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FIFTEEN
He stopped at NC for coffee and a roll, and headed to the post. Charlene Taylor was waiting for him. She didn't look happy.
Fifty years old, give or take a few, she had a round face topped by a fringe of flyaway brown bangs. Her ample waist was firmly restrained by a thick leather belt, and her epaulets and shoulder pads made her look twice as wide as the Sherman tank she already was. Her eyelashes, long, thick and curling, were disarmingly coquettish until you got past them to the unavoidable brown gaze they screened, a stare that weighed, measured, classified and stamped in one thorough glance. It reminded him a little of Alta's. It reminded him a lot of Bill's.
Liam, a man who had always loved women, was a bit afraid of all three of them. He wondered suddenly what Wy would be like at fifty, and gave an involuntary grin at the thought of what it might be like to live with her then. He'd have to check with Charlene's husband, the D.A. for this district, and see what he said.
“There's nothing fu
“Nothing fu
Charlene planted herself squarely in front of his desk and folded her arms across an impressive chest. “I understand you have Frank Petla under arrest for murder.”
Liam, still in the act of pulling off his cap, looked surprised. “He hasn't been charged yet, but, yes, he's in custody.”
“He didn't do it.”
Liam took his cap the rest of the way off and took a minute hanging it just so from the hat rack on the wall. He went behind his desk, sat down, and took the lid off the coffee. “You want half?” he said, holding out the enormous ci
“He didn't do it, Liam.”
“Fine,” he said. “More for me.” He took a gigantic bite and washed it down with a swallow of satisfyingly strong coffee. “You sound very sure.”
“I know him. He's a drunk, but he's not a killer.”
“We're all potential killers, given the right circumstances, and you know it, Charlene.” He took another bite.
“You weren't,” she said pointedly, and he flushed a dark red.
“No, I wasn't.” The memory of the man who had killed his wife and child, kneeling in front of him in the rain, on a lonely road fifty miles from anywhere and anyone to see, flashed through his mind. He banished it, the way he always did. His appetite gone, he set the roll down.
“Aw hell,” she said, disgusted. “I'm sorry, Liam.” She removed her own cap and sat down heavily. “Low blow, totally unwarranted, completely out of line.”
“You aren't the first person to have made that observation.” A lot of people thought Rick Dyson should have been shot while resisting arrest, many of them within Liam's own command. Liam had felt the weight of their silent contempt every time he walked into headquarters.
Contempt was not manifest in Charlene's glare. “I said I was sorry.”
He held up one hand, palm out. “All right. Apology accepted. What makes you so sure Petla didn't do it?”
“Tell me what happened,” she said instead.
He told her. She followed the story intently. “How did you catch him when he took off on the four-wheeler? There's no place to land and intercept him around there.”
“I brought him back to the dig,” Liam said, avoiding a direct answer. “Charlene, he assaulted a trooper.”
She looked startled. “You?”
“No, we got ourselves a new trooper, fresh out of the academy, Diana Prince.”
“I didn't know that.”
“She came in yesterday. Green as she is, I have to say it helped having her here, what with the press of business and all.” It was a weak attempt at a joke and didn't earn him a smile. “You hear about theMarybethia?” She nodded. “We flew out to Kulukak yesterday morning when the news came in, I sent her back with the bodies. McLy
“I've heard of him.” Her dry tone indicated that she hadn't heard anything good.
“Well, Wy Chouinard's been flying him in and out, and when they flew in yesterday morning they found Nelson's body. Don Nelson,” he added parenthetically. “He was McLy
“What was the murder weapon?” He told her, and she grimaced. “I knew there was a reason I chose the Fish and Game side of this department. At least people are only murdering moose.” She pulled the brim of the cap through her fingers. “Okay.” She raised her head. “It looks bad for Frank. Given his presence and his behavior, you didn't have any choice, I see that.”
“How do you know him?”
Her mouth pulled down. “He boarded with us for a year when he was a teenager.” Her eyes met his, her expression troubled. “You know how it is in the villages, Liam. The elders are trying to hold things together, trying keep the kids off the booze long enough to grow up, but a lot of the time it's just too little, too late. Frank comes from one of the families for which it was too little and too late. His father ran his snow machine into a lead on the river when Frank was ten, and his mother never recovered. She's a great gal when she isn't on the sauce, but it's got her by the scruff of the neck and it's not about to let go. His sister Sarah died when she was thirteen, alcohol abuse. Frank was in trouble in the village, some underage drinking, some disturbing the peace, some small-time B &E-yeah, yeah, I know what this sounds like. Liam, he just never had a chance. The elders called in the troopers when he broke into the school one night and trashed the library, and the trooper brought him before Bill. Jerry and I-well, we don't have any of our own, and we take in a kid now and then, a kid who otherwise will get sent to McLaughlin in Anchorage and get lost in the system. Village kids got no business being sent to McLaughlin, Liam; all that happens there is they get advanced instruction in criminal behavior.”
Liam held up one hand. “You're preaching to the choir here, Charlene.”
She relaxed a little. “He was real good, the time he spent with us. Stayed sober, did his homework. Even had a girlfriend, Betty Kusma, smart girl, works as a checker at NC. We took both of them to the AFN convention that October, and he signed on with the sobriety movement.”
“What happened?”
Her mouth set in an unhappy line. “His mother got an attorney and forced DFYS to give him back to her.” She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. “He was only fifteen. If we could have kept him for just one more year, until he was sixteen and would have had a choice whether to go or stay, he might have made it.”
There was silence for a moment. “I'll dot all thei's and cross all thet's, Charlene,” Liam said at last. “I won't take anything at face value. But you have to know it looks pretty bad.”
“I know.” She opened her eyes and stood up. “Thanks, Liam.”
“Hold on a minute, would you?” He rose and walked over to the wall map of the Bristol Bay area. He tapped Kulukak. “Can you tell me what part of Kulukak Bay was open for fishing on Sunday?”
“Sure.” She came to stand next to him. “All of it.”
“For how long?”
She thought. “I'd have to look it up, but I think six a.m. to six p.m.”
“Hell.”
“What's the problem?”
“It's eight miles across,” he said gloomily, “and ten or more north-south. I'm trying to track the whereabouts of forty to fifty different boats on that Bay during a twelve-hour period.”