Better To Rest

FIFTEEN

Diana Prince caught a call just as she was headed out the door at the end of the day. Someone had made a charge of child abuse against Bernadette Kusegta, who ran a small day-care center out of her home. The complainant, one Gloria Crow, accused Bernadette of interfering with her three-year-old daughter, Tammie. Kusegta, plump and attractive, with her black hair permed into a mass of large curls, looked white beneath her brown skin. She sat, unmoving, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond the large room decorated in primary colors. It was heaped with toys and books, and a small inflatable swimming pool filled with about four inches of water sat on the floor, one lone rubber duck floating in the middle of it.

“Well, go on, arrest her!” Crow said. “What are you waiting for?” She was slender and sharp-featured and vibrating with rage.

“When did you see the marks, ma’am?” Prince said.

“Tonight! When my baby came home! She was crying and holding her bottom!”

“Did she say that Ms. Kusegta had hurt her?”

“No, but who else could have done it? Go on, arrest her! She hurt my baby!”

“You said, ‘When your baby came home,’ ma’am. From that, I’m guessing you didn’t go get her.”

“No! So what?”

“Who did bring your daughter home, Ms. Crow?”

“Leslie did; he picked her up on his way home.”

“Is Leslie your husband?”

“He’s my roommate.”

“What’s his full name?”

“Leslie Clark.”

“And when he brought your daughter home, she was crying and holding her bottom.”

“Yes!”

“And then you looked and found the marks.”

“Yes! I know she did it; she was the only one who could have! Arrest her right now!”

“Where is your daughter now, ma’am?”

“She’s home, of course! I came here as soon as I saw what that bitch did to her!”

“Is Leslie there with her?”

“Of course! Did you think I’d leave my baby all alone?”

Diana flipped her notebook closed. “I’ll need to talk to your daughter, ma’am. Right now.”

They made it in the door before the boyfriend started beating on the little girl again, but only just. He was now in the lockup, protesting his innocence in spite of the similarity in size and shape between his hands and the marks on Tammie’s defenseless little bottom. Bernadette Kusegta’s face had regained some of its natural color, and Gloria Crow was still insisting that Leslie could never have done such a thing, that she would have known if he could, that she would never have let him in her house or left her daughter with him if she’d known. Diana took statements and called Bill Billington for an arraignment at tenA.M. the next morning. It was almost ten before she was through, and she was tired and heartsick and wanted nothing so much as a long, hot bath. Preferably with bubbles, but if no bubbles were to be had she might pour in a bottle of Lysol.

She had her hand on the knob of the door when the phone rang. It would have forwarded to Liam’s cell after the second ring, but she seemed to be constitutionally incapable of walking out on a ringing phone. Cursing herself, she snatched it up. “Alaska State Troopers, Newenham post.”

The voice was loud enough to make her wince away from the receiver. “Ma’am! Ma’am! Please, calm down, I can’t understand a word!”

There was a gulping kind of sob. “Please help me; I think my sister’s dead.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh, God, Karen, please, Karen, don’t do this, please don’t do this!”

“Ma’am? Where are you?”

“We’re at my mother’s. Please help us, please!”

“Where is your mother’s house, ma’am? Ma’am?”

“Oh, God, I think she’s dead.” The voice dulled and flattened. “Oh, Karen. Oh, Karen.”

“Ma’am?” Diana clenched the phone so hard her arm ached. “I need you to tell me where you are. Ma’am?”

After a long, silent moment, when she thought the caller might have hung up, the woman told her. Diana told her she was coming, called Liam, and called Joe Gould.

She got to Lydia’s house five minutes after Joe and a split second before Liam. The three of them stood once again in Lydia’s kitchen, looking at another body on the same floor.

“Strangled, this time,” Joe said.

“What was your first clue?” Diana said, her voice hollow. Karen’s eyes were open and bulging, her tongue protruded from her mouth, and her throat was one livid bruise.

To Liam’s everlasting shame, his first reaction at the sight was relief. Now Wy would never know what had happened in Lydia’s bedroom.

Joe did not change expression.

