Better To Rest

THREE

Liam and Diana were still recovering from the fit of giggles caused by the vampire-disposal kit when they pulled up in front of the small square building with the Last Frontier Bank sign over the door. A burly man waited for them on the steps. He had a belly like a beer barrel, a head like a rectangular bullet, hair that stood up all over it in stiff white bristles, and a scowl carving lines into his cheeks and forehead. He wore button-fly jeans and a blue cashmere sweater with a button-down collar peeking out from underneath the crew neck. Liam suspected that the laces on his boots were ironed. “Brewster,” he said as he stepped out of the white Chevy Blazer with the badge of his service emblazoned on its door.

The burly man gave a curt nod. “Campbell. Took your time getting here.”

Liam felt rather than saw Diana stiffen. “We had some things to take care of at the post.” He hitched up his gun belt. “Molly says somebody tried to steal your ATM again.”

Brewster Gibbons, manager of Newenham’s only bank and general pain in the civic ass, watched Liam’s hand settle on the butt of the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson strapped to his right hip. “Yes.”

Liam ambled forward to inspect the machine secured to the wall of the bank. Its corners were dented. Further investigation found a length of heavy galvanized chain tossed in a careless heap beneath the porch, as well as a horizontal burn in the right-hand upright of the porch railing, and two deep ruts in the driveway. The last two links of the chain were bent open, as if the chain had been made from clay. “Looks like someone tried to haul it off, all right.”

In spite of its wounds, the machine’s screen continued to flash advertisements for credit cards and car loans and home mortgages. Liam got out his wallet and inserted his cash card. Obediently, the machine spit out fifty dollars. “Although it doesn’t seem to have hurt it much.” He stuffed the cash into his wallet and the wallet back into his pocket. “My turn to cook dinner,” he told the bank manager. “I’m thinking take-out chicken from the deli counter at Eagle.”

Prince made a face. “I don’t know, sir, that burrito I got from there was pretty awful. You might want to reconsider.”

“What I want to know,” Brewster said, his face tight and his eyes angry, “is what you intend to do about it.”

“I don’t know,” Liam said. “Probably pick up some Maalox on my way through the checkout counter.”

Brewster Gibbons took a visible breath, looked again at the hand resting on the gun butt, and bit back what he had been about to say.

A raven’s soft croak sounded from a nearby tree, followed by a series ofclick-click-click s andcraaaa-ack s. A stiff breeze blew on shore from Bristol Bay, dropping the already crisp chill factor to a temperature close to freezing. After a summer’s absence the stars had returned to the Alaskan sky, and Liam looked up to let the Big Dipper show him the way to the North Star.

Brewster stood it for as long as he could. “Well? Somebody tried to rob my bank! I want to know what you’re going to do about this! When Anchorage finds out, they’re going to want some answers, and they’re going to be talking to our friends in Juneau!”

Diana Prince hadn’t been working with Liam Campbell for even four months, but it was long enough to look at Brewster Gibbons and think, You poor dumb bastard. Every two years Brewster Gibbons contributed five hundred dollars to the campaign of anyone of the Democratic, Republican or Libertarian persuasion running for state office from the Newenham district and thought that bought him influence. It was the maximum amount allowed by law, as anyone in Alaska could have told him, and was standard operating procedure for any businessman covering his political bets. It hardly rated a thank-you note. But then, she’d always been something of a cynic when it came to politics.

Without ceasing communion with the celestial beings overhead, Liam said, “Trooper Prince? How many times has someone attempted to kidnap Mr. Gibbons’ cash machine?”

“I believe this makes it four times, sir.”

“Uh-huh. And the first time was, when, exactly?”

“That would be June. June sixth, I believe.”

“Hmmm. And the method used?”

“The first time they wrapped an electrical cord around the machine and pulled. The cord snapped.”

“I see. And the second?”

“The second time was eight days later, the fourteenth. This time they tried to open it up with a saw.”

“A saw. Refresh my memory. What happened?”

“The blade snapped in two. Mr. Gibbons found pieces of it on the porch when he came in in the morning.” She added, “The night before, a Ferdinand Volinario called to say that his shop had been broken into, and that he was missing some tools, including an electric Skilsaw.”

