Dana Stabenow - Better To Rest

The fourth book in the Liam Campbell series, 2002

My thanks to the Literary Ladies of Anchorage, Alaska, for their (until now) unwitting loan of their name to the book club described herein, which is at best only a pale imitation of the magnificent original.

During World War II, 8,094 American-built aircraft were ferried up through Canada to Nome and Krasnoyarsk, many of them the ubiquitous and much-beloved Gooney Bird flown by Amerian crews. The story about the medevac comes from an account by Lt. Alta Mae Thompson, 805th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron, of a trip she made in September 1943 from Elmendorf to Dutch Harbor and back. They were heroes all.

Turkey and stuffing in the mess. It was awful. The cook runs a laundry in Memphis Tennessee in civilian life. He says he told them that when he signed up and doesnt know how he got assigned to be a cook. Typical army situation normal all fucked up.

It never gets this cold in Birmingham. There arnt any hangars so the mechanics are working on the aircraft right out in the snow. There arent any quarters either just tents and theyve got these heaters like big bunsen burners that keep catching the tents on fire. Ive only been here two weeks and in that time three tents have burnt down. A guy on one of the other crews got burnt pretty bad and everybodys scared of the tents and the heaters but theres nowheres else to go. Were all glad to get in the air. Its cold in the cockpit of a Gooney Bird but it aint as cold as it is on the ground.

I got a letter from Helen. Shes pregnant. We were so careful I dont know what happened. I dont know what Im going to do my pay isnt enough to pay for a kid. I could get promoted pretty soon though if Roepke doesnt get us kilt first. That would mean more pay not much but some. Ive got to figure out a way to get more money home. I joined up so I could provide for us and they send me to Alaska. I still cant believe it.

I better hide this log I dont want anybody else reading it. But I have to tell someone what Im thinking even if its only my own self and I cant write the truth to Helen because of the censers. Ill keep it in my flightsuit. I never take it off its too cold.

“I’m a vampire.”

“Of course you are,” Diana Prince said.

“I suck blood.”

“Of course you do.”

The young woman sitting on the other side of Diana Prince’s desk was thin to the point of emaciation, with sharp cheekbones emphasized by fine, black, almost certainly dyed hair sleeked into a severe knot at the back of her head. Her eyebrows, eyelids and lips were painted black, and she wore a high-necked, long-sleeved, ankle-length dress of some dense fabric that seemed to suck up all the available light, which, considering that the ceiling of the post was wall-to-wall fluorescent tubing, was quite a trick. Maybe she really was a vampire.

Then again, Diana was well into overtime, after a day of duty that had had its moments, highlighted by the disarming of an enraged father bent on avenging the defloration of his seventeen-year-old daughter by her fisherman boyfriend, who was a little less than six months older than she was. It was also the last day of what had proven to be a labor-intensive week. Maybe it was just that she was tired, and about to fall face-forward into the now cold bean burrito sitting on her desk.

“Officer Prince,” the vampire said, leaning forward in her chair, every line of her gaunt body taut with earnest sincerity, “I don’t want to hurt anyone else. So if you will…” She proffered the items in her lap in mute appeal.

Diana eyed what looked like a leathercrafter’s rubber mallet and a wooden stake that appeared to have been carved from the limb of a very dead spruce, and gave an inward sigh.

From what she could hear, her boss was doing a lot better than she was, and he looked like he was in love.

“So there I was, arms around four bags full of groceries, and coming out of the store I see this guy breaking into my car.”

“And that was when you hit him with the jar of tomatoes,” Alaska state trooper Sgt. Liam Campbell said, his gaze rapt.

“Sun-dried tomatoes,” the woman sitting next to his desk said. She uncrossed and crossed her legs, rearranged the skirt of her blue-flowered housedress, fussed with a short, smooth cap of still-black hair, and smiled at Liam. “And no, or at least not then. I was going to hit him with the two-pound loaf of Tillamook sharp, but it just didn’t seem hard enough to stop him. He is a pretty big guy.”

They both turned to look at the six feet, five inches and two hundred twenty pounds of Guamanian male, by way of Chicago and Anchorage, handcuffed to the chair on the opposite side of the desk. He was bent over, his free hand cupping the left side of his face. His left eye was swollen shut with the beginnings of what looked to become a shiner of truly fabulous hue. The left shoulder of his blue T-shirt was stained a dark brown. He pulled his hand away from his face and looked at his bloody palm. “Fuck, man, how come you ain’t arresting her? How come she ain’t in the cuffs? She assaulted me! I’m wounded here, man! I’m bleeding!”

Liam opened a drawer and handed him a Wash’n Dri. “Here, Harvey, see if you can’t clean yourself up a little. You look disgusting.” He turned back to Mrs. Lydia Tompkins, a seventy-four-year-old housewife, mother of four, grandmother of two, who topped out at four-foot-eight and couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds wringing wet with six-pound lead weights strapped to each ankle. “So,” he said, radiating a quiet joy, “instead of hitting him with the cheese, you hit him with the tomatoes-excuse me, the sun-dried tomatoes.”

“Well, yes,” said Mrs. Tompkins, “but not yet. I was going to hit him with the artichoke hearts, but it’s an awfully big jar-did you want to see?”

“Absolutely,” Liam said.

“Oh, fuck me, man, do I have to sit here and listen to this?”

“Shut up, Harvey,” Liam said.

Harvey shut up. He was the bouncer at the Bay View Inn and he and Liam had already met professionally.

Mrs. Tompkins dove headfirst into one of the four plastic shopping bags clustered at her feet. She upset her purse on the way down and a couple of coins rolled out. She pounced on them, holding them up to the light and squinting at them. She frowned. “No good,” she said, and caught Liam’s eye. “Except to spend.”

She dove back into the shopping bag and emerged flushed and triumphant, jar of artichokes in hand. It was a big jar, Liam noted with respect, forty-eight ounces, and always assuming it hit its target, would have put a hell of a dent in Harvey’s head. Funny how Harvey didn’t look grateful for the reprieve.

“It was too big, I thought,” Mrs. Tompkins said with the air of a woman who had right on her side and who knew it. “I mean, I didn’t want to kill him; I just wanted to protect my property.”

“Of course.”

“There he was, breaking into my car, and that car’s my property.”

“Certainly.”

“And I really didn’t know how else to stop him.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Liam said. “So that was when you hit him with the sun-dried tomatoes.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Tompkins, and fluttered her eyelashes. She was as taken with Liam as he was with her. “I was going to use the olive oil, but it was a plastic bottle. I figured it’d just bounce off, and then he’d probably hit me.”