So Sure Of Death

TWENTY-ONE

“Sir! Sir!” An ungentle hand shook his shoulder. “Sir, wake up!”

Liam swam up from a great depth. The light was dim and distant at first, steadily increasing in wattage, until it became so bright it hurt his eyes. The light resolved into a long, rectangular fixture on a ceiling somewhere. The two fluorescent bulbs behind the white plastic cover seemed to burn right through his retina, and he closed his eyes. Somebody groaned.

“Sir! Are you okay?”

His head hurt. No, that wasn't right, his head was thumping, pounding, hammering with pain. He felt his gorge rising. He opened his eyes again and this time saw Prince, her expression anxious. “Help me up.”

“What?”

“Help me up.”

Prince helped him sit up, and he staggered to the sink and vomited. The water ran cold and clean from the faucet and he held his head under it. The water swirling in the bottom of the sink turned pink. He kept his head under the faucet until it ran clear again. She was waiting with a tea towel when he stood up.

“Help me to a chair.”

He propped his head in his hands. “How long have I been out?”

“Over an hour, if you got clobbered right after we split up.”

He explored his scalp with tentative fingers; there was an enormous lump over his right ear and his right eye felt puffy. “Am I going to have a shiner?”

Prince regarded him gravely. “It looks like it. Who hit you?”

“I didn't see him. Where's my cap?”

Prince found it where it had rolled beneath the table. It no longer fit around his head. He adjusted the band to its widest extension. It perched on top of his lump at a precarious angle.

“Who do you think hit you?”

“I don't have a clue,” Liam said. “How about you?”

Head trauma often resulted in short-term memory loss. Prince pulled out a chair and sat down. “I got Chad Donohoe's statement.”

“Good.”

“He saw the skiff pass him that night, he thinks around three a.m. Monday morning.”

“You told me that two days ago.”

“He signed his statement.”

“Good.”

“So did Fred Wassillie.”

Liam squinted at her through his one good eye. “You didn't say Donohoe had somebody with him.”

“He didn't.”

Liam sighed and shifted carefully in a tentative attempt to sit upright. His head didn't fall off, so he was more patient than he might have been. “Look, Prince, you've obviously discovered some new evidence that you think is important, and any other time I'd be willing to let you lead me to it a piece at a time, but I've just been sucker-punched by an unknown assailant, I'm sitting here with a lump on my head the size of Denali, I've just lost my breakfast and most of last night's dinner, I can only see out of one eye and NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO GET CUTE!” Yelling hurt. He dropped his voice. “Talk. And keep it short and to the point. Who's Fred Wassillie, and what'd he say?”

Prince looked hurt. “He saw the skiff coming out of Kulukak Bay, too,” she said stiffly.

“So we've got two witnesses. All the better.”

“He saw it three hours earlier.”

A short, charged silence. Liam wanted to lay his head- carefully-in his arms and close his eyes for the next month. “At midnight.”

“Right around.”

“He's sure of the time?”

Prince cleared her throat. “He was-ah-trysting with Edith Pomeroy on the deck of his boat at the time.”

“And-ah-trysting with Ms. Pomeroy was such a memorable event that he was looking at his watch?”

“Mrs. Mrs. Edith Pomeroy. Ralph Pomeroy's wife. Ralph is a local fisher.”

Liam looked at Prince, who was looking prim as a Victorian spinster. Maybe his father had slept alone the night before after all.

His father… Something nagged at the back of his mind. What was it, his father and-his father and… he couldn't remember. The walrus head on the opposite wall seemed to be laughing, head raised, ivory tusks ready to strike. “And he was persuaded to share this information-how, exactly?”

“I-ah-overheard him telling a couple of his friends about it. On my way back to theSnohomish Belle.About seven friends, actually. It seems Mrs. Pomeroy had been pretty elusive, and Mr. Wassillie was-er-collecting debts now owed him.”

“I'm surprised he noticed the skiff.”

“Apparently Mr. Wassillie thought it might be Mr. Pomeroy in search of his wife.”

In spite of the throbbing of his skull, Liam had to smile. “You know, there sure were a hell of a lot of boats wandering around out there in the fog that night.”

“It moves in, it moves out.” Prince shrugged. “We keep finding holes to land through.”

