Dana Stabenow - Nothing Gold Can Stay

She digested this. “Come on. They’ve got it all, means, motive, opportunity. They’ve even got a history of pulling this kind of stuff, going back years.”

“They’ve never killed anybody before.”

“They shot at two people last year,” she retorted.

“They didn’t hit anybody, though,” he said thoughtfully. “You notice? Just the canoe. You see that drawing Corcoran did, showing where the bullet holes were? One amidships, directly between the two thwarts where the two people were sitting. The second in the stern. Both just at the waterline.”

“So?”

“So, they both limited out this year.”

She pulled into the space in front of the post and turned to stare at him. “And?”

“And I’d like to know how good they are with those rifles.”

He called Charlene Taylor. “Johnny and Teddy?” she said. “They’re hell on the moose and the caribou, but I can’t see them killing anybody.”

“Do you know what kind of shots they are?”

“First class,” she said promptly. Charlene was Liam’s alter ego in Newenham, the fish and game side of the troopers. It was her unenviable lot to enforce, or try to enforce, the state fish and game laws, which she did by four-wheeler, Zodiac and Cessna 206. Wet your line too early, shoot your bear too late, take the rack on your moose and leave the meat, and Charlene was there, a smile on her face and a summons in her hand. “I’ve checked out their camp a time or two, up on the bluff. Always go for a head or a shoulder shot, and they always get it, too. Probably has something to do with needing the meat to feed their families. Trophy hunters’ll go for the gut every time.”

Liam heard the disgust in her voice but refused to be sidetracked. “You ever have to haul them in, Teddy or John?”

“I probably could have, a time or two,” she admitted. “Maybe even should have. But I didn’t. They don’t take more than their families can eat in a winter, and if they hold over the hunting season by a couple of hours, I’m not going to notice.”

“Thanks, Charlene.”

He hung up the phone. Prince had her arms folded and was staring at him. “Please tell me you don’t think they’re telling the truth.”

He put his cap back on. By way of answering, he said, “Let’s check out Teddy’s hunting boots.”

Teddy’s dad suffered from Alzheimer’s. One of John Kvichak’s nieces, a tall, cool, blond drink of water named Karen, was staying with him while Teddy, she informed Liam in icy tones, was in jail. She examined Liam and Prince from behind oversize glasses that somehow lent an extra air of contempt to her expression, and produced Teddy’s boots.

They were leather, and laced up over the ankles. They were also damp right through.

“This doesn’t prove anything,” Prince said.

“No,” Liam said. “Let’s go back to the office and make some calls to Anchorage.”

They reached Rebecca Hanover’s best friend, Nina Stewart, on their fourth call. She was upset and yelling by the end of the call, but what she unconsciously let slip along the way about the Hanovers’ summer on Nenevok Creek had even Prince raising an eyebrow afterward. “Well,” she said.

“Well,” Liam said.

“A reluctant miner.”

“Her husband was the miner,” Liam said. “Seems Becky wasn’t all that thrilled at the prospect of moiling for gold.”

“Can’t argue with her there,” Prince said. “You ever panned gold?” Liam shook his head. “My folks took me out to the Crow Creek mine when I was a kid. I was soaked to the skin with mud up to my eyebrows by the time I was done. Never did find any gold.”

Liam grunted.

“If I was dainty little Rebecca Hanover, used to a comfy suburban lifestyle, shopping at Nordie’s and dining at Sack’s, all supported by my husband’s North Slope engineering job, I might be a bit peeved if he quit that job, sold my home and moved me out into the Bush.”

“She had a job, too,” Liam said mildly.

“Uh-huh. Do you think she did it?”

“We’ll have to find her to answer that question.”

“The boys still look good to me.”

“They look pretty good to me, too,” Liam admitted.

Prince looked out the window. It wasn’t even six o’clock and the sky was black. “If it’s her, and she’s on the run, at least she’s not getting away easy.”

“More than that,” Liam said. At her inquiring look he added, “This storm is keeping the magistrate up the creek. Plus, if our boys do insist on a lawyer, it’ll take a public defender with a stronger stomach than I’ve got to put his ass in the air until it blows out or through.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we’ve got time. Time to hang on to the boys while we wait for Rebecca Hanover to show up.”

Prince was skeptical. “You think she will?”

“If she isn’t dead already, yes.”

“The Bush is a big place.”

“Yeah, but it’s amazing how often people wander out of it. Let’s go talk to the boys again.”

Old Man Creek, September 5

The wind howled around the little shack. The walls creaked, but they were well caulked and Moses had built up the fire in the woodstove so that it was toasty warm.

“Do you think the roof will hold?” Bill said, eyeing it, a collection of water-stained bits and pieces of three different grades of plywood, Sheetrock and one-by-twelves, neatly trimmed and fitted together like a patchwork quilt. Softened by the golden light of four gas lanterns, it looked like a work of art instead of a creation of convenience.

“The walls will go before the roof does,” Moses said quite cheerfully, and grinned his evil grin when his three guests exchanged apprehensive glances. “Okay,” he said. “Mr. Plum, in the library, with the pipe wrench.”

He won, for the second time that evening, and Bill threw down her cards in disgust and eyed him in a frustrated way.

Moses worked his eyebrows. “Sorry, little girl,” he purred, “not in front of the children.”

After they finished picking up all the pieces, they retired Clue in favor of Monopoly. Moses won that game, too. In desperation, Tim suggested crazy eights, and aided and abetted by Bill and Amelia, who by this point didn’t care who won so long as it wasn’t Moses, he won handily.

They celebrated with mugs of hot cocoa. Bill leaned her back against Moses’ chest, his legs curled around her, her head on his shoulder. Amelia sat on her bunk, hanging over the edge as Tim showed her a card trick that involved a story of ace islands with diamonds buried on them, jacks coming to dig the diamonds up, kings coming to drive the jacks away and the queens bringing their hearts. “Then a big windstorm comes and blows them all away,” Tim said, stacking the cards and cutting them repeatedly. “Here.” He offered the stack to Amelia. “Go ahead, cut them.”

She did so, a puzzled expression on her face, trying to work out the trick.

Tim dealt the cards out again in piles facedown. One by one he turned the piles over, with all the diamonds in one pile, all the jacks in another, all the hearts in another, and so on.

Amelia was impressed. “How did you do that?”

Tim did his best to keep his face impassive, but a delighted grin kept leaking out around the edges. “I can never tell. I took the oath.”

Amelia giggled, and Moses nudged Bill. “They’re getting along all right.”

She cast him an amused glance over her shoulder. For a man who could read the future with devastating and occasionally horrific accuracy, he could be remarkably obtuse about the now.

“What?” he said.

She shook her head and snuggled against him, smiling to herself when she felt him react. Too bad, so sad, old man, she thought, and looked across the room at Tim and Amelia. Tim looked like a kid with a brand-new toy. He cast quick, sidelong glances at Amelia when he thought she wasn’t looking, he blushed when she caught him, he took every opportunity of brushing against her, a finger touch to the back of her hand as he scooped up the cards, a shoulder brush when he leaned in, even a bump of heads when they fought out a game of Snerts, resulting in shared laughter.