Dana Stabenow - Fire And Ice

"How good?" Wy demanded.

Wolfe pulled a spiral notebook from a pocket. "Mike got twelve, Alex got thirty-six, and I got a hundred and ten. Add 'em all up, you get-"

"One hundred fifty-eight tons," Liam said, and in spite of himself felt a little light-headed.

"The percentage stay at fifteen?" Wy said.

Wolfe nodded.

"What is this percentage business?" Liam said, remembering Wy asking Wolfe that question while they were still in the air.

"The percentage of total weight in roe," Wolfe replied. "Ten percent is considered excellent."

"And we got fifteen," Wy said, a slow smile breaking across her face. "How much did we get a ton?"

Wolfe's grin widened. "Top dollar."

"How much is top dollar?" Wy demanded.

"The most we've ever got," Wolfe replied, enjoying himself. In someone less arrogant, it might have been called teasing. In Wolfe, it was a demonstration of power on the schoolyard level: I know something you don't know, I know something you don't know.

"How much is "the most we've ever got"?" Wy demanded.

"Eighteen hundred."

"Eighteen hundred a ton?" Wy's voice scaled up. "We actually got eighteen hundred dollars a ton?"

"Eighteen hundred a ton," Wolfe confirmed. "Here's your copy of the fish ticket."

Liam moved to stare over Wy's shoulder at the sheet of paper Wolfe handed her. He also had the check from the processor with him, which Wolfe flourished like the banner of a conquering hero. So many decimal places made Liam dizzy.

"This oughta pay for fixing up that plane of yours, Chouinard," Wolfe said. "Fearsome, what a crowbar can do to the fabric on a wing."

"How did you know they used a crowbar?" Liam said. "In fact, how did you know Wy's plane had been trashed?"

Wolfe gave a practiced shrug. "Hell, trooper, it was all over Newenham five minutes later, just like all the rest of the news."

"I didn't tell anyone about the crowbar," Liam said. "The only other person who knew about the crowbar besides me was the guy using it." He looked at Mulder. Mulder looked stolidly back.

He knew for sure, now, and Mulder knew he knew, and so did Wolfe. But he couldn't prove it, and they knew that, too. Wolfe gave Wy a sly nudge. "Anyway, lucky for you we did so good today."

"Luck had nothing to do with it," Wy said, lost to anything but the numbers on the fish ticket.

"Yeah, you earned your keep," Wolfe said, grin widening. "Well, I'm going to go deposit this check, clean up, and get the book work out of the way," Wolfe said, "and then I'm buying at Bill's. I'll be handing out paychecks there."

"See you then," Wy said.

Wolfe's grin widened even farther. "I just bet I will."

Master and man climbed into the Chevy and drove off. Liam liked nothing about Wolfe-not his cocky arrogance, not his cool assumption of intimacy with Wy, not his relationship, if you could call it that, with Laura Nanalook, and most especially not his air of knowing something Liam didn't. He didn't like Mulder, either, but that was personal, and would be settled personally, at a time and place of Liam's choosing. Alaskan fishing seasons were long, and so were the summer days. As with Wolfe, time was on Liam's side.

John Barton would not have approved, but then John Barton had not been coldcocked with a crowbar on a rainy airfield in the middle of the first night of his posting. In law enforcement, your reputation was even more important than your badge and your gun, and Liam had no intention of beginning his career in Newenham with the word getting around that he could be whacked with impunity. And if he read Wolfe right, word would get around.

He looked over at Wy, who was staring again at the fish ticket. Wy felt his stare and looked up. A tear slid down her cheek. She didn't notice. "You can't know what this means."

Liam remembered John Barton's call that morning. "I can guess." He gestured in the direction of the Cub. "Especially now."

She held the fish ticket up. "Ten percent of this is yours, don't forget." He started to say something, and she waved his words aside. "You earned it. You watched the sky and you didn't throw up down the back of my neck. Believe me, that's not bad for a first-time observer."

"Ten percent?" Liam said.

She smiled. It was a pale imitation of the real thing. "Ten percent. I've got to go-I want to clean up, too. See you later."

She walked off, no spring to her step, and for the first time since he had landed in Newenham no consciousness of their relationship coloring her demeanor, either. She wasn't thinking of him or of her or of them, she was thinking about her bank balance. Given what he knew of her situation, and the tattered wings of the plane parked a row up, he could hardly blame her.

She had mistaken his response. He had not been overwhelmed by his percentage; he had in fact been dismayed by it. Four thousand two hundred sixty-six dollars. That would have been Bob DeCreft's share, had he lived to earn it.

Say for argument's sake a lawyer billed at $100 an hour. It was more than that nowadays, but $100 was easy to divide into $4,266. Fortytwo hours. Liam wondered how many attorney-hours the standard adoption case averaged.

He'd investigated murders committed for the loose change in a man's jeans. Four thousand two hundred sixty-six dollars was a lot more than pocket change.

There were public showers at the harbormaster's. Liam got in at the tail end of a long line and ran out of hot water halfway through. It was after seven before he got back to the post, and when he did, he found Jim Earl pacing up and down the office in an obvious snit. "Where the hell have you been?" hizzoner barked. "I been trying to track you down all day."

"Working on the DeCreft murder case," Liam replied, which was the truth, if not all the truth. He could have added, Not that I'm accountable to anyone except my boss for my actions, but he didn't.

That slowed Jim Earl up a bit, and Liam realized why with his next words. "Oh. Jesus, I forgot. Poor old Bob." By now, everyone Liam had spoken to had called DeCreft "poor old Bob." He hadn't been that poor or that old. Liam wondered what it had been about the man that made people pity him in retrospect. Other than his sudden and violent death.

Jim Earl rallied to his cause. "I wanted to talk to you about Kelly McCormick."

"Who?" Liam said, caught off guard.

Jim Earl glared. "Kelly McCormick, the guy who shot up the post office."

"Oh. Of course. I knew who you meant, the name just slipped my mind for a moment. Press of business and all."

It was a weak defense, and both men knew it. "You even talked to him?"

"Jim Earl," Liam said, a trifle impatiently, "I've been on the ground here in Newenham for"-he checked his watch-"not quite three days. I walked into the middle of a murder and two shootings, and I haven't had time to find someone to press my uniform, much less a place to stay. No, I haven't talked to Kelly McCormick. I've asked around about him. I haven't found out much, and I haven't found him."

With awful sarcasm, Jim Earl inquired, "Did you think of looking for him on his boat? Or at his girlfriend's?"

"I didn't know he had a boat. Or a girlfriend."

"Of course he's got a girlfriend," Jim Earl snapped. "Every girl in this town is looking for a way out of it from the time she reaches puberty on, and the fastest way to get out of it is to waggle their tail feathers in front of some young rooster with a boat and a permit."

"And Kelly McCormick qualifies?"

"You bet your ass he does," Jim Earl said. "In fact the only good thing I can find to say about that boy is that when he's sober, he's one hell of a worker. He catches himself one hell of a lot of salmon. 'Course he immediately drinks it all right down, so that don't mean one hell of a lot."

"What's his boat's name?"