This time there had been a fight. The kitchen table and chairs were knocked over, drawers had been pulled out and dumped, cupboards opened and emptied on the floor. Broken dishes and spilled rice crunched underfoot, and the body was coated with powdered chocolate. “Let’s check the rest of the house,” Liam said.

It was trashed. The bed had been ripped apart and the mattress dumped to the floor. The drawers to the filing cabinet had been opened and dumped. The shelves in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom had been swept clean, bottles of Bayer and boxes of Band-Aids and bars of scented soap winding up in the sink or toilet and all over the floor. Betsy Amakuk sat on the couch in the living room, where all the books had been pulled from the shelves. She was weeping into Stan Jr.’s shoulder. Stan Jr. patted her awkwardly. He looked angry. Jerry wasn’t there.

“Somebody was looking for something,” Diana said.

“No shit,” Liam said, and returned to the kitchen. Joe Gould was zipping Karen into a black plastic body bag. “To the airport, Joe, straight to the airport and no stopping.” He dialed Wy’s number on his cell phone. When she answered, he said, “I need you to take the Cessna to Anchorage tonight. Right now, in fact. Can do?”

“Are you coming?”

“Yes. You’ll be transporting a body.” Silence. “Wy?”

“Whose body?” she said, but he got the feeling she was only killing time.

“Karen Tompkins.”

“What?”

“Karen Tompkins, Lydia’s daughter. We just found her. I need to get her body to the ME in Anchorage tonight. Can you take it?”

Another silence. “I- All right. I’ll call Bill to stay with Tim and head for the airport to start pulling seats.”

“Meet you there.” He hung up and looked at Prince. “You know the drill.”

“I do.”

“We’ll do a turnaround and come straight back.”

“Okay.” She was straining toward the door, eager to start questioning the neighbors.

“Go,” he said, and she bolted for the door like the starter pistol had been fired.

“Give me a hand,” Joe said, and Liam went to Karen Tompkins’ black plastic-clad feet. They lifted her easily and bore her from the room. Liam glanced back at the isolated island of faded linoleum in a sea of broken crockery, spilled flatware and a layer of white flour, an eerie reverse print of the dead woman’s body.

They were in the air half an hour later, the second and third rows of seats pulled and stacked in the shed next to the tie-down. “Karen Tompkins?”

“Yeah.”

“Lydia Tompkins’ daughter?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“It looks like somebody strangled her.”

She made a noise of distress. “Why?”

“I don’t know yet.”

The night was clear and calm, and the moon rose in time to light their way through Lake Clark Pass, a narrow gorge hedged about on all sides by very tall, very steep mountains already covered with snow. They landed at Merrill seventy minutes later, to be met by the meat wagon. Brillo Pad was driving.

Brillo Pad, aka Dr. Hans Brilleaux, had a very thick, very wiry, very curly head of very black hair, hence the nickname. Brillo Pad was fifty-six years old and very proud of his hair’s continued thickness and lack of gray. “Liam,” he said, big white buckteeth flashing in a grin. His face was swarthy and his nose was large and red-veined.

“Hans Brilleaux, Wy Chouinard.”

Brillo Pad gave Wy the once-over. “Delighted. You folks staying the night in Anchorage?”

“You done with Lydia Tompkins?” Liam said.

“Who?”

“Lydia Tompkins,” Liam said, enunciating the name in careful, independent syllables. “The woman I sent you two days ago.”

Brillo Pad tore his eyes from Wy and said, “Sure. I knew that. Ah, yeah. Head injury, whacked her skull pretty good, causing internal bleeding and a clot. Bam. On the physical evidence of the body, good chance it was accidental, not intentional. She clawed him, but no skin or blood, only fibers. If I had to guess, I’d say they came from a Carhartt’s jacket.”

“Great.”

“I know, not many of those around Alaska, are there?” He helped Liam maneuver the body bag out of the 180. “Who’s this?”

“The first woman’s daughter. How quick can you look at her?”

Brillo Pad whistled long and low. “Daughter, huh? Man, you’re the reason I’ve been in business the last six months.”

“I’m figuring the same guy did both women. Any hard evidence you can find, say fibers from the same coat, would be most helpful.”

“I’ll take her straight to the lab, see what I can see. So, are you staying in town tonight?”