Liam repressed a shiver. “Don't remind me. Who was it? In the skiff? Who did Wassillie see?”

“He described a skiff-a dory, excuse me, a New England dory, a big skiff about twenty feet long. If not the twin, then very similar to the one Donohoe saw.”

“Did he see who was in it?”

Prince didn't even try to hide her triumphant smile. “A man very similar to the one Donohoe saw.”

They sat in silence for a moment, digesting this. “So he went out twice?”

“It would explain the two hours between the shootings and the fire.”

“Yes, but why? Why go out twice?”

With some asperity, Prince said, “This is a man who can kill one woman for leaving him, one man for having her and three men and two kids for being there when it happened. I don't think we can expect rational thought from someone like that. I don't think we have to.”

Mike Ekwok skidded in the door. “Sheriff!” he cried.

“It's Trooper,” Liam said tiredly.

Ekwok saw Liam's shiner and the lump that was giving his cap a rakish tilt and his eyes widened. “What happened, Sheriff?”

Liam gave in. “Somebody coldcocked me when my deputy wasn't watching my back.”

Prince looked offended, but Mike Ekwok's round face hardened into determined lines. “I'll back you up, Sheriff.”

“Thanks, Deputy.” Liam got to his feet, carefully avoiding Prince's gaze. “Are Wassillie and Donohoe somewhere around?”

“They're waiting on board theCheyenne.”

Liam spoke more sharply than he intended. “They're not in the same room, are they?”

“There's an old guy watching them. I snagged him off the dock and told him to stand guard, not let them talk.”

The walrus leered at him from the wall. “The old man,” Liam said suddenly. That's what he'd been trying to remember. “ Walter Larsgaard's father. Is he here? In the house?”

“I… don't know. I didn't look.”

“Well, look. Mike, help her.”

Ekwok sprang into action. Five minutes later they were back. “House is empty, Sheriff.”

“Did you check everywhere? Closets, basement, attic?”

“It's a crawl space, not a basement, and there is no attic.” Prince's expression was quizzical. “Why?”

“I don't know, I…” Again Liam thought of his father. “Damn it, there's something I'm missing-wait a minute.”

“What-”

Liam silenced Prince with a wave of his hand. His father. Don Nelson's father. Frank Petla's ancestral fathers, tribal fathers, his real father, his adopted father. Walter Larsgaard's father. Fathers and sons. Sons and their fathers, and what they did to each other, and what they did for each other. He remembered something he'd read in Don Nelson's journal, and his own reaction to it, and suddenly he understood. “Mike?”

“Yessir?”

“Are you a good friend of Walter Larsgaard, Senior?”

Mike's face showed his bewilderment. “I guess so. I've known Old Walter since we were kids.”

“That's not what I asked. Were you friends?”

“We've lived in the same village all our lives.”

Liam sighed. “Never mind. Did he drink?”

Ekwok shuffled his feet and looked at the floor.

“Mike-Deputy,” Liam said sternly, “this is important. Was Old Walter a drinker?”

Ekwok shuffled some more and looked everywhere but at Liam. “I guess he'd been known to knock back a few Olys,” he muttered finally.

“He do it often?”

“No more than anybody else.”

“Does he or his son own a big skiff? A New England dory, a twenty-footer?”

Relieved to be off the hook, Ekwok gave an eager nod. “Sure. Nice big dory, new last summer. Twenty-one feet long. You could get to Togiak in it if you had to.”

“Is it in the harbor?”

“I guess.”

“Did you know Walter Junior was sleeping with Molly Malone?”

Mike Ekwok's face showed first surprise, and then envy. “No kidding? That lucky-” He turned whatever he'd been about to say into a cough. “No, Sheriff, I didn't know that.”

“How would Walter Senior have felt about that?”

“I-hell, I don't know. He didn't poke his nose into much, Old Walter. He minded his own business, and he let people mind theirs. He was a good neighbor.” Mike Ekwok sounded as if he had only just learned this fact, and was surprised that it was so.

“Sir-” Prince said.

“Did Wassillie say if the guy was rowing the dory, or if he had the outboard going?”

Prince consulted her notes. “Rowing.”

“That matches the Jacobsons' statements. But Donohoe said the dory he saw had the kicker running.”

Comprehension dawned. “Two different boats.”

