Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

“Of course not.” Liam closed the file again. “Tell me, Evan, how do you make your living?”

“A little of this, a little of that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look, it doesn't matter how I make my living, this charge is bogus. Get May in here and I'll prove it.”

“Officer Raymo let May go, did he?”

Gray snorted. “It was an answer to his favorite wet dream, catching me holding.”

“What do you want, Evan?”

“I want out of here. I want the charge against me dropped.” His grin was cocky, as cocky as Charles's had been the night before. “I want a hot shower and my own bed and a good-looking woman in it, in that order.”

All trace of humor had vanished from Liam's face. His eyes were cold and steady, his hands flat on the table, muscles in his arms taut as if he were about ready to get up and go. “What have you got to trade?”

Liam sent Gray back to his cell and brought Larsgaard into the interview room. He got him a cup of coffee, heavy on the cream and sugar. Larsgaard took the first sip and looked surprised that Liam had gotten it right. “I watched how you fixed it at your house,” Liam said. He blew on his own coffee and sipped.

The window was open and that damn raven was sitting on the branch of a mountain ash right outside the window, looking as if he had been carved from a single piece of the darkest obsidian. Liam didn't really know anything about obsidian except that it was a rock of some kind that was black and shiny, but he liked the sound of the word and it was what that black bastard looked like he was made of, from his enormous curved beak to his black beady eyes to his fat black tailfeathers. Although he didn't look so black this close up, more a mixture of green and blue and dark brown. Sort of like snow and how it wasn't really white.

Larsgaard followed his glance. “Raven,” he said. “My favorite bird.”

“Really?” Liam gave the raven an unfriendly glance. “Why?”

“They're smart.”

“If they're so smart, why don't they fly south for the winter?”

“And they're loyal.”

Liam raised his brows. “Loyal?”

“Sure.” Larsgaard gestured with his mug. “When one of them finds something to eat, say a moose or a caribou or a bear, anything, they wait and watch it, sometimes hours, sometimes even days to make sure it's dead, and then they call in their friends and relatives for a feast. They're like wolves with wings.” He paused. “The elders say that a raven will lead you to your moose, because he knows when you're done butchering out, there will be some left over for him.” He saw Liam's skepticism and said, “It's true. Have you heard them talk?”

Liam thought of all the various sounds he had heard from either the one raven following him around or the hundreds of ravens living around the Bay, one of which he seemed to see everywhere he went. Each raven utterance was a different sequence of clicks and croaks and caws, each sequence in a different series of tones. “Yeah, I've heard them talk.”

“They have different kinds of calls, and each call has a different meaning. Why shouldn't ‘Supper's on the table, come and get it’ be one of them?” Larsgaard shrugged and drank coffee. “Wolves have a language. Whales. Why not ravens?”

Why not ravens? Liam thought. “Walter, I want you to take me through it again, step by step this time.”

Larsgaard sighed and turned around to face Liam. “Why? I've already told you once. You already have it on tape. I'll tell Bill I'm guilty.”

“A magistrate doesn't sit on felony cases.” Or she doesn't if I get the felon on a plane to Anchorage first.

Larsgaard shrugged. He didn't look much the worse for wear for his night in prison. His hair had been combed and his eyes were calm, a marked contrast to the panicked expression on Frank Petla's face every time he saw Liam. “Whatever. I read about Spring Creek in the paper. I expect that's where I'll wind up?”

Spring Creek was the state's maximum security facility in Seward. “If there's room.”

“And if there isn't?”

“A prison Outside until there is.”

For the first time Larsgaard looked anxious. “I'd rather stay in the state, if I could. Close to my father. You understand.”

Again Liam thought of Charles, whom Liam couldn't wait to put on the first plane south, but he said yes to avoid an explanation that would only get them off track. “Humor me, Walter. Run through it again. One step at a time. When was the first time you slept with Molly Malone?”

Larsgaard flushed. “None of your business.”

“Okay, then tell me when you decided to kill her.”

“I told you,” Larsgaard said, his voice rising. “On Sunday.”

“When did she break things off between you?”

“Last week.”

“What day?”

“I don't remember. I-I was pretty broken up about it. I don't remember much.”

A bad memory, always a convenient tool in the suspect's cache. “The twentieth?”

“I told you, I don't remember.”

“The seventeenth? Maybe the twenty-first? How about the fourth of July?”

Larsgaard drew his hands back from the mug and sat upright. He'd regained his composure, and his eyes became distant, his manner remote. “I told you. I don't remember. I'd like to go back to my cell now.”

Liam stood up, his six-foot-three frame filling up the little room. “Well, then, let's try something easier. Do you remember what you said to Evan Gray last night?”

“What?” Larsgaard's eyes snapped back into focus, staring up at Liam, startled out of whatever inner hiding place he'd run to.

“Last night did you tell Evan Gray that you didn't kill Molly Malone, that you loved her, that you could never have killed her?”

Liam watched the color drain from Larsgaard's face, and tried like hell to read the expression there. The closest he could come to was fear, which made no sense. Why would Larsgaard be afraid? Of what? He'd already confessed to seven murders, he would only ever see the sun again from behind a barbed-wire electric fence; what could he possibly fear now?

There was a brisk knock on the door, and Liam cursed under his breath. “It's open!”

Prince opened the door and gave an apologetic cough. “Sorry, sir, but it's almost ten o'clock. We need to get in the air if we're going to get back in time for the arraignment this afternoon.”

“You're going back to Kulukak?” The words forced themselves from Larsgaard's throat.

They looked at him, curious. “Yes,” Liam said.

“Why? What for?” He saw their expression and with the same visible effort at control Liam had seen before he pulled himself together. “I said I did it. You've got the bodies. You don't need to go back there for anything.”

Liam stared at him. “I'm beginning to think I do, Walter.”

“I don't understand,” Prince said as she followed him the door. “We've got a suspect in custody, we've got his confession, he had means, motive and opportunity, we've even got a witness. What else are you digging for?”

The phone rang, saving him from trying to come up with an answer. “Brillo Pad. About time. What have you got?”

“It's Brilleaux,” the voice said, made husky by the three-packaday and two-martini lunch habits he refused to quit no matter how much his wife and his doctor nagged him. “Bril-LEAUX, how many times do I have to tell you?” He coughed heavily, and Liam involuntarily held the phone away from his ear.

“This isn't official, okay?”

“Okay.”

“They were shot about two hours before they were burned. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Seawater fucks up all the time-to-decay stats, and the water's been colder than normal down there this year.”

“Who says?”