Better To Rest

“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?”