"Fire And Ice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stabenow Dana)

THREE

"Liam," Wy said in an urgent undertone.

He watched the Metroliner line up on final as if his life depended on its pilot's perfect takeoff. "What?"

"I have to fly. It's how I make my living. Herring seasons don't last that long. Fish and Game could announce an opener at any moment. I've got to get back in the air. Can I take my plane up?"

He was looking at the plane in question, the red and white paint job, the faded red fabric of the wings, the worn white call letters down the side. If he looked hard enough, he was sure he would find a scratch in the right-side door that he himself had put there while loading a cooler with Pete Petersham's severed head inside into the plane. Two years and a lifetime ago. Seven-eight Zulu. The lines of the little plane were almost as familiar to him as the laugh lines at the corners of its pilot's eyes. "No," he said. "You can't take her up. Not yet."

A variety of expressions crossed her face: anger, frustration… fear. Why fear? A cold knot grew at the pit of his stomach. "Wy, where were you when this happened?"

The anger was back with a vengeance, then. "Oh, so I sabotaged my own plane to kill a guy I'm not going to be able to spot without, just so I won't make my loan payment and my insurance payment and my tax payment, not to mention attorney fees for-" She bit the rest of her words off with an effort.

He waited patiently. Better than most, she knew the drill.

After a moment she said curtly, "I was getting us lunch at Bill's."

"Who's Bill?"

"Bill's Bar and Grill. It's a bar and a restaurant in town. There isn't one out here at the airport." She walked over to her truck and wrenched open the door, producing a grease-stained brown paper shopping bag. Making an elaborate show of it, she opened it and displayed the burgers and fries inside, both wrapped in foil and exuding a heavenly aroma.

Liam's stomach growled. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was almost six o'clock. He'd had a McDonald's sausage biscuit for breakfast and an apple for lunch, but then he hadn't been hungry lately. He was now. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so hungry. Yes he could-the last time he'd been really hungry he'd been sitting down to dinner across from the brown-eyed blonde glaring at him now.

Well. No point in letting the food go to waste, especially if it tasted anywhere near as good as it smelled. He reached for one of the burgers, unwrapped the foil, and bit in. It was lukewarm but juicy and had just the right ratio of onion to meat. The fries were good, too; real potatoes, heavy on the salt and greasier than the bilge of a boat.

Wy looked startled, and then, fleetingly, amused.

There were one or two exclamations of disapproval from the remainder of the crowd, as if there was something intrinsically profane in ingesting nourishment in the presence of the dead, but after some hesitation, a little muttering, and a few pointed glances at the mound beneath the blue tarp, they began to drift away, to their homes and kitchens. It was dinnertime, after all.

Liam took another bite of burger and motioned to Gary Gruber, still hovering indecisively around the periphery. Liam couldn't decide if Gruber had remained because the death had happened on his watch on property for which he was responsible, or out of a perverse fascination with the act itself. From his expression, half appalled, half inquisitive, it was probably a combination of both. "Have you called an ambulance?" A thought struck him and Liam swallowed a mouthful of burger. "Newenham does have an ambulance, don't they?"

Gruber nodded. "Yes. I called the dispatcher and she said she'd find him and send him on."

"Only one?"

Gruber nodded, watching with fascination as Liam munched steadily through burger and fries and washed everything down with the large Coke Wy produced from the truck's cab. It was a fountain Coke, and a good one. Liam was going to have to cultivate this Bill guy.

" Gary?" Wy said. "I need another spotter." None of them looked at what was left of her last one, which might not have been the best incentive for accepting her offer of employment. "Can you take a day? I pay the standard percentage."

"I told you, Wy," Liam said, "you can't take this plane up. Not right now. It may be a crime scene."

"I've got another plane," she informed him, and couldn't hide her pleasure at his surprise. "It's a 180, so it won't be as good for spotting as the Cub is, but it'll do." She saw his expression and said, urgency back, "I've got to get in the air, Liam. The whole fleet's out now, waiting on an announcement from Fish and Game to put their nets in the water. The herring season only lasts until they catch the quota, and I'm spotting for the high boat in the bay. And Cecil Wolfe didn't get to be high boat with his spotter on the ground," she added with feeling.

"No shit," Gruber said with equal feeling.

"All right," Liam said. "You can fly, but first let's take another look at that p-lead." He would have waited for the forensics team to show up and dust everything for prints, but since this wasn't NYPD Blue there would probably be an awfully long wait.

The two of them crowded into the open door of the Cub. "Can you unhook it or unscrew it or something?" Liam said.

"You aren't afraid I'm going to destroy evidence that might convict me of murder?" Wy said sarcastically.

Liam gave her a steady, unsmiling look. "All right," she muttered, and reached beneath the dash. A moment's fumbling, and two pieces of thin plastic-coated wire were resting in the palm of Liam's hand.

"It's been cut," Wy said, staring.

It was true. Normal wear and tear would not have produced the neatly severed ends of the little wire.

