Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

“Easily,” she said. “It's like glass.”

“We got enough fuel to get back with all three of us on board?”

She flicked one of the dials again. “Yes.”

They kept their distance, close enough to be in visual range but far enough to be out of gunshot. Sure enough, theBay Roverdropped anchor off a dark-sand beach sandwiched between sheer vertical cliffs of rock the same color. One side of the beach, the one with the most sun, was strewn with big brown bags.

“What are those-” Liam started to say, and then he realized. They were walruses, hundreds of them, packed tightly one against the other across the sand, asleep in the sun, their ivory tusks gleaming white, their taut hides a golden brown. “Jesus.”

“I hear they can weigh up to a ton and a half each,” Prince said.

They looked bigger than that to Liam, but he had no more time to marvel. “He's launching a small boat!” Prince shouted, and pointed.

The tiny figure of a man jumped nimbly from deck to rubber raft. He was carrying something that could have been a rifle, but the raft didn't have a kicker, so he was going to have to row, which wouldn't leave any hands free for shooting. “Put her down,” Liam said. “Can you taxi into the beach?”

Prince put the Cessna into a sharp left turn, banking so she could inspect the water close to the beach for any hidden rocks and reefs. Liam's head hurt too much for him to be afraid, but his ears did pop in protest. “Yeah, I think so. Here we go.” She brought the Cessna around and set her down in a soft kiss of a landing. She taxied straight into the beach, but wasn't quick enough to beat Larsgaard, whose raft was already sitting at the edge of the tide, empty.

Liam stepped out on the float, drew his weapon and walked forward to hop onto the beach. Footsteps in the sand led from the beached raft directly toward the herd of walrus. They looked like they were sleeping, the whole bunch of them, soaking up rays. There was some twitching and grunting but for the most part they seemed dead to the world. He approached them cautiously, his headache forgotten. They were enormous creatures, all fat and fur and tusk.

A breeze came up. Liam was downwind. “Jesus!” he said again, this time for a different reason. The smell of ammonia was overpowering. They were sleeping in their own piss; a lot of it, judging by the smell. A three-thousand-pound beast would generate a lot of waste. Instantly his eyes began to water and he blinked them furiously, trying to see.

He heard someone say something that sounded like, “Tookalook.”

Through a blur he thought he saw a small figure slip between two enormous ones and he started forward involuntarily.

“Asveq!” someone yelled, and Liam threw himself to the sand when a rifle went off. He rolled sideways and of course now his face was right in the sandy residue of urine and feces, and his eyes were tearing so badly he couldn't see at all. He couldn't seem to catch his breath, either, and it didn't help that the sound of the rifle shot had woken up the walrus. All of them.

A roar sounded right over his head and he looked up, blinking the tears away to see a bull rear up, tusks that must have been two feet long at present arms. Down they came, straight toward him, in a slashing move that would have splattered him all over the beach if he hadn't pushed himself away, scuttling backward on hands and feet like a crab. At the same time something swept down on ebony wings, straight into the face of the walrus.

The whole herd was up now. Their grunting roars of protest were deafening. On his feet, Liam was dazed and disoriented. He still had his weapon but what good would a little popgun like this be? The bullets would be lost in all that blubber. He wiped his arm on his sleeve in time to see a walrus lumber toward him, probably the same one, tusks raised again. No, this one had a tusk broken off halfway up, leaving a jagged point that looked even more threatening than a whole one. He thought Prince yelled something but he couldn't hear what. He saw what he thought was Old Walter in the middle of the herd, standing still, watching him. Down the tusks flashed; again he avoided them by the merest inch. He thought he saw the dark-winged shadow diving at the walrus for the second time, and the walrus dodging out of the way of its wickedly curved beak.

Prince yelled again, and Liam blundered backward until he ran into her. They both sat down heavily in the sand, and watched as the river of brown fur poured into the water, yipping and barking and growling and roaring defiance. A moment later there was nothing left but roiled sand and glassy water and blue, blue sky.

“He's gone.”

“He must have been flattened by the herd.”

“I don't see anything, do you?”

“No.” She swept the beach with the glasses. When no walrus popped up from behind a rock, she ventured forward to explore the beach where Larsgaard and the walrus had been. When she came back she said, “Okay, this isn't weird or anything.”

“No sign of him?”

“None.” She paused, and said doubtfully, “You don't think they ate him, do you?”

“I think they mainly eat fish and shellfish.”

“Oh.” Nobody said anything for a while. “Well, he's gone.”

“He's gone,” Liam said. He got to his feet. “And so are we. Let's head for home.”

Their dinner date had been postponed a week and changed to a picnic on the beach. They were one short, as Tim was long gone up the river with Moses, but as Wy was guiltily aware, they didn't even miss him.

“I was so smug,” Liam said, regarding the hot dog he held suspended over the flame with a critical eye. The raven croaked agreement from a convenient spruce branch on the cliff. “I had them both, both perps, locked up in the local jail. Petla was as good as convicted, and I didn't think twice about walking into Larsgaard's house. I didn't think for a moment Larsgaard Junior didn't do it. Sure, there were things wrong with his story, but hell, he had means, motive, opportunity.”

“So did I, in May.” Her smile was tentative, as if she wasn't sure it was permissible to joke about that yet.

He grinned at her. “Yeah, but you I'm hoping to get back into the sack at some point. I couldn't put you in jail.”

She laughed.

“Besides, Larsgaard had even confessed, for crissake.”

“True.”

“And then there's Frank Petla.” He looked at where the bandage showed beneath the arm of her T-shirt. “He was there, he had a gun, he was in possession of goods stolen from the scene, including the murder weapon, he'd assaulted two people in fleeing said scene, what more could I want?”

“Yeah, well, Frank kind of set himself up for that.”

“Still,” Liam pulled his hot dog out of the fire, decided it didn't pass and put it back. “So after we got back to town and find Don Nelson's real killer in your custody, I went after Dick Ford again. I found him this time, up in Icky helping Aneska Ugashik fillet her salmon so she could hang it. He tells me he loaned his four-wheeler to Frank Monday morning, and then he tells me that he was fishing the same section of river Frank was over the weekend, Cache Creek, and Frank was out there all day both days, and Charlene was right, he didn't kill Don Nelson.”

“He shot McLynn. He hit Diana.”

“He was drunk.”

“Don't make excuses for him, Liam. He's already made enough of them for himself.”

“You know who I think of when I think of Frank Petla?”

“Who?”

“Tim.”

“Tim?” Wy ruffled up. “He's nothing like Tim, he-”

“I didn't mean it like that. I meant, Tim gets a chance. You gave him a chance.”

“Charlene and Peter gave Frank a chance.”