Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

Tim's shoulders rose in a faint shrug. “Have to, against a guy like that.”

“Did you meet his sister, too?”

“Yeah. He introduced me once.” A pause. “She was a cheerleader, traveled with the team.”

“Pretty?”

“Yeah.”

The 737 touched down just inside the markers in a runway paint job, the engines roaring immediately into reverse so they wouldn't miss the first taxiway. Hot dog, Wy thought. Definitely the sound of someone not flying their own plane.

“Liam says they're dead.” He looked at her.

Wy finished with the rag and turned to pitch it, accurately, in the wastebasket just inside the door of the shed. “Yeah.” She turned back. “When did you talk to Liam?”

“This morning. I went over to the post. When you left to take the mail to Manokotak.”

Bless the U.S. Postal Service, Wy thought automatically. A mail contract was the difference between red and black on the bottom line to a Bush air taxi. “Oh.”

“You didn't say I couldn't.”

“No,” she agreed. Did he ask about me? she wanted to say, but managed to refrain from anything that sophomoric.

“So they're dead,” he repeated.

“Yeah.” Her hand settled on his shoulder and squeezed, as the 737 popped its hatch and let down its rear air stair.

“It's-it's-itstinks,” he said, and his eyes when he raised them were dark and wounded.

“It stinks to high heaven,” Wy agreed. “Tim. Did you ever meet the rest of Mike's family? His mom? His dad?”

Tim shook his head. “No. Just Mike.” He hesitated.

“What?”

He colored, and looked at his shoes. “One time, it was like the first time we played the Wolverines, I remember Mike got benched for fighting.”

“What about?”

His color deepened and he wouldn't look up. “Somebody'd said something about his mother.”

“What?”

He said gruffly, “Said she slept around on Mike's dad. Called her a whore. So Mike beat him up, and the coach benched him.” He added wistfully, “That was the only time all year we beat them.”

“Who said that? Who did Mike beat up?”

“Arne. Arne Swensen. He plays guard, too. He's a senior this year, so he'll probably start even if he doesn't deserve to.” He looked up. “That stinks, too.”

Wy smiled and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah.”

He pulled back and anxiously patted his glossy black locks back into their previous perfect order. The last person off the 737 was a big, bulky man wearing a parka and mukluks. In July. “Tourist,” he said.

“And how.”

“Mom?”

He'd called her Mom from the first day she brought him home from the hospital, a direct and determined repudiation of his birth mother. Now that he felt more secure, he used Mom and Wy interchangeably. She did notice that when he was particularly bothered about something, he usually called her Mom. She steeled herself. “What?”

He fidgeted. “They weren't-they didn't-Kerry and Mike… nobody, well, hurt them, did they?”

It only took Wy a second to understand. Tim had grown up among a succession of people who had regarded his body as their personal punching bag. “No,” Wy said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Wy said. “I'm sure.”

She wasn't, of course, she knew nothing about the condition in which the bodies had been found, but she was willing to lie herself blue in the face before she contributed one more scene to Tim's recurring nightmares. Imagining how Mike, a boy he'd admired, and Kerry, a girl he might have had a secret crush on, had been tortured before being killed was not going to lessen their frequency or ease their intensity.

The 737 started loading passengers for the return trip to Anchorage. First on board was a skinny little blond kid in a blue nylon jacket, jeans and sneakers, clutching a silver briefcase almost as big as he was. He looked purposeful, on a mission. Wy wondered what was in the suitcase.

A shout distracted her attention, and she looked around to see Professor Desmond X. McLynn bearing down on them. “I'm outta here,” Tim muttered, and he grabbed his bike and shot off. Wy didn't blame him.

“What can I do for you, Mr. McLynn?” Wy said as the professor came trotting up.

“Do? You can fly me out to my dig, is what you can do. Where have you been all day? I was here at nine o'clock and you were gone! You've contracted to be my air support for the summer, and then you disappear when I need to fly! Give me one good reason why I shouldn't hire another pilot!”

Wy, one of the more reliable pilots on the Bay, bit back an invitationfor Professor Desmond X. McLynn to do just that, didn't say that she'd contracted to fly him in and out once a week, not twice, and plastered a smile on her face. “I do have other contracts to fulfill besides yours, Professor McLynn, but”-she overrode his protest-“I'm here now. We can be in the air in ten minutes.”

McLynn blustered for a few moments before giving in. They were in the air in the promised ten minutes. It was their fastest flight to the dig yet. “Are we back on a normal schedule?” Wy said, when she had him and his gear on the ground.

“What? Yes, yes, pick me up Friday evening.”

“Certainly, sir,” Wy said to his retreating back. She was in the air before he reached the work tent. She left his gear where it was.

Some jobs didn't pay enough. Some jobs wouldn't pay enough if you were making a thousand dollars an hour. Still, a job was a job, a paycheck was a paycheck and a lawyer's fee was most definitely a lawyer's fee. Wy brought the Cub around and headed back to Newenham.

Liam went back to the post to find Prince had left a note, saying she'd gone to lunch and that she'd be back in time to sit in on the interrogations. So they were interrogating suspects this afternoon, were they? Liam picked up the phone and dialed his father's number in Florida. It rang five times and he was just about to give up when someone picked up. It was a woman's voice, very young and breathy, which made “Hurlburt Field Strategic Operations School” sound like phone sex. “Hi, I'm Liam Campbell, Colonel Campbell's son,” he said. “Is my father in?”

There was a brief silence, and the voice said brightly, “I'm sorry, Mr. Campbell, but Colonel Campbell has been reassigned.”

Has he indeed? Liam thought. “Could you tell me where?”

“I'm sorry, sir, I'm not allowed to give out that information.”

“Oh.” Liam waited for a moment, letting the silence gather. “I really need to talk to him about some family business-what was your name again? Valerie? That's a pretty name. Are you single, Valerie?”

Valerie giggled. “You're not very subtle, are you, Mr. Campbell?”

“I don't play hard to get,” he purred, shamelessly dropping his voice down into its best lower register, sexy-guy-picking-you-upina-bar accents.

She giggled again, sounding very young. “I don't know…”

“I'm his only son, Valerie, and it really is important that I reach him soon. Kind of a family emergency. Just a phone number. I won't even say I got it from you.”

He hung up a minute or two later. Definitely a threat to national security there, he thought, dialing the number he'd scribbled on his desk calendar. This time he was unlucky; an answering machine picked up. The message on it was illuminating, though.

At three o'clock he was back at the jail. He showed Mamie the warrants Bill had sworn out, and she copied them and filed them away. “There's an interview room in the back,” she told them.

There was: four walls, a barred window, a table and four chairs, so tiny there was barely enough room to inhale. Liam reached through the bars and opened the window. A raven's croak was the first sound he heard, and he craned his head for a look. Nothing. Big black bastard ought to mind his own business.