"Somebody must have reached up under the control panel and pulled down the lead and nipped it with a pair of wire cutters, and then shoved it back up again," Wy said. The tightness was back in her voice.

Liam allowed his free hand to give her shoulder a quick, reassuring squeeze. For a moment, for a brief, halcyon moment, he felt her relax into his touch. In the next second, she had tensed and pulled away.

He would have gone after her this time, even with Gruber watching, even if the crowd had still been there, even if somebody had been selling tickets, but a construction orange Chevy Suburban V-8 Turbo Diesel roared up to skid to a halt five feet from the Cub. The door opened and the grizzled old frowner from the Anchorage flight yelled, "You the new trooper?"

"Bad news travels fast," Wy muttered.

Liam shot her an unfriendly look and said to the man, "Yes, sir. What can I do for you?"

"Some drunk's shooting up Bill's," the man said. "Get in."

Liam, out of uniform and unarmed, said, "What about the local police?"

"We just lost two officers to the goddamned troopers," the man said, "two more went fishing, and we've got two left to do a six-man job. The one on duty right now is on the other side of town trying to keep Nick Pauk from killing Johnny Wassillie, and the wife of the other one flat won't wake him up from the first good sleep he's had in a week. You coming or not?"

Liam looked at Wy. He looked at the body lying on the ground in front of the Super Cub, which had no useful advice to offer. He looked at Gruber. "You stay here, watch the plane and the body, see that no one interferes with them. All right?"

Gruber, pausing in the act of jamming a fresh wad of bubble gum into his mouth, said blankly, "What?"

"Nobody touches that plane until I get back. When the ambulance shows up, tell the paramedic he can load the body but to wait here for me."

"What?"

"I'm deputizing you for the duration. Nobody else touches anything." Liam looked over at Wy. "Nobody. Got that?"

She looked up at that, and said with a trace of defiance, "I'll stay, too."

"I thought you had to get in the air."

"You just co-opted my spotter," she said, jerking her chin at Gruber. "And the Cub is my plane. I don't want anyone messing with her, either."

Good, Liam thought. Should the subject arise later, for whatever reason, Gruber could testify that Wy had gone nowhere near the Cub while Liam was gone.

"Goddammit, get the lead out!" the grizzled man said testily.

"One minute." Liam buttoned the severed p-lead into an inside pocket and went to the terminal to find his bag. Another police officer would have carried his weapon on board, but Liam was always afraid it might accidentally discharge in the cabin and blow up the plane. He located his bag-the rest of his stuff was being shipped-strapped on his regulation Smith and Wesson automatic, and went back outside to find that the old man had pulled up to the door. Liam climbed into the passenger seat and the old man slammed the Suburban into first and they pulled forward with a jerk. Liam slapped a hand on the dash to brace himself against the man's careless shifting, not improved by the many and deep potholes on the road between the airport and town. It was a jolting, bouncing ride. "They ever grade this road?" he said above the noise.

The man grunted. "Every week." He thrust out a ham-sized right hand. "Jim Earl. I'm the mayor of Newenham."

"Oh." Liam took Earl's hand. Hizzoner had a firm, callused grip. "Liam Campbell."

"I know. Thought that was you when I saw you in the Anchorage airport. We heard you were coming."

"Oh," Liam repeated, and wondered what else they had heard. A crater the size of Copernicus loomed up in front of them. Jim Earl drove right through it. When he came down off the ceiling Liam wedged himself into the corner as firmly as he could, one hand gripping the back of the seat and the other pressing against the glove compartment. "What's the situation with the local cop? Should we maybe detour over there first, see if he needs backup?"

"Shit no." Earl spit out the window, fortunately rolled down. In retaliation, a large blast of wet, cold air flooded the cab. "The way I hear it, Amy Pauk thought Nick was safe out fighting for his share of herring, so she invited Johnny Wassillie over for the morning. Johnny and Amy got this thing going," Earl added parenthetically. "They think nobody knows about it." He snorted again. It seemed to be his favorite expression. "Fine, fine, most of us could give a shit who's screwing who, and I'm all for a quiet life anyway. Only trouble is Nick's boat broke down and he had to limp back into the harbor early. Goes home to grab some grub, catches Nick and Amy in the sack, goes for his rifle, starts a little ventilating. Dumb bastard." The mayor shook his head. "It's too early in the day for that shit."

Liam checked his watch. It was just coming up on six-thirty. As casually as he could, he said, "So it's a hostage situation? Are there any children involved? What kind of gun does Pauk have? Did he shoot his wife? Did he shoot Mr., uh, Mr.-"

"Wassillie, Johnny Wassillie, and hell yes, he shot him. Only winged him, though." Jim Earl seemed regretful to report this. He tapped the scanner hanging beneath the dash. "On the way over to get you, I heard Roger Raymo report in to the dispatcher. That'd be our day shift officer, the one we got left," Earl added with some bitterness. "He said he'd managed to disarm Nick before he got around to shooting Amy." Earl grinned. "Scared her, though, I bet." He thought about it. "Maybe. Amy's pretty scary herself, when she's of a mind to it."

