Dana Stabenow: Fire And Ice

Liam checked his watch. It was just coming up on six-thirty. As casually as he could, he said, "So it's a hostage situation? Are there any children involved? What kind of gun does Pauk have? Did he shoot his wife? Did he shoot Mr., uh, Mr.-"

"Wassillie, Johnny Wassillie, and hell yes, he shot him. Only winged him, though." Jim Earl seemed regretful to report this. He tapped the scanner hanging beneath the dash. "On the way over to get you, I heard Roger Raymo report in to the dispatcher. That'd be our day shift officer, the one we got left," Earl added with some bitterness. "He said he'd managed to disarm Nick before he got around to shooting Amy." Earl grinned. "Scared her, though, I bet." He thought about it. "Maybe. Amy's pretty scary herself, when she's of a mind to it."

Liam's hand slid from the holster, and he let out a long, slow breath. "Okay," he said, he hoped mildly. He hadn't been on the ground for-he checked his watch-three hours, and already there had been two and possibly three attempts at murder.

Maybe four, once he got his hands on Wy.

"No, we're headed for Bill's," Earl said with grim satisfaction. "Local watering hole, open from six a.m. until midnight, two a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Best burgers in town." He shot Liam a sardonic look. "Only burgers in town."

"Uh-huh," Liam said, dragging his attention back to the situation at hand. "You said there'd been shooting?"

Jim Earl snorted. "No shit, Sherlock."

Liam waited. "So, who got shot?"

"Not who, what."

"I beg your pardon?"

The Suburban bottomed out over another pothole. Liam winced at the resulting tortured scrape of metal. Jim Earl didn't seem to notice. "Teddy Engebretsen's boat broke down just about the time the gun went off for herring. He and Nick limped back into the harbor together; Nick went home to see if he could bag hisself a Wassillie, Teddy went on up to Bill's to drown his sorrows. Reasonable response," Earl added parenthetically. "Hell of a thing to miss out on, herring. Enough money in one set for the boat payment and the insurance payment and a new engine and a trip to Seattle. If you make the right one in the right place."

Liam made a small noise that could have meant assent. He knew even less about herring fishing than he did about aviation, although in the case of the former it was distance and inexperience, not terror and intent that kept him ignorant.

"So, Teddy gets a little liquored up." Earl paused. "Well, okay, maybe a lot liquored up, and he takes exception to what's on the jukebox." A small shudder seemed to ripple up Jim Earl's spine. "Bill keeps a thirty-ought-six behind the bar in case of trouble. Teddy grabbed it and shot out the jukebox. Right in the middle of "Margaritaville." Dumb bastard." He shook his head. "Poor, dumb bastard." He spit out the window again and added, "Poor dumb dead bastard is what he's going to be if we don't get there in time."

They were in town now, a confused mass of buildings built on a series of small rolling hills that reminded Liam of sand dunes in shape and size, sand dunes covered with a thick encrustation of pine and spruce and alder and willow and birch. The town's buildings varied in construction from prefabricated corrugated metal to rickety two-story wooden plank to split log, lining the sides of a labyrinthine arrangement of streets. Paved streets, both Liam and Jim Earl's truck were glad to notice. They passed two grocery stores, one with its corrugated metal siding painted an electric blue and a small front porch that was crowded with a group of teenage boys.

As the Suburban passed the store, the group of boys spilled down the steps and into the street. Jim Earl leaned on the horn. The boys looked around, mimed astonishment at this appearance of a wheeled vehicle in the middle of the road, and one by one and as slowly as was humanly possible drifted to the curb.

One boy in particular, shorter and younger than the others, was even more obvious than the rest. He wore jeans that bagged out down to his knees and a baseball cap on backward. He stooped to fuss with a cuff, which although rolled three times, was still dragging the ground, and barely twitched when Jim Earl's horn gave another impatient blast. He took his time straightening up, adjusted his cap, and gave Jim Earl a sideways glance that bordered on insolence. He was short and stocky, with straight black hair and the classic high cheekbones, tilted eyes, and golden skin of the upriver Yupik. "Goddammit, kid, move outta the goddamn way!" the mayor bellowed out the window, and hit the horn again.

The other boys had retreated to the porch and were whistling and hooting and catcalling. The boy looked from them to the truck and back again, held a brief, internal debate, and then with an almost imperceptible shrug moved ever so slowly to one side of the street. "About goddamn time," Jim Earl bellowed again, and trod on the accelerator.

Liam twisted his head to watch the boy swagger up the steps to the porch, where he was greeted like a conquering hero, with a lot of back- and hand-slapping, shoulder-shaking, and fist feints to the jaw. The boy turned suddenly and caught Liam's eye. He smiled, slowly, arrogant satisfaction sitting on his young face like war paint, and then the Suburban went around a corner and the boy was lost from view.

The potholes had given way to pavement, but the streets were a warren of sudden rises and dogleg curves. Jim Earl swooped down one such rise and around one of the doglegs, whipped past a large group of buildings on a wooden dock that could have been a cannery or the local fuel dock or the SeaLand warehouse-they were going too fast for Liam to be sure-and pulled up with a jerk at a sprawling, one-story building that featured a shallow-peaked tin roof and green vinyl siding. It sat in the middle of a large parking lot, about three-quarters filled.

The sight did not fill Liam with joy, who had visions of all the vehicle owners being held hostage at gunpoint. "Mayor-" he began.

"Call me Jim Earl," the mayor said, turning off the ignition without bothering to throw out the clutch. The Suburban lurched and gurgled. "Everybody does." With a protesting diesely rattle, the engine died.

"Hold on a minute," Liam said, raising a hand. "You're saying there's a man in there with a gun, right? How many other people are in there? Is he holding them hostage? What kind of gun does he-"

Jim Earl snorted again, spit again, and slammed open the driver's side door. "Shit, Liam, Teddy don't got no gun. Bill done took it away from him."

"What?" Liam got out and slammed shut his own door. "Then what the hell am I doing here?" Ten miles from what might be a real murder scene, and farther than that in space and time from Wy. Suddenly he was furious. "Now, look, Jim Earl"-it was difficult to separate those two names-"I just set foot in Newenham, and I know, because you've told me, that your local force is shorthanded, but I've got some real work to do out at your airport, and-"

Mayor Jim Earl snorted, spat, and swore all in the same breath. "Shit, boy, I didn't haul your ass all the way in from the airport to take Teddy into custody." The tall, grizzled man walked around the hood of the car and poked Liam in the chest with a bony finger. "You're here to save his ass. You don't understand: Teddy shot the jukebox in the middle of "Margaritaville." He'll be lucky to get out of there alive." He grinned for the first time, displaying a set of large, improbably white teeth. "I wouldn't care but he's my son-inlaw, and I don't want the raising of his kids. Hellions, every one of them. You might be arresting me for murder my own self, should I be fool enough to take on that job."

And with that he vaulted the faded gray wooden steps and disappeared inside the building with the sign on it that said in unprepossessing black block letters, BILL'S BAR AND GRILL.