He reached up to touch the lump beneath his hair, shrunken and less tender now. He looked back at the box marked Cecil Wolfe and thought of Kirk Mulder, Wolfe's first mate, then traced the dotted line back to Wy. He added another box and labeled it Jacobson, the gimpy fisherman Liam had seen at the airport talking to Wy, the same gimpy drunk he had hauled down to his boat, as lightly penciled as Rebecca Gilbert's square and with another question mark beside it.

He thought back to his conversation with Barton, to Barton's visit with his wife. Jenny, laughing, loving Jenny of the light brown hair, in the poet's words that had become a family joke. Jenny, who loved the Beatles and the Beach Boys and the Boston Bruins, who never read a book that wasn't a.s.signed in cla.s.s, who was the first person in Glenallen to buy a VCR so she could tape All My Children every day, and who talked back to the television while she was watching as if the characters were in the room with her. He'd bought her season tickets to the University of Alaska Anchorage Sea Wolves hockey games, and she had responded with such fervent grat.i.tude that he'd had a hint, that first winter they were together, of what they'd been missing. Jenny, whom he knew too late had always been more like a sister to him than a wife.

"I didn't know, Jenny," he said out loud, for the thousandth time. "I didn't know that what we had wasn't the best that there was. We settled, you and I. I didn't know, until Wy, what was possible." He waited stoicly for the wave of sorrow and guilt to pull him under. It came, as it always did, swamping him with grief and remorse. His hands curled into fists and he shut his eyes against the familiar tears. "G.o.ddammit!" he yelled. "G.o.dd.a.m.n you for leaving me like this, so I can't even ask for your forgiveness!"

As always, thoughts of Jenny brought thoughts of Charlie, too, and again he held his son in his arms. He remembered best reading him to sleep, those evenings when he made it off duty early enough to catch Charlie still awake. He read to him, Good Night, Gorilla and Paper Bag Princess and The Velveteen Rabbit and The Wind in the Willows, and every now and then from Bushcop by Joe Rychetnik, just so the kid would know the kind of business his father was in. He knew Charlie couldn't understand the words yet, but he wanted him to grow up hearing them anyway.

Charlie would fall asleep in his arms, lulled by the sound of his father's deep voice, in the process his body temperature seeming to rise ten degrees and his body weight to increase ten pounds. Liam would put him to bed and hang over the edge of the crib, watching his little chest rise and fall. For the first few months he'd been terrified at how quietly Charlie slept, and had on more than one occasion gone into the boy's room in the middle of the night, just to make sure his small miracle was still breathing.

With a jerk that brought him up out of his chair, Liam came back into himself again and battled for control. Bit by bit, it did come back, leaving him drained and spent.

He checked his watch. Seven o'clock. The sun was streaming in the window, long glissading columns of incandescent light. Somewhere nearby was the one person who could offer him comfort, and maybe even make him dinner. He went out to look for her, leaving his memories littered on the floor of the post.

He stopped by Bill's for directions, if she could be persuaded to give them, and found Moses perched on what Liam was coming to consider his usual stool. The shaman greeted the trooper with his usual respectful welcome, "Ah yes, here comes the man without a clue!" He drained his beer, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt, and added, "Root from below, suspend from above. It won't give you everything, but it'll give you something." He fixed Liam with a piercing if somewhat bleary eye. "Let her go. She's on her own journey; you're only slowing her down by hanging on to her with your grief and your guilt."

With ponderous dignity he descended to the floor and made for the men's room. He didn't miss a step when he flipped off Cecil Wolfe, who was presiding over a boothful of boisterous young men. Cecil threw back his head and roared with laughter, which sound brought Moses to an instant halt.

Moses looked straight at Cecil Wolfe, his voice clear, his words sober and distinct and audible to everyone within earshot. "You will pay," Moses said.

Cecil was startled for a moment, but only for a moment. He laughed again, slapping Kirk Mulder on the back. "Of course I'll pay --I always pay for my crew, that's why they stick with me!"

Mulder laughed with him, and the rest of the men in the booth joined in, a hearty, forced sound. They couldn't keep it up forever, and Moses waited patiently. When the conditions were right, he spoke again. His voice was dispa.s.sionate, matter-offact. He wasn't making a threat or sounding an alarm. He was simply reporting the truth, without bias, without prejudice, really without much feeling of any kind. "Wolfe, you're an a.s.shole and don't deserve warning. Nevertheless, it is true. You will pay."

Wolfe's expression indicated that few people called him an a.s.shole to his face and got away with it. Liam made as if to step forward.

"No," Bill said, putting out a restraining hand. "Moses will handle it. He always does."

