Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

On the other hand, there were three boats for sale, two thirtytwo-foot drifters and a fifty-four-foot seiner. One drifter was going for fifty thousand or best offer, one for two hundred thousand if you bought the permit, too, and the seiner for eighty, although the electronics needed replacing.

He folded the paper and put it down. Bristol Bay was looking at a fifty percent bankruptcy rate for fishermen these days, what with the vanishing salmon runs and the rise of farmed salmon everywhere but Alaska, where farmed salmon was out-lawed. A lot of people were making career-changing decisions, including sons and daughters whose families had made their livings on the Bay since back before engines were legal and all the Bay drifters operated under sail. It was anybody's guess what would happen next.

It didn't mean the availability of real estate was going up, or its price coming down, though.

His stomach growled. One of Bill's burgers sounded about right, but Bill's Bar and Grill was a public place. You never knew who you might run into there. He decided he was more in the mood for the deli takeout at the NC market, and a cozy evening at home with a couple of fingers of Glenmorangie and a good book.

Even if that home was slowly sinking into the boat harbor, one inexorable inch at a time.

An hour later, he'd settled back with a porcelain mug half full of single-malt scotch and a copy ofPillar of Fireby Taylor Branch, a historian who managed to combine scholarship with a talent for writing. Liam liked reading history, and it wasn't often he came across the two skills in the same package. He piled pillows in back of his head and paged through the preface to chapter one. He always read prefaces and prologues and introductions after he'd read the book. Partly he was impatient to get on with the story, partly he didn't want anything in the book spoiled for him, partly he didn't care how many people the author wanted to thank and partly he just wanted to get on with it.

He got on with it, and the scotch was down by half when he reached page 26 and first mention of Eugene T. “Bull” Connor, police commissioner in Birmingham, Alabama, whose actions in the late fifties and early sixties were still being lived down by police departments all over the nation. Liam had seen videotapes of the Birmingham police using fire hoses and German shepherds to quell demonstrators, most of them black, most of them nonviolent. They hadn't needed quelling, but then that hadn't been the point. Liam thought of Rodney King and wondered when America was going to get it right.

The boat shifted suddenly and he almost rolled out of bed. The rest of his scotch got away from him, which put him in no good mood to answer the knock on the hatch. “Who the hell is it?” he barked.

The door opened, and Trooper Diana Prince ducked her head inside. Her uniform was still immaculate, although she did look tired. Curious, as well. She took in the cramped quarters, the minuscule galley, consisting of two gas burners and a sink the size of a teacup, the marine toilet tucked into an alcove, and with a heroic effort managed not to wrinkle her nose at the dank smell. “Sir.”

Liam, dressed for bed in T-shirt and jockey briefs, sat abruptly upright and smacked the same part of his forehead against the same section of bulkhead that he had that morning. “Shit! Son of a bitch! Goddamn it to hell!”

He held his head and swung his legs over the side. “Damn, damn, damn.” He stood up, feet squishing in the damp carpet.

“I'm sorry, sir. Are you all right?”

He felt her hand on his arm, and yanked it free. “I'm fine,” he said, retreated a step. His heel came down on a church key previously secreted beneath the lip of his bunk. “Ouch!” He hopped into the air, clutching his foot, and whacked his head on the bulk-head again.

“Sir, let me-”

“No!” he roared. “Don't help me, for crissake please don't help me!” Vision blurred, he pawed for his pants, draped over the opposite bunk. Helpfully, she put them into his hands. “Go outside and wait, goddamn it,” he growled, and heard the hatch slide open behind him.

“Oh hello,” he heard her say, and whirled around on one leg to meet the startled gazes of Jo Dunaway and Tim Gosuk.

His pants legs developed a reluctance to fit over his legs heretofore unknown in their history as his pants. He drew himself up, necessarily stooping some because of the level of the ceiling, and said with awful politeness, “Could you please wait outside while I get some clothes on? Thank you.” Without waiting for an answer, he hopped forward on one foot, herding Prince in front of him, and slid the hatch shut in their faces.

A minute later, a scowl on his face that dared any one of them to comment on the prior scene, he reopened the hatch. Very gruff and businesslike, he said to Prince, “Did you have something to report, Trooper?”

“Yes, sir, I did, but it can wait,” Prince said from a brace that looked as rigid as the expression on her face.

It couldn't have waited until morning, when he wouldn't be caught with his pants down by Wy's best friend and son? To Jo he said with unbending courtesy, “What can I do for you?”

One thing about Jo, she wasn't afraid to come right to the point. “I heard about the killings on theMarybethia.”

“How?” Liam waved a hand in his own reply. “Never mind. Doesn't matter. Is this on the record?” She nodded. “All right, get out your recorder.” She produced a tiny black Sony. Click. “My name is Trooper-” Remembering, he corrected himself. “My name is Corporal Liam Campbell, of the Alaska State Troopers, assigned to the Newenham post.” He caught Prince's quick, surprised glance at this sudden elevation in rank. Jo's steady eyes didn't waver, but she caught it, too, and he cursed himself for the slip. “My associate is Trooper Diana Prince. This morning we responded to a call from Kulukak, which reported a fishing boat named theMarybethia,adrift in Kulukak Bay. It was reported to have been on fire. We went to Kulukak, where the boat was towed. All crew members, seven in number, were dead. We are not releasing the names of the victims pending notification of next of kin. Investigation into the incident is continuing.”

Jo waited until it was obvious he was going to say no more and shut off the recorder. “That it?”

“That's it for now.”

“Did the fire kill them or not?”

“Cause of death will be determined at time of autopsy.”

She pointed the recorder at him. “If you won't say cause, I'm thinking maybe they died from something other than the fire.”

He said nothing, arms folded, face expressionless.

She looked at Prince. “Anything to add?”

Prince, face wooden, said, “No, ma'am.”

“Look at that,” Jo said to Tim. “If you're going to be a reporter-”

“Over my dead body,” Liam said involuntarily.

Tim looked at Liam, at first startled, and then gratified. No one, before Wy, had ever taken enough of an interest in him to be proprietary about his future.

“-then you need to be able to recognize that expression. It's called stonewalling.” To Liam, Jo said, “I'll be in touch.”

“I'll be around,” he said blandly, regaining his composure. “Now if you'll excuse us, I have some business to discuss with my associate.”

He saw them to the deck. Tim hopped to the slip, followed by Jo. She paused, looking up at Liam. “Nice legs, by the way,” she said, and winked at him before following Tim down the slip to the ramp.

He waited until they were mounting the ramp and safely out of earshot before returning to the cabin. He wouldn't put it past Jo to sneak back and eavesdrop. “You want some coffee?” he said to Prince.

“I could use some,” she admitted.