“We’re going home,” Liam told Brillo.

“Okay. I’ll give you a call when I’ve got something.”

He drove off, and Wy got clearance from the tower. They were back in the air five minutes later.

Liam felt a sense of relief as the lights of the big city receded behind them, and wondered at it. “It’s easier flying at night,” he said over the headset.

She looked at him in the darkness of the cabin. “You’re not as afraid to fly in the dark?”

“I don’t think I am. Or at least not as much as I am during the day.”

“It’s a miracle,” she said lightly.

“Maybe it’s just that I can’t see how far up we are.” He peered out of the window, saw a flare burning on one of the Inlet oil rigs far below, and straightened hastily.

“Or maybe you’re just tired of being scared and your little monkey brain has decided enough is enough.”

“Maybe,” he said, unconvinced. He was glad, though, to be spared some of the usual terror. He wasn’t relaxed enough to doze, but at least he wasn’t holding the aircraft up by the edge of his seat.

It was dark and warm in the cabin. Outside the stars were very bright, competing with the new moon, and both lit every rugged peak and every hanging glacier of the pass in bold relief. The moonlight reflected off the snow and lit the cabin of the aircraft with enough light to read by. He was very conscious of Wy’s shoulder brushing his, of her strong hands, relaxed and competent, resting on the yoke, of her long, jeans-clad legs stretched out in front of her, the soles of her feet just touching the rudder pedals. He turned a little in his seat so he could watch her.

She glanced over. “What?”

“Nothing. I just like watching you work, is all.”

Her teeth flashed in the dim light. “Since when?”

“Since tonight, I guess.”

She held up a hand and turned a knob on the tuner. A woman’s voice gave a recorded weather report. When it began to repeat, she turned it off.

“I love you, Wy.”

She reached for his hand and brought it to her lips. “Same goes.”

He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm. They flew on steadily for a few moments, content.

“Liam?”

“What?”

It was odd, but the question she had been dreading to ask came out more easily than she had imagined. Maybe everything was easier at five thousand feet. “Are you going to take that job that John Barton offered you?”

“I don’t know.” His answer, too, was much less tense than it might have been.

“Do you want it?”

Did he? Did he want to go back to the fast track, to being John Dillinger Barton’s fair-haired, handpicked successor, well up on the ladder to the top?

He remembered the answer he’d given Brillo Pad when the ME had wanted to know if they were staying the night in Anchorage.We’re going home. It was natural now, or so it seemed, for him to call Newenham home. He thought of the people he would never have met if not for his fall from grace and his transfer to Newenham. Bill Billington, a magistrate unlike any other he had ever encountered. Moses Alakuyak, that not-quite-dried-up little demon. Charlene Taylor. Newenham had given him Wy back. Newenham had given him Tim.

He thought then of the mighty river flowing past their deck, of the great bay it emptied into, of the rolling muskeg and the hundreds of lakes and the ragged peaks and glaciers and hidden valleys beyond. Of the little herd of caribou that he had been told wandered into town in the early spring when they overran their calving grounds. Of the walrus hauling out in herds on the beaches of an island just miles down the coast. Of the hundred tiny towns and villages, cabins and fish cabins and lodges sprinkled across this vast area with a lavish hand, each one housing some gem of a person like Leonard Nunapitchuk, who refused to be a victim, who remained stubbornly in his own house even after his wife had been murdered in it by the same man who had kidnapped and murdered his daughter.

“You know, Wy, I don’t know the answer to that one, either. Three years ago I wouldn’t have hesitated; I would have grabbed it and ran. I had a wife, and a son, and a career where there was nowhere to go but up. And then I met you. Wy?”

“What?”

“If I take the job, will you come with me? You and Tim?”

There was a brief silence. “I don’t know, Liam. This is honest. I don’t know.”

He laughed then. “Yeah, well, we’re not the most decisive couple on the block, now, are we?”

“I guess not.” She laughed, too, a little. “Liam.”

“What?”

She took his hand, and his curled around hers in a comforting grip. “There is Tim.”

“There certainly is. I wasn’t thinking we’d leave him behind.”

“I know.”