Liam shook his head. “The same boat. Two different men.” He leaned his aching head on one hand. “I'm in his house,” he muttered, staring at the walrus head. It wasn't leering now. “Who else would hit me?”

“Who do you think did?” Prince said, but she knew. So did Ekwok if his open mouth and staring eyes were any indication.

“Old Walter, that's who. He was in the first skiff, the one Jacobson saw going out, the one Wassillie saw coming in. He shot the crew of theMarybethia,and then he came home and either told his son what he'd done or his son guessed. Young Walter went out to destroy the evidence, and that's who Donohoe saw.”

Prince stared at him, mouth slightly open.

“Young Walter must have been frantic to get rid of the evidence. He set fire to the boat, but it wouldn't burn, so then he tried to sink her. He must have been pretty sure he'd succeeded because he left to go back into town.”

They left Ekwok behind in their run for the boat harbor. In spite of his aching head and the accompanying slight sense of disorientation, Liam was first down the gangway when they arrived, and first to step on board theCheyenne.So it followed that he was the first to see the bodies.

“Son of a bitch!” Prince's voice rang out across the harbor. She leapt first to one downed man, then the other. “Mother-fucking son of a BITCH!”

“Donohoe and Wassillie?” Liam said.

Prince's face was red with rage. “Yes,” she said tightly, regaining her poise. Mike Ekwok, looking scared, edged away from her. She knelt, felt for pulses. “Both dead. Looks like shot.”

“Tell me this, Prince,” Liam said. “Did the little old guy you set to guard them look anything like Walter Larsgaard?”

She stared at him, confused. “I don't know, I-he was Native,” she said. “He was short, and he had black hair, and dark skin with wrinkles, and-”

“And besides, they all look alike,” Liam said.

She flushed.

“They better stop all looking alike if you want to get ahead in this job,” he told her. “I don't suppose you noticed if he had a rifle?”

“He was wearing a big coat,” she said. She looked down at the sprawling forms of the two fishermen. There is no attitude as awkward as death. It didn't matter if you were a ballet dancer; death took pride in the ungraceful splay of limbs, the disjointed twist of the neck, the ungainly looseness of hands and feet. To look at death and know some carelessness of your own had caused it was not pleasant.

“Where's the… what was his boat's name?” Liam asked Prince. She looked at him, mute. “Young Larsgaard. Where is his boat?” She remained silent. “Prince, snap out of it! Where's Larsgaard's boat?”

He felt a timid touch on his elbow. “I know where it is, Sheriff.”

But of course by then theBay Roverwas long gone.

The shovel came whistling down. Wy rolled. It smacked into the dirt next to her head and she scrambled to her feet just in time to catch the business edge of the shovel against her shoulder. She looked down for a stunned moment to see blood welling from the cut. The shovel was coming at her again, McLynn amazingly calm, still with that determined frown on his face, as if he were in the process of deciding where the shovel would do the most good and estimating range and trajectory to target. Time seemed to slow down, as if she were in a dream. Only the blood was real.

The blood was in fact very real, staining the sleeve of her shirt, and the sight propelled her to her feet, just in time to catch the shovel on her shoulder. She turned, managing to deflect its edge, but the force of the blow sent her staggering into the other tent. The wall collapsed. The rest of the tent, unaccustomed to this kind of abuse, collapsed with it, and canvas engulfed her.

For a panicky moment she thought she couldn't breathe. Blows came at her from every direction, one catching her foot, another her thigh, a third her elbow, as she rolled and twisted and fought, the canvas as much as McLynn. She rolled into an object that fell over with a crash, probably one of the tables on the inside of the tent. Other crashes followed as she blundered through the folds of canvas. She had a gun in her plane, part of the survival gear required by law of any Bush pilot. If she could just get to the Cub and get the gun… Another blow caught her squarely between the shoulder blades.

“Goddamn it!” Suddenly, gloriously, she was angry. The hell with the gun, she was going to clean this little bastard's clock right here and right now with her bare hands. She caught a glimpse of daylight and dove for it, squirming out into the fresh air, a half step ahead of the maniac with the shovel. The shovel hit the opening in the fold of canvas a second after she had exited it, and she reached down to grab the canvas and yank it as hard as she could, pulling it out from under his feet. McLynn lost his balance and fell heavily. He was back on his feet almost at once, never dropping the shovel. All those years digging ditches in old graveyards had toughened him up.