Liam's hand slid from the holster, and he let out a long, slow breath. "Okay," he said, he hoped mildly. He hadn't been on the ground for-he checked his watch-three hours, and already there had been two and possibly three attempts at murder.

Maybe four, once he got his hands on Wy.

"No, we're headed for Bill's," Earl said with grim satisfaction. "Local watering hole, open from six a.m. until midnight, two a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Best burgers in town." He shot Liam a sardonic look. "Only burgers in town."

"Uh-huh," Liam said, dragging his attention back to the situation at hand. "You said there'd been shooting?"

Jim Earl snorted. "No shit, Sherlock."

Liam waited. "So, who got shot?"

"Not who, what."

"I beg your pardon?"

The Suburban bottomed out over another pothole. Liam winced at the resulting tortured scrape of metal. Jim Earl didn't seem to notice. "Teddy Engebretsen's boat broke down just about the time the gun went off for herring. He and Nick limped back into the harbor together; Nick went home to see if he could bag hisself a Wassillie, Teddy went on up to Bill's to drown his sorrows. Reasonable response," Earl added parenthetically. "Hell of a thing to miss out on, herring. Enough money in one set for the boat payment and the insurance payment and a new engine and a trip to Seattle. If you make the right one in the right place."

Liam made a small noise that could have meant assent. He knew even less about herring fishing than he did about aviation, although in the case of the former it was distance and inexperience, not terror and intent that kept him ignorant.

"So, Teddy gets a little liquored up." Earl paused. "Well, okay, maybe a lot liquored up, and he takes exception to what's on the jukebox." A small shudder seemed to ripple up Jim Earl's spine. "Bill keeps a thirty-ought-six behind the bar in case of trouble. Teddy grabbed it and shot out the jukebox. Right in the middle of "Margaritaville." Dumb bastard." He shook his head. "Poor, dumb bastard." He spit out the window again and added, "Poor dumb dead bastard is what he's going to be if we don't get there in time."

They were in town now, a confused mass of buildings built on a series of small rolling hills that reminded Liam of sand dunes in shape and size, sand dunes covered with a thick encrustation of pine and spruce and alder and willow and birch. The town's buildings varied in construction from prefabricated corrugated metal to rickety two-story wooden plank to split log, lining the sides of a labyrinthine arrangement of streets. Paved streets, both Liam and Jim Earl's truck were glad to notice. They passed two grocery stores, one with its corrugated metal siding painted an electric blue and a small front porch that was crowded with a group of teenage boys.

As the Suburban passed the store, the group of boys spilled down the steps and into the street. Jim Earl leaned on the horn. The boys looked around, mimed astonishment at this appearance of a wheeled vehicle in the middle of the road, and one by one and as slowly as was humanly possible drifted to the curb.

One boy in particular, shorter and younger than the others, was even more obvious than the rest. He wore jeans that bagged out down to his knees and a baseball cap on backward. He stooped to fuss with a cuff, which although rolled three times, was still dragging the ground, and barely twitched when Jim Earl's horn gave another impatient blast. He took his time straightening up, adjusted his cap, and gave Jim Earl a sideways glance that bordered on insolence. He was short and stocky, with straight black hair and the classic high cheekbones, tilted eyes, and golden skin of the upriver Yupik. "Goddammit, kid, move outta the goddamn way!" the mayor bellowed out the window, and hit the horn again.

The other boys had retreated to the porch and were whistling and hooting and catcalling. The boy looked from them to the truck and back again, held a brief, internal debate, and then with an almost imperceptible shrug moved ever so slowly to one side of the street. "About goddamn time," Jim Earl bellowed again, and trod on the accelerator.

Liam twisted his head to watch the boy swagger up the steps to the porch, where he was greeted like a conquering hero, with a lot of back- and hand-slapping, shoulder-shaking, and fist feints to the jaw. The boy turned suddenly and caught Liam's eye. He smiled, slowly, arrogant satisfaction sitting on his young face like war paint, and then the Suburban went around a corner and the boy was lost from view.

The potholes had given way to pavement, but the streets were a warren of sudden rises and dogleg curves. Jim Earl swooped down one such rise and around one of the doglegs, whipped past a large group of buildings on a wooden dock that could have been a cannery or the local fuel dock or the SeaLand warehouse-they were going too fast for Liam to be sure-and pulled up with a jerk at a sprawling, one-story building that featured a shallow-peaked tin roof and green vinyl siding. It sat in the middle of a large parking lot, about three-quarters filled.

The sight did not fill Liam with joy, who had visions of all the vehicle owners being held hostage at gunpoint. "Mayor-" he began.

"Call me Jim Earl," the mayor said, turning off the ignition without bothering to throw out the clutch. The Suburban lurched and gurgled. "Everybody does." With a protesting diesely rattle, the engine died.

