Dana Stabenow: Better To Rest

“I see. And the second?”

“The second time was eight days later, the fourteenth. This time they tried to open it up with a saw.”

“A saw. Refresh my memory. What happened?”

“The blade snapped in two. Mr. Gibbons found pieces of it on the porch when he came in in the morning.” She added, “The night before, a Ferdinand Volinario called to say that his shop had been broken into, and that he was missing some tools, including an electric Skilsaw.”

“I’d forgotten all about Nando,” Liam said. “Well done, Trooper Prince. And the third time?”

She hesitated just long enough to make it interesting. “We think a sledgehammer, sir, but we’re not absolutely sure. The machine was pretty severely dented. You can still see some of the dents.” She pointed.

Liam lowered his eyes to peer at the machine. “So you can.” He laid hands on the machine and tried to rock it loose. It wouldn’t budge. “Pretty sturdy piece of equipment,” he told Gibbons, his tone congratulatory. “You’ve got it fastened down pretty solid, too.”

“We can only hope they ripped their axle out,” Prince said.

“Your security camera working yet?” Liam said.

Gibbons’ flush was easy to see from the light over the door. “I need to pull it and send it to Anchorage to get it fixed.”

“Yeah. Camera on the machine itself working yet?”

“Not since June.”

“Uh-huh. Did you see anything yourself?”

Gibbons lost patience. “I didn’t have to! It was Teddy Engebretsen or John Kvichak or Paul Urbano or Mac MacCormick or one of that worthless bunch, or maybe the whole boiling lot of them together! You know it as well as I do! I want you to go over there and arrest them!”

“Did you see Teddy Engebretsen this evening, Brewster?” A brief silence. “Brewster? Did you see Teddy Engebretsen trying to kidnap your ATM machine?”

“No,” Gibbons said, his face sullen.

“How about John Kvichak? No? Then Paul Urbano? Again no? Brewster, I know you watch a lot of television, with that fancy new satellite dish and all, so I know you have at least a speaking acquaintance with probable cause. Absent witnesses, absent evidence, I have no reason to suspect Teddy or John or Paul of anything except smoking a little dope at Tasha Anayuk’s Saturday-night party.” Not lately, anyway, he thought. “In the meantime, in spite of someone’s best efforts, it doesn’t look like your machine is going anywhere. Get your security cameras fixed or hire a security guard or both, and maybe we’ll catch them in the act next time.”

“Next time! I don’t want there to be a next time! And where the hell am I supposed to hire a security guard in Newenham?”

“Job Service in Anchorage always has clients looking for employment,” Liam said, and tipped his flat-brimmed Mountie hat in grave salute on his way back to the Blazer.

“Job Service! Sure, if I wanted hire a moron who-” The rest of Brewster Gibbons’ words were cut off when Liam’s door closed.

“All the same,” Prince said when he put it in gear, “it probably was Teddy or John or Paul. Or Art Inga and Dave Iverson. Or-”

“Probably,” Liam agreed. “Which is why we’re going over to John’s to say hi.”

“Did I mention that I have a hot date tonight?” Prince wondered out loud. “And that I’m already late?”

“Did I mention that so do I, and so am I, and that I’ve got a better chance of getting laid at the end of it than you do?” Liam said, wondering if it was true.

“Just a passing comment,” Prince said, and slumped in her seat with a sigh.

Liam pulled out onto the road and put the Blazer into a skid over the icy ruts. The road looked like his life. He hit the gas and powered out of the skid, the rear wheels missing the ditch by a hair. Next to him Prince let out a pent-up breath.

Things had cooled off considerably between Liam and Wy since John Barton’s offer to bring Liam back to Anchorage. It was the difference between fire and ice, and ice, as the poet foretold, for destruction was also great and would suffice. He knew it was partly his fault; he was holding both Wy and Tim in limbo, which made him feel guilty. He was pissing off John Barton, too, who was calling on average once a day before breakfast to bellow down the line for Liam to shit or get off the pot in tones clearly audible all over Wy’s house. The job wasn’t helping much, either. He and Prince had been hard at it for a solid month, responding to a series of burglaries, robberies and assaults aggravated by the rapidly weakening economy. It was the first practical lesson Liam had learned in the practice of law enforcement: It was easy to obey the law when your kids had full bellies. He understood, but it was not comforting to watch the lives of the people under his protection fall apart. Especially while he seemed to be helpless to stop the deterioration of his own.

Newenham, population two thousand, was a fishing town and regional market hub sitting on the eastern edge of Bristol Bay. It was built on a thick deposit of silt and clay washed down by the Nushugak River, and its topography consisted mostly of rolling hills covered with stands of birch and alder and fireweed and spruce clustered around houses with vinyl siding and trailers and mobile homes and log cabins with sod roofs and Quonset huts left over from World War II. There wasn’t a straight street downtown; a series of looping curves wound around that part of Newenham with delusions of grandeur, city and business buildings in all their prefabricated glory and even a town house condominium complex sitting at the edge of the river overlooking the small boat harbor. A forest of masts of varying heights crowded the slips like nursing piglets, their backs to the bay and another bad fishing season. By February only a quarter of their skippers would have filed for bankruptcy, if the town was lucky. Meanwhile, they were all drinking their misery away, and their good sense with it.

Wy could have offered some solace, some counsel, he thought, taking a corner too fast. Instead she had withdrawn behind a façade that was as cool as it was irritating. Anyone would think she didn’t care if he went or stayed. Anyone would think that she was just waiting for him to screw up so she’d have the opportunity to kick him out.

Not that she’d ever asked him to move in in the first place. What was her problem with that, anyway? They were single, in love, in heat, had a boy who needed two parents, had jobs that gave them financial security; just what the hell was her problem? Was it him? Was it marriage?

He could have asked. He could win everything or lose it all, but he feared his fate too much. What was the name of that poem? After a moment’s thought it came to him. “My Dear and Only Love.” Figured. The author, as he recalled, had wound up with his head on a pike outside London, the only proper end for anyone who dared to put that much truth into rhyme. The road straightened out and he stepped on the gas, only to send the vehicle into a protesting fishtail.

“Did you say something, sir?” Diana Prince said, knuckles white on the door handle.

He let up on the gas. “No.”

Sometimes he thought he read too much poetry.

John Kvichak’s house sat on the river’s bank, too, although too far upstream of Wy’s house for Liam to see the lights. Liam hoped she wasn’t pissed that he was late. He could have called before he left the office. But then she might have picked up instead of the answering machine, and he would have had to talk to her. Or Tim.

Tim hadn’t exactly been a barrel of laughs lately, either. Seeing his first girlfriend shot in front of his eyes the month before had been traumatic enough. Now his adoptive mother Wy had invited his birth mother into the house. This was the same woman under whose porch Wy had discovered a broken and bleeding Tim a little over two years before. Tim’s hatred of Natalie Gosuk was fierce and visceral; he openly resented being forced to spend time with her, and the house was, to say the least, unsettled after one of her visits. Wy was allowing one a week. Today had been her third. Liam and Tim had been forging a relationship one cautious step at a time, their mutual love for Wy the impetus behind the journey. Now Tim had barricaded himself behind a wall of resentment that even Wy was having trouble getting through. Not that she would stop trying. She’d die first.