The shovel came up again, and this time something happened, something deep inside her. Her feet were parallel, a shoulder's width apart, and without volition her hands and arms moved into Ward Off Left, right hand cupped and down, left hand cupped and up, most of her weight forward on her left knee. Of its own will her left hand shifted so that her forearm caught most of the blow, yielding but not giving way before it. Her right foot stepped forward and her right arm came around and up into Right Push Upward, her right hand grasping the shovel handle. She went into Pull Back and McLynn was jerked off balance and he lost his grip on the shovel and then lost the shovel.

Wy didn't know who was more surprised, herself or McLynn. “It works!” she said involuntarily. “You cranky old bastard, it actually works!” She looked at McLynn, who still couldn't figure out how he'd lost his weapon, and smiled at him. He fell back a step at the sight of that smile, and it widened. “God, I wish Moses could have seen that.”

“It's okay,” a weak voice said from the door of the one tent left standing. “I did.”

Wy looked over to see Jo, bloody and maybe a little bowed, but otherwise conscious and back in the world.

It took them an hour of making wider and wider circles in the air before they found him, and that only after they'd spotted two other boats and come down to find they were the wrong ones. TheBay Roverwas on a south-southwesterly heading, throttles all the way out. “How are we for gas?” Liam said.

Prince's voice was grim over the headset. “There is no av gas in Kulukak, so our nearest refueling is Togiak or Newenham.” Her eyes narrowed as she checked the dials. One readout didn't please her, so she flicked the plastic cover with her finger. That must have helped because her brow cleared. “Depends on where he's going, sir,” she said. “We're good for another hour or so.”

Liam didn't inquire into the “or so.” He'd always found ignorance an enormous comfort in the air, and he saw no reason to change that now.

“What do you want me to do?” she said.

“We might as well tell him we're here.”

She looked apprehensive. “You're not going to jump out of this plane, are you, sir?”

“You're not going to make me jump off the float again, are you, Prince?” he replied. “Just lose some altitude, make a couple of passes, let him know he's not alone.”

“He's got a rifle, sir.”

He couldn't believe he'd forgotten that little detail. He blamed it on his headache, a repetitious thud that seemed to harmonize with the noise of the engine. “Okay, one quick pass, close enough for him to see us, and then climb to a safe distance.” What was a safe distance? Liam wondered. Depended on the kind of gun Larsgaard had, he supposed. Ah well, anything for the cause of justice.

In a steep dive the Cessna fell from a thousand feet to one hundred. The engine roared, and the pain in Liam's head increased. The bow of the boat flashed by and they were climbing again, the engine flat out and Liam's aches and pains with it.

“It looks like he's headed there,” Prince said, pointing.

Liam squinted against the sun. As usual, the fog had been left behind in Kulukak, clearing to blue skies as soon as they were out of the little bay. It was noon straight up, and the rays of the sun threw everything into bold relief against the darker blue of the water. There were half a dozen main islands in the Walrus Islands group, High, Round, Crooked, the Twins, Black Rock and even Summit, although Summit was a lot closer to the mainland. It looked as if Larsgaard was heading for one of the smaller ones. “This is a game sanctuary,” he told Prince. “Off limits to just about everyone.”

“Why the hell would he come here? He has to know he can't get away.”

“Did you see that walrus head on the wall of Larsgaard's kitchen?”

“Yes.”

“One of his friends told me that he's been hunting since he was a boy. He's been here before, knows the territory, which we don't.” Liam tried to remember past the thumping in his head; someone had been talking to him about the Walrus Islands just recently. The plane hit an air pocket and his head bobbed forward and for a moment it felt as if the dense matter behind his forehead was going to detonate. Wy. Her smart-ass suggestion for their first date. “There's a big, wide beach where all the walrus haul out. That's where the hunters go for harvest. That's where he'll be. Can you land?”

“Easily,” she said. “It's like glass.”

“We got enough fuel to get back with all three of us on board?”

She flicked one of the dials again. “Yes.”

They kept their distance, close enough to be in visual range but far enough to be out of gunshot. Sure enough, theBay Roverdropped anchor off a dark-sand beach sandwiched between sheer vertical cliffs of rock the same color. One side of the beach, the one with the most sun, was strewn with big brown bags.

