Fire And Ice

FIVE

There was a thump at the door. Liam, asleep in the office chair with his feet up on the desk, started awake. The chair rolled back and Liam slid off the seat and crashed to the floor. "Ouch! Goddammit!" His head gave a tremendous throb and then settled into a steady ache just above his left ear. He raised an investigatory hand. The wound was swollen, but less so than when he had come in last night. The cut on the crown of his head was better, too; still tender but crusted over.

He shoved the chair away from him and it went, casters protesting creakily. He rose almost as creakily to his feet, rubbing at the small of his back. He stretched, popping his joints, and gave a mighty yawn, in the middle of which someone thumped on the door again, the same bone-jarring thump Liam recognized as his original alarm clock.

Without waiting for an invitation, the door swung back on its hinges. In the door stood a man it took Liam a few befuddled moments to recognize. It was the Alaskan Old Fart, the drunken shaman, Moses Alakuyak. The shaman stared at him, hands on his hips.

"Well?" Liam said testily. He wasn't a morning person.

"Well," Moses said, emphasizing the word with awful sarcasm, "get your ass out here. It's late-we've got work to do." And he vanished.

Liam blinked once, then felt around for his watch. The little red numbers blinked back at him -6:00 A.m. His teeth were furry, he'd had maybe five hours' worth of uneasy sleep perched on his makeshift office chair bed, and he needed to pee.

"Get out here, dammit!" Moses' voice barked. Liam considered his alternatives, and then braved the shaman's displeasure by relieving his most pressing problem in the bathroom.

He examined himself in the mirror. His hair covered most of the damage. He splashed cold water on his face, drank about a quart of it straight from the faucet, noticing a faintly sulfuric taste, and filled up the bowl to sluice the blood out of his hair. There was a roll of paper towels on the back of the toilet; he used those to dry off.

"Goddammit," the shaman bellowed, "get your goddamn butt out here before I lose my goddamn temper!"

He could always arrest Moses for disturbing the peace, Liam thought hopefully. And then bethought himself of Bill's burgers. Given the obvious relationship between Bill and Moses, it would behoove him to stay on Moses' good side. Or at least that's what Liam told himself. He took a deep breath and stepped out on the porch.

The Newenham troopers' post was one small building consisting of an outer office, an inner office, a lavatory, and two holding cells. The right side of the building was surrounded by a paved parking lot enclosed by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. Current occupants included a rusted-out white International pickup, a brand-new Cadillac Seville, and a dump truck. Liam hadn't had time yet to look at the files and see why they had been confiscated.

He could probably make a fairly accurate guess as to why the truck and the Caddy were there (Dwi for the one, drugs for the other) but the dump truck had him stumped. What could you do with a dump truck that was criminal? Haul toxic wastes, maybe, but that would be a federal offense. Wouldn't it? He made a mental note to look up the relevant statutes.

The Newenham post sat on a side road a few blocks from downtown, a stand of white spruce crowding up against it, brushing the corrugated steel roof with long green branches. The road was paved, and there were five parking spaces in front of the building, what looked like a warehouse on one side, and a vacant lot on the other. Beyond the vacant lot was the city dock, and beyond the dock the mouth of the Nushagak River and the entrance to Bristol Bay.

Something was wrong. It took a minute for Liam, balancing uncertainly on the top step, to realize what it was. "Hey," he said. "It's not raining."

Liam was a tall man, six foot three inches, and where he stood his hair nearly brushed the eave of the building. From directly overhead he heard a loud croak, followed by a rapid clicking and another croak. He looked up and recoiled to find himself nose to beak with a raven-sleek, fat, with utterly black feathers that shone in the morning sun with an iridescent luster. He was either the same raven Liam had seen outside the bar the day before, or its twin. He was perched at the very edge of the roof, talons curled around it, peering down at Liam with a bright, intelligent, speculative gaze that knew far more about the human race than any member of a winged species had a right to.

"Wait a minute," Liam said. There had been a raven, hadn't there? The night before? He reached up and touched his wound, or wounds. The hell with it-he must have been more out of it than he'd thought. And after two cracks on the head a man was entitled to a few delusions.

