
Dana Stabenow