"Hold on a minute," Liam said, raising a hand. "You're saying there's a man in there with a gun, right? How many other people are in there? Is he holding them hostage? What kind of gun does he-"

Jim Earl snorted again, spit again, and slammed open the driver's side door. "Shit, Liam, Teddy don't got no gun. Bill done took it away from him."

"What?" Liam got out and slammed shut his own door. "Then what the hell am I doing here?" Ten miles from what might be a real murder scene, and farther than that in space and time from Wy. Suddenly he was furious. "Now, look, Jim Earl"-it was difficult to separate those two names-"I just set foot in Newenham, and I know, because you've told me, that your local force is shorthanded, but I've got some real work to do out at your airport, and-"

Mayor Jim Earl snorted, spat, and swore all in the same breath. "Shit, boy, I didn't haul your ass all the way in from the airport to take Teddy into custody." The tall, grizzled man walked around the hood of the car and poked Liam in the chest with a bony finger. "You're here to save his ass. You don't understand: Teddy shot the jukebox in the middle of "Margaritaville." He'll be lucky to get out of there alive." He grinned for the first time, displaying a set of large, improbably white teeth. "I wouldn't care but he's my son-inlaw, and I don't want the raising of his kids. Hellions, every one of them. You might be arresting me for murder my own self, should I be fool enough to take on that job."

And with that he vaulted the faded gray wooden steps and disappeared inside the building with the sign on it that said in unprepossessing black block letters, BILL'S BAR AND GRILL.

From the top of a nearby streetlight, an enormous raven surveyed the situation with a sardonic eye and croaked at the mayor's receding back. When Liam looked around to meet the black bird's steady gaze, the raven clicked at him, a series of throaty cackles that sounded somehow mocking.

It was the last sound Liam heard before he went in the door of the bar, from which he promptly came staggering out backward, falling down the stairs and landing with a thump on the pavement, fanny-first. "What the hell?" He looked up just in time to see a tangle of bodies roll down the steps and right over the top of him, to hit hard against the already bruised bumper of the construction orange Suburban. The tangle resolved itself into three people, two men and one woman. One of the men had a rifle and the second man and the woman dove on top of him and the resulting scuffle looked like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

He fumbled to his feet, brushed off the seat of his jeans and tried out his trooper voice. "Now, just hold it right there!"

The scuffle paused, looked him over, saw a tall man with an authoritative frown but nothing much else to recommend they obey him, and resumed the scramble. The man with the gun managed to get his finger on the trigger and the gun fired, bang! The bullet glanced off the windshield of the Suburban but there were already so many cracks in it Liam couldn't really tell if it had left a mark.

Enough was enough. He waded into the fray and grabbed someone by the scruff of the neck and someone else by the seat of the pants. "Hey!" a voice said indignantly, and he looked down to see that he had the woman by the seat of the pants.

"Sorry," he said without apology, dropped her and the unarmed man, and grabbed for the rifle, which went off again just before his hand closed around the barrel. The bullet sang past his ears and clipped the branch the raven was sitting on. The bird rose up in the air with an affronted squawk and a tremendous flapping of wings to hover over the shooter and unload a large helping of bird shit down his cheek and the front of his shirt. He squawked again, a somehow menacing sound that promised more of the same should he be disturbed a second time, and went back to the spruce tree to land on a branch a little higher up the trunk.

"Eyaaaagh!" said the shooter, and the woman, glaring at him, snapped, "Serves you goddamn right, you nearsighted little bastard! If you'd just buy some glasses maybe once in a while you could hit what you aimed at!" She hauled him to his feet by the collar and hustled him up the steps.

"Wait a minute-" Liam said, standing still with the rifle in one hand.

The second man followed the first two up the steps.

Liam stared at the door. "What the hell?"

From his new branch, the raven croaked at him. "Who asked you?" Liam retorted.

He climbed the steps again, keeping to one side this time. The door opened inward, and he hooked a cautious eye around the edge.

Inside, it was a bar like any fifty other Alaskan bars he'd been in, from Kenai to Ketchikan, Dutch Harbor to Nome, Barrow to Anchorage. He stood in the doorway, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light. A bar ran down the left side of the room; booths and the jukebox lined the right side. There was a stage the size of an end table against the back wall with an even smaller, imitation parquet dance floor in front of it. The rest of the floor was covered with tables and chairs. There was a window into the kitchen through the back wall, and the air was filled with the tantalizing odor of a deep fat fryer on overdrive. The floor was gritty beneath his feet, and the rafters were unfinished timber festooned with caribou racks, lead line, cork line, green fishnets, and various animal pelts. Neon beer signs glowed from every available inch of wall space. There were two windows overlooking the parking lot, grimed with years of condensed fat. More signs blinked on and off in them.

Something was missing. It took a moment for Liam to realize what it was. There wasn't any television. No thirty-two-inch screen blaring out the latest Madison Avenue seductions into overspending your income on like-arock pickups, after which tall black men would chase after balls of assorted shapes and sizes, unless it was short white men whacking the hell out of a puck, when they weren't whacking the hell out of each other. Sports made no sense to Liam. The only form of exercise he considered worth pursuing was undertaken horizontally. "Pushups?" Wy had asked oh so innocently when he had propounded this theory to her. "Bench-pressing? Oh, I know, wrestling," and she had tumbled him back onto the bed and demonstrated various holds.