“I’d forgotten all about Nando,” Liam said. “Well done, Trooper Prince. And the third time?”

She hesitated just long enough to make it interesting. “We think a sledgehammer, sir, but we’re not absolutely sure. The machine was pretty severely dented. You can still see some of the dents.” She pointed.

Liam lowered his eyes to peer at the machine. “So you can.” He laid hands on the machine and tried to rock it loose. It wouldn’t budge. “Pretty sturdy piece of equipment,” he told Gibbons, his tone congratulatory. “You’ve got it fastened down pretty solid, too.”

“We can only hope they ripped their axle out,” Prince said.

“Your security camera working yet?” Liam said.

Gibbons’ flush was easy to see from the light over the door. “I need to pull it and send it to Anchorage to get it fixed.”

“Yeah. Camera on the machine itself working yet?”

“Not since June.”

“Uh-huh. Did you see anything yourself?”

Gibbons lost patience. “I didn’t have to! It was Teddy Engebretsen or John Kvichak or Paul Urbano or Mac MacCormick or one of that worthless bunch, or maybe the whole boiling lot of them together! You know it as well as I do! I want you to go over there and arrest them!”

“Did you see Teddy Engebretsen this evening, Brewster?” A brief silence. “Brewster? Did you see Teddy Engebretsen trying to kidnap your ATM machine?”

“No,” Gibbons said, his face sullen.

“How about John Kvichak? No? Then Paul Urbano? Again no? Brewster, I know you watch a lot of television, with that fancy new satellite dish and all, so I know you have at least a speaking acquaintance with probable cause. Absent witnesses, absent evidence, I have no reason to suspect Teddy or John or Paul of anything except smoking a little dope at Tasha Anayuk’s Saturday-night party.” Not lately, anyway, he thought. “In the meantime, in spite of someone’s best efforts, it doesn’t look like your machine is going anywhere. Get your security cameras fixed or hire a security guard or both, and maybe we’ll catch them in the act next time.”

“Next time! I don’t want there to be a next time! And where the hell am I supposed to hire a security guard in Newenham?”

“Job Service in Anchorage always has clients looking for employment,” Liam said, and tipped his flat-brimmed Mountie hat in grave salute on his way back to the Blazer.

“Job Service! Sure, if I wanted hire a moron who-” The rest of Brewster Gibbons’ words were cut off when Liam’s door closed.

“All the same,” Prince said when he put it in gear, “it probably was Teddy or John or Paul. Or Art Inga and Dave Iverson. Or-”

“Probably,” Liam agreed. “Which is why we’re going over to John’s to say hi.”

“Did I mention that I have a hot date tonight?” Prince wondered out loud. “And that I’m already late?”

“Did I mention that so do I, and so am I, and that I’ve got a better chance of getting laid at the end of it than you do?” Liam said, wondering if it was true.

“Just a passing comment,” Prince said, and slumped in her seat with a sigh.

Liam pulled out onto the road and put the Blazer into a skid over the icy ruts. The road looked like his life. He hit the gas and powered out of the skid, the rear wheels missing the ditch by a hair. Next to him Prince let out a pent-up breath.

Things had cooled off considerably between Liam and Wy since John Barton’s offer to bring Liam back to Anchorage. It was the difference between fire and ice, and ice, as the poet foretold, for destruction was also great and would suffice. He knew it was partly his fault; he was holding both Wy and Tim in limbo, which made him feel guilty. He was pissing off John Barton, too, who was calling on average once a day before breakfast to bellow down the line for Liam to shit or get off the pot in tones clearly audible all over Wy’s house. The job wasn’t helping much, either. He and Prince had been hard at it for a solid month, responding to a series of burglaries, robberies and assaults aggravated by the rapidly weakening economy. It was the first practical lesson Liam had learned in the practice of law enforcement: It was easy to obey the law when your kids had full bellies. He understood, but it was not comforting to watch the lives of the people under his protection fall apart. Especially while he seemed to be helpless to stop the deterioration of his own.

