Trooper Prince didn't raise her voice. “I quite understand, sir, but the area is, unfortunately, also the scene of a crime. Our investigation will intrude as little as possible into your workspace, but it must begin immediately.”
Basically, Wy thought with admiration, she outpompoused him. Defeated but grumbling, McLynn followed Prince back to the bar. “I understand that your air taxi service is on contract to the troopers,” Prince said to Wy.
Wy groaned inwardly, but the thought of Harold Abood, Esquire, J.D., made her reply, “Yes.”
“And that you know where Kulukak is.”
Wy nodded.
“In that case, I'd like to charter your services to go pick up Trooper Campbell.”
Colonel Campbell looked at Wy. “You're a pilot, too?”
“Place is just lousy with pilots,” Bill observed from behind the bar. She was a short woman with eyes the translucent blue glacier ice goes only on a cloudy day, and silver hair swept straight back from her face to her shoulders in a thick, shining fall. Her T-shirt read “Laissez le bon temps roulez-Mardi Gras,” not easy to read unobtrusively because of how well she filled it out. Like Moses, her expression was one of not quite malicious glee.
“Yes, sir,” Wy said to Campbell, “I'm a pilot, too.”
“In what capacity?”
“I own and operate the Nushagak Air Taxi Service.” She said it proudly, because she was proud of it.
“Really.” He seemed amused, and she bristled. He saw her reaction and grinned, and again she was put forcibly in mind of his son. “Well, then, we have something in common, too.”
Not hardly, she thought, remembering Liam's occasional tales of his father going head to head with Soviet Backfire bombers in the skies over the Bering Strait, back before the Berlin Wall had fallen and taken the Cold War down with it. “Marginally,” she said. “I fly a Piper Super Cub. You fly an F-14.”
“An F-16C, actually,” he said.
“And a Cessna 180,” she said.
“Pilots,” Moses said to Bill. “Jesus. Even when they don't have cocks, they're comparing sizes.”
Campbell said, “I take it you'll be bringing my son back from, er, Kulukak?”
“Yes.”
“What time you think you'll get in?”
Wy looked at her watch. “I should get out of here in less than an hour. It's eleven o'clock, say I'm in the air by noon. I should make Kulukak well before one. If Liam's ready to go, we should be back here by, oh, say two-thirty to be safe. I don't know what he's got left to do on the ground.”
“All right. Tell Liam I'm here, would you? Liam hates surprises.” He donned his cap and smiled again, and this time she saw that his charm was more practiced than Liam's, and more conscious of effect. “I'm at the BOQ on base. I'll be expecting his call. Nice meeting you folks,” he said to Bill and Moses. He nodded to Prince and left the bar.
“Whew,” Bill breathed as the door swung closed behind him, and pretended to fan herself.
Moses growled something and hooked a hand around her neck to pull her forward. The passionate, carnal kiss then exchanged was enough to make Prince blink and McLynn's jaw drop. Wy was more used to it, but she still felt the temperature of the room go up a couple of degrees. She rolled her eyes, tried not to feel jealous and walked outside, followed by Prince and McLynn on self-conscious tiptoe.
Prince said, “I assume you're taking your Cessna to Kulukak.”
“Yes.”
“Am I correct in assuming I can't fly a Cessna on floats into the dig?”
“Yes. A Cub's the only aircraft other than a helicopter that'll make it in and out of that strip. It's not even a strip, really, we just moved some rocks and pulled some bushes.”
“I see. Do you charter your aircraft?”
“Yes,” Wy said, masking a flinch.
“Then I'll need to charter your Cub to fly out to the dig.”
“Tulukaruk,” Wy said. “That's the name of it. Look, I don't mean to-I mean-well-hell. It's a very short, very rough strip, with a forty-five-foot drop to a river at one end. How many hours you got on a Cub?”
Prince's smile was smug. “Three hundred and four. I've been flying since I was thirteen, and I've done hundreds of Bush landings, Ms. Chouinard. Besides,” she added, serious now, “you're insured, aren't you?”
Smart-ass, Wy thought. She sighed and gave in to the inevitable. “You'll need a map. Follow me out to the airport.”
“And when we all get back to town, I'll want to talk to you again, take a formal statement.”
“Not a problem,” Wy said, heading for her truck. “You know where I work, and I'm not going anywhere.”
Except to Kulukak to pick up Liam, she thought as she started the truck. She felt her heart skip a beat. She hadn't seen him to speak to in almost three months, and now they were going to spend a minimum of forty-five minutes shoulder to shoulder.
Unwillingly, she remembered the first days of their acquaintance, when she in her innocence had thought they were just friends. The hours spent in the air on their way between Glennallen and various crime scenes, the grisly prospects before them muted by the pleasure they took in each other's company. They had never seemed to stop talking, she remembered painfully: books, music, politics, religion, art, people they both knew, places they'd both been, experiences they'd shared separately.
Oh, they had been such fine, fine days in the air, that summer that now seemed so long ago and so far away.
It was when they had stopped talking that they got into trouble.
She slammed the truck into gear and headed for the airport. The white Blazer with the gold shield on the side fell in behind her like a ghostly shadow.
When Liam didn't respond, Ekwok repeated in a louder voice, “I know who did this.”
The raven erupted with a staccato “Kuk-kuk-kuk-kra-kuk”that sounded eerily like the cadence of Ekwok's own speech patterns. Ekwok looked up with an apprehensive expression. His eyes hardened and he said for the third time, “I know who did this.”
Liam wished with all his heart that just once it could be that easy. Well, hell, maybe it could be. “And who might that be, Mr. Ekwok?” he said, pulling out his notebook.
“That David Malone, he fired a guy last year. A deckhand. He wouldn't even give him a ride from Seattle when he brought theMarybethianorth. This deckhand, he was angry. He said he would kill Malone.”
Ekwok shut up, his expression suggesting that he had said all he had to say. His attitude clearly indicated that he had solved all Liam's problems and that he, Liam, should go away now and attend to them.
Quoth the raven,“Kwark, click, click.”
“Will you knock it off?” Liam said.
“Knock what off?” Ekwok said.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Ekwok, I meant him.” Liam jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
Ekwok examined him with an expression on his face that was impossible to read. “You talk to the raven?”
Liam pulled himself together. “No. No, of course not.” Pen poised, he said, “Do you know the name of the deckhand that Malone fired?”
Ekwok shook his head. “No.”
“Do you know someone who might?”
“Walter will know. Walter hired him last summer, after Malone fired him.”
Had he indeed. “Could you take me to Mr. Larsgaard's house, Mr. Ekwok? I'd like to ask him a few questions.”
Walter Larsgaard and the rest of the village council were at Larsgaard's house, sitting around a kitchen table, drinking coffee. As one honor-bound, Walter Larsgaard offered Liam a mug. Liam accepted. It was hot and strong enough to melt the enamel right off his teeth.
They waited politely until he had taken a few sips, and he used the time to look at his surroundings. The kitchen was small but clean, wooden cupboards that went right up to the ceiling painted a white enamel that was beginning to chip down to the original lime-green coat, an old but well-scrubbed gas stove, a Frigidaire refrigerator with a bad-tempered mutter that sounded pre-World War II. The sink was stainless steel with a high arching faucet-high enough to clean salmon under-and the linoleum on the floor had been scoured so often and so well that the blue and white floral pattern was beginning to wear off. The kitchen table was rectangular, with a Formica top and steel legs. The chairs matched. A half-eaten loaf of Wonder bread and a one-pound can of Darigold butter sat on the table, with a box of Lipton tea bags and a jar of homemade jam.