That thought, too, had an uncomfortable echo.

"Well, come on," Moses bellowed, "quit lollygagging around; get your ass down here."

Liam looked from the raven to the shaman, standing in the exact center of one of the empty parking spaces in front of the post. In the distance a truck engine turned over, the generator on a boat kicked in, a small plane took off, a seagull screamed. But right here, right now, it was still and silent -no traffic on the street, no voices. Just the shaman, the raven, and Liam.

Giving the raven a wary look-that beak looked sharp-Liam descended the steps. "What's going on, Moses?"

Moses ignored him. He was dressed in a frogged jacket with a mandarin collar and pants whose hems were secured with cloth ties a little above his ankles. Jacket and pants were made of black cotton; his shoes were black canvas slip-ons with flat roped soles. His expression was serious, even solemn, and his eyes were not, so far as Liam could tell, even a little bit bloodshot.

"Get over here," Moses ordered.

Not only was Liam not a morning person, he hadn't had any coffee yet, but despite this he found himself complying, standing an arm's reach away from the old man, facing the same direction. Moses fixed him with a bright, knowing gaze that reminded Liam uncannily of the raven's. "Put your feet a shoulder width apart, toes turned out. Feel the connection of the earth to your heel, to the ball beneath your big toe, and the ball beneath your little toe." Looking up, he caught Liam gazing at him, brow furrowed, and said impatiently, "Well, come on. It's called a Modified Horse Stance. Bend your knees, get into it."

Not sure why, Liam obeyed. The old man bent over to push Liam's right toe a little in, his left toe a little out, and both knees into a deeper bend. "I want to see a plumb line from your knees to your toes. All right. Now, picture the crown of your head held up by a string. Let your whole spine hang from that string. Fix your feet to the ground, heel, toe, and toe; hang your spine from the sky. Root from below, suspend from above."

The old man walked around Liam twice, examining the trooper's stance with a critical eye. "All right, I suppose that's about as good as we can expect for the first time." Liam began to straighten up, and Moses said, "Where do you think you're going?"

Dutifully Liam sank back down, and over the next half hour Moses began to teach him the rudiments of the first two movements of what the old man finally deigned to tell him was tai chi ch'uan, an ancient Chinese physical discipline based on a form of martial arts known as soft boxing. Those first two movements were called Commencement and Ward Off Left, and consisted of shifting weight from one leg to another, the turning of the torso, and the forming and unforming of the hands and arms into a ball, all beneath the sardonic supervision of the raven, who occasionally added a click of reinforcement to one of Moses' brusque commands from the low branch of a white spruce. The spruce was, evidently, a better spot from which to oversee than the roof of the post.

The Alaska State Troopers require their officers to be physically fit, and Liam was. He could run two miles barely breaking a sweat, he could pull himself over a six-foot fence and hit the ground running, and at the end of the obstacle course he could pull out his weapon, put the barrel in the cardboard circle, and hit what he aimed at without touching the sides of the circle. He ate right most of the time, he worked out, he didn't indulge in too much of anything. Except perhaps Glenmorangie, but that wasn't overindulgence, that was the stuff of life. Even at the bottom of the pit, after Wy's farewell, Charlie's death, Jenny's coma, the debacle at Denali, his demotion, when the future looked as bleak as an Arctic landscape and hope that things would ever get better was long lost to him, he had regulated his health and his fitness. Sometimes it was all he had left to hang on to.

So, if he wasn't precisely hale and hearty, which implied a certain optimism of outlook, he was capable of vigorous exertion in the fulfillment of his duties. It was a matter of common sense, as well as pride. No cop wants to lose a footrace to a bad guy, and he or she definitely has no wish to be forced into going back to the cop shop and admitting to it.

This was a different kind of activity. This required control, focus, discipline, and the kind of dedicated concentration Liam had hitherto given only to the pursuit of criminals and the opposite sex.

And, while it didn't completely cure it, it made his headache recede somewhere to the back of his mind, turning the pain into something he could deal with or ignore, as he wished.

