Dana Stabenow: Fire And Ice

She said nothing. "And," he said, his voice rising again, "and he hits on you. You had three good reasons to kill the guy, Wy, and those are only three that I know of. How many more are there?"

She still had no answer for him. He could feel his temper bite into him, and battled it back. "Also lucky for you, at two a.m. this morning Becky Gilbert confessed to the murder of Cecil Wolfe."

She looked up then, shocked. "What?"

"Becky Gilbert killed Cecil Wolfe," he repeated.

She was having difficulty taking it in. "Becky Gilbert? The minister's wife? You've got to be kidding!"

"She's Laura Nanalook's mother," Liam said curtly. "Wolfe raped Laura the day her father died. He'd done it before. He would have done it again. Becky found out, and killed him. Tell me why you did it, Wy." Their eyes met. "Tell me why, goddammit!"

"I needed the money," she said simply.

He watched her with angry eyes, arms folded, waiting.

She sighed. Her eyes closed and her head fell back. "The business took every dime I had. You know, I told you back then that I wanted to run my own air taxi someday." She opened her eyes and looked at him.

He gave a curt nod.

She sighed again. "This was it. I knew it as soon as I met Jeff Webster and he showed me around, as soon as I saw the office and the hangar and the house, and the planes. And met the people. And got to know the place." She paused. "And I had to have something. I had to be busy. I had to not think of you."

"Save that," he said shortly.

"All right," she said, submissive. "But it's true." She blinked back what might have been a tear. He'd seen Wy cry only twice, that last day in Anchorage and yesterday when she heard how much she was going to make on her herring check, but the hard knot of anger burning in his gut wouldn't let him acknowledge the emotion he thought he saw now. "And then there was Tim. I found him, I-I guess you could say I rescued him." She tried to smile. "You know that old saying, about how if you save someone's life, you're responsible for it forever after? It's true." She added urgently, "It is true, Liam. Tim is mine now, and I would do anything, I will do anything to keep him safe."

The same way Bob DeCreft would have done anything to provide for Laura. He said, "Anything, including double-crossing your employer."

"Yes," she said simply.

"Anything, including lying to me."

"Liam-"

"You should have trusted me," he said implacably. "After all we had together, you should have trusted me."

She lost her own temper then, shoving her chair back in turn. She leaned forward, hands flat on his desk. "After all we had together? You smug, selfish, self-righteous jerk! I'll tell you what we had together, Liam! We had a thousand dollars in phone bills, most of which I paid because I had to call you so it wouldn't show up on your phone bill, and a four-night stand in Anchorage! That's all we had together!"

He was struck to the heart, and stung into retaliation. "So what are you doing hanging around me now? You figure having a state trooper on a string is going to make you look better to the judge when it comes time for the adoption to go to court? Just a little something to make up for nearly being charged with murder?"

"And afterward you didn't call, you didn't try to come after me, nothing, it was like I didn't exist!"

"I was honoring your decision! You said it was over!"

"And you searched my house! I invite you in for dinner and you search my house! Where the hell do you get off turning a social invitation into an opportunity to invade my privacy!"

"Gee, forgive me for doing what I'm required to do when I'm trying to find a murderer!"

She wasn't listening. "You know what I hate? Not the lies, and the deception, and the sneaking around, although all that was bad enough. What I really hate is that I fell for a coward."

He was outraged. "What!"

"I fell for a coward," she said, as implacable as he'd been. "You came after me like a freight train, there was no stopping you-and if there is any truth in you at all, you'll admit that I tried to, more than once." Her furious brown eyes bored into his blue ones. "You roared into my life and flattened everything in it and roared out again. You're just pure hell at roaring through, Campbell."

"What was I supposed to do, I-"

"You were supposed to leave me alone in the first place!" she shouted. "And if you were too weak to do that much, then the instant you realized what was happening between us you should have marched right home to Jenny and said, I'm sorry, I've met someone else, I want a divorce!"

Liam opened his mouth, and closed it again.

"Instead, you arranged that little getaway in Anchorage. "To see if it's real," you said." She curled her lip. "Like we needed proof. You were just hedging your bets. Admit it, you wanted me, but you were afraid of what would happen if you asked for a divorce, afraid of what your friends would say, of what your boss would say." She paused, readying herself for the cruelest cut of all. "You were afraid of what your father would say. You were afraid he would say that you were just like your mother."

He was so angry that he feared he would hit her. "Get out," he said in a rusty voice.

"Don't worry, I'm gone," she said. "You stick with what's safe, Liam. That's what you're good at."

The door closed silently behind her on its hydraulic hinge.

Liam stood there, impotent with rage. It boiled over. "Goddammit!" he bellowed, and swept everything from the top of his desk to the floor.

The cap on the Pepsi bottle came loose and Bob DeCreft's piss spilled all over Wy's sleeping bag.

It turned out that Bill Billington had an industrial-sized washing machine and dryer in the back of her bar. She was pleased to offer Liam their use. When he saw the ironing board and the iron, he went back to the post and fetched his uniform. It took two refills for the iron to generate enough steam to smooth the wrinkles from the dark blue slacks and the blue jacket.

The shirt was easier. When he finished, he held it up, admiring it. After Liam's mother had left, his father, the complete air force officer to whom an unpressed uniform was an act of sacrilege against God and country, had taught himself how to iron a uniform shirt so that the creases down the arms were sharp enough to draw blood. He had passed this skill on to Liam as soon as the boy was tall enough to stand over the ironing board. Jenny, a child of wealth and privilege, hadn't known an ironing board from a lawn mower, and the knowledge had come in handy before and after his marriage.

The washing machine cycle ended and he loaded the sleeping bag into the dryer.

And then he put on his uniform-light blue shirt, dark blue slacks with a gold stripe down the outside of each leg, dark blue tie-adjusting badge and nameplate, buckling on his belt and holster, shrugging into the shiny dark blue jacket, getting the round crown of the flat-brimmed hat just so.

For the first time since landing in Newenham, he felt dressed.

When he stepped out of the back room into the bar, Bill was arguing politics with a patron. "I don't care what those goddamn Europeans are doing to each other. We've already saved their asses twice-three times if you count the Marshall Plan. Enough! As far as I'm concerned the only thing worth going to war over in recent memory was Jamaica shooting down Jimmy Buffett's plane. We should have invaded the sonsabitches over that."

She gave the bar a swipe with the bar rag for emphasis and caught sight of Liam in all his glory. She paused, subjected him to a comprehensive study from head to toe and back again, and pursed her lips in a long, low whistle that managed to be admiring and salacious at the same time. "Damn, Liam. I don't know whether to salute or just genuflect and get it over with."