The memory, flashing in from nowhere, halted him in his tracks. He came back to himself and, flushing slightly, looked around for Teddy, whose ass he was there to save.

It wasn't only that there was no television and that the jukebox wasn't playing-the bar was quiet. Too quiet, especially for a bar in the Bush at the beginning of the fishing season. The booths and tables were full, the bar was lined with patrons, and there should have been talk, laughter, more than a few feminine shrieks of delight or dismay, and at the very least two men arguing blearily over who corked who during last summer's salmon season.

But it was quiet instead, with a quality of silence Liam might have expected to find at a drumhead court-martial. There were maybe thirty people present, most of them standing in a semicircle a respectful distance from the action without being so foolish as to put themselves out of range of hearing every word. Liam cast a quick eye over the group. It was a varied bunch, about two-thirds male, white, Native, mixed race, and what appeared to be a couple of heavy equipment salesmen from South Korea who looked delighted with fortune's putting an event in their path that had previously only been granted them via John Wayne movies. There was an ethereal young blonde with a bar towel wrapped around her waist, one hand on her hip, who was tapping an impatient foot as if to indicate she was ready to get back to generating tips now, thanks. Their shoulders stooped and hands crabbed from a lifetime of picking fish, three or four old fishermen in white canvas caps worn a dull gray watched everything out of bright, avid eyes. In a back booth one man had his head pillowed in his arms and was sleeping through it all. A barfly with glassy eyes and a lot of miles on her hung affectionately on the arm of the man Liam recognized from the altercation outside, a stocky young man with a merry grin that displayed irresistible twin dimples. "Come on, Mac honey," the barfly said in a slurred voice. "Les go back to my place, hmm?"

Mac honey was sober enough to catch the barfly's hand as it slid to his crotch, and to get while the getting was still good. "Sorry, Marcie," he said, draining his beer and setting the empty bottle on the bar. "I've got a party to go to, and a girlfriend to keep happy."

He threaded his way through the throng, nodding politely as he passed in front of Liam, and the sound of the door closing behind him was magnified by the hush surrounding the main event. The only noise came from a man Liam recognized as the Old Fart from the plane that afternoon. He was standing in front of the jukebox, whose clear plastic lid was marred with a neat round hole surrounded by a starburst array of cracks. The lid was back, and the Old Fart was tinkering with the insides. He looked around once when Liam came in, said "Huh!" in a loud voice, and selected a larger screwdriver before returning to his work.

Liam looked further for the source of quiet. It wasn't hard to find. It hadn't taken them long, once they got him inside; the man who had been separated from the rifle was seated in a chair and immobilized with enough bright yellow polypropylene line to restrain King Kong. He was maybe thirty years old, five-eight, thickset, with matted brown hair and terrified brown eyes that stared at Liam over the bar rag that had been used to gag him.

Teddy Engebretsen might be drunk, but he wasn't so drunk he didn't know his life was in grave danger.

Standing opposite him was a woman, a woman who towered over Teddy in presence if not in height. The same woman who had rolled over the top of Liam outside, she was about five feet two inches tall and plump as a pigeon, her body a cascading series of rich curves; cheek, chin, breast, belly, hip, thigh, calf, a model for Rubens clad in clean, faded jeans and a gray T-shirt cinched in with a wide leather belt. Zaftig, they called it, Liam remembered from somewhere, as in making a man's palms itch.

All attention in the room was focused on these two. No one seemed to be moving; no one, with the exception of the Alaskan Old Fart, seemed to be breathing. Liam, mindful of his training, gave his gun belt an authoritative hitch and said in his calmest, deepest voice, "What seems to be the trouble here?"

The woman turned to look at him, and Liam registered three things immediately. Her eyes were the blue of glacier ice and thickly lashed, her well-filled T-shirt had a picture of a beribboned mask with the words "New Orleans Jazz Fest" written beneath it, and she had one of the firmest jaws he'd ever seen. She spoke, moved, and acted with a vigor that belied the lines on her face and the color of her hair, a thick silver swath combed straight back from her face that fell to a neatly trimmed line just above her shoulders.

"Who in the hell are you?" she demanded. "Give me that."

She made as if to snatch the rifle from him. He moved it away and she said irritably, "Oh, don't bother, you damn fool, I'm the magistrate for this district."

He looked at her for a long moment, and then sought out Jim Earl's face in the crowd. Jim Earl gave a confirming nod.

"Uh-huh," Liam said, but he kept hold of the rifle. "State Trooper Liam Campbell, ma'am."

"And don't call me ma'am," she snapped. "Makes me feel like I'm a hundred years old."

"Close enough!" the man at the jukebox said without turning around.

