Дана Стейбнау - Spoils of the Dead

Alexei appeared hypnotized by the sight of the tube. “How long will it take?”

“One to three days, depending on how backed up things are at the lab.”

“And then we’ll know.”

Liam nodded. “Yes.”

Alexei looked from the tube to Liam. “How did he die?”

Liam could feel himself stiffening, and made an effort to relax. “I’m sorry to say he did not die of natural causes.”

“He was murdered.”

It wasn’t a question, but Liam answered it anyway. “Yes.”

“How?”

Liam could have made the standard answer, that the case was under investigation and the details were confidential until that investigation was concluded, but he could not bring himself to do so to this man who had lost his only brother thirty years before. “Blunt force trauma. A blow to the head.”

“It would have been quick, then.”

Liam sure as hell hoped so. “I believe so.”

“Who kills a kid?” Alexei said, his face contorting. “Who the hell kills a ten-year-old kid out beachcombing on a sunny summer day? And leaves another one for dead?” He bent his head for a moment, blinking. Kimberley put her arm around his shoulders and tucked her head beneath his chin.

When he looked up again he was dry-eyed and determined. He jerked his chin at the tube. “What do I do?”

Now, on Monday morning, Liam looked down at the square, dissatisfied all over again. The square thing always worked. He willed it to do so again.

Alexei and Kimberley Petroff were cleared, as Sergei Pete had confirmed.

Domenica Garland’s Zoom meeting had checked out, too. It was the first time Liam had direct-dialed Europe. Her boss had sounded as if he were in the next room.

Gabe McGuire had Len Needham for an alibi, although that was dicey since Len was also a close relative. But McGuire had zero motive. Liam had contacted the relevant authority at the borough and Gabe’s petition to vacate the right of way was on track to being approved and had been before Erik Berglund was murdered.

Hilary Houten might have had motive but he came and left with Blue Jay Jefferson and let’s face it, the guy was in his eighties and he couldn’t get around without a honking big cane to hold him up. He wasn’t going to pick a physical fight with anyone.

Same went for Blue Jay.

Liam sat back and tossed down the pencil. He scrubbed his hands through his hair and swiveled to look out the window behind his desk. The view was somewhat obscured by the inevitable alders and ragged black spruce but there was enough room that he could see a slice of the Bay and the mountains beyond.

He wondered if he’d made a mistake in accepting the Blewestown post. In Newenham he would have been out on a call already and catching up on three more from the day before. Of course he had been for a long time almost the only law enforcement officer within three hundred or more miles, so there was that. And he had been getting tired of the sameness of the job, the constant domestic violence calls, the drunk and disorderlies, the reported break-ins by tweakers looking for anything to sell so they could buy their next fix. Everybody remembered the murders because murder was high profile, the stuff of crime fiction and Hollywood blockbusters, but it was the daily grind of seeing his fellow citizens at their worst that wore him down. That wore them all down.

One of the first things Wy had asked him when they met—it was one of the first things everyone asked—was why he had become a trooper. “For the uniform,” he had said, which was what he always said. It was flippant and flirty and non-responsive. It was also in some small part true. He’d grown up idolizing the Alaska State Troopers because they just looked so damn cool in their Smokey hats. He looked at his button-down flannel and jeans. His first official day on the job in Blewestown and he wasn’t wearing one. There were three clean, pressed, perfectly tailored uniforms hanging in the closet at home. What did that say?

He wondered just how quick Barton was imagining he could slide Liam into a job at HQ in Anchorage. Back in the day it had been the height of Liam’s ambition to ascend the ladder to Barton’s job, boss of the whole damn shooting match. There had been a time when he’d kept a secret list of all the improvements he would make to the agency if he were in charge. Jenny, his first wife, had been enthusiastically in support of his ambitions and aided and abetted them with formal dinners featuring movers and shakers, luncheons with their spouses, and letters of support to legislators who ran on law-and-order platforms. She’d named Charlie after Liam’s father and made sure to mention Charlie’s grandfather and namesake, Air Force Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell, to every soldier and airman she met who was stationed at JBER. She had been the perfect partner for that Liam.

This Liam, not so much. He wondered if Jim was right and he should pull the plug, or at least start planning for it. State troopers were well paid and the time he had served in the Bush would amp up his pension admirably, and he was pretty sure Wy still had the first dime she’d ever made. They wouldn’t be rich but they would be comfortable. He could learn how to hunt and fish, fill the freezer every year. Maybe travel some. He hadn’t been out of the country since college.

God, that sounded boring. He wondered what Wy was doing, and what she was wearing, and how quickly he could get her out of it that evening.

They had woken up that morning to make love, do form on their new deck, showered together, made pancakes and eaten them together, and he’d left her reluctantly when it was time to go to work. But then that was always the case. She had disappeared out of his life once. He didn’t ever want that to happen again, and some part of him lived in fear that she would.

The window was open and a mild, cool breeze carried in the scents of autumn, woodsmoke, unpicked berries rotting on the vine, fallen leaves decomposing. He heard a noise like the sound of someone knocking on a metal door. He looked around to meet the beady black eyes of a huge raven sitting on a spruce bough almost exactly level with his gaze.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Kraaaack—kraaaaaaaack,” the raven said.

The bird wore coal-colored feathers that looked as if they’d been oiled. He was at minimum two and a half feet beak to tail and had fed well enough this past summer that he significantly bent the branch he was sitting on.

“I thought I left you behind,” Liam said. “Like a long fucking way behind. Like far enough behind I wouldn’t have to put up with you anymore.”

“Koo-kluck-kluck-kloo-kluck,” quoth the raven.

“Do it to me again and again” Donna Summer sang behind him.

“Kraaack!” With one beat of his iridescent wings the raven was aloft and gone.

Liam spun around and picked up his phone. “Hey, Brillo.”

“Yeah, yeah, happy fucking Monday to you, too, Campbell.”

At least he wasn’t operating at a Barton decibel level today. “You have the results back from the DNA?”

“Yeah, the kid is definitely Joshua Petroff.”

“How soon can you release the body? His family wants him home.”

“As soon as I sign off on the paperwork.”

“Let me know and I’ll send Wy to pick him up.”

“Yeah, listen, I got something else going on here. Something weird.”

“Weird?”

“Yeah, weird. As in freaky, creepy, spooky. Weird. I told you how the kid died, somebody bashed his head in.”

“I remember.”

“Yeah, well, I think the same weapon that killed the kid was used to kill Erik Berglund.”

Liam sat up so fast he pushed himself away from the desk and banged off the windowsill behind him. “What?”

“I told you, weird, right? There’s a kind of corner, almost but not quite a right angle to the impact depression in both of the skulls. I measured and it’s almost exactly the same size in both. It’s higher up on the kid and lower down on Berglund, but I’m pretty sure the same thing was used both times.”