Dana Stabenow - Fire And Ice

His wife looked at him and replied, "I guess they'll say a mother killed the son of a bitch who hurt her daughter." She paused, and added with a smile, "And they'll be right."

She sat across the desk from Liam, perfectly composed, hair neatly combed, gray knit pantsuit freshly pressed (liam knew a wistful thought for her obvious ironing skills), her words calm and precise.

"When I was very young I had a daughter. The circumstances don't matter, but I gather you have already guessed who her father is, or was."

"Bob DeCreft."

She inclined her head. "Yes. I was traveling with the Ilutuqaq Native Association Board, as a board member." Her chin raised. "I was the youngest person ever elected to the association board. I wanted to keep my seat after I married, but Richard said… well, it doesn't matter what he said. This all happened long before I met him. The board had chartered a plane. Bob was our pilot." She smiled, a wide smile rich with memories. "I was the youngest, so I always got to ride shotgun. My auntie Sada was supposed to be looking out for me, but she would get airsick and take pills to go to sleep." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "We had some fine times in the front of that plane. I'll never forget them."

Liam remembered the first few months he'd flown out to crime scenes with Wy as his pilot. Sometimes her Cub; sometimes, when there was a body to bring back for autopsy, a chartered Cessna. Sometimes four seats, sometimes only two, him sitting behind her as he had today, or yesterday, now. The smell of Ivory soap on her skin, the quick crinkle of flesh at the corners of her eyes when she laughed, the rub of her shoulder against his. It was a long way between places in the Bush, and they'd talked, nonstop it seemed in hindsight, about everything: his cases, her flights, books, music, movies, politics, religion.

It was a hothouse environment, forcing relationships to rapid fruition, with no time-outs to cool down or reconsider. He'd never understood anyone so well or so quickly, and just the memory of it now was so powerful that it took a serious effort to draw himself back to the present, to Newenham and the woman looking over his shoulder with a dreamy smile on her face.

She sighed. "We, well, we were together constantly over a period of three months, flying around the state, talking to legislators and businesspeople and shareholders and boards from other Native regions, finding out how they were managing their ANCSA funds, how they were administering their land grants. We were coming into our share of the ANCSA settlement, and we wanted to do a good job for all the shareholders, not waste the money or give away the lands."

"Like the Anipa Subdivision?"

She bestowed an approving smile on him. "Yes, exactly like that. Native investors funding Native projects with federal backing, built by Native workers for Natives to live in. We were all so charged up and full of purpose. We were like the Blues Brothers."

"I beg your pardon?"

She smiled faintly. "On a mission from God."

"Oh." It had been a long time since Liam had seen the movie, but eventually he got the joke, and returned her smile. "I see."

"And then there was Bob. I saw him almost every day, sat next to him everywhere we flew. He was funny, and nice, and smart-he was a pilot, after all-and the color of my skin and the shape of my eyes weren't the only things he saw about me. I liked him right away. He was twenty years older than I was, but I didn't care." Her smile was rich and warmly reminiscent. "And then I loved him, and he loved me, and for a month we were happy. So very happy." She paused.

"What happened?"

Her smile faded. "Auntie Sada saw what was happening and called my parents. My parents came and took me home."

"And you went?" Liam said involuntarily. It was almost impossible to reconcile this strong, composed woman with the subservient, submissive wife he had seen at the post office, or for that matter with the picture she drew of the idealistic young board member of twenty-two years before.

"Yes," she said soberly. "I went. They were my elders. It wasn't that easy, Mr. Campbell, not in the seventies; it isn't that easy even today to disobey your elders in the village. And Bob was white. That didn't help. They were horrified that I would consider marrying a gussuk, let alone sleep with him. So I went home, hoping that I could change their minds."

"And when you found out about the baby?"

All the life drained from her face, leaving it a mask with nothing alive behind it. "They sent me to Anchorage to have her, and then they took her from me. They wouldn't allow a half-white child to be raised in the Ilutsik home. They took her from me and gave her to the Nanalooks in Newenham, or so I found out later."

Her fists clenched on the arms of the chair. Liam had not cuffed her. It wasn't necessary. Elizabeth Rebecca Ilutsik Gilbert had already committed her murder. She would not kill again.

"I take my commandments seriously, Mr. Campbell, but if I'd known where Laura was and what the Nanalooks were doing to her, you'd have had to arrest me for murder a long time before this."

Liam didn't doubt it for a minute. "Off the record?" he said.

She was curious. "Off the record," she agreed.

"I'd have held your coat."

She smiled at him then, the same wide, warm, transforming smile of before, with an extra dollop of approval added. Liam would have wagged his tail if he'd had one, and for the first time saw the woman Bob DeCreft had been attracted to so many years before. "Thank you."

"How did you come to marry Richard Gilbert?"

The smile faded. "My parents wanted me off their hands and out of their house, and they figured I was already tainted anyway. He was a missionary who needed a link to the community he was trying to convert. They arranged it between them. I didn't much care one way or another, so I went along with it. I thought I could have more children, that that would help. But I didn't."

"I'm sorry," Liam said inadequately.

"Thank you," she said softly. "I am too."

Liam, who had lost his own child, cleared his throat and said, "Why didn't you try to call Bob? When you found out you were pregnant?"

"My parents wouldn't allow it." She added in a lower voice, "And when I was back in the village, I was ashamed."

The words were so simple, and encompassed so much. "When did Bob get in touch with you again? When he moved here in 1992? You went up the river with him, didn't you?"

Enough of the minister's helpmate remained that she looked alarmed. "How did you know that?"

"You were seen. Don't worry, they didn't recognize you, they only recognized him."

"Oh. Good. I guess." The alarmed expression faded, as if it had only been habit in the first place. "It doesn't matter now. We got away by ourselves, and we talked and talked and talked, and he told me that he figured I was never coming back, so he didn't bother leaving a trail for me to follow. I thought he'd moved on to another woman, but he hadn't." Pride showed through again. "He wanted me to leave Richard and move in with him, and have Laura move in with us."

"Why didn't you?"

She paused, thinking it over. "I don't know," she said finally, a puzzled crease appearing between her brows. "I should have. I suppose I was-afraid."

"Afraid of what? Your husband?"

She shook her head. "No. No one who truly knows Richard is afraid of him. No, I suppose I was afraid of what God would think of me if I did." She saw Liam's expression and smiled again, this time without humor. "Yes, I know what you're thinking. Nowadays people sling His name around like they're on a firstname basis with Him. It's true that my parents arranged my marriage to Richard-even if he was a gussuk, they figured that at least he was a holy one-but I said the words. For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, so long as you both shall live. Those are truly terrible words, Mr. Campbell, if you think about them. Very few people do. But I did, and when I said them I meant them."