"Oh shut up, you old fart," the woman said. Again she reached for the rifle, and this time Liam let her take it. "The name's Billington, Linda Billington. You can call me Bill; everybody does." She shifted the rifle to extend a hand. Her grip was dry and firm-one pump, up and down, and withdrawn. She looked him over critically. "Liam Campbell, is it? We heard you were coming. They get that mess cleaned up at Denali?"

Liam thought "mess" was an inadequate way of referring to the screwup that had cost five lives and his job. "Yes," he said briefly.

Bright eyes examined him shrewdly. "Buck stopped on your desk, I hear."

"Yes. Look, what-"

"Didn't help they were a family of Natives, and you and the other two troopers involved were as white as you can get without bleach."

"No." He could feel the eyes of many trained upon him. This was even worse than he had expected. "What seems to-"

"You'll have a lot to prove here, Liam," she said. "But it's a good town. Pretty fairminded bunch of people. They'll judge you, all right, but they'll judge you on what you do here, not what you did before you came here."

"Yes, ma'am," Liam said woodenly.

"Bill, dammit. I don't want to be called ma'am until I'm at least a hundred."

"Won't be long now!" the Old Fart bellowed.

"Oh shut up," Bill said without heat. "In the meantime, Liam, this here is Teddy Engebretsen, who's got nothing better to do on a fine spring day such as this than to come in and shoot up my bar with my own rifle." She glared at the miscreant, who whimpered behind his bar rag gag. "And then when we think he's all calmed down, he has the gall to go for it a second time!" Teddy whimpered again. "I'm just figuring on what to do with him."

"Uh-huh," Liam said, because for the life of him he couldn't think what else to say. He shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. He was, after all, the first officer on the scene. It was up to him to establish his sense of authority. He buried his resentment at the woman's blabbering of his private affairs-as private as they get when they've been on the front page of the Anchorage Daily News for a week straight-to most of the population of Newenham. "Well, Ms. Billington-"

"Who's that?" she demanded. "I told you to call me Bill. That's my name. Liam," she added pointedly.

So much for establishing his sense of authority. "Okay, Bill," he said, trying an ingratiating smile. She didn't visibly soften, but then the smile hadn't been all that sincere, and he persevered, ever mindful of the clock ticking in the background on the crime scene-if it was one-at the airport, and even more conscious of the burning if irrational need to get back to Wy before she vanished on him again. "What exactly happened here?"

"Teddy shot up the place," she replied promptly. "He come in here all liquored up, then got more so-my fault for not cutting him off sooner. He takes exception to what's on the jukebox, which isn't any of his goddamn business and he can go down to the Seaside and listen to punk rock music and like it from now on." She glared again at the miscreant, who seemed to shrink inside his clothes.

"And?" Liam prompted.

Her face darkened. "I got to him before he got more than one off, but that one hit my jukebox. Right in the middle of "Margaritaville." She looked back at Liam. "Nobody does that to Jimmy Buffett. Not in my bar. Nobody."

"Uh-huh," Liam said. Bill's priorities seemed a little skewed to him, given the number of people in the room who could have been shot instead, herself included. "And we are doing-what, now?"

"I was deciding on that when the cavalry barreled in the door," she said with a sardonic look. "By the way, where is your uniform, trooper?"

Bill was an officer of the court, and as such his coconspirator in upholding the letter as well as the spirit of the law in this section of the Alaskan Bush. Liam reminded himself of this, and took care to keep his tone civil. "In my luggage. I just got off the plane," he added, sounding to his own ears a little aggrieved.

"Uh-huh," she mimicked him, and smiled suddenly. He stared, dazzled. It was like the sun coming out on a bare and wintry day. Her face was strong of brow, nose, and jaw and her skin was lined at the corners of eyes and mouth, but there was no mistaking the warm humor, the manifest charm, and the undeniable sex appeal.

"Watch it, boy," someone growled, and Liam turned to see the Old Fart glaring at him. "She's taken." He pointed with the screwdriver. "And so are you."

Liam blinked. A ripple of laughter went around the room, defusing some of the tension. He shook himself. The Old Fart must have picked up on Wy at the airport. It seemed unlikely, given that the Old Fart must have adjourned to Bill's early on, but then if any part of what Liam had been feeling had showed on his face, he had probably been lit up like one of the neon signs on the wall behind him. It was an uncomfortable thought for a deeply private man, and he turned back to Bill. "What were you intending to do with Mr. Engebretsen, Bill?"

They both regarded the bound man for a moment. The bar watched and waited in silence. "Well," Bill said finally, "I was thinking about supergluing his shooting hand to one cheek of his ass and his other hand around a beer bottle."

Liam stared. She appeared to be absolutely serious. He opened his mouth, and she said, "He drinks too much, does Teddy. I'm not totally unfeeling-the bottle of beer will be a full one, but after it's gone, that's it."

"I like it," the Old Fart said, and grinned evilly when Teddy's eyes bulged over the edge of the gag.

"Or we could just shoot him," she said, and raised the.30-06 to work the action. She gave a satisfied nod. "Plenty of ammunition. 'Course at this distance I really only need one."

