The Alaska State Troopers require their officers to be physically fit, and Liam was. He could run two miles barely breaking a sweat, he could pull himself over a six-foot fence and hit the ground running, and at the end of the obstacle course he could pull out his weapon, put the barrel in the cardboard circle, and hit what he aimed at without touching the sides of the circle. He ate right most of the time, he worked out, he didn't indulge in too much of anything. Except perhaps Glenmorangie, but that wasn't overindulgence, that was the stuff of life. Even at the bottom of the pit, after Wy's farewell, Charlie's death, Jenny's coma, the debacle at Denali, his demotion, when the future looked as bleak as an Arctic landscape and hope that things would ever get better was long lost to him, he had regulated his health and his fitness. Sometimes it was all he had left to hang on to.
So, if he wasn't precisely hale and hearty, which implied a certain optimism of outlook, he was capable of vigorous exertion in the fulfillment of his duties. It was a matter of common sense, as well as pride. No cop wants to lose a footrace to a bad guy, and he or she definitely has no wish to be forced into going back to the cop shop and admitting to it.
This was a different kind of activity. This required control, focus, discipline, and the kind of dedicated concentration Liam had hitherto given only to the pursuit of criminals and the opposite sex.
And, while it didn't completely cure it, it made his headache recede somewhere to the back of his mind, turning the pain into something he could deal with or ignore, as he wished.
At the end of an hour, Moses grunted a grudging satisfaction with Liam's progress and ordered a by now profusely perspiring Liam back into the modified horse stance. "Stay," he commanded, and Liam stayed while the old man changed into jeans and flannel shirt.
"Er, you want to use the john in the office?" Liam said, thighs trembling, sweat running down his spine.
"What for?" Moses said, with what appeared to be genuine surprise. He packed his tai chi uniform into his truck, a red Nissan long bed with a white canopy on the back, both colors nearly obscured by a thick layer of mud. He walked around Liam one more time, muttering a disapproving comment here, giving a nudge there, standing back finally with a dubious nod. "Best that can be hoped for, I guess. All right. I'm going for coffee."
He climbed into his truck and drove off.
Liam continued to stand there. Five minutes passed. Ten. His shins began to hurt. Fifteen, and his thighs began to vibrate like the wings on a mosquito. Liam could practically hear them humming. After twenty minutes the raven gave a nasty cackle and flapped off toward the river, probably for breakfast, the lucky bastard.
A truck came down the road and stopped somewhere behind Liam. A door slammed, steps approached, the heavenly smell of coffee teased his nostrils. "He's not coming back, Liam," Wy's voice said.
Liam stayed in position. "What do you mean? He said he was going for coffee."
"He didn't say he was bringing any back, did he?" she said. "I ran into him at the espresso stand in NC. He told me he'd been giving you your first tai chi lesson, and I knew what that meant." A cup, a grande by the size of it, appeared in front of his face like an apparition. "He does this to all his beginning students. Come on, come out of it. Stand up, if you can. Slowly."
Liam came up out of it, slowly, and on trembling legs tottered over to the steps, there to subside into a weak pile. He accepted the cup of coffee and sipped it gratefully, savoring the first swallow with closed eyes. "Hey," he said, opening them and smiling at Wy, "you remembered. I like a little coffee with my cream. Good coffee, too. I was worried if I'd find any here."
"Oh yeah," Wy said. " Alaska is getting to be as bad as Seattle -you can't walk a quarter of a block without bumping into an espresso stand."
Liam stared at her for a moment and said finally, "I fail to see the problem there, Wy." She laughed, and he knew a warm feeling around his heart. He could still make her laugh.
She seemed relaxed this morning, in a determined kind of way. Dressed in tennis shoes, jeans, and a green and gold University of Alaska hockey sweatshirt, her dark blond hair picking up highlights from the rising sun, she was willing to meet his eyes, if fleetingly, and was capable of casual small talk, if somewhat constrained and never anything verging on substantial. By merely existing on the planet she tempted him in a thousand different ways, but this morning she was excruciatingly careful, doing nothing overt to provoke. He followed her lead, content for the moment to tuck away the memory of their hasty coupling the night before. He would not forget it, though, and knew she wouldn't, either. The reckoning on their relationship, whatever it was and wherever it was going, had only been postponed.
His transfer had come through so hastily that he knew very little of Newenham or Bristol Bay beyond what everyone knew-fish, fish, and more fish-and he had yet to sift through whatever information Corcoran might or might not have left behind. He asked Wy for a rundown now, he admitted to himself, as much to hear the sound of her voice as to gain information on his new posting. His new home, it turned out, had a population of two thousand in the winter, five thousand in the summer, state and federal government providing most of the year-round jobs. It was the headquarters for three national parks, one state park, four game preserves, a dozen wildlife refuges, and a federal petroleum reserve that had yet to be tested. The population of the town itself ran about three-fourths white, one-fourth Native, mostly Yupik, with some Inupiaq transplants from up north, some Aleut transplants from down south, and one lone Tlingit family that got sidetracked during a move from Sitka to Nome back in the fifties, homesteaded a hundred and sixty acres twenty miles up the Icky road, and never left. "It makes for a lively time during the quarterly meetings of the local Native association," Wy said.
Newenham was the largest city in southwest Alaska, and the staging area for the biggest salmon fishing fleet in the world. "Wait till you see, Liam," she said, shaking her head. "In a couple of months you'll be able to walk across Bristol Bay without getting your feet wet, there will be so many boats on it."
He was satisfied to listen, happy just to savor her presence, but duty called, and reluctantly, he answered. "Let's get your statement down while you're here."
"All right," she said equably, and followed him inside.
She talked, he typed, once he figured out how to turn the post's computer on. There were another few blasphemous moments while he figured out how to turn the printer on, too, after which minor victory of man over machine he fed the form in, hit the print button, and had her sign the result.
"That wasn't so painful," she said, handing back his pen.
"No." He knew something that was going to be, though. He filed the form, stalling for time.
She noticed. "What's up? Is there something wrong, Liam?"
He sat back in his chair, raising a hand to smooth his hair, touching gently the lump over his left ear. "Yeah, there is. I'm sorry as hell to have to tell you this, Wy, but something happened after you left last night."
She stared at him, puzzled. "At the airport? What do you mean, something happened? Oh."
Something sure had, but it wasn't what either of them were thinking of. He watched the rich color run up beneath her skin, and images of the moments in the front seat of her truck caused his own inevitable response. He had a man dead, probably murdered, and all he could think of was the next time he'd get Wy in bed. So much for duty.
"Yes, something happened." He drained his cup and rose to his feet. His headache was only a remembered throb, easily ignored, and he knew a moment of gratitude to the Alaskan Old Fart. Might be something to this tai chi stuff. "Let's take a ride out to the airport."