At the end of an hour, Moses grunted a grudging satisfaction with Liam's progress and ordered a by now profusely perspiring Liam back into the modified horse stance. "Stay," he commanded, and Liam stayed while the old man changed into jeans and flannel shirt.

"Er, you want to use the john in the office?" Liam said, thighs trembling, sweat running down his spine.

"What for?" Moses said, with what appeared to be genuine surprise. He packed his tai chi uniform into his truck, a red Nissan long bed with a white canopy on the back, both colors nearly obscured by a thick layer of mud. He walked around Liam one more time, muttering a disapproving comment here, giving a nudge there, standing back finally with a dubious nod. "Best that can be hoped for, I guess. All right. I'm going for coffee."

He climbed into his truck and drove off.

Liam continued to stand there. Five minutes passed. Ten. His shins began to hurt. Fifteen, and his thighs began to vibrate like the wings on a mosquito. Liam could practically hear them humming. After twenty minutes the raven gave a nasty cackle and flapped off toward the river, probably for breakfast, the lucky bastard.

A truck came down the road and stopped somewhere behind Liam. A door slammed, steps approached, the heavenly smell of coffee teased his nostrils. "He's not coming back, Liam," Wy's voice said.

Liam stayed in position. "What do you mean? He said he was going for coffee."

"He didn't say he was bringing any back, did he?" she said. "I ran into him at the espresso stand in NC. He told me he'd been giving you your first tai chi lesson, and I knew what that meant." A cup, a grande by the size of it, appeared in front of his face like an apparition. "He does this to all his beginning students. Come on, come out of it. Stand up, if you can. Slowly."

Liam came up out of it, slowly, and on trembling legs tottered over to the steps, there to subside into a weak pile. He accepted the cup of coffee and sipped it gratefully, savoring the first swallow with closed eyes. "Hey," he said, opening them and smiling at Wy, "you remembered. I like a little coffee with my cream. Good coffee, too. I was worried if I'd find any here."

"Oh yeah," Wy said. " Alaska is getting to be as bad as Seattle -you can't walk a quarter of a block without bumping into an espresso stand."

Liam stared at her for a moment and said finally, "I fail to see the problem there, Wy." She laughed, and he knew a warm feeling around his heart. He could still make her laugh.

She seemed relaxed this morning, in a determined kind of way. Dressed in tennis shoes, jeans, and a green and gold University of Alaska hockey sweatshirt, her dark blond hair picking up highlights from the rising sun, she was willing to meet his eyes, if fleetingly, and was capable of casual small talk, if somewhat constrained and never anything verging on substantial. By merely existing on the planet she tempted him in a thousand different ways, but this morning she was excruciatingly careful, doing nothing overt to provoke. He followed her lead, content for the moment to tuck away the memory of their hasty coupling the night before. He would not forget it, though, and knew she wouldn't, either. The reckoning on their relationship, whatever it was and wherever it was going, had only been postponed.

His transfer had come through so hastily that he knew very little of Newenham or Bristol Bay beyond what everyone knew-fish, fish, and more fish-and he had yet to sift through whatever information Corcoran might or might not have left behind. He asked Wy for a rundown now, he admitted to himself, as much to hear the sound of her voice as to gain information on his new posting. His new home, it turned out, had a population of two thousand in the winter, five thousand in the summer, state and federal government providing most of the year-round jobs. It was the headquarters for three national parks, one state park, four game preserves, a dozen wildlife refuges, and a federal petroleum reserve that had yet to be tested. The population of the town itself ran about three-fourths white, one-fourth Native, mostly Yupik, with some Inupiaq transplants from up north, some Aleut transplants from down south, and one lone Tlingit family that got sidetracked during a move from Sitka to Nome back in the fifties, homesteaded a hundred and sixty acres twenty miles up the Icky road, and never left. "It makes for a lively time during the quarterly meetings of the local Native association," Wy said.

Newenham was the largest city in southwest Alaska, and the staging area for the biggest salmon fishing fleet in the world. "Wait till you see, Liam," she said, shaking her head. "In a couple of months you'll be able to walk across Bristol Bay without getting your feet wet, there will be so many boats on it."

