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She let the boy go, took a deep breath, and sat down. "What did he steal?"
"A couple of packs of Camels," Liam said. "This time."
"Cigarettes?" Wy's voice went up a notch, and she turned to look at Tim. "You're smoking, too?" Tim hunched an impatient shoulder.
"Mr. Gunderson seems to think hanging, drawing, and quartering would be too good for him," Liam said.
"Oh hell, that Dewayne is a-" Wy remembered who else was listening and bit back the words. "He made you arrest Tim, is that it?"
Liam said wryly, "Wy, Alaska state troopers don't spend a lot of time apprehending people for shoplifting. Mr. Gunderson caught Tim stealing and was in the act of hauling him down to the local police station when I drove by in the trooper vehicle. He waved me down." He paused. "Mr. Gunderson says it isn't the first time Tim has stolen from his store."
Wy looked to Tim for confirmation. Tim stared steadily at his feet, dark color creeping up his neck.
"Mr. Gunderson seems to think that there is a gang of boys that gets Tim to steal for them, essentials like cigarettes and candy and batteries."
"Tim?" Wy said.
Tim raised his face, pale again but determined. "I won't rat them out. That's like the lowest. I won't."
"Besides," Liam added helpfully, "they'd beat the shit out of you if you did."
The boy flashed him a startled look.
"Is this Joey and Jerry Atooksuk?" Wy said. "Tim, I've told you to stay away from them."
"They force you in, Tim?" Liam said, man to man.
Tim's head snapped up. So did Wy's. "What do you mean, force?" she said, bristling. "Tim, did they hurt you? Did those boys threaten you or-"
"Wy," Liam said.
She stopped, looking at him. "Mr. Gunderson got his property back, undamaged. He's mad now, and he wants to throw the book at your boy, but if we give him a while to cool off I think he'll come around. He's probably not going to want to see Tim in his store for a while. If ever," Liam added, watching the boy, and was rewarded when a brief flash of intense relief flooded the young face. "Let me talk to him. In the meantime, take Tim back to school. Or no, it's Saturday, isn't it. Home, then."
"Fine," Wy said promptly, and the grip she fastened on the boy's arm had more the look of military police than maternal concern about it. But then Wy hadn't been a mother long, Liam reflected as the door closed behind them.
It swung open again almost immediately. "Liam? Thanks. Thanks a lot. You don't know what this means; you don't know what-"
"I'm going to know, though, aren't I, Wy?" Liam said.
He threw the question down between them like a gauntlet, and left it lying there for her to pick up or not, as she chose.
Five minutes later the door opened and Gary Gruber stuck his head in. "Trooper Campbell?" He sidled inside and stood hesitantly in the still-open doorway, jaw champing at a bubble gum cud.
"Mr. Gruber, come on in." Liam waved the thin man to a chair. "Thanks for coming down."
Gary Gruber perched himself gingerly at the very edge of his seat. "You said you wanted a statement."
"Yeah, wait a minute while I get the computer fired up. Took me ten minutes to find the On button this morning. Computers. Sheesh." He gri
Gruber returned a weak smile and shifted the omnipresent pink wad from one cheek to the other. Could have been worse, Liam thought, could have been chewing tobacco. "I don't know what I can add to what I told you yesterday. It's like I said, I didn't really see much of anything."
"Tell me what you did see, then," Liam said as the screen filled with the proper form.
He'd been in his office, Gruber told him, when he heard a scream from the lobby in the front of the building. He'd rushed to see what was going on, and there was Bob DeCreft, stretched out in front of 78 Zulu.
"Not a pretty sight," Liam said sympathetically.
A slight shudder passed over Gary Gruber's thin frame, and he swallowed spasmodically. "No," he agreed, shifting his gum again.
"In fact, not much to tell you it was Bob DeCreft," Liam observed. "Tell me, how did you know it was him?"
Gruber stopped in mid-chew. "What?"
"Well, I was there, too, and there wasn't much left of his face. How did you know that the man lying on the ground in front of that Cub was Bob DeCreft?"
Gruber floundered for a moment. "Well, I-well, I just assumed it was him."
"Why?" Liam asked in an interested voice.
"Well, I-well, I-" Gruber had a flash of inspiration. "Everybody knew he was spotting for Wy. Who else could it have been? Nobody's go
"And since it was 78 Zulu," Liam prompted.
"Well, yeah."
"So 78 Zulu is known as belonging to Wy Chouinard."
"Well, sure. She's in and out the airport all the time. Everybody knows Wy."
Liam printed out Gruber's statement; Gruber signed it and sidled out in the same vaguely furtive ma
Liam rifled through the various statements he'd taken at the airport the day before. Nobody saw nobody doing nothing, he reflected sadly. At a conservative estimate, culled from Gruber's statement, at the time of Bill DeCreft's death there had been at least ten small planes in the act of landing or taking off, one DC-3 freighter off-loading a hold full of lumber, a 737 on a short final, and three small craft inbound. There were fourteen people in the terminal waiting to board the Metroliner Liam had flown in on, another thirty waiting either to pick up the inbound passengers on the Metroliner or to board the 737, and who knew how many mechanics and fuelers and wand wavers and baggage men and support perso
And nobody saw nothing. He sighed.
He called the hospital. The doctor he reached there sounded impatient and irritable. "Cause of death? For Christ's sake, officer. The man walked into the rotating propeller of a small plane. What do you want, an exact description of what that does to the human head?"
Liam said no, thank you very much all the same, and set the phone down gently in its receiver. He called the bank, forgetting it was Saturday, and had to track down his quarry at home. Fortunately the banker was hooked into her database by computer. "Gosh," she said in thrilled accents, "we've never had a depositer murdered before!"
Liam thanked her and hung up, and looked at the amount he'd written down on the yellow pad. Two thousand one hundred and seventy-three dollars and sixty-eight cents. The bank held no outstanding notes in Bob DeCreft's name. There had been no recent withdrawals of any substantial size, just the usual bill payments for heat, light, gas, groceries.
He turned on his computer, called up the modem, and tapped out a sequence that got him into the Department of Motor Vehicles. Bob DeCreft had had one vehicle registered in his name, a 1981 Ford four-wheel-drive pickup. No lien holder was listed, and he'd been up to date on his tags. No emissions test necessary, since he'd lived in the Bush.
The Division of Revenue listed one airplane in Bob DeCreft's name, a Piper Super Cub the state had valued at $35,000. DeCreft was current on the personal property taxes for the Cub, too. He'd had the usual collection of king salmon tags, duck hunting stamps, and moose hunting permits. He'd had his permanent fund dividend check direct-deposited to his bank account every October, and he'd been deemed eligible to receive the dividend every year since the first one was issued in 1981.
Liam disco