Dana Stabenow - Fire And Ice

"Hello, Gary," she replied, hands not pausing in her task.

He fiddled with the zipper pull on his jacket. "Uh, I was sure sorry to see-I mean, hear-I mean, it's awful about Bob."

She flashed another of her patented smiles. "Thanks, Gary. I appreciate that." She picked up her tray.

"Uh, Laura?"

She paused and said, a little impatiently, "What, Gary? I'm kind of busy here."

"Of course," he mumbled. "I was just wondering if you'd like-if sometime you'd want to-" Beneath her patient stare his words died away. "I'm sorry, Laura, excuse me. It was nothing." He gave a vague flap of his hand and turned back to the bar to bury his nose in his glass.

Not for the first time Liam marveled at how opportunistic his own sex could be. Bob DeCreft wasn't cold and the sharks were already circling.

His eyes traveled beyond Gruber to Wolfe. Some weren't bothering to circle. "You stay away from Wolfe, do you hear?" Liam said harshly.

Wy looked at him in surprise. "I'm hanging until he forks over my paycheck, and then I'm outta here," she said, adding incredulously, "Are you jealous or something?"

He closed one hand around her arm, pulled her around to face him, and said with all the conviction he could muster, "Stay away from him, Wy. Stay as far away from Cecil Wolfe as you can get. The man's dangerous. Don't ever be alone with him."

She pulled free. "You are jealous," she said, but she wasn't certain.

"He's dangerous," he repeated. "Don't be alone with him, not ever."

She stared. "What aren't you telling me?"

Bill appeared with a loaded plate and a glass of Coke. Liam turned back to the counter and waded in. "Sit down," he said, kicking out the stool next to him. "Have a fry."

She cast a look over her shoulder, and then took the stool.

He picked up the salt shaker. Bill rematerialized. "Fries aren't salty enough for you?" she inquired frostily.

Liam put the shaker back down. "The fries are perfect."

"I thought so," Bill said, and disappeared again.

"Jesus, that woman," Liam muttered.

Wy laughed. "I like her."

Liam looked Wy straight in the eye. "If I'd seen her first, I'd be in love with her."

Wy flushed and didn't reply.

Liam finished off his fatburger in half a dozen big bites, mopped up the last of the juice with the last of the fries, and licked his fingers. "I mean it, Wy. Get your check from Wolfe and get out of here." He stood up and pulled out his wallet. "I've got to go; I've got a couple of stops I have to make."

"Where?"

"One's the harbor, the other's the hospital. See you later."

He left her staring after him as he went out the door.

Outside, the raven croaked at him. He ignored it, heading for the Blazer when he caught sight of a white Ford station wagon. He walked over to look inside, but it was empty. He looked around the parking lot and didn't see anyone, other than a couple steaming up the windows of a bright green Toyota Tercel. And he would surely have noticed her if she had been inside Bill's, as would have everyone else, something devoutly to be avoided by a minister's wife-especially, from what Liam had seen and heard, this minister.

The hospital was a three-story building painted a soft white with dark green trim. It had wings leading from either side, and as instructed Liam entered through the emergency door into the right wing. A nurse in a white two-piece pantsuit sat behind a counter. She was short and dark, with a round face and almond-shaped eyes. She spoke English slowly, with a heavy Yupik accent, but she was perfectly understandable. He followed her directions down a hall and into a treatment room, where behind a curtain he found the prone figure of Kelly McCormick.

McCormick had been beaten severely about the face and head. His eyes were swollen shut, his nose broken and bleeding, his lips split over his teeth. His clothes had been cut from his body to display defensive wounds up the undersides of both arms and great purple and yellow bruises on his chest and belly. One hand looked as if it had been stamped on by a heavy boot, the index finger sticking up at an odd angle.

He was conscious, however. He peered up uncomprehendingly at Liam through slitted eyelids. He grunted something, his mouth too damaged to articulate his words.

"I'll be damned," Liam said. Recognition came hard but it did come. "You're the guy at Bill's. The one who helped to get the rifle away from Teddy Engebretsen."

Larry Jacobson was standing on the other side of the bed. "Don't try to talk, Mac." He stared at Liam, hostility warring with fear in his face. Hostility won. "What do you want?"

"I heard Mr. McCormick had been brought in to the hospital," Liam said. "Thought I'd stop by." Yes, there was one of the dimples sported by Mac honey. He'd have ditched the barfly, too, if he had someone like Candy Choknok waiting on him. And Candy had said that Kelly had started out at Bill's on Friday, before going on to Tasha's party and first prize in the flatfooting contest.

Liam gave an inward sigh. All unknowing he had encountered Kelly McCormick twice in the past three days, the first time on Friday at Bill's, the second time on Saturday, on board the Mary J. He wasn't sure what that said for his powers of observation. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"We've already talked to Cliff Berg," Larry Jacobson said belligerently. "He took our statement."

"That'd be the local police?" Larry nodded and Liam wondered if he was ever going to meet the mythical local police. He stepped up to the bed and leaned over so McCormick wouldn't have to strain to see him. "Mr. McCormick, I'm Liam Campbell. I'm the new state trooper assigned to these parts. Do you know who beat you up?"

It was hard to read any expression on that battered face, but the head turned away and one maimed hand clawed at Jacobson's arm. "He doesn't want to talk to you," Jacobson said. "He's too hurt, anyway. I told you, we already talked to the police."

"Mr. McCormick, do you know who beat you up?" Liam repeated. "Tell me."

The maimed hand stilled, the slit in the eye closed, but Liam didn't think McCormick had gone to sleep or passed out on him. "Mr. McCormick? Whoever did this to you, he shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. I won't let him. Tell me who did it."

Nothing. "Did it have anything to do with your shooting up the post office yesterday?"

The slit opened again and a fragment of blue eye looked up at him in alarm. Liam smiled. "Yes, I know about that. I've been looking for you to ask you some questions."

"You got any witnesses?" Jacobson demanded hotly.

"About ten, all together," Liam said dryly.

The blunt answer squelched Jacobson for the moment. "Oh."

Neither McCormick nor Jacobson would be missed by the gene pool if either disappeared off the face of the earth, Liam reflected. "Why'd he do it?"

"Shoot up the P.o.?"

Liam nodded.

Jacobson glanced at McCormick. They seemed to commune telepathically for a moment or two, and then Jacobson looked back up at Liam. "I'm not saying he did do any such thing," he said.

"Uh-huh," Liam said.

"But if somebody," Jacobson said, stressing the last word, "if somebody took a gun and shot up the post office, then somebody might have had a really good reason."

Liam maintained an expression of polite interest. "And that really good reason might be-what?"

Again there was an exchange of looks. "That Gilbert guy, he's the postmaster."

"Yes."

"He's also the minister for the Trinity Church."

"Yes."

Jacobson shuffled his feet, then blurted out, "He won't give you your mail if you quit going to his church."

"Ah." It was about what Liam had expected, and it was yet another instance of how far out of his jurisdiction he was wandering in his new posting. My kingdom for a United States postal inspector, he thought. There's never a federal cop around when you need one. "So Kelly here thought he'd get the Right Reverend Mr. Gilbert to hand over his mail at gunpoint."