He was satisfied to listen, happy just to savor her presence, but duty called, and reluctantly, he answered. "Let's get your statement down while you're here."

"All right," she said equably, and followed him inside.

She talked, he typed, once he figured out how to turn the post's computer on. There were another few blasphemous moments while he figured out how to turn the printer on, too, after which minor victory of man over machine he fed the form in, hit the print button, and had her sign the result.

"That wasn't so painful," she said, handing back his pen.

"No." He knew something that was going to be, though. He filed the form, stalling for time.

She noticed. "What's up? Is there something wrong, Liam?"

He sat back in his chair, raising a hand to smooth his hair, touching gently the lump over his left ear. "Yeah, there is. I'm sorry as hell to have to tell you this, Wy, but something happened after you left last night."

She stared at him, puzzled. "At the airport? What do you mean, something happened? Oh."

Something sure had, but it wasn't what either of them were thinking of. He watched the rich color run up beneath her skin, and images of the moments in the front seat of her truck caused his own inevitable response. He had a man dead, probably murdered, and all he could think of was the next time he'd get Wy in bed. So much for duty.

"Yes, something happened." He drained his cup and rose to his feet. His headache was only a remembered throb, easily ignored, and he knew a moment of gratitude to the Alaskan Old Fart. Might be something to this tai chi stuff. "Let's take a ride out to the airport."

The damage looked far worse in the full light of day.

The little plane's wings were shredded, long tails of stiff red fabric fluttering in the slight breeze coming off the bay. The steel tubing beneath was clearly visible. She looked all the more pitiful sitting between 68 Kilo, the faded but neat Cessna 180 on her left, and the Super Cub with the brand-new teal and green paint job on her right, which planes Liam was able to identify because their manufacturers had been thoughtful enough to stencil make and model on the side in nice black letters.

Wy was out of the Blazer before it had come to a complete stop. Liam followed more slowly. When he caught up, she was running her hands over the frame, partly in a search for further damage, and partly, he thought, in a soothing, healing motion, as unthinking as it was useless. He looked once at Wy's face, and then away again.

It was early enough that the damage had yet to attract a crowd. He was glad, for her sake.

She stood back finally, face set, hands hanging at her sides.

"I'm sorry, Wy," Liam said. "I tried to stop him."

Her head snapped around. "You caught the son of a bitch?"

"I tried," he said, and sighed, one hand going to his head. "He brained me with a crowbar and took off."

"What?" A hasty step had her peering up into his face. "Are you all right?" Her hand followed his to his head. "Liam! There's a big bump there!"

"I noticed." Gently, he removed her hand. "It's okay-he didn't hit me hard enough to break the skin, and it doesn't feel like anything's broken." His smile was crooked. "Believe it or not, I think the tai chi helped a little. It hardly hurts at all now."

Her hand dropped slowly to her side. "Good. I'm glad. I'd hate to think that you got hurt protecting-" She looked again at the Cub, and whatever she had been going to say died.

"How much to fix it?" he said.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Five grand, average. Maybe more, maybe as much as seventy-five hundred."

"For both?"

She almost smiled at his naivete. "Each."

"Jesus." He took a deep breath, let it out. "So, ten thousand dollars. How long will the plane be out of commission?"

She shrugged. "The work will take a week a wing. Maybe more." She looked around as if just waking up from a bad dream, only to find the bad dream reality. "Are any of the other planes-"

"No, Wy," Liam said, sadly but firmly. "No. This wasn't random. This wasn't a bunch of vandalizing brats out to see how much havoc they could wreak in one night. I saw him sneaking around and I followed him. He headed straight for your plane. This was directed at you, and only at you. And now you're grounded for, what, a minimum of two weeks? I don't know much about it, but I know the herring fishing season is short." He raised an eyebrow.

She nodded numbly. "Days. Hours. Minutes even, sometimes."

"I thought so. Since this is the plane you spot in, the damage pretty much puts you out of the running for this herring season, doesn't it?" She nodded again. "So, who doesn't want you spotting, Wy?"

"You mean-?" He raised an inquiring eyebrow, and she said forcefully, "No, Liam. No. No way."

"No?" He gave her a long, thoughtful look. "How much herring did you help catch last year?"