“I like him, Wy. I like him a lot. And without sounding too egotistical, I think he likes me. I’d like to be his father. And,” he added pointedly, “I’d like to make it official.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said. “Man, I never knew anyone more hot to get married than you.”

He leaned over to kiss her. “ ‘Hot’ doesn’t even come close,” he said with his best sexy growl, and then his mike got tangled up with hers and they both started to laugh.

“Tim can’t get into any more trouble in Anchorage than he has in Newenham,” he said, sitting back. “Same cliques, same drugs, same joysticks. He can go to the malls and the movies, and it’ll be harder to keep tabs on him if he finds a friend with a car, but otherwise it’s not that different.”

“It’s a lot bigger than Newenham. The school’s bound to induce big-time culture shock. And then there is Natalie.”

Liam shook his head. “I never would have thought to hear you using Natalie Gosuk as a reason to keep Tim in Newenham.” He was gentle but inexorable. “Are you sure she isn’t just an excuse to keep you there, too?”

She was silent. They were out of the pass and were losing altitude, on approach across the Nushugak into the Newenham airport.

“Do you know the words in the wedding service, Wy? ‘Forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live.’ That’s what I want. ‘Forsaking all others.’ And all other places. We don’t have to move to Anchorage; that’s not what I’m saying.”

She didn’t sound angry. “It kind of sounds like that, Liam.”

He was exasperated. “Do you get anything about me at all, woman? I love you! I’ve always loved you! I would have walked out on my wife and my child if you’d asked me! But you didn’t ask!”

She stared at him. “Don’t you get anything about me?” she said at last. “I wouldn’t have wanted you if you’d been able to do something like that. One of the reasons I love you, that I’ve always loved you, is that you’re an honorable man. I knew all I had to do was drive to Glenallen and knock on your door. I always knew that.”

“But you didn’t.”

“So I didn’t love you enough to? Is that what this is about? I let you back into my life, Liam, into Tim’s life. You’re important to both of us now.”

“I want to be essential.”

“You are. You were then.” She was silent. “Or…”

“What.”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know, Liam. Love is supposed to be unselfish. If you love, you’re supposed to want what’s best for the person you love.”

“And?”

“And if I’d loved you enough then, I shouldn’t have asked you to choose between me and Jenny and Charlie. If I’d loved you enough, I should have bought the house next door to yours, so you’d never have to be far away from your son.”

His feeling of comfort vanished. The plane seemed very high in the air and nowhere near as steady beneath his butt as it had been a moment before. “You’re telling me you didn’t love me enough.”

The silence that followed seemed to him to be very long. “I guess I didn’t.”

The next question was as difficult but came much more quickly. “Do you now?”

If he hadn’t been listening so intently for her answer he might have missed it. “Wy?”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“The engine seemed to miss a beat.”

“What?” Liam sat up, peering at the prop, instantly focused on where they were.

“There! It happened again!”

She was adamant so he listened. A high-pitched drone whined past the outside of the aircraft. The Cessna seemed to shudder, although it might have been Wy’s hands clenching on the yoke. “What the hell?”

“What is it?”

Her hands were already a blur of movement. “I think someone’s shooting at us.”

“What!”

“I said I think-”

There was another whine, followed this time by the unmistakable impact of metal on metal. The prop began to shudder, and the cowling and indeed the entire front of the aircraft with it. “Hang on!” she shouted, and kicked the rudder and put the Cessna into a shallow dive and a spiraling turn.

It was an unnecessary command; Liam had his hands clenched around the edge of his seat and with every muscle strained upward, keeping that plane in the sky. Oh, God yes, anything but down, please, please, I’ll never get drunk again, I’ll do all of Miranda every single time no matter how the Supreme Court rules, I’ll marry and settle down and live a nice, quiet life, just please don’t let this plane go down with me on board.

But when he risked a glance out the window, down seemed to be coming up very fast indeed, and now he cursed the light of the moon that so clearly illuminated the river beneath them. No, not into the river-it was too cold; they’d never survive long enough to make it to the shore-and then the shore was beneath them-oh, no, not the shore, they were going to crash, the plane was going to hit the ground and break into pieces and they were going to break into pieces with it, not the shore, please not the shore. Wy’s face was tight-lipped and grim, the yoke shook back and forth in her hands in time with the shaking of the propeller and the cowling and the whole front of the plane, Oh, God, he thought he was going to be sick.