Newenham, population two thousand, was a fishing town and regional market hub sitting on the eastern edge of Bristol Bay. It was built on a thick deposit of silt and clay washed down by the Nushugak River, and its topography consisted mostly of rolling hills covered with stands of birch and alder and fireweed and spruce clustered around houses with vinyl siding and trailers and mobile homes and log cabins with sod roofs and Quonset huts left over from World War II. There wasn’t a straight street downtown; a series of looping curves wound around that part of Newenham with delusions of grandeur, city and business buildings in all their prefabricated glory and even a town house condominium complex sitting at the edge of the river overlooking the small boat harbor. A forest of masts of varying heights crowded the slips like nursing piglets, their backs to the bay and another bad fishing season. By February only a quarter of their skippers would have filed for bankruptcy, if the town was lucky. Meanwhile, they were all drinking their misery away, and their good sense with it.

Wy could have offered some solace, some counsel, he thought, taking a corner too fast. Instead she had withdrawn behind a façade that was as cool as it was irritating. Anyone would think she didn’t care if he went or stayed. Anyone would think that she was just waiting for him to screw up so she’d have the opportunity to kick him out.

Not that she’d ever asked him to move in in the first place. What was her problem with that, anyway? They were single, in love, in heat, had a boy who needed two parents, had jobs that gave them financial security; just what the hellwas her problem? Was it him? Was it marriage?

He could have asked. He could win everything or lose it all, but he feared his fate too much. What was the name of that poem? After a moment’s thought it came to him. “My Dear and Only Love.” Figured. The author, as he recalled, had wound up with his head on a pike outside London, the only proper end for anyone who dared to put that much truth into rhyme. The road straightened out and he stepped on the gas, only to send the vehicle into a protesting fishtail.

“Did you say something, sir?” Diana Prince said, knuckles white on the door handle.

He let up on the gas. “No.”

Sometimes he thought he read too much poetry.

John Kvichak’s house sat on the river’s bank, too, although too far upstream of Wy’s house for Liam to see the lights. Liam hoped she wasn’t pissed that he was late. He could have called before he left the office. But then she might have picked up instead of the answering machine, and he would have had to talk to her. Or Tim.

Tim hadn’t exactly been a barrel of laughs lately, either. Seeing his first girlfriend shot in front of his eyes the month before had been traumatic enough. Now his adoptive mother Wy had invited his birth mother into the house. This was the same woman under whose porch Wy had discovered a broken and bleeding Tim a little over two years before. Tim’s hatred of Natalie Gosuk was fierce and visceral; he openly resented being forced to spend time with her, and the house was, to say the least, unsettled after one of her visits. Wy was allowing one a week. Today had been her third. Liam and Tim had been forging a relationship one cautious step at a time, their mutual love for Wy the impetus behind the journey. Now Tim had barricaded himself behind a wall of resentment that even Wy was having trouble getting through. Not that she would stop trying. She’d die first.

Liam had met Wy three years before, when he’d had to fly into the Bush to investigate a murder. It hadn’t been a memorable murder, a subsistence fisherman shooting a sports fisherman over some alleged trespassing of fishing territory. He couldn’t even remember now if the investigation and subsequent arrest had resulted in a conviction.

But he could remember every single second of the flights out and back, and for once his memories had nothing to do with his fear of flying. He remembered Wy had her hair pulled back into a ponytail, the easier to wear the headset. He remembered hearing her laugh, loving the sound of it, and trying deliberately to provoke a repeat. He remembered the feeling of instant recognition when she introduced herself as his pilot, the brief feeling of incredulous dizziness when their hands clasped for the first time in greeting, the dismayed realization of instantaneous attraction, of sharp-edged, undeniable need.

A need that a four-day weekend in Anchorage had only whetted. A weekend that, due to Wy’s uncomfortable conscience, constituted the main portion of their affair, before she sent him back to his wife and son. They had parted in grief and in anger, and the first time they had seen each other again they had coupled in the front seat of her truck like a pair of randy teenagers.