Wolfe eyed Moses for a fulminating moment. Moses stared back, unblinking, unafraid. Everyone waited.

Wolfe broke the silence with another of his bellowing laughs. "Ah h.e.l.l, Moses, you're too little to slug and too drunk to know what you're saying. Come on, boys, I'll buy us another round. And," he added with a broad wink at Moses, "just so you don't break your streak as a soothsayer, Moses, I will pay. Barkeep! Another round for the table! h.e.l.l, another round for the house!"

"See?" Bill said. She turned to ring the bra.s.s ship's bell fixed to the wall, and the resulting clang brought whoops of joy from every corner.

"Yes, but he didn't handle it, Wolfe did," Liam said.

Bill smiled. "Did he?" She began setting up gla.s.ses and uncapping bottles.

Laura Na.n.a.look came up to the bar carrying a tray loaded with empty bottles and gla.s.ses. She looked up and caught Liam's eye. "Oh." A flush swept up over her face. "h.e.l.lo."

Bill filled another gla.s.s, topped it off with an onion, and nodded toward Wolfe's table. "Serve Cecil's table first--he's buying."

If Liam hadn't been watching so closely, he would have missed the expression of revulsion that swept fleetingly over Laura's angel face. It was as rapidly gone, and she loaded her tray with professional efficiency and took it to the booth. Wolfe, sitting on the outside, laid a hand on her hip. It was a brief gesture, but it was heavily suggestive of both knowledge and possession, and it was not lost on the other men sitting with him. Laura Na.n.a.look was private property, off-limits to the rabble. The rabble saw, and understood. They'd wait. They'd been thrown sc.r.a.ps before after Wolfe had taken the edge off his appet.i.te.

Gary Gruber sat at one end of the bar, a besotted look on his face as his eyes followed Laura Na.n.a.look about her business. She moved through the crowd with grace and efficiency, dispensing drinks from her tray with a wide, mirthless smile flashing on and off as if controlled by a switch. Gary Gruber wasn't the only one; Moccasin Man and the h.e.l.l's Angel were watching her from a corner booth. Liam wondered where the Flirt was, and as if in answer to his thought, she came in the door, dressed now in cutoffs and a T-shirt cut up to there. She spotted Moccasin Man, noted who he was watching, slid into his lap, wrapped an arm around his neck, and kissed him, long and hard. Moccasin Man lost interest in Laura Na.n.a.look, especially when the Flirt wriggled around in his lap like a cat making a place to curl up for the duration.

The h.e.l.l's Angel watched laconically, until another man stopped by the booth. They spoke briefly, and something changed hands, followed by something else. The h.e.l.l's Angel gave a casual look around the room. His eyes met Liam's. Even more casually he turned back to the table and said something to Moccasin Man, whose hands stopped moving. The Flirt pouted in protest. Moccasin Man held her still, and with an elaborate show of nonchalance looked around the bar, eyes coming to rest finally on Liam's face. Liam didn't move. A hand slid up to cup one of the Flirt's full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the Flirt gave a voluptuous wriggle and pressed against him for just a moment before moving the hand back down to her waist with a playful slap and a promising glance from beneath her lashes. Over her head Moccasin Man smiled at Liam, revealing a mouthful of small white pointed teeth.

Liam didn't smile back.

"I don't know why Tiffany bothers owning a house with a bedroom in it," Bill said disapprovingly at Liam's elbow. "What'll it be, whiskey or beer?"

"Tiffany?" Liam said. "That's the Flirt's name, Tiffany?"

"The what?"

"The woman sitting in Moccasin Man's lap."

"Who?"

He jerked his head in the direction of the booth.

"Oh, you mean Evan. Yeah, that's Tiffany Saunders. How do you know her?"

"We flew in on the same plane, along with Moccasin Man and the h.e.l.l's Angel."

"h.e.l.l's--oh. Oscar. Right." A slow smile spread across Bill's face. "I guess he does look sort of like a h.e.l.l's Angel."

Laura returned to the bar, reloaded her tray with a wooden expression, and departed again.

"Never mind her for now--you can't help someone who won't accept it," Moses said at his elbow, causing Liam to start. "Bill! I need another beer! What!"

This to a young man and woman standing a few feet away. The young man looked a little disdainful, the young woman painfully respectful. Both were Yupik in appearance: short, stocky, golden of skin, raven of hair, brown eyes tilted upward in the fashion of their Asian ancestors. "Uncle," she said, bowing her head.

She nudged the young man. "Uncle," he repeated. He didn't bow his head.

"What?" Moses said, climbing back on his stool.

