Dana Stabenow: Fire And Ice

A series of prefabricated corrugated steel buildings of various sizes marched unevenly down one side of the runway, opposite a wide gravel area dotted with tie-downs. A third of the tie-downs were occupied by small planes of every age and make, some big, some small, most with two wings and a propeller, some with four wings, some with two propellers, some with wings made of fabric stretched over aluminum tubing, some built of aluminum from the inside out. Most of them looked neat and ready to fly and some looked like they would drop right out of the sky, providing they got up into the air in the first place.

They all looked alike to Liam. They were planes. He didn't need to know any more, thank you.

The buildings consisted of a terminal and hangars, offices for air taxis and a Standard Oil office with a tank farm looming up in back of it, and a couple of aviation parts stores and a tiny little log house that would have looked like a cache without the stilts that bore a sign proclaiming it YE OLDE GIFTE SHOPPE.

Small planes buzzed overhead on takeoff and landing. There was another small plane pulled around in front of the Standard Oil pumps, a red one with a pair of wings that looked larger than its fuselage and white identification letters down the side ending in 78 ZULU. Liam's heart gave an involuntary thump, and then his eyes dropped to the ground in front of the aircraft.

"Oh my God!" the near-miss grandmother said from the top of the Metroliner's stairs.

A body lay on the ground, a bright red circle spreading rapidly from beneath its head, or where its head used to be. The propeller of the little plane was stained the same bright red.

For a moment, no one could move, except for the square-jawed young copilot as he heaved up his breakfast. The people on the ground, the people in the plane, the people staring in horrified fascination out of the terminal's windows all stood in frozen silence.

There was a woman kneeling in front of the body, her back to the runway. Dressed in worn jeans and denim jacket, the only clue to her femininity was the fat braid of golden brown hair that lay along her spine, strands escaping to curl madly all around her head. Liam found himself behind her without any conscious recollection of moving. It took him three tries to say anything, and when he could speak his voice seemed to come from very far away. "Wy." She refused to look around, but a visible shudder ran over her body, and he was close enough to see the sudden prickling of the skin on the back of her neck. Her head came up like a deer on the scent of danger. "Who is he?"

She didn't turn, but then she didn't have to. Wyanet Chouinard was a brown-eyed blonde, thirty-one years old, five feet five inches tall, with full breasts, a small waist, and lush, full hips that looked better in denim than any figure had a right to. Her voice came out low and husky, but that could have been stress and shock. From what was lying on the ground in front of her, or from what was looming up in back of her? Both, Liam hoped, with a sudden ferocity unknown to him until that moment. It surprised him, andwiththe surprise came a hot rush of sheer pleasure. He hoped he threatened her. He wanted to strangle her.

He pulled himself together. First, the job. "It's Liam, Wy."

"I know who it is," she said without moving.

"Who is he?" he repeated.

"Bob." A long, shuddering sigh. One hand reached out as if to touch the still shoulder closest to her, dropped. "Bob DeCreft."

The deceased was male, taller than average with well-defined shoulders and large, scarred hands. He'd dressed that morning in faded Levi's and a blue plaid Pendleton shirt with both elbows threadbare. He had a black leather knife sheath fastened to his belt, the flap still snapped, and Sorels, the ubiquitous Alaskan Bush boots, on his feet. The hard rubber heels were close to being worn flat. Liam forced himself to look, but it was impossible to see the dead man's features or the color of his hair. The plane's propeller had done a thorough job.

He looked up at it. Both blades stained dark red. A faint cry came from near the plane, and Liam turned his head to see the Flirt being enfolded in Moccasin Man's comforting and by now distinctly proprietary embrace. He looked back at the crowd, beginning to come to life, muttering and shifting. A breeze had come up off the river, and people were starting to get cold but didn't feel quite right about leaving. Either that, or were too curious to go. Liam understood both reasons.

He slipped easily into investigatory mode. "Did anyone see what happened?"

No one said anything. A few people looked at another man standing to one side, a thin man of medium height in his mid-thirties with dishwater blond hair and a pallid face. He was chewing something steadily, cheek muscles moving without pause, like a cow chewing a cud. "Who are you, sir?"

The man opened his mouth and almost spit out a large wad of pink gum. His face turned the same color. He sucked the gum back in and said, "Uh, Gary Gruber. I'm the manager."

"Of what?"

"Oh. Uh, of the airport?"

It didn't sound as if Gruber were all that certain just what he was managing, but then sudden, violent, proximate death had a way of casting everything in one's life into question. Liam waited with that outward attention and patience cultivated by an Alaska state trooper, at the same time completely and overwhelmingly conscious of the woman standing at his side.

After a moment Gruber, apprehensive and flustered, continued. "I make sure the planes are parked in the right spaces, advise about the scheduling, watch for theft, sub for ATC and weather and the fueler when they go on break." His voice trailed off.

"Did you see the accident?"

Gruber shook his head violently, chewing hard at his gum, jaw moving like a piston. "No. No no no. I was in the terminal. I only came out when I heard people shouting. And then I saw-" His voice failed him again.

Liam raised his voice. "Did anyone else see what happened?"

No one had, or weren't saying if they had. "Does anyone know how it could have happened?"

Wy said, "He must have primed the prop by hand."

"What?" Liam still couldn't look at her directly. He looked at Gruber instead.

Gruber swallowed again, Adam's apple bobbing in the open throat of his shirt. "I guess she means Bob must have pulled the prop through by hand."

Liam looked again at the prop. At his height it was nearly eye-level. Despite the rays of the early evening sun peering through the break in the clouds, a light rain was falling. The blood on the tips was beginning to run, coalescing into fat red drops that fell with audible plops to the mangled flesh of the man beneath. "Huh?"

"You reach up, grab a blade, and rotate the prop a couple of times," Wy said.

"Oh, you mean like-"

Gruber choked on his wad of gum, and Wy said, "Don't do that!"

She grabbed his half-raised hand. Her touch seared right through the surface of his skin. She let go, a brief flush of color in her cheeks. "Sorry," she said gruffly. "I haven't checked her out since I got back and found Bob. Whatever was wrong with her still is."

"Oh." Liam, feeling suddenly warm, unzipped his jacket and turned his face up to catch a little of the cooling drizzle on his overheated skin. "Why would he do that? What did you call it, "pull the prop through by hand"? I take it that isn't standard procedure." He looked at Gruber because he wasn't sure what his face would show if he looked at Wy.

"No." Gruber looked at the pilot standing silently next to the trooper. Liam waited. "He was an old-timer," she said finally.

"An old-timer? What's that got to do with anything?"

She looked up, and slowly Liam turned to meet her eyes, which were as bleak as her voice. "A lot of the old-time pilots are used to the old round engines, which had a habit of leaking oil into the cylinders. Pilots would pull their props through to make sure no leaky oil had caused a hydraulic lock. If they didn't pull it through, they could blow a jug."