“What are those-” Liam started to say, and then he realized. They were walruses, hundreds of them, packed tightly one against the other across the sand, asleep in the sun, their ivory tusks gleaming white, their taut hides a golden brown. “Jesus.”

“I hear they can weigh up to a ton and a half each,” Prince said.

They looked bigger than that to Liam, but he had no more time to marvel. “He's launching a small boat!” Prince shouted, and pointed.

The tiny figure of a man jumped nimbly from deck to rubber raft. He was carrying something that could have been a rifle, but the raft didn't have a kicker, so he was going to have to row, which wouldn't leave any hands free for shooting. “Put her down,” Liam said. “Can you taxi into the beach?”

Prince put the Cessna into a sharp left turn, banking so she could inspect the water close to the beach for any hidden rocks and reefs. Liam's head hurt too much for him to be afraid, but his ears did pop in protest. “Yeah, I think so. Here we go.” She brought the Cessna around and set her down in a soft kiss of a landing. She taxied straight into the beach, but wasn't quick enough to beat Larsgaard, whose raft was already sitting at the edge of the tide, empty.

Liam stepped out on the float, drew his weapon and walked forward to hop onto the beach. Footsteps in the sand led from the beached raft directly toward the herd of walrus. They looked like they were sleeping, the whole bunch of them, soaking up rays. There was some twitching and grunting but for the most part they seemed dead to the world. He approached them cautiously, his headache forgotten. They were enormous creatures, all fat and fur and tusk.

A breeze came up. Liam was downwind. “Jesus!” he said again, this time for a different reason. The smell of ammonia was overpowering. They were sleeping in their own piss; a lot of it, judging by the smell. A three-thousand-pound beast would generate a lot of waste. Instantly his eyes began to water and he blinked them furiously, trying to see.

He heard someone say something that sounded like, “Tookalook.”

Through a blur he thought he saw a small figure slip between two enormous ones and he started forward involuntarily.

“Asveq!” someone yelled, and Liam threw himself to the sand when a rifle went off. He rolled sideways and of course now his face was right in the sandy residue of urine and feces, and his eyes were tearing so badly he couldn't see at all. He couldn't seem to catch his breath, either, and it didn't help that the sound of the rifle shot had woken up the walrus. All of them.

A roar sounded right over his head and he looked up, blinking the tears away to see a bull rear up, tusks that must have been two feet long at present arms. Down they came, straight toward him, in a slashing move that would have splattered him all over the beach if he hadn't pushed himself away, scuttling backward on hands and feet like a crab. At the same time something swept down on ebony wings, straight into the face of the walrus.

The whole herd was up now. Their grunting roars of protest were deafening. On his feet, Liam was dazed and disoriented. He still had his weapon but what good would a little popgun like this be? The bullets would be lost in all that blubber. He wiped his arm on his sleeve in time to see a walrus lumber toward him, probably the same one, tusks raised again. No, this one had a tusk broken off halfway up, leaving a jagged point that looked even more threatening than a whole one. He thought Prince yelled something but he couldn't hear what. He saw what he thought was Old Walter in the middle of the herd, standing still, watching him. Down the tusks flashed; again he avoided them by the merest inch. He thought he saw the dark-winged shadow diving at the walrus for the second time, and the walrus dodging out of the way of its wickedly curved beak.

Prince yelled again, and Liam blundered backward until he ran into her. They both sat down heavily in the sand, and watched as the river of brown fur poured into the water, yipping and barking and growling and roaring defiance. A moment later there was nothing left but roiled sand and glassy water and blue, blue sky.

“He's gone.”

“He must have been flattened by the herd.”

“I don't see anything, do you?”

“No.” She swept the beach with the glasses. When no walrus popped up from behind a rock, she ventured forward to explore the beach where Larsgaard and the walrus had been. When she came back she said, “Okay, this isn't weird or anything.”

“No sign of him?”

“None.” She paused, and said doubtfully, “You don't think they ate him, do you?”

“I think they mainly eat fish and shellfish.”

“Oh.” Nobody said anything for a while. “Well, he's gone.”

“He's gone,” Liam said. He got to his feet. “And so are we. Let's head for home.”