Both old men shook with remembered glee, until Liam was afraid Clarence at least might go off into an apoplexy.

“I think he thought he was going to get lucky that night,” Clarence said, mopping his eyes. “But his girl wouldn’t have anything to do with him after that.” He winked at Liam. “Not to say she didn’t get lucky herself.”

Moses leaned forward and leveled a forefinger. “Clarence, you are a dirty old man.”

“I wasn’t then.”

Again both men fell into choking fits.

“When was that?” Liam said.

“Oh, hell,” Clarence said, knuckling his eyes. “Long time. Long time ago. Before the war.”

“Not long before,” Moses said instantly.

“Long time before,” Clarence said, glaring.

“We weren’t that old long time before the war, old man.”

“Set up the pieces; we’ll see how old I am!”

Liam left them to it.

December 15, 1941

Its cleer but god its cold they say its thirty-seven below the coldest in twenty-five years. Our mechanic Billy hes from Duluth in Minnesota hes a good guy he lost a filling the other day just by breathing in. He can only do a twenty-minute shift and even then he has to work in mittens. It took him two hours to replace a plug yesterday.

Haven’t written for a while because we spent a week tdy flying out of Anchorage One day we went to Adak to pick up eighteen patients. 1250 miles and usually eight to ten hours flying time. There was a front hanging off Umnak and it was rough as hell. The nurse was a pistol she piled blankets all over the patients to keep them from bouncing around and give her parka to another. Roepke brought us down to 50 feet. Everybody puked. He brought us back up to thirteen thousand and the cabin temperature dropped to twenty below but at least it smoothed out. He put her down at Naknek in a forty mile an hour crosswind he had to really crab her in. Man that was no fun. While we were on the ground another Gooney crashed and burned on landing. The crew got out okay. We overnighted. The whole flight took two days two hours and ten minutes.

Came back to find a letter from Helen. She lost the baby. Says shes sick and needs money to pay the hospital.

Went to Petes for dinner when we got back. Hes a good guy knows not to talk to much. Wanted to know about Krasnoyarsk and what it looked like and how many people lived there. Told him it looked like Nome.

FIFTEEN

Diana Prince caught a call just as she was headed out the door at the end of the day. Someone had made a charge of child abuse against Bernadette Kusegta, who ran a small day-care center out of her home. The complainant, one Gloria Crow, accused Bernadette of interfering with her three-year-old daughter, Tammie. Kusegta, plump and attractive, with her black hair permed into a mass of large curls, looked white beneath her brown skin. She sat, unmoving, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond the large room decorated in primary colors. It was heaped with toys and books, and a small inflatable swimming pool filled with about four inches of water sat on the floor, one lone rubber duck floating in the middle of it.

“Well, go on, arrest her!” Crow said. “What are you waiting for?” She was slender and sharp-featured and vibrating with rage.

“When did you see the marks, ma’am?” Prince said.

“Tonight! When my baby came home! She was crying and holding her bottom!”

“Did she say that Ms. Kusegta had hurt her?”

“No, but who else could have done it? Go on, arrest her! She hurt my baby!”

“You said, ‘When your baby came home,’ ma’am. From that, I’m guessing you didn’t go get her.”

“No! So what?”

“Who did bring your daughter home, Ms. Crow?”

“Leslie did; he picked her up on his way home.”

“Is Leslie your husband?”

“He’s my roommate.”

“What’s his full name?”

“Leslie Clark.”

“And when he brought your daughter home, she was crying and holding her bottom.”

“Yes!”

“And then you looked and found the marks.”

“Yes! I know she did it; she was the only one who could have! Arrest her right now!”

“Where is your daughter now, ma’am?”

“She’s home, of course! I came here as soon as I saw what that bitch did to her!”

“Is Leslie there with her?”

“Of course! Did you think I’d leave my baby all alone?”

Diana flipped her notebook closed. “I’ll need to talk to your daughter, ma’am. Right now.”

They made it in the door before the boyfriend started beating on the little girl again, but only just. He was now in the lockup, protesting his innocence in spite of the similarity in size and shape between his hands and the marks on Tammie’s defenseless little bottom. Bernadette Kusegta’s face had regained some of its natural color, and Gloria Crow was still insisting that Leslie could never have done such a thing, that she would have known if he could, that she would never have let him in her house or left her daughter with him if she’d known. Diana took statements and called Bill Billington for an arraignment at tenA.M. the next morning. It was almost ten before she was through, and she was tired and heartsick and wanted nothing so much as a long, hot bath. Preferably with bubbles, but if no bubbles were to be had she might pour in a bottle of Lysol.

She had her hand on the knob of the door when the phone rang. It would have forwarded to Liam’s cell after the second ring, but she seemed to be constitutionally incapable of walking out on a ringing phone. Cursing herself, she snatched it up. “Alaska State Troopers, Newenham post.”

The voice was loud enough to make her wince away from the receiver. “Ma’am! Ma’am! Please, calm down, I can’t understand a word!”

There was a gulping kind of sob. “Please help me; I think my sister’s dead.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh, God, Karen, please, Karen, don’t do this, please don’t do this!”

“Ma’am? Where are you?”

“We’re at my mother’s. Please help us, please!”

“Where is your mother’s house, ma’am? Ma’am?”

“Oh, God, I think she’s dead.” The voice dulled and flattened. “Oh, Karen. Oh, Karen.”

“Ma’am?” Diana clenched the phone so hard her arm ached. “I need you to tell me where you are. Ma’am?”

After a long, silent moment, when she thought the caller might have hung up, the woman told her. Diana told her she was coming, called Liam, and called Joe Gould.

She got to Lydia’s house five minutes after Joe and a split second before Liam. The three of them stood once again in Lydia’s kitchen, looking at another body on the same floor.

“Strangled, this time,” Joe said.

“What was your first clue?” Diana said, her voice hollow. Karen’s eyes were open and bulging, her tongue protruded from her mouth, and her throat was one livid bruise.

To Liam’s everlasting shame, his first reaction at the sight was relief. Now Wy would never know what had happened in Lydia’s bedroom.

Joe did not change expression.

This time there had been a fight. The kitchen table and chairs were knocked over, drawers had been pulled out and dumped, cupboards opened and emptied on the floor. Broken dishes and spilled rice crunched underfoot, and the body was coated with powdered chocolate. “Let’s check the rest of the house,” Liam said.

It was trashed. The bed had been ripped apart and the mattress dumped to the floor. The drawers to the filing cabinet had been opened and dumped. The shelves in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom had been swept clean, bottles of Bayer and boxes of Band-Aids and bars of scented soap winding up in the sink or toilet and all over the floor. Betsy Amakuk sat on the couch in the living room, where all the books had been pulled from the shelves. She was weeping into Stan Jr.’s shoulder. Stan Jr. patted her awkwardly. He looked angry. Jerry wasn’t there.