Dana Stabenow: Better To Rest

“Why lucky?”

“Man, I’m going to be able to hire you on as an apprentice, you keep this up. Lucky because instead of pooling near and rotting the floor joists-”

“What’s a joist?”

“Same thing as a truss, only under the floor instead of the roof.” Gary reflected. “Well. Sort of. Same principle, anyway, supporting the structure. So, the water from the leak migrated down and only ruined the Sheetrock in the downstairs bathroom.”

“So what did you do?”

“I gutted it right down to the studs, renewed all the plumbing. I closed off the door to the hallway, made it a master bath. I put the window back in-I love glass brick-and took out the wall-hung toilet and replaced it with a floor-mounted one. I built new cabinets-maple slab, looks great, if I sez it who shouldn’t-and laid down new linoleum. Now it looks about twice as big and feels ten times as light as it did before, and everything’s new and done right. That bathroom’s good for thirty years.” His grin was not modest. He cut another piece of steak and inserted it into his mouth as if he were receiving the Year’s Best Contractor award.

“You like doing that?”

Gary chewed while he thought. “Yeah,” he said, swallowing. “It’s fun to take something that’s messed up and straighten it out, make it right again. You should have seen this woman; you’d have thought I was some kind of magician. She acted like she hadn’t had to pay for it, like I’d given her a gift. Like I said, it’s fun. Except I’m allergic to mahogany,” he added, shaking his head, “and I sneezed all the way through the remodel. But other than that. It was fun.”

“What’s your next project?”

Gary let his gaze drift ever so slowly toward Wy. “I’m between projects at the moment.”

Wy felt heat rise up into her face. Tim looked from one to the other with a gathering frown. Jo grinned, and if she’d been part Yupik and forty years older you’d have sworn she was Moses Alakuyak’s twin sister.

At this auspicious moment, Liam walked in.

He didn’t see them at first, walking straight to the bar and pulling off the ball cap that seemed suddenly too tight for his head. “I need a warrant.”

“I’ll give you a warrant,” Bill said, “if you’ll move this lush out of my bar.”

Liam craned his head. “Oh. Eric.”

“Yes. Again.”

“Poor old bastard.”

“What is it with you guys,” Bill said, disgusted.

“I’m sorry?”

“Never mind. Who’s the warrant for?”

“I’m not sure, exactly.”

“Arrest?”

“Yes. At least I think so.”

“For what?”

“I’m not sure about that, either.”

“You’re not helping me much here, Liam.”

“I know. I’m sorry. The damnedest thing.”

“What?”

“I got something I need you to keep in your freezer until I can get it on a plane to the lab.” Liam opened up the white plastic garbage bag he’d carried into the bar with him.

Bill peered inside. “Sweet Jesus!” she yelled, turning heads all over the bar, which was when Wy saw Liam for the first time. “What the Sam Hill hell is that!”

Since Bill didn’t seem to be in any hurry to take custody of the bag, Liam, who was even less thrilled to be carrying it around, set it on the floor at his feet. “It’s exactly what you think it is.”

“Where the hell did you get it?”

“I first saw it coming out of John Kvichak’s house on a fly pitch that nearly brained me.” He shook his head. “At first I thought it was a prosthetic. That clenched fist looked like somebody’d forgotten to throw the switch on the circuits.”

Bill’s face began to regain some of its natural color. “For crissake. Where the hell did he find that? I mean, I know John and Teddy are scavengers, but…” Her hands were shaking a little when she poured out two fingers of Glen-morangie, neat. She frowned down at them and they steadied as she put the glass on the bar. “Oh. I forgot. You on or off?”

Liam sat down next to Eric Mollberg, who stirred and moaned a little, and turned his face to Liam in a preliminary attempt to surface from the sea of alcohol in which he had been submersed for going on three months. “I,” said Liam, “don’t give a damn if I’m on duty or off at the moment.” He drank and felt the heat and flavor of the single-malt seep straight into his bloodstream. Comfort food, he thought, and finished it. Bill held up the bottle. He shook his head. “No. That did it. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had.”

Bill cast a surreptitious glance over his shoulder at the group in the booth, one of whom was staring back with an undeniably guilty look all over her face, and thought, And it’s not over yet. Because she was a woman, too, and had her own men problems-for starters the Alaska old fart sitting in the corner knocking back enough beer to fell Paul Bunyon and whooping it up with his pals-she bought Wy some time. “Where’d it come from?”

“You’ll love this.”

Bill ran a couple more margaritas down to the end of the bar for Moccasin Man, who was putting the moves on Susie Akiachak. Susie was a smart girl and knew better, but her defenses had been weakened by a nasty breakup with Jimmy Koliganek, and Evan Gray was first and foremost an opportunist. On the way back up the bar Bill hooked her foot beneath the bottom rung of the bartender’s stool and sent it sliding into place across from Liam. “Okay,” she said, settling in for the duration, “let’s hear it.”

“John Kvichak and Teddy Engebretsen were hunting.”

“They’re always hunting when they get into trouble. When they’re not in town and getting into trouble. Or out fishing and getting into trouble.”

“All too true.” Liam rolled the glass between his hands as if the heat of his palms would evaporate anything left of the scotch and he could inhale the fumes. “So they were hunting, up around Bear Glacier, and they found it.”

“Found what?”

“A plane wreck.”

“What? What plane wreck? Did somebody go down?”

“Evidently.”

“I haven’t heard a thing.”

“Neither have I, and neither has anybody at the airport. I called Anchorage Flight Service to see if anybody had gone missing and they said not to their knowledge. I called Elmendorf, to see if the air force was missing a mission. Nope. They checked with Eilson. Still nothing. So then I ask Teddy and John what are they talking about a plane wreck. And they say it was a plane wreck they found, and they found that”-he jerked his head at the bag, on the floor between him and Eric-“in the wreckage. So I take another look at it.”

Bill repressed a shudder. “And?”

“And it’s old.”

“Old? What do you mean, old? You mean like from an old man? How can you tell?”

“No, I mean like desiccated old. I mean like from an old plane wreck, years and years old.”

“You can tell that just from looking?”

“Bill, I’m telling you, it’s practically petrified, it’s so old. You want another look?”

“No.”

“You don’t see how old it is when you first look at it; all you see is… well.”

“Yeah.” Bill took a deep breath. “Bear Glacier, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Ice is a great preservative.”

“Yeah.”

“No telling how long it’s been up there.”

“No.”

“You’re going to have to go look.”

“Oh, yeah,” Liam said, with no visible enthusiasm.

“So? Tell me more about Teddy and John.”

“So I talked to Teddy and John, and John says it’s an old plane, and it’s painted army gray, and he knows that color because he slopped enough of it on anything that didn’t move out of the way in time while he was in the army.”