The boat shifted suddenly and he almost rolled out of bed. The rest of his scotch got away from him, which put him in no good mood to answer the knock on the hatch. “Who the hell is it?” he barked.
The door opened, and Trooper Diana Prince ducked her head inside. Her uniform was still immaculate, although she did look tired. Curious, as well. She took in the cramped quarters, the minuscule galley, consisting of two gas burners and a sink the size of a teacup, the marine toilet tucked into an alcove, and with a heroic effort managed not to wrinkle her nose at the dank smell. “Sir.”
Liam, dressed for bed in T-shirt and jockey briefs, sat abruptly upright and smacked the same part of his forehead against the same section of bulkhead that he had that morning. “Shit! Son of a bitch! Goddamn it to hell!”
He held his head and swung his legs over the side. “Damn, damn, damn.” He stood up, feet squishing in the damp carpet.
“I'm sorry, sir. Are you all right?”
He felt her hand on his arm, and yanked it free. “I'm fine,” he said, retreated a step. His heel came down on a church key previously secreted beneath the lip of his bunk. “Ouch!” He hopped into the air, clutching his foot, and whacked his head on the bulk-head again.
“Sir, let me-”
“No!” he roared. “Don't help me, for crissake please don't help me!” Vision blurred, he pawed for his pants, draped over the opposite bunk. Helpfully, she put them into his hands. “Go outside and wait, goddamn it,” he growled, and heard the hatch slide open behind him.
“Oh hello,” he heard her say, and whirled around on one leg to meet the startled gazes of Jo Dunaway and Tim Gosuk.
His pants legs developed a reluctance to fit over his legs heretofore unknown in their history as his pants. He drew himself up, necessarily stooping some because of the level of the ceiling, and said with awful politeness, “Could you please wait outside while I get some clothes on? Thank you.” Without waiting for an answer, he hopped forward on one foot, herding Prince in front of him, and slid the hatch shut in their faces.
A minute later, a scowl on his face that dared any one of them to comment on the prior scene, he reopened the hatch. Very gruff and businesslike, he said to Prince, “Did you have something to report, Trooper?”
“Yes, sir, I did, but it can wait,” Prince said from a brace that looked as rigid as the expression on her face.
It couldn't have waited until morning, when he wouldn't be caught with his pants down by Wy's best friend and son? To Jo he said with unbending courtesy, “What can I do for you?”
One thing about Jo, she wasn't afraid to come right to the point. “I heard about the killings on theMarybethia.”
“How?” Liam waved a hand in his own reply. “Never mind. Doesn't matter. Is this on the record?” She nodded. “All right, get out your recorder.” She produced a tiny black Sony. Click. “My name is Trooper-” Remembering, he corrected himself. “My name is Corporal Liam Campbell, of the Alaska State Troopers, assigned to the Newenham post.” He caught Prince's quick, surprised glance at this sudden elevation in rank. Jo's steady eyes didn't waver, but she caught it, too, and he cursed himself for the slip. “My associate is Trooper Diana Prince. This morning we responded to a call from Kulukak, which reported a fishing boat named theMarybethia,adrift in Kulukak Bay. It was reported to have been on fire. We went to Kulukak, where the boat was towed. All crew members, seven in number, were dead. We are not releasing the names of the victims pending notification of next of kin. Investigation into the incident is continuing.”
Jo waited until it was obvious he was going to say no more and shut off the recorder. “That it?”
“That's it for now.”
“Did the fire kill them or not?”
“Cause of death will be determined at time of autopsy.”
She pointed the recorder at him. “If you won't say cause, I'm thinking maybe they died from something other than the fire.”
He said nothing, arms folded, face expressionless.
She looked at Prince. “Anything to add?”
Prince, face wooden, said, “No, ma'am.”
“Look at that,” Jo said to Tim. “If you're going to be a reporter-”
“Over my dead body,” Liam said involuntarily.
Tim looked at Liam, at first startled, and then gratified