Dana Stabenow - Fire And Ice

"What makes you say so?"

She shrugged, her back to him. "Most of the old guys out in the Bush pretty much figure that their right to fish and hunt when and where they please was grandfathered in with statehood."

Liam had to smile. He couldn't see Moses Alakuyak waiting for a clock to tick down to put his net in the water, if he was up a creek and that creek was filled with fish. Of course as an Alaska Native Moses had subsistence rights, so long as he didn't abuse them by selling the fish he caught commercially, which he probably did the first chance he got.

"I did run into old Bob up a river off the Nushagak one time," Taylor said reflectively. "Years ago, that was." She popped a roll of film out of the camera and replaced it with another.

"What, was he poaching?"

She shook her head and stood upright, rubbing the small of her back. "No. Not that time, anyway." She cocked an eyebrow at Liam and grinned. "He had a girl with him."

"A girl? Oh, the little blonde? Laura Nanalook?"

"Oh, you know about her?"

"We've met," Liam said.

She gave him a sympathetic look. "Yeah, that's right, you would have. One reason I've always been glad to stay on my side of the service, I don't ever have to tell anybody their people are dead. Anyway, it wasn't Laura."

"It wasn't?"

"No."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know." She grinned again. "He was awful anxious to get rid of me, old Bob was, and I thought for sure he had a bunch of king fillets in his cooler he didn't want me to see. King season not being open for another day," she added. "But it wasn't fish he was hiding, it was a woman."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know. I only saw her from a distance. We were on the sandbar and she was on the bank. Guess she'd waded across to tinkle or something, or maybe he'd waded back across for a beer."

"What did she look like?"

"Like I said, I didn't get all that good a look. She was short, kinda thick through the middle, dark hair." She looked at him. "One thing I know for sure."

"What's that?"

"She was somebody's wife."

"Why do you say that?"

Taylor spread her hands. "Why hide otherwise?"

Why indeed? Liam pointed at the film. "You got everything that went down out there?"

"Pretty much. Something always slips through, but I think I got everything I need. Why?"

Liam thought it over. He didn't want to mess up Wy's paycheck, but he knew a powerful wish to see Cecil Wolfe get a little of his own back again. "I saw an awful lot of boats running into each other out there."

"Yeah?"

She wasn't going to help him any. Liam said doggedly, "Some of it looked deliberate."

"That a fact," she said placidly. She saw his look and gave a snort of laughter. "Let me tell you a story, Liam. Last year during herring, season was on time instead of early like this year so it was, oh, second week of May, I guess, we had an opener down in Togiak. There was a collision between a couple of boats which involved the sinking of one of the boats' skiffs. The guy who lost the skiff filed a complaint, and Corcoran-you know Corcoran?" Liam nodded. By the very absence of emotion in her voice he could tell what Fish and Wildlife Protection Trooper Taylor thought of Public Safety Trooper Corcoran. "Corcoran arrested the other skipper for assault. It came to trial last November. Guess what the verdict was." She paused expectantly.

He thought for a moment. "Who testified?"

"Oh, the whole kit and caboodle-both skippers, the deckhands on both boats, the guys on the skiffs, both spotters, and me. We all told the same story, with slight differences of opinion on whether the ramming was deliberate." She waited.

"Where was the trial?"

Her smile was approving. "Right here in Newenham."

"Acquittal," he said.

"You got it. Just like the last six cases where anyone could be bothered to bring charges. Probably one out of every two jurors from a panel generated from this judicial district is thinking, There but for the grace of God go I. So we get acquittals, now and then a hung jury. Sometimes," she said reflectively, "sometimes, in my more cynical moments, I think they've got it worked out beforehand, before they ever go into deliberation. But that's only in my more cynical moments. Most of the time I'm a regular Pollyanna when I look at our judicial system. Innocent until proven guilty, I always say."

"And everybody out there today qualifies."

"That's right," she said cheerfully. "You just have to understand, being found not guilty in Newenham of any fishing-related crime is not exactly the same thing as being innocent."

Liam had to laugh.

She grinned, satisfied. "And if there is one thing our local state attorney hates worse than an acquittal, it's a hung jury. Both are a waste of the judge's time, both cost the state money, and both get him grief from his boss in Juneau. Makes him hard to live with."

Liam raised an eyebrow. "How would you know?"

The grin widened. "He's my husband." She pulled a small grip from the back of the Cessna and closed the door firmly. "No one will be filing charges anytime soon for anything that happened out on the water today, Liam. That's just the way it is."

Liam got the feeling she was telling him this particular story for a reason. He took her implied advice and his leave.

It didn't matter all that much. Moses was right-sooner or later Cecil Wolfe would get his. His very arrogance would cause him to cross the line again and again, until one day he did it when all the lights were on and everyone was looking.

On that day, Liam would be watching, too.

He could wait.

But could Laura Nanalook?

Wy had taxied the borrowed Cub back to its tie-down and was busy removing all traces of its most recent trip from the interior. Liam stood watching her for a moment. "You didn't ask the dentist if you could borrow his Cub, did you?"

She started and froze for a moment. "Dammit, Liam, don't sneak up on a person like that." She gave the floor of the plane a final brush with a whisk broom and folded up the door. "And I do, too, have his permission to take her up."

From her airy tone of voice, Liam guessed, "Once in awhile? Like maybe once a year? Say for a test flight just before he comes down to kill caribou?"

In that same tone of airy unconcern, Wy said, "He pretty much leaves that up to me."

"Uh-huh," Liam said. "You enter today in the log?"

Wy drew herself up to her full height and looked him straight in the eye. "Of course I did."

"Uh-huh," Liam said. He could have asked to read the log, but was unwilling to do anything so extremely foolish. About all he could hope for was that he wasn't mentioned by name. She began walking toward her own tie-down and he fell into step beside her. "You never did tell me, how much do I get paid for today's jaunt?"

As if in answer to his question, a bright red fourwheel-drive Chevy S10 long bed drew up with a flourish. Cecil Wolfe got out from one side, Kirk Mulder from the other.

Wolfe looked over her head. "Trooper Campbell."

Mulder nodded, his skeletal grin flashing out to blight the landscape.

"You made good time into port," Liam said. "I figured for another hour out at least."

Wolfe waved an expansive hand. "I've got a pilot boat on the payroll, comes out to pick me and Kirk up when we get done delivering. I let the crew bring her the rest of the way in."

Of course.

Wolfe slung a careless arm around Wy and pulled her next to him, grinning down at her. Liam noticed the stiffening of her shoulders, but he also noticed that she didn't pull away. "Hear you were up in the air with my flygirl."

"I was," Liam admitted.

"Well, by God you must be our lucky charm, because we beat hell outta the little sonsabitches today!" He lifted Wy up off her feet, wrapped both arms around her in a bear hug, and kissed her, taking a long time over it. Wy dangled limply, about as responsive as a sack of potatoes, the only thing that saved Wolfe from instant and total annihilation. Liam hung on to his temper and his patience, and eventually Wolfe dumped Wy back on her feet. Liam, watching her face, recognized the moment when she realized she couldn't spit and drag a sleeve across her mouth. Wolfe saw it, too, grinned his hard, feral grin, and chucked her beneath the chin, much as Corcoran had just before he'd boarded the Metroliner. "We done good, flygirl. We done real good."