The crowd, as a unit, took one step back.

Not just a court-martial, Liam thought, but an execution as well. He admired Bill's efficiency. He started to say something soothing, only to be beaten to it by Jim Earl. "Now, Bill-"

"Put a lid on it, Jim Earl," Bill said. "You been letting this boy run wild since he starting courting your daughter in high school." She bent a severe look upon the mayor. "Why you let him court her is something we won't get into right now." The mayor's face went red, and he began to splutter. Ignoring him, Bill continued, "Fact is, somebody's got to shake some sense into Teddy, and it looks like I've been elected. Besides," she added inexorably, in what was becoming a litany, "he came into my saloon, and he shot up my jukebox, and he shot it up when Jimmy was singing, and he shot it up when Jimmy was singing "Margaritaville." Nobody does that in my bar. And nobody ever, ever does that to Jimmy."

"Uh," Liam said.

"Yes, Liam?" Bill said, looking at him with a bland smile.

Liam made what felt even to himself like a feeble attempt to gain control of the situation. "Surely there has to be a local ordinance against the shooting of a firearm within the city limits."

Bill raised her brows. "I'm sure there must be. And your point is?"

"Well, I-" Liam was beginning to sweat, although not as freely as Teddy Engebretsen. It didn't help that the rest of the people in the bar were fully alive to his dilemma and thoroughly enjoying it. Liam felt like the star attraction in a three-ring circus. He looked back at Bill, and for the first time noticed the twinkle lurking at the back of her eyes. He stared at her, and the twinkle grew.

"There, that oughta do it." The lid on the jukebox came down with a solid thud and the Old Fart dropped a quarter into the machine and punched in a selection. Nothing happened. The twinkle in Bill's eyes vanished, and Teddy looked even more terrified, if that was possible. "Come on, you son of a bitch," the Old Fart said, and squared off to give the jukebox a quick kick in the side. The machine hiccuped once and came alive with the sound of steel drums and a harmonica collaborating on a Caribbean rhythm that inspired one couple into an impromptu jitterbug. Jimmy was back.

Tension visibly eased. The Old Fart packed up the toolbox and lugged it to the bar, where he let it drop with a resounding crash. He looked impatiently around for Bill. "Well, come on, woman, don't just stand there, get me a beer!"

Bill grumbled but did as she was told, absentmindedly handing off the rifle to Liam as she passed. The Old Fart looked at him. "Get your butt up here, too, boy-I'll buy you a drink. Bill, pour him some o' that Glenmorangie-you know, that stuff bottled by the only ten honest men on the Isle of Skye, or some such."

Bill snapped her fingers and pointed at the Old Fart. "That was why you made me buy this stuff."

The Old Fart shrugged. "What can I say? I'm good."

Liam found himself standing at the bar. If he'd had time to think about it he might have wondered how he got there, especially with what was waiting for him at the airport, but for the moment he didn't seem to have much choice in the matter. It all seemed somewhat dreamlike, anyway-the body at the airport, the reappearance of Wy in his life when he had thought her lost to him forever, a practicing vigilante who moonlighted as the local magistrate, and now, a soon-to-be-drunken jukebox repairman. He was wrong-this wasn't a three-ring circus, it was an alternate plane of existence.

The Old Fart was a foot shorter than the trooper, which he rectified by hoisting himself up on a stool. He turned to Liam and stuck out a hand. "Moses Alakuyak, shaman."

His beer and Liam's single malt arrived. Moses held out his bottle of beer and Liam clinked his glass against it. "To women," Moses said. "Not all of them leave, you know."

"I beg your pardon?" Liam said.

Moses drained his bottle in one long, continuous swallow. "Barkeep! Do it again! Not that it matters," he said, turning back to Liam. "Pretty soon there'll be nothing left of this goddamn planet but a garbage dump and a grave."

Ten years of practicing law enforcement with the Alaska State Troopers was an excellent way to hone one's survival skills. Liam murmured something that could have been agreement, and sipped cautiously at his glass, but it was the real thing all right: Glenmorangie single malt scotch. He swirled the liquid around in his glass and inhaled with reverence.

"People think survival of the fittest is all right for animals but not for people," Moses explained expansively. "We're not culling the human herd the way we oughta. We're saving the weakest: the ones with AIDS, the folks in Africa who can't figure out how to feed themselves, them Serbs who can't stop shooting at their neighbors. We're gonna rescue 'em all, and wipe out the human race doing it." The old man snorted, a comprehensive sound issuing forth from his snubbed nose. "By God," he said, voice rising, "we're living in the best of times right now, because it sure as hell ain't gonna get any better."

The scotch slid down Liam's throat like melted butter. He set the glass down. "Thanks for the drink, Moses," he said, and paused. "Wait a minute. How did you know I drink single malt scotch?"

"I know a lot of things about you," Moses said, knocking back his second beer and waving for a third. Bill brought it, and set it down gently in front of him. There was none of the condemnation in her expression Liam had seen there for Teddy Engebretsen. Of course, Moses had fixed the jukebox and returned Jimmy Buffett to his natural setting, a bar, so Bill was no doubt inclined to look kindly upon him.

