Dana Stabenow: Fire And Ice

"Blow a what?"

"A jug. A cylinder."

"Oh," he said.

She gave a faint shrug. "I pull the prop through in the wintertime myself, just to see if it's moving freely."

"It's never done this to you," Liam observed, and knew a momentary spear of terror. Goddamn flying anyway, it'd kill you in the air or on the ground, made no difference.

She shook her head. "I always check the magneto twice. Always. Sometimes three times." Her brow creased. "But so does Bob. I don't understand this."

"The magneto?"

"The switch connected to the p-lead. Controls power to the ignition."

Liam thought about it. "So if it's off, the prop shouldn't do this."

"No."

"Show me."

She hesitated. Her hand came out in a futile gesture.

"Don't," he said, understanding.

Her hand dropped, her shoulders slumping.

"Mr. Gruber?" Liam had to say the airport manager's name twice before the man could tear his eyes from the body. "Why don't you get a tarp or something to cover him up?"

Gruber shifted from one foot to the other. "Uh, listen, no offense, but who are you, anyway?"

Liam glanced down involuntarily at his clothes. He was dressed much as Wy was-jeans, sneakers, plaid flannel shirt beneath a windbreaker. "Sorry. I'm a state trooper, just transferred to the Newenham post. Liam Campbell. My uniform's packed." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the Fairchild Metroliner, one prop shut down now, the other still whirring. He fished out his badge.

Gruber's jaw hung open in mid-chew, the wad of gum gleaming pinkly between his teeth, pale eyes staring from the badge to Liam and back again.

"That tarp, Mr. Gruber?" Liam said.

Gruber flushed, nodded once, and went off, shifting the gum from one cheek to the other, the cheek muscles working like pistons again.

The two halves of the small red and white plane's left-side door were folded open, the top portion fastened to the wing with a quick-release latch, the bottom half left to hang. The cockpit of the plane was, to put it kindly, utilitarian. The seats were little more than plastic stretched over a metal frame, the interior was without the usual fabric covering, and the dash was held together in places with duct tape. She'd seen better days.

Wy saw his look. "She flies," she said.

Liam let that pass. "Where's the ignition?"

Liam had spent his life in a concentrated effort to learn as little about flying as he possibly could, which was a neat trick given his profession and where he practiced it. There were roads in Alaska: one between Homer and Anchorage, two between Anchorage and Fairbanks with a spur to Valdez, and one between Fairbanks and Outside. You needed to go somewhere there wasn't a road, you flew. Troopers needed to go everywhere, so troopers flew, some in their own planes, some that they contracted. Liam contracted.

Wy had been his pilot, and 78 Zulu had been her plane, back in the days when there was a lot less duct tape and a lot more spit and polish about her. It was because of 78 Zulu that Liam could recognize a Piper Super Cub when he saw one. It was the only plane he could recognize, outside of a 747, and that only because of the bump on its nose.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, staring at the inside of the little plane. He looked at Wy from the corner of his eye. To anyone else, to anyone who didn't know her as well as he did, as intimately as he had, she would have looked calm, controlled, perhaps a little pale, understandable in the circumstances. But he knew what to look for, always had, and he relished the pulse thudding rapidly at the base of her throat, at the way her gaze avoided his.

She pointed beneath a row of gauges that meant nothing to Liam, and he saw a knob with four settings: Right, Left, Both, Off. It was set at Off. He stared at it in puzzled silence for a moment. "Where's the On?"

"What?"

"If there's an Off, there ought to be an On."

Seemed simple enough to Liam, but Wy shook her head. "Magnetos are little generators, their own power source. There are two of them, and they're always on. This isn't really an on-off switch, like a"-she cast about for a comparison to something he might understand-"like a light switch. It's a kill switch. Either their power is available to the engine, one or the other or both of them, or it isn't."

"And according to this switch, power from this one wasn't when Mr…"

"DeCreft."

"When Mr. DeCreft pulled the prop through."

"No. But it must have been, or-" She stopped, and added, almost against her will, "I don't get it."

"Get what?"

"Th." She waved a hand, inclusive of the deceased, the Super Cub, the dash. "Bob was even more careful than I am. He never would have pulled the prop through with the mag on."

Liam regarded the knob in frowning silence. "How old was DeCreft?"

"Sixty-five."

"Sixty-five?" He raised an eyebrow and looked at her, something it was getting easier to do.

"Sixty-five going on thirty," she said. "He passed his flight physical every year, including this one."

Liam let that pass, too. The Cub contained two green headphones with voice-activated microphones attached, one hanging from a hook over each seat, and two expensive-looking handheld radios sitting on the backseat, as if carelessly tossed there on the way out of the plane. He looked back at the dash, stooping to examine the switch more closely. "Hey. What's this?"

"What?" She peered around him and reached between him and the doorjamb to slap his hand as it stretched toward the dash. "Don't touch anything."

Again his skin burned where it had grazed hers. Their bodies had been forced very close together in the open doorway of the little plane. He took a deep breath and said, pointing from a safe distance, "What's that wire?"

"What wire?"

"That wire coming from out of the bottom of the dash."

"What?" All self-consciousness gone, she elbowed him aside and bent down, breast against the forward seat, nose inches from the bottom of the dash. Her braid slid forward to fall between the seat and the right-side door, and he resisted an impulse to pull it back. "What the hell?" She reached out, and it was his turn to reach over her and slap her hand aside, leaning against her back as he did so. She jumped. So did he. His voice was gruff. "What is it? What's wrong?"

There was a brief silence, just long enough for him to imagine everything she wasn't saying. "The p-lead's off."

"The p-lead?" He wasn't thinking all that clearly, and it took him a moment to follow. "Oh, yeah. The wire connected to the ignition, I mean the mag switch." He did look at her then, eyes all cop. "You mean it's not connected to the switch?" he said sharply.

She nodded dumbly.

"So the switch was…"

"It was on," she said. She jerked her chin toward the front of the plane. "It was on when Bob thought it was off. When he pulled the prop through."

There was a stir in back of them, and a bluff voice calling out, "What the hell's going on here? Get the hell outta the way, Gruber, let me see." Heavy feet slapped to a halt against the pavement, followed by a long, drawn-out, "Jeeeesus H. Key-riiiiiist."

Liam turned. Gary Gruber had returned with a blue plastic tarp. He was holding up one end for the perusal of an Alaska state trooper in full-dress blue and gold glory, a square red face beneath the badge pinned to the center of the black fur cap, earflaps tied neatly together over the crown, bushy black eyebrows over deep-set dark eyes. He wore sergeant's stripes.

The new arrival took in the body, the silent crowd, Liam and the pilot standing next to the Cub. His eyes, their look of surprise fading into the professional assessment of the practicing policeman, narrowed on Liam's face. "Well, well, well. Liam Campbell, isn't it? Sergeant Liam Campbell?" he added, emphasizing the first word.