The ground rushed up at them and suddenly he saw a stretch of open ground, oh, God, was it an airstrip? It was white with snow or frost but it was long and straight and there were no trees in the middle of it, no trees for the plane to run into, no trees to decapitate him or impale him or skewer him, a Campbell shish kebab. “Is it an airstrip?” he shouted.

“Shut up!” she shouted back, and the ground rushed up, filling his range of terrified vision, up, up, up, until they hit down, hard, bounced once, hit again, and then, miraculously, all three gear were on the ground and she had cut the engine and they were running out the length of the airstrip, this blessed airstrip that had appeared out of nowhere to aid and to succor them in their time of need.

The Cessna rumbled and rolled and thumped and chunked over hummocks of ice and snow and what might have been a fallen tree and finally stopped.

It was very quiet in the cabin of the little plane. Liam could hear himself inhale, exhale, inhale. His heartbeat was clearly audible, too, a rapid thudding sound, like a drumbeat, slowing now.

“Liam.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry I told you to shut up.”

“It’s okay. Everything’s okay. I’m fine. You’re fine, and I’m fine, and we’re on the ground, oh, God, how I love the ground, and everything’s fine.” He was light-headed, a little dizzy.

“Liam?”

“Really. I’m fine. I’m just-I’m fine.”

Another silence. “Wy?”

“What?”

“Why does the plane always break when I’m on board?”

She ruffled up. “It doesn’t always break. It’s only broken once before when you were on board. And it didn’t break this time; somebody broke it.”

She opened the door and climbed out. He followed.

One end of the propeller had been hit, it looked by, yes, by a bullet. The squared-off end of the prop was not quite holed but sort of splooshed, dented, cratered, if you could call something that small a crater.

Liam could. “I have to sit down,” he said, and staggered over to a tree trunk.

“Me, too,” Wy said, and followed him.

They both sat down at the same time, not bothering to clear off the trunk, and as a result the snow on the trunk wet their pants through immediately. They didn’t move, except that Liam put his head between his knees.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Liam said, his head still between his knees. “Where are we?”

“Bulge. The village across the river. Their front street.”

“Oh.” He peered around, and now that the terror had cleared from his eyes he saw the three little houses, shacks, really, clustered at one end of the airstrip. “Where is everybody?”

Wy let her head fall back and closed her eyes against the glare of the moon. “Nobody lives here during the winter.”

“Yeah? Summer cottages.”

“One room, river view.”

He turned his head, still keeping it low. “You sound almost cheerful.” She looked it, too, as near as he could make out her expression in the moonlight.

“I am,” she said, and laughed out loud and opened her eyes.

He sat up with caution. “What’s so damn funny?”

She laughed again, a joyous sound. “I didn’t know it was coming!”

“What?”

“I didn’t know anybody was going to shoot at us!”

He stared at her. “Okay,” he said. “I didn’t, either, which goes without saying, as I’d much rather shoot it out on the ground, although I’d rather never shoot it out at all. What the hell are you talking about?”

“I didn’t know anybody was going to shoot at us, and I didn’t know we’d have to make an emergency landing! I didn’t know anything about it! I didn’t hear any voices, or feel any feelings! I didn’t have any visions!”

“Wy, honey,” Liam said, “you’ve got a first-aid kit in the plane, don’t you? Is there any, well, you know, Valium in it?”

“I’m fine, Liam,” she said, and got up to do a neat dance step, of necessity shuffling a bit because of the snow, but still… “Listen,” she said, coming to sit back next to him. She seized his hands in both of hers and kissed him soundly, a loud smack that echoed off the sides of the plane and back at them, and made her laugh again.

“Wy-”

“Moses came to see me last night,” she said.

“Wy, let me get the first-aid kit. You’ve got some whiskey in it, don’t you? I think you could use a drink, and I know I could.”

He tried to stand up and she wouldn’t let him. “Wait a minute, Liam. I know I sound crazy, but listen. Moses came to see me last night, and he told me he was my grandfather.”

