Dana Stabenow: Fire And Ice

All about Laura.

Liam stood up and reached for his hat.

"Hey, where you going, what about the rest of your food?" He threw down a ten. "That's not what I meant and you know it!" she said indignantly.

"Sorry. I've got to run."

In the doorway, inevitably, he ran into Moses, who looked him over sardonically. "You sure are slow."

"I'm a good student," Liam retorted. "Slow, smooth, unbroken, flowing, that's how I'm supposed to be moving, right?"

Moses stopped to stare. A smile crept across his face. "You're learning, boy. You're learning."

From overhead a raven croaked agreement. Liam tossed him a salute before getting into the Blazer and heading for the road to the airport.

There was a crowd of people at the check-in counter. Heads turned, one, two, five, until they were all staring at him, startled and a little apprehensive. He walked forward and the crowd parted naturally, as if before an undeniable force of nature. The office at the back of the airport terminal was unlocked and, when Liam knocked and went in, empty but for a desk, some filing cabinets, and a couple of chairs. He didn't have a shred of a legal right to do so but he tossed the desk on general principles anyway. The bottom-right-hand drawer held a half-empty plastic bag of Bazooka bubble gum.

He thought of the omnipresent pink wad in Gruber's mouth, and the pink wrapper scooped from the floor of 78 Zulu during the inventory.

It wasn't proof, but it wasn't bad. Gary Gruber was on the scene, he worked there every day, so he had opportunity. He was in love with Laura Nanalook, and Bob DeCreft lived with Laura Nanalook, so he had motive. He was a pilot, and could be presumed to be familiar with the innards of a Super Cub and to have tools to go along with that knowledge, so he had means.

If it looks like a motive, if it acts like means, if it quacks like opportunity…

Liam strode back through the terminal like a ship under full sail, and reached the double glass doors at the same time Gary Gruber did, only from the other side. They both grasped the handle. The door wouldn't budge. They looked up and their eyes met.

Liam's appearance in uniform had been noticed before. "The man's a walking recruitment poster," John Barton had told a colleague privately, and it was true. Liam didn't just put on his uniform, he merged with it. When the last snap was fastened and the hat set just so, Liam Drusus Campbell became an Alaska state trooper from the bone marrow out. The uniform was sword and buckler, an outward manifestation of the full power and majesty of the law, with Liam as its tool. In uniform Liam looked capable, incorruptible, and virtually invincible.

To Gary Gruber, he looked like the wrath of God.

Gruber ran.

Liam, a heartbeat behind, wrenched the door open and ran after him. "Gruber, stop! Stop!"

It had rained again that morning and the pavement was slick beneath their feet. People stopped, turned, stared as first Gruber ran past and then the trooper in full regalia followed in hot pursuit. Gruber had the advantage-he knew the airport-and he almost lost Liam when he dodged between two buildings and slipped behind a pile of white plastic totes.

Liam skidded to a halt and looked in both directions. He almost missed it, the top of Gruber's head bobbing just above the line of totes. He began to run again.

Gruber ran out onto the apron and crossed the taxiway. A large single-engine craft taxiing for takeoff skidded around in a circle to avoid him. Liam looped around the back of the plane, heart in his mouth. The prop wash blew his hat off and he cursed briefly. The pilot was gesturing and yelling but his voice couldn't be heard above the sound of the engine.

Ahead of him Gruber ran across the runway, casting a white-faced, desperate glance over his shoulder as he did so. Liam was gaining on him, and they both knew it.

A Fairchild Metroliner, possibly the same one that had brought Liam to Newenham the previous Friday, had just landed and was rolling down the runway, gradually decreasing speed. Panicked, Gary Gruber ran out in front of it. The pilot kicked the rudder, too late, and Gary Gruber ran face-first into the portside propeller.

The plane kept turning from the kicked rudder, and Liam, running full tilt too close behind to avoid it, caught the full extent of the prop wash and everything with it-bone, brain, hair, skin, but especially and most copiously blood. It sprayed him from head to toe. There was blood in his eyes, his nostrils, his mouth, and all down the front of his uniform.

He managed to slow down enough to avoid running into the prop himself, barely. He came to a halt next to Gruber's body, heart pounding, gasping for breath, trying not to vomit.

The pilot cut the engines of the Metroliner. The hatch popped and the pilot stumbled down the stairs of the plane, his face white. "He ran out onto the runway," he said numbly. "There was nothing I could do."

His copilot, another fresh-faced, squarejawed young man, was standing just behind him. He leaned over the railing and threw up.

At Liam's feet, Gary Gruber lay like a broken toy, without a head, missing most of his right shoulder, his right arm lying ten feet away.

Liam was back in his office, washing Gruber's blood and brains out of his hair in the rest room sink, when the phone rang. It was John Barton. "Brace yourself, Liam," John said.

His tone was enough to tell Liam what was coming.

"Jenny's dead."

They buried her next to Charlie, a tiny plot of land and an etched marble stone all that was left on earth of their son. The funeral was small and quiet, with Jenny's parents, a few of her closest friends, and Liam attending. John Barton came, too, with his wife.

"Don't blame yourself, Liam," John said afterward. "You didn't put her here. Rick Dyson did."

"I can't help it," Rose, his mother-in-law, whispered, her head hanging. "I'm relieved."

He hugged her. "So am I, Rose. So am I."

Alfred, not a hugger, stuck out a hand and said in his bluff way, "I'm glad you could make it, Liam."

"I wish I'd been here, Alfred. I'm sorry as hell."

Alfred Horner shook his head. "Wasn't nothing you could have done. We weren't here, either-we'd gone out to dinner. The nurse said she was breathing one moment, next moment she wasn't. Doctor said it might happen that way."

"I know. I still wish I'd been here."

"You were here," Alfred said firmly. "You were wherever Jenny was. She knew." He flushed slightly at this unaccustomed detour into fancy, and his grip around Liam's hand tightened painfully. "Don't be a stranger, you hear? You're part of the family. You stay part of the family."

Liam couldn't speak, could only nod, but it wasn't for the reasons that Alfred might have expected.

When you betrayed someone, you didn't just betray them, you betrayed your families, your community, an entire way of life. He thought of Becky Gilbert, of how her relationship with Bob DeCreft had begun a chain of events that ended twenty-two years later with three deaths. Begun in fire, ending in ice. The poet was wrong; ice was a better destroyer than fire, particularly if you were in the mood for vengeance. Fire was quick and clean, a leap of flame, a wave of heat and then nothing but a pile of soft and formless ash, dispersed with the first breeze. Ice was slow, heavy, corrosive, relentless, grating. It took a long time to get where it was going, and when it got there, it left behind a towering confusion of rubble to be sorted and identified and disposed of. Ice left baggage.

Liam knew he would never be able to look at Alfred and Rose Horner again without remembering that during the last year their daughter had lived whole and conscious and happy upon the earth, her husband had been in love with another woman.