"It doesn't matter," she flared. "I can't think of a pilot in the world who would do this to another pilot. Besides, if they were after me, why didn't they go after my 180, too, just to be on the safe side." She indicated the blue and white plane sitting next to the Cub, wings intact.

"Maybe because I got here before they could," he said, and added, "Doesn't have to be only the wings they went after. I'd have your mechanic check it out, stem to stern or whatever you call it on a plane, before you go up in her again."

"No," she said, but she had weakened.

"It doesn't have to be another pilot who did it, either," he said inexorably. "Could be a fisherman, and in that case he might not know about your other plane, he may only have seen you up in the Cub. He may only have her tail number. Did you spot last year from the 180? The last opener?"

She was shaking her head back and forth. "No, Liam. No way."

"Uh-huh," he said, unconvinced. He thought about it, and added, "Well then, who else have you pissed off lately?" She said nothing, staring at the Cub with a dumb misery that struck to his heart. "Wy, dammit!" He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her once, roughly. "Don't you get it? Maybe it was only bad timing that that prop caught Bob DeCreft upside the head. Maybe it was meant to catch you."

She shivered beneath his hands, andwitha slight shock he knew he had not been the first to realize this. "Wy, dammit! What have you been up to? I can't help you if you lie to me, or hold back! Tell me what's going on!"

She opened her mouth to reply, maybe even with the truth, which was why it was especially annoying when the mayor's orange Suburban raced around a corner and swooped to a screeching halt. Jim Earl stuck his head out the window. "Get in the truck, trooper-somebody's been shooting up the post office!"

"This is getting to be a habit, Jim Earl," Liam said, letting Wy go reluctantly. "The post office inside the city limits?"

"Of course! What of it?"

"So you should call the local police."

"I did, goddammit! They ain't none of them available. Roger Raymo's tracking down Bernie Brayton, who some damn fool in Eagle River let loose of before his sentence was up, and Cliff Berg's wife flat won't wake him up! Come on!"

Liam, in what he considered to be the voice of sweet reason, said, "So why don't you wake him up?"

"Because the last time I tried she met me at the door with a loaded twelve-gauge is why. Now will you goddammit get a move on!"

Liam paused, one hand on the door of the Blazer, and looked at Wy. "Can you grab a ride back to your truck?"

She nodded.

"Okay." Still, he hesitated, while Jim Earl rolled his eyes and muttered beneath his breath. "I'll see you later."

She was silent for a moment, thinking over the implied question in his words. At last she said, "All right."

"I'll call. We have phones here, don't we?"

She recovered enough to make a face. "Of course we have phones here, Liam. We've even got cable."

"Just like downtown," he said. He let go of the door and walked back to her, ignoring Jim Earl's impatient snort. "I'll catch the bastard who did this, Wy. I promise." He put a hand beneath her chin and forced her to meet his eyes. "If you'll help me."

"You're still outta uniform, trooper," the mayor said disapprovingly through his open window.

"You're right, Mr. Mayor, I am," Liam agreed cheerfully. He climbed into the Blazer. "Lead the way," he called out the window, and waved to Wy as he drove off. In the rearview mirror, he watched Wy's figure grow smaller and smaller, standing forlornly next to the tattered remnants of her Super Cub.

The post office was a one-story building out of the same mold as every other post office in the Alaskan Bush: a shallow, corrugated metal roof, a sloping ramp leading up to the front door, the Alaska and American flags flying out front (the Alaska flag flying a little higher than the American), banks and alcoves of keyed boxes with metal doors, and a small room at one end with a counter dividing it. There were six or seven people inside. One of them greeted the mayor with relief. "Jim Earl! Dammit, when do I get to mail my package!"

It was the grandmotherly type from yesterday's flight. Today her eye shadow was forest green and her lipstick cranberry red. Her brassy blond hair was piled into a beehive and she was tapping very long, very pink fingernails against a fearsomely taped cardboard box sitting on a high table opposite the counter.

"Now, Ruby, you just hold your horses," the mayor ordered. "We've had a shooting, and we need to clear that up before we open the post office for business again."

