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“Yeah?” he said, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear.
Prince’s voice said, “We’ve got a body down at Kagati Lake, sir.”
He put down the noodles and turned off the burner. “Where?”
“Kagati Lake, a hundred or so miles north of here.”
Something about the name niggled at the back of his mind. He carried the walk-around phone into the living room, where the one wall that didn’t have a window had a map of the Bristol Bay area taped to it. He found Newenham and followed the river up. “I don’t see it.”
“North and west. North of the lakes,” she said, and he moved his finger to the left, encountering the mail route Wy had penciled in, asterisks marking the stops. He traced it up the map, Four Lakes, Warehouse Mountain, Weary River, the names some people hung on some places. Russell-he stopped.
The route ended at Kagati Lake.
Prince had taken the floats off the Cessna and put the wheels back on the week before in anticipation of freeze-up, and they were in the air forty-five minutes later. “You sure she said she wasn’t hurt?”
“I’m sure,” Prince said patiently. “She found the body, is all.”
On either side Newenham airport fell rapidly away from them and Liam’s stomach gave its usual takeoff flip-flop. “She’s going to kill me,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
He hadn’t meant to be heard, but the headset was a good one and Prince turned her head to stare. “Why would she be mad at you?”
The plane hit a pocket of dead air and dropped fifty feet. Liam grabbed for the edges of his seat. “Because she’s done nothing but find dead bodies since I came to town.”
“That’s not your fault.”
He forgot his terror long enough to send Prince a pitying glance. “You’ve never had a permanent relationship, have you, Prince? A serious one?”
Defensive now, she shook her head. “Still-”
“Still nothing,” Liam said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s my fault or not. It will be by the time I get there.”
He stared resolutely ahead, trying to ignore the thousand feet of space between himself and Mother Earth.
Prince mumbled something he couldn’t hear. “What?”
“Nothing,” Prince said, and tossed Liam the FAA’s Airport/Facility Directory. He opened it, and found the airport sketch for Kagati Lake. “It’s a gravel strip, two thousand forty-five feet long, fifty-five wide.”
“Elevation?”
“Eight hundred eight feet.”
“Light?”
Liam squinted down at the page. “Says it’s unimproved. That mean no lights?”
“If there were lights it would say.” Prince tapped the dial of a gauge on the control panel. The needle didn’t move. “We’d better hustle if we’re going to beat the sun.”
It hadn’t registered with Liam until this moment that the sun was in the act of setting. There wasn’t any snow yet, piled into neat, defining berms along the sides, so it could be hard to spot an unfamiliar runway in the dark. “How long?”
“We’ve got a little bit of a tailwind,” Prince said. “I’d say about an hour.”
Liam thought of Wy, alone on the ground in Kagati Lake but for the doubtful company of a corpse. “Can we push it?”
Prince gri
She kept the throttle all the way out and they raised Kagati Lake in fifty-nine minutes. It was still light enough to see 68 Kilo parked at the west end of the strip, near a large sprawling building that looked as if it had begun its long life as a one-room log cabin, and then had skipped the split-level phase entirely to metamorphose into something that was a cross between a plantation house and a barn. The roof was variously shingled, tarpapered and capped with sheets of corrugated plastic.
Wy emerged from beneath the wing of 68 Kilo and looked up. Prince waggled her wings. Wy didn’t wave back.
“See?” Liam muttered.
The 180, which even Liam had to admit was a well-ma
As always, Liam was first out. Wy was waiting for him.
“I don’t want to find any more dead bodies,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“I never used to find dead bodies.”
“I know.”
“I never, ever found a single dead body before this year.”
“I know.”
“No more dead bodies,” she said. She was very definite. “Of any kind. Nobody I know, nobody I don’t know. Not next to the fuel pump at the Newenham airport, not in the middle of the ruins of an abandoned village, and especially not at a Bush post office where I’m delivering the U.S. mail.”
“Okay,” Liam said.
“Good,” she said. “So long as we’re clear.”
“Perfectly,” he said.
“I mean it,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He could feel Prince begi
“What happened?” she said. “What happened is I’m on my mail run, I’m landing at my last stop on the route, I start unloading the mail, and when Opal doesn’t come out to carry it inside I go in looking for her.” She swallowed. “And I found her.”
“Did you know her?” Prince said.
“Of course I knew her,” Wy snapped. “I knew her like I know everybody on my mail route. She was the postmistress, I talked to her once or twice a week, weather permitting.”
“What did you say her name was?” Prince got out her notebook.
“Opal. Opal Nunapitchuk. Oh god.” There were a couple of benches arranged around a lovely little copse of plants, shrubs and trees native to Alaska, evidence of someone’s inspiration and loving care, and Wy went over and sat down hard on one of them. “Oh god,” she repeated, and bent over to put her head between her knees.
“She in the house?”
Wy nodded without looking up.
“Better take a look,” Liam said to Prince, and led the way up the path.
Opal Nunapitchuk lay sprawled on her back behind the counter that fenced in the corner of the room to the left of the door. Her eyes were wide open, her head at an odd angle because of the cramped quarters of the space behind the counter. Her left shoulder was shattered, a mess of white splinters of bone and congealed blood.
He looked at her face first, something he had trained himself to do from his first crime scene. He wanted to imprint the face of the victim in his memory, be able to call it up at need. He wanted the face of the victim right there as he gathered evidence, as he interviewed witnesses, as he swore out an arrest warrant, as he arrested a suspect, as he conducted the interrogation, as he testified in court. He made sure that the victim was always with him.
His first impression was how young she seemed, clear brown skin ta
“Not a body shot,” Liam said, more to himself than to Prince, but she picked up on it.
“Not aiming to kill, maybe?”
“Maybe.”
Prince stooped and raised the body slightly to peer beneath. “Entrance wound. She was shot from behind.”
“Bullet spun her around.”
“Yeah.” She stood up. “Guy pulls the gun, what, going for the cash?” She looked in a few of the half-open drawers. “Aha.” She pulled out a rectangular aluminum box and opened the lid to show him. It was divided into sections for bills and change, and it was empty.
“She turns to run… behind the counter?” he added doubtfully.