The EMT slammed the doors of the ambulance and paused to give Liam a level, considering stare. "Guy walked into a propeller," Gould said. "The initial report from the scene, as conveyed to me by the dispatcher, indicated that the victim was dead before he hit the ground." He had been leaning on the ambulance. He straightened now. "I was delivering a breech baby in Icky at the time." He went around the ambulance, climbed into the cab, and drove off.
"Icky?" Liam said to the air. As in the Icky road?
Nobody answered him, so he fetched a flashlight and a garbage bag from the Blazer and went to inventory the contents of the Super Cub.
There were a handful of candy wrappers, two maps of Bristol Bay, five small green glass balls Liam recognized as Japanese fishing floats, a walrus tusk broken off near the root, a survival kit, two firestarter logs, two parkas, two pairs of boots, a liter-sized plastic Pepsi bottle half full of yellow liquid, a clam gun, a bucket, three mismatched gloves, and three handheld radios, which to Liam seemed a bit redundant. He put everything into the garbage bag and tied the neck into a firm overhand knot, then set it to one side on the tarmac.
He stuck his head back inside the airplane to make sure he hadn't missed anything. He reexamined the control panel. To his deliberately uneducated eye, it sported the usual array of dials, knobs, bells, and whistles. He pointed. "What's that?"
Next to him he felt Wy start, and smiled grimly to himself. Good. She should know by now that he was still as acutely aware of her presence as she was of his, that he could have told her the instant she stepped from the truck, that he had known to the inch how close she was standing next to him now.
"It's a radio," Wy said.
"I can see that much," Liam said. "Why is it bolted to the bottom of the control panel instead of being built in like the other one"-he pointed-"and why does it look so much newer?"
He turned to look down at her, and again surprised that look of fear on her face. It vanished, but he had seen it, it had been real, and he knew a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"It's a special radio. I installed it at the request of the skipper who heads up the consortium I spot herring for."
"What's so special about it?"
"It's scrambled. So if anybody stumbles across our channel, and I'm telling the skipper where I spotted a big ball of herring, nobody else can understand what I'm saying."
"I see. I suppose there's a descrambler on the skipper's end."
"Yes."
Liam pointed at the garbage bag that held the Cub's inventory. "Then why these other three radios?"
"Backups."
Again, she couldn't quite meet his eyes. Liam waited, but she didn't volunteer any further information. He looked at Gruber, who had materialized on the other side of the strut and who was engaged in wiping his runny nose on the sleeve of his brown jacket, jaws champing again at a wad of bubble gum. He blew a bubble that broke with a splat against his nose, and he slurped it back into his mouth.
"Want me to take that?" Wy said from Liam's other side, and he turned to see her indicating the garbage bag.
"No problem," he said, "I've got it."
He walked over to deposit the bag in the passenger seat of the Blazer, and as an afterthought locked the doors. It was evidence of a sort, after all, although he didn't have a clue yet as to just what it was evidence of, other than a serious sweet tooth and bad housekeeping. Back at the plane, he said to Wy, "Can you lock this thing up?"
"She should move it out of here," Gruber said. "It's kind of in the way."
"Have you got a tie-down?" Liam said. Wy nodded at the apron. "Okay, let's do it."
Wy walked around him to the tail of the plane, picked it up, and began towing the Cub toward the section of the apron she had indicated. Liam and Gruber caught up to help, but the little plane was so light it wasn't really necessary.
Wy's tie-down was some distance down the commercial side of the Newenham strip, off the main taxiway and behind three rows of other small planes. The tiny square of tarmac was at the very edge of the pavement, with a building the size and shape of an outhouse placed on the gravel directly behind it. Looking around, Liam saw other little houses lining the strip like so many miniature garages. Wy's was painted powder blue, and Wy towed the Cub to the tie-down in front of it.
The tie-down itself consisted of two small hoops of bent metal rod set into the pavement. A length of manila line, black electrician's tape sealing the ends, was fastened to each hoop by an eye sealed with more electrician's tape. Liam threaded one length of line to the matching fastening on the right strut, Wy elbowing Gruber aside to do the other.
Liam ducked out from beneath the wing. "At least I can do that much," he said, and smiled at her.
She almost smiled back, and he rejoiced silently. This time he wouldn't back down, he wouldn't walk away. Not this time.
She gestured at the prop. "Can I wipe that down?"
Liam turned. The rain had pretty much washed the prop clean. "You sure it's okay?"
"I disconnected the mags."
"I thought I told you not to mess with it while I was gone," he said in a long-suffering voice. He looked at Gruber. "I thought I told you to keep everyone away from it."
Gruber shifted his gum. "Well, yeah, but, you know. I mean, it's her plane."
Liam suppressed a sigh. "So, can I clean the prop?" Wy said.
"Sure," Liam said. "You can steam-clean the interior if you want. Doesn't much matter now." He hung back, Gary Gruber a silent ghost at his elbow, watching as she fetched a rag from the powder blue shack and carefully cleaned the propeller blades. "Wy?"
She stiffened. "What?"
"What and where is Icky?"
He could almost see the tension leaving her body. "It's what the locals call Ik'ikika. It's a village about forty miles north, on the shore of One Lake."
"You can drive there?"
She nodded. "It's a dirt road, but it's passable. Mostly."
Thinking of the roads he had traveled in Newenham made him think that this was a matter of opinion.
"I've got to get home," she said, and turned abruptly to walk back to her truck.
"Me, too," Gruber said, and made a vague gesture with one hand. "Anything you need, officer."
"Yeah, thanks," Liam said, eye on Wy's retreating back. "If you could come into the office tomorrow, we'll type out your statement and you can sign it."
By the time he caught up with Wy, she was almost to her truck. He caught her elbow. "What's your rush?"
She pulled away. "I have to get home. I'm late already."
Gruber passed them like a gray ghost and vanished into the terminal. A moment later all the halogen lamps but one went out, a door slammed, and they heard the sound of a vehicle starting and fading into the distance.
"Don't you need to call your boss?"
"I already did. Fish and Game never did call an opener. Lucky for me."
Liam gave her a sharp look. "How? I thought you didn't leave the airport."
"I used one of the handhelds in the plane."
He found relief in a small eruption of temper, all the sweeter because he'd been sitting on it for three hours. "Goddammit, Wy, I told you not to go anywhere near that damn plane!"
She glared at him. "We both went, Gary and me both, when I explained to him what I needed to do. I had to disconnect the mags anyway."
He was skeptical, and sounded it. "You can reach the Bay from one of those handhelds here on the ground?"
"I called the processor in the harbor," she said, looking suddenly weary, as if all the fight had gone out of her. "They relayed the message."
"Who is he? Your fishing boss?"