The young woman screwed up her courage. "We will marry next week. We want your blessing."

"No you don't," Moses snapped, and gulped at the beer Bill brought him. "You want to know if you'll live happily ever after. You shoulda asked me that before you went and popped the question, now shouldn't you, Amelia?" He drained his gla.s.s and fixed her with a steely stare. He spoke two words, and two words only, in what Liam a.s.sumed was Yupik.

The young woman's face turned dead white and her body swayed as if receiving a blow.

Moses turned his back on them. The young man muttered something beneath his breath, grabbed her arm, and hustled her out of the bar.

Liam watched the door shut behind them, and turned to Moses. "What did you say to her?"

Moses was staring at his hands. They were powerful hands: brown, seamed, with large knuckles and thick, well-kept fingernails. "I told her his father's name," he said, and the sorrow and foreboding in his voice stopped Liam in his tracks.

Confused, Liam said, "She didn't know it before?"

"Oh yeah, she knew it," Moses said glumly. "She just didn't know it."

Bill came down the bar. "You okay?"

Moses dredged up a smile. "I will be." The smile turned lecherous. "I know I will be later."

She allowed herself to be sidetracked, and leaned across the bar for a kiss. Again, Liam was awed and a little embarra.s.sed by the display of pa.s.sion, the obvious appet.i.te, the frank l.u.s.t.

Moses pulled back and saw the look on Liam's face. "What, you think people over sixty can't have s.e.x or what? Just because you ain't been getting any lately don't mean it's over for the rest of us! Now get the h.e.l.l out of here! She's waiting on you, G.o.d knows why."

"Who is?"

"Who is--don't get cute with me, you dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I'm your sifu. Her house is out on the bluff. Go south on Main, turn left on the river road, go three miles, and turn right just after the pavement ends." Moses turned away, and then turned back. "And if you have the strength of will to haul your sorry a.s.s out of a bed with Wy Chouinard in it, stand post for at least twenty minutes tonight." He leveled a finger at Liam, the same finger he had leveled at Wolfe. "You don't use it, you lose it."

The glint in his eye told Liam that Moses wasn't referring solely to tai chi.

NINE.

The Blazer was the property of the state and as such should only have been driven on official business, but since Liam didn't have a car yet, along with an apartment or an iron, he decided to risk the wrath of observant citizens and drive it anyway.

Like DeCreft's, Wy's house was on the river bluff. The road in was, again, almost but not quite lost in a tangle of brush and trees. When he had b.u.mped his way to the end of it, he found a surprisingly neat clapboard cottage painted white, with a detached garage and shop, also painted white. Both buildings were old but well kept.

Wy's truck was in the garage. Good. There was a battered white Isuzu pickup parked behind it. Wy had visitors. Not so good. He climbed the steps to the door and raised his hand to knock. The door opened before he could.

"Liam!" Wy said brightly.

There were two people standing behind her in the act of shrugging into their jackets. A tall man with white hair, and a stocky woman with intent green eyes. He recognized them at once from the plane: the other Alaskan Old Fart, with Daughter.

"I don't think you've met Dan and Jo, have you?" Wy said, still in the bright, artificial voice. "Daniel Dunaway, Joan Dunaway, this is Liam Campbell. Liam, this is Daniel and his daughter, Jo. Dan is a friend of my parents. Jo and I went to high school and college together."

"How do you do?" Liam said, holding out his hand.

After a moment of hesitation, Daniel Dunaway took it. His grip was dry, callused, and hard. When Liam turned to Jo, she had her arms folded across her chest and was staring at him out of narrowed eyes. Liam thought better of holding out his hand to her.

Daniel settled one big hand on Wy's shoulder. "It was great seeing you, girl. I'll call your folks when we get back, let them know you're all right."

"Thanks, Dan."

Jo broke off staring at Liam long enough to give Wy a fierce hug. "Anything you need, you call, you hear? And I'm coming out over Labor Day for a week or ten days, okay?"

"Okay."

Daniel Dunaway put one large hand on Wy's shoulder and bent a forbidding stare on Liam. "Wy's one of the family."

"Yes, sir," Liam said.

"She's like blood to us. To me."

"Yes, sir."

The older man gave a curt nod. "So long as you know."

His daughter was a hair less subtle. As she brushed by him on her way out, she said in a low voice, "You hurt her again and you're toast, a.s.shole."

"Yes, ma'am," Liam said. It seemed the most politic response.

The Dunaways climbed into the rental, waved good-bye, and were off.

"Friends of yours?" Liam said neutrally.

"The best," Wy agreed. "Come on in."