Oh, yeah, the need was still there, as strong and as certain as it had ever been. Need wasn’t enough, though. Sometimes even love wasn’t enough. He used to know what was, but he was no longer as sure of himself as he had once been.

It was with relief that he pulled up in front of John’s house, where, to judge from the lack of parking spaces, there appeared to be a monster truck rally in progress, and consigned his personal life to a folder in the back of his mind markedLater. Wy would be there when he was ready to open it again.

John Kvichak’s house had started life as a dugout, a pit with sod walls and roof, and over the intervening hundred and fifty years had migrated up and out. One wall was log, another plywood with tar-paper shingles, the third and widest of round river rock that rose into a chimney that, however unsteady in construction, appeared to be functional, if the smoke pouring out of it was any indication. The fourth was a bright blue vinyl siding Liam tried to convince himself wasn’t the same shade as the new siding Seafood North sported across from the small boat harbor. On a drive-through of the dock area the day before, Liam had noticed that part of one wall of the cannery was still bare except for the Tyvek house wrap. Probably, he told himself, Seafood North had ordered short. Probably.

“Don’t look now; it’s Delinquentville,” Diana Prince said. “That’s Teddy’s Ranchero, isn’t it? And Kelley MacCormick’s Dakota? And Paul Urbano’s Cherokee Chief. What’s with those tires, anyway? He could drive over a moose without grazing the rack, the body sits so high.” She released her seat belt and looked at Liam. “The gang’s almost all here. You think they’re planning their next heist?”

“I hope not,” Liam said, and he meant it. He didn’t know Paul that well, but Teddy and John were the sole support of their families, and pretty good at it so long as they stayed sober. Mac MacCormick was fresh out of the hospital and was in no shape to do more time. “Might as well get it over with.”

He got out of the Blazer just in time to see Brewster Gibbons haul his Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer to a halt and bounce out. Gibbons must have been behind them the whole way and Liam had been so preoccupied that he hadn’t spotted him, which did not improve his temper. “Brewster,” he said, his voice very different from the irritating drawl he had used before, “what are you doing here? We don’t need you. Go home.”

“I didn’t think you were going to do anything.” Gibbons panted up, full of righteous wrath. “I came to warn them to stay away from my bank.”

“As you can see, it’s not necessary. We’re here, and we’ll handle it. Now go home.” To underscore his command, he stepped forward to take Gibbons’ arm and escort him back to the SUV. He even went so far as to open the door. With bad grace, Gibbons climbed in.

Liam caught Diana as she reached the porch, which along with the stairs up to it and the overhang looked brand-new, the wooden planks neatly lined up and not yet gray from weathering. Liam wondered who next would be pounding on the trooper post’s door to report a theft.

The door swung open.

“Hi, John,” Diana Prince began.

She didn’t have time to say anything else. The man standing in the door took one look at her uniform, another at Liam’s blue-clad bulk looming up behind her, said, “Oh, shit,” and vanished.

From behind him there was a panicked yell and some shouts and a lot of swearing and a rush of footsteps. Something crashed inside the room and the lights went out. There was a thump and a moan and some more swearing.

“Okay, guys, we’re coming in,” Diana Prince said, pushing the door wide and feeling for a wall switch. She found one. An overhead light revealed a terrified Teddy Engebretsen with something in his hand and that hand pulled back to throw. “What’s- Teddy? Teddy, what the hell is that? Teddy, don’t- Christ! Look out, sir!”

She ducked, and on instinct Liam followed suit. Something pale and elongated sailed over their heads.

There was a loudsmack! followed by a howl of outrage and the thump of a butt hitting the ground, hard.

Still crouching, Liam turned to look.

Brewster Gibbons was sitting on his fanny in the snow at the foot of the stairs, staring at the thing lying half on the bottom step and half on his lap. As Liam watched, he let out a yell and scuttled backward on his hands and feet. The thing slid from his lap and skidded across the icy path to bounce off the berm on one side and back off the other. “Keep it away from me! Keep it away from me!”

“What the hell?” Liam said, and went to investigate.

On closer inspection, he didn’t blame Brewster for yelling.

The object was a human arm, the left, severed above the elbow.

Its hand was clenched into a tight fist.