Ruby grumbled. "I thought neither snow nor sleet nor dark of night stayed the mailman from his appointed rounds."

"That oath doesn't say anything about bullets, now, does it?" Jim Earl demanded. Ruby subsided, but not graciously.

Jim Earl led Liam through a door behind the counter. The room was an office, containing a desk, two chairs for visitors, and a row of filing cabinets. There were two people already in the room. The one window looked out on the work space of the post office, and Liam peered through it with interest.

The innards of the post office consisted of one large, continuous room full of conveyor belts and gray plastic carts overflowing with piles of white envelopes. A man in a post office uniform shirt loaded a pile of green duffel bags into one of the carts. At one counter a woman sat, running envelopes from another cart through a machine that looked like it was canceling their stamps. A second woman stood at another counter behind the side of the post office boxes the public never sees, throwing mail into the boxes so rapidly that her hands were a blur. Ruby would have felt reassured if she'd seen that it indeed appeared to be business as usual, come rain, snow, sleet, or bullets.

The rear wall had garage doors, and one of them was open to reveal the maw of a freight igloo sitting on a trailer hitched to a semi, into which the man in the post office uniform shirt, now operating a forklift, hoisted a pallet with packages strapped to it. The sun shone so brightly through the gap formed between the igloo's end and the garage door that man, forklift, and pallet seemed to vanish into outer darkness once they had rumbled across the knobby steel runners laid from building to vehicle.

The most interesting thing about the window Liam was looking through was the bullet hole in it. Two of them, in fact, neat holes that had left equally neat starbursts behind in the thick glass pane. He bent to look more closely. "Thirty-caliber, I'd guess," he said, straightening.

"Well now," Jim Earl said, "You don't have to sound so awful goddamn cheerful about it, do you?"

Developing a habit where you showed up after all the shooting was done was definitely something to cheer about, in Liam's opinion, but he kept it to himself.

"This here's the postmaster," Jim Earl said, indicating the man behind the desk. "Name's Richard Gilbert." He failed to identify the woman standing off to the side.

Richard Gilbert was a thin, short man wearing a white uniform shirt, a pair of dark blue uniform pants, and thick-soled black loafers. There was a not very bloody crease across his upper left arm, and his long, narrow face was contorted with rage.

"Mr. Gilbert," Liam said. "I'm Sergeant-I'm Trooper Liam Campbell. Do you know who shot you?"

"Of course he knows who shot him, you damn fool," Jim Earl barked.

Liam looked at Jim Earl, and back at the postmaster. "Might this person have a name?"

"Of course he's got a name-everybody's got a name," Jim Earl said.

Still patient, Liam said, "And this name might be?"

"Oh," Jim Earl said. "That'd be Kelly McCormick."

The mayor looked at Liam expectantly. To the postmaster Liam said, "Mr. Gilbert, did you see Mr. McCormick shooting at you?"

"Of course he did!" Jim Earl's bark was back. "Shot at him right through that loading door there."

Liam looked at the loading door blocked by the igloo on the trailer backed up to it. The man in postal uniform was piloting another palletful of mail on board. "Was the van there at the time?"

For once, Jim Earl seemed stumped. He looked at the postmaster for reference. The woman behind Gilbert, wearing a white uniform shirt and blue pants identical to Gilbert's, was now uttering little cries of solace as she tried ineffectually to sponge the wound with a polka dot scarf that looked as if it had recently been tied around her hair. The postmaster slapped her hands away. "Knock it off, Rebecca, you're only making it worse."

"Mr. Gilbert," Liam said, producing a pad and pencil. For some reason a pad and pencil always helped to focus people's attention, and this time was no exception. Gilbert fended off Rebecca once more and she retreated obediently back into a corner. He straightened in his chair and looked at Liam through thick-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses. "Mr. Gilbert," Liam repeated, "could you please tell me exactly what happened here this morning?"

Then an odd thing occurred. Like crumpled cotton under the heat of an iron, the rage smoothed out of the postmaster's face. Gilbert stiffened his spine and folded his hands on the desk before him, and when he spoke his voice was calm and his words were measured, studied, almost pontifical. The effect was somewhat ruined by the voice itself; it was thin and high-pitched, erring occasionally to a raspy squeak. "How do you do, officer," he said formally. "This is Rebecca."