"What do they do?" Liam said, following her inside.

"Daniel's retired, sort of. Used to be a heavy-duty mechanic; he's got an IBEW pension. Nowadays he amuses himself with hunting, fishing, and some wheeling and dealing around the Bay. He's got a piece of property out at the airport--he's trying to sell it to one of the local fishermen."

"And his daughter?"

"Jo's a reporter for the Daily News. She just came along for the ride, and for the chance to visit with me."

Liam got his first good look at her, and blinked. Wy was wearing an ap.r.o.n. At least he thought that was what it was--he'd never seen her wearing one before. If he wasn't mistaken, there was lace around the hem.

"I'm just cooking dinner. Would you like some? I tried to get Dan and Jo to stay but they had to catch a plane."

He opened his mouth and his stomach growled, loud enough to be heard over the strains of Constance Demby floating in from elsewhere in the house. Constance Demby was one of his favorite composers, and he had given a CD of hers to Wy. If he wasn't mistaken, the particular cut playing just now was "Oceans Without Sh.o.r.es."

"Well," Wy said, bright and chipper, "I guess you're hungry." She gave a hostessy little laugh that sounded so unlike her he almost asked what was wrong.

Instead, he followed her through to the kitchen. It was a large room that took up the whole south side of the house. The south-facing wall was almost all window. A door opened out onto a large deck that faced the mouth of the Nus.h.a.gak River where it flowed into Bristol Bay.

The broad expanse of grayish brown water, more than a mile across, moved steadily, powerfully, inexorably south between low bluffs thickly encrusted with trees and brush. Here, the current had swept a stand of spruce trees growing too close to the edge for comfort out to sea. There, it had carved out a backwater and lined a sand beach in a perfect crescent shape with a tidy row of driftwood bleached white by water and time. Farther down, where freshwater met salt, a dozen little estuaries nourished tall stands of marsh gra.s.s and dozens of species of wildfowl, from the elegant Canada geese to widgeons with calls like rubber duck squeeze toys to the long-legged, long-billed lesser yellowlegs. An immature eagle, as yet uncertain of the newfound power of his great wings, landed for a breather in a nesting area and was instantly dive-bombed by a flock of furious seagulls. A male merganser, red of neck and of temper, chased off a rival for the affections of the female merganser at his side. A large salmon jumped free of the current and smacked back into the water again with a large, loud splash that echoed clearly up to the top of the bluff and through the open windows of the house perched there.

The sun was still well up above the southwestern horizon, pouring an unceasing flow of golden light over them all. That same sunlight gilded the interior of Wy's house, and Liam tore his eyes away from the incredible view and took stock of his more immediate surroundings. There was a dining room table big enough to seat eight on the left and the kitchen on the right, the two separated by a counter and pa.s.sthrough. Wy pulled out a stool and he sat down and accepted the gla.s.s she handed to him. One sip, and he knew the b.u.t.tery-smooth slide of twentyyear-old Glenmorangie, which retailed for something like eighty bucks a bottle in Anchorage. G.o.d knew how much the stuff cost in the Bush, and Wy didn't drink hard liquor. He picked up the bottle and looked at the label. It was about two-thirds full, the same as the bottle at Bill's. Had she bought it from Bill to serve especially to him? That was how Moses had known what he drank, he realized with a rush of something like relief. There. He always appreciated a nice, rational explanation for the oddities of life.

A little voice whispered that the explanation might not be quite that easy in the long run, but he banished it at once and took another sip. "Nice," he said, putting down the gla.s.s. He didn't want anything about this night to be clouded in his memory. "How did you know I was coming?"

She was stirring something in a boiling pot. "What? Oh. Bill called. Said you were on your way."

"Where's Tim?"

Her face darkened. "In his room." She managed a smile. "He'd better be studying for his civics exam, or I won't just ground him until the next century, I'll ground him for life."

Liam studied the golden brown liquid in his gla.s.s. "We've got some catching up to do."

He felt rather than saw her pause. "Yes," she said, her voice a little breathless but determined enough for all that. "Yes, we do."

"You first," they said together. Their eyes met and they both broke into laughter. It was nervous laughter, but nevertheless it sounded good to Liam. It must have to Wy, too, because when the phone rang she said, "Shoot!"

"Let the machine pick up," Liam suggested. Phone and machine were sitting on the kitchen counter.

She hesitated, hand hovering. "No," she said, and gave him a rueful smile. "Might be work." She picked up the receiver. "h.e.l.lo? Oh." Her face changed. "Just a minute." She held the receiver to her chest. "Liam, I'm sorry. This is kind of personal. Would you mind?"