“Oh.” All that meant to Liam was that the little martinet was going to be his grandfather-in-law. He could only imagine how much Moses was going to be beat up on him now. There were probably one hundred additional movements in tai chi that Moses had been saving up to torture him with, and he’d have to learn them all. “Maybe I don’t want to marry you after all.”

She laughed again, a clear, full-throated sound that rang down the airstrip like a bell. “He’s a shaman.”

“I’ve noticed,” Liam said dryly.

“No, no, listen.” She shook his hands. “Listen, Liam. I’m his granddaughter, and he hears voices.”

“Wy, I don’t-”

“He told me I was going to hear them, too.”

“-think- What? What do you mean?”

“I mean just what you think I mean. He told me that hearing the voices is hereditary in our family, that sometimes it takes a while for them to kick in. He told me the reason I made us come to the fish camp last month is because I knew Gheen was coming and that Tim was in danger.”

He looked at her and remembered how determined, how in fact implacable she had been to fly into the teeth of thirty-five-knot winds, blowing snow and fog and the year’s first winter storm. She was going to go; nothing anyone could say or do short of busting up the plane with a crowbar was going to stop her. He had been angry with her, and terrified, because he knew he’d have to go with her. “Did you?”

She rounded on him. “Of course not! I told Moses last night that all I did was follow the trail of dead bodies that crazy bastard left. It was pointing right toward Old Man Creek. It didn’t take any voices to see that; it was right there on the map!”

She looked as fierce as she sounded; there was plenty of moonlight to show him that. “That’s why you were nervous about the flights,” he said.

“What flights?”

“The one to the glacier this morning and the one to Anchorage tonight. You were looking for advice from the voices if you should fly or not.”

“Voices,” she said with scorn. “Imagine. I’m a pilot, Liam. I’m not a shaman. Besides, a shaman is a man. All the shamans I’ve known are men.”

“How many have you known?”

“That’s not the point. Okay, one, all right, Moses! But I’ve never read about a woman shaman, or heard about one, and besides, I don’t believe in any of that stuff anyway. He’s my friend, and my tai chi teacher, and it turns out he happens to be my grandfather, too.” She made a visible effort to calm down. “He’s also a drunk, and he was drunk on his ass last night. He probably didn’t have a clue what he was saying.”

He always had before. Liam kept that thought to himself.

“And besides,” Wy added, “if any voices were going to kick in they would have kicked in before this flight. They would at the very least have kicked in before we left Anchorage. I haven’t got any; I don’t care whose granddaughter I am.”

Suddenly, right over their heads, a raven cawed loudly. They both jumped. Wy leapt to her feet and shouted, “Yeah, your mother, you little black bastard!”

She marched off.

Liam stood up and brushed at the seat of his pants, searching out the cawer in the tree above. He’d been there the month before, or someone very like him, and had followed them down the river in the skiff. They would have missed the mouth of Old Man Creek if it hadn’t been for the raven.

Although it wasn’t necessarily a he. It was impossible to tell a male raven from a female raven from a distance. Liam had been making it his business to read up on ravens. As a practicing law-enforcement professional, he preferred his science straight, unencumbered by myth or legend, but it was hard to get away from either in this country. He read Bernd Heinrich and Richard K. Nelson, and he learned that Alaska Natives regarded the raven as a trickster, not a helper. You had to watch Raven or he’d steal you blind, food, home, woman, children, the sun, the moon and the stars, for that matter.

All Liam knew was that something big and black and winged had come between him and disaster three times in the last six months, and he was grateful. There was a series of soft croaks from a branch above him. He thought he caught a blue-black gleam of raven wing, a glimpse of a beady eye.

He also thought he might be going a little insane. Disney-ham was finally getting to him. He followed Wy to the plane.

She had the toolbox out of the plane and was rooting through it. She stood up as he approached, hacksaw in hand. “What are you doing with that?”

She got a plastic crate out of the back of the plane and went to the front, upended it, and climbed on top.

“Wy?”

She put one hand on the prop and rested the hacksaw on the end, to just before the bullet nonhole.

“Wy!”

She started to saw. She might even have been whistling.

“Wy!”