The woman, short, stubby, and dark-haired, made a sort of curtsy in Liam's direction and offered him a timid smile. "Ma'am," Liam said, and inclined his head in lieu of touching the brim of his hat, which was back in his bag at the office. He'd responded to three calls in twenty-four hours, and not one of them in uniform. He was liable to be fined for it if his boss ever found out.

"Precisely what is it that you wish to know, officer?" the postmaster said.

Equally formal, in trooper mode at least endlessly patient, Liam repeated, "Could you please tell me exactly what happened here this morning?"

The postmaster frowned at his folded hands, formed them into a steeple, and looked to the ceiling for guidance. Next to Liam the mayor shifted, and the trooper said quickly, "Jim Earl, do me a favor? Call dispatch and see if there have been any other incidents of shooting this morning? Be a good idea to see if this guy's been practicing on more than one target." Jim Earl made a move toward the phone on the desk, and Liam said even more quickly, "Mr. Gilbert, is there a phone in the other office the mayor can use while we talk in here?"

The woman in the corner positively leapt forward to be of assistance, and with reluctance Jim Earl followed her from the room, casting a doubtful look over his shoulder on his way out the door. Liam closed it firmly behind him and turned once again to the postmaster, who had lowered his gaze from the ceiling and was regarding Liam over the tips of his steepled fingers, the thick lenses of his glasses enlarging his eyes to the point that they seemed to be protruding from his head. Exactly like a goldfish in a bowl, Liam thought.

"Now then, Mr. Gilbert, please tell me exactly what happened this morning."

"Certainly, officer," Gilbert replied. "I was sitting right here, at my desk. I had-"

"What time was this?"

"Oh. A few minutes after eight-we'd just opened. I was settling down to work on some of the month-end reports when I heard shouting out in the shop." He gestured behind him. "I turned to look and I saw Greg-that's Greg on the forklift-running away. I stood up, and I saw Kelly McCormick in the open doorway of the freight bay."

"The semi with the freight igloos in it wasn't backed up there at that time?"

"Almost. You see, Greg had been backing it in, in preparation for loading it. The plane leaves-"

"So Greg must have jumped down from the cab when he saw Kelly McCormick."

Gilbert didn't look as if he was accustomed to being interrupted. "Yes."

"And he ran because-?"

The postmaster's lips thinned. "He ran because he saw that son-because Mr. McCormick was carrying a rifle."

Liam looked out into the freight bay. It faced directly east. The door of the building was larger than the back of the igloo, and the morning sun poured in through the open space and formed a blinding frame of light. "You say you saw Mr. McCormick."

"Yes. Standing in the door of the freight bay."

"And he was holding a rifle."

"Yes."

"What kind of a rifle?"

Gilbert smiled. "I'm afraid I don't know, officer; I'm not all that familiar with firearms."

I bet you're the only red-blooded Alaskan male within a thousand miles who can say that, Liam thought. "How was he dressed?"

"Who?"

"The man who shot at you. Did you see what he was wearing?"

"What does that matter?" Gilbert said, a trace of impatience in his voice. "I know who he is, I know where he lives; it's not like you have to put out an APB or anything."

"Indulge me," Liam said, and smiled his politest smile.

Something in that smile made the postmaster suddenly cautious. "Well, I don't know exactly, I was kind of busy diving for cover at the time," he said, and tried a smile of his own. "He was wearing clothes," he tried again, smiling more widely. Liam waited, the picture of polite attention, pencil poised. The postmaster cast about for inspiration. "Well, I don't know, I guess a kind of checked shirt and jeans?"

Liam made a noncommittal noise and wrote "checked shirt and jeans" on his notepad. He looked up. "Could we call-what was his name, Greg?-could we call Greg in here, please?"

"Why, I hardly think that's necessary, I've-"

Liam gave him the smile again. "If you don't mind." The smile told the postmaster that the trooper didn't care if he did, and sullenly Gilbert turned in his chair and knocked on the window. He pointed at Greg, backing the forklift out of the trailer, and made a crooking motion with his finger. One of the women trotted over to tap Greg on the shoulder, and a moment later he was in the office.