Bill stretched out a hand and cupped Moses' cheek. "Going to be one of those nights, huh?" she said in the softest tone Liam had yet to hear her use.

"Don't worry about it," Moses said gruffly, but he didn't turn away when she leaned over the bar and kissed him. It wasn't the kiss of a friend, either; it went on for a while, and Moses hooked a hand around the back of Bill's head and cooperated with enthusiasm, to the vocal approval of the bar's other customers.

Bill pulled back and gave Moses a sweet smile. "Later, lover."

He caught at her hand before she could move down the bar, and kissed it. "Later."

There was a wealth of promise in both word and kiss. Liam was trying to read the fine print of the labels on the line of bottles on the opposite wall when Moses dug an elbow into his side. "Okay to look now, trooper." The Old Fart grinned up at him, and now that he was looking for it, Liam could see the Alakuyak in him, in the barely perceptible slant of his eyes, the high, flat cheekbones, the snubbed nose. Come to think of it, his height should have been a dead giveaway-most Yupik men ranged between four-eight and five-five. But his skin was olive, not golden, his hair a grizzled brown, not the sleek black cap found in the villages, and his eyes were a startling gray, a gray so light they had almost no color at all. They were looking at Liam now, clear, cool, assessing, and Liam could not shake the uncomfortable feeling that they could see right through him.

Moses didn't help when he said, "Yeah, I know a lot of things, about everything, but right now I want to know why you're keeping a girt as fine as Wyanet Chouinard waiting on you."

The accusation took Liam aback, and he fumbled around for an acceptable answer. "Well, I-everything's happened so fast, I didn't know -the mayor came and-"

"I don't mean this bullshit." An allinclusive wave of one impatient hand took in Teddy Engebretsen, still bound and gagged. "Why didn't you come after her?"

Liam felt disembodied. "I'm married," he heard someone say.

"Like hell you are." Moses stared at him, not without sympathy. "That's no kind of way to live, boy."

"It's my life," Liam said, and the anger came back again, anger at himself, at Wy, at Jenny, at fate.

Moses regarded him impatiently. "Ain't never going to be a good time to make the break, boy. Your situation, painful though it is, aggravating though it is, is familiar to you. You've become comfortable in it. You don't want to make a mess, create fuss and inconvenience. Tell you something." The shaman, if that was what he was, snorted a laugh. "Tell you a lot of things, because I know a lot of things, but right now listen to this." Moses drained his fourth beer, and pointed to it for emphasis. "Life isn't neat. Know why? Because it's run by imperfect people who make messes, who then have to go around cleaning up after themselves." Moses gave Liam a severe once-over. "You're not much of a cleaner-upper, are you, boy?"

Liam could feel the heat rising up beneath his skin. All he could think of to say was "You don't talk like someone raised in Bush Alaska. Where did you go to school?"

"Hah!" Moses said, triumphant. "I can't talk like this because I was raised in a village, is that it? You got a lot to learn, boy, and I'm just the one to teach you. Stick around." He drained his glass with a satisfied smack of his lips, followed by a resonant and contented burp. "But not tonight. Bill! Hit me again!"

"In a minute." Bill took Liam's glass, drained it, and used the thick end to rap the bar, twice, sharp, quick raps, bringing everyone to momentary attention. She bent a severe eye on Teddy Engebretsen, still bound and gagged. He quailed. "Teddy Engebretsen, in my capacity as magistrate of the state of Alaska, I charge you with being drunk and disorderly in public, discharging a firearm within the city limits, and just generally being a pain in the ass. I find you guilty of same. Court's adjourned." She thumped the bar with the glass twice again. "He's all yours, trooper. Legally, anyway."

"What am I supposed to do with him?" Liam said.

Now it was Bill's turn to regard him with impatience. "Toss him in the hoosegow. What the hell kind of trooper are you?"

A magistrate for the state of Alaska didn't need a law degree, didn't need much more than a high school diploma or its equivalent and some standing in his or her community. Official arrest procedures called for the swearing out of a warrant, a reading of rights, an arraignment, a grand jury, a trial, a conviction-all those nitpicky little due-process things required by the Constitution of the United States and affirmed by the Bill of Rights, not to mention two hundred and twenty years of Supreme Court case law. Belief in those things made Liam the kind of trooper he was, but they didn't seem to count for much here and now. "Where exactly is the, er, hoosegow?" he said meekly.

"At the cop shop. Jim Earl'll show you."

"How long do I leave him there?"

"Long as I say so," Bill said.

"Oh."

Moses grinned at him.

It could be worse, Liam thought. At least Newenham's magistrate had taken the Sixth Amendment to heart, if no other. Teddy Engebretsen's trial had been speedy, and it sure as hell had been public.

A dimension beyond sight and sound, he thought, going down the stairs and out to the construction orange Suburban. A dimension known as the Twilight Zone.