"Greg Nielsen, this is Officer… Officer…"

"State Trooper Liam Campbell," Liam said. "Mr. Nielsen, I understand you were a witness to this morning's shooting."

Greg Nielsen was a fair-haired, pinkcheeked, amiable young giant who, Liam estimated after a few minutes of conversation, was smart enough to run a forklift and no more. He agreed with the postmaster that the post office had barely begun its business day when Kelly McCormick had arrived. "Kelly and I shoot a little pool down at the Seaside," he confided, "and I could tell he was already half in the bag." He shook his head and gave an admiring smile. "That Kelly-when he goes on a tear, he don't wait for the bars to open."

"So he was on a tear?"

Greg grinned. "Looked like to me. Waving that big bastard of a gun around, and cussing to beat the band."

"Rifle or handgun?"

"Oh, handgun," Greg said without hesitation. "He had it stuffed down the pocket of his Carhartt's. I remember especially because them overalls, they were just covered in grease, looked like he'd been up all night changing out the impeller on his drifter again. I swear, that Kelly, he has more bad luck with-"

Liam very carefully did not look at Gilbert, who was sitting extremely still behind his desk and, if Liam was any judge, doing his damndest not to glare through his thick-lensed glasses at his happily oblivious employee. "Mr. Nielsen, do you know why Mr. McCormick was so upset with the post office that he had to come shoot it up?"

Mr. Nielsen became suddenly wary. His eyes slid in what he obviously thought was an inconspicuous manner to his boss, and then away. "Well, I-I don't-well, heck, officer, Kelly's just a good old boy who tends to get liquored up and go on a tear once in a while. He don't make a regular thing of it. Much." He managed a sickly smile. "And, heck, everybody's mad at the post office at one time or another. I figure our number just came up on Kelly's list."

Not a bad recovery, Liam thought with dispassionate approval. He turned to the postmaster. "Mr. Gilbert, you said you knew where-"

There was a piercing shriek from the next room, loud and anguished enough to cause all three men to start. It was followed by a shrill wailing sound. Beneath it Liam heard the muffled tones of Jim Earl trying to soothe someone.

Two pairs of footsteps approached the office door, which opened to reveal the woman who had been fluttering around the postmaster's wound sobbing into her hands. She was supported by an extremely uncomfortable mayor, who patted at her shoulder ineffectually while repeating, "There, there now, Rebecca. Come on, girl, buck up." He looked at the postmaster. "I'm sorry as hell about this, Richard. Rebecca and I got to talking about the hooraw at the airport yesterday. I thought everybody already knew."

He guided the sobbing woman into a chair and, having discharged his duty, stood back with an air of palpable relief. "I didn't know you folks were that close to poor old Bob. I wouldn't have said, if I'd known." He cast an uneasy look at Rebecca, who was bent over, her face buried in her arms. "I'm just sorry as hell," he repeated.

"That will be all, Greg," the postmaster said, rising to his feet, and Greg shot out of the room as if he'd been fired out of a cannon. To Jim Earl and Liam the postmaster said, "Would you excuse us, please?"

Jim Earl fell all over himself making for the nearest available exit. Liam hesitated.

"Kindly permit me to deal with my family in my own way, officer," the postmaster said.

"Family?" Liam said.

His lips a thin line, Richard Gilbert said, "Rebecca is my wife."

Liam looked at the woman in the chair, who was now rocking back and forth slightly, shrill wail dropped to little moans that came out of her every time she touched the back of the chair. "Of course, Mr. Gilbert," he said. He paused, one hand on the doorknob. "I'm sorry for your loss."

The door closed on the sight on its pneumatic hinge, but before it did, Liam heard Gilbert's voice. "Oh for heaven's sake, Rebecca. Stop making a spectacle of yourself."

Not as grief-stricken as his wife, and not the most loving and comforting spouse, either, Liam thought.

The door closed softly behind him, cutting Rebecca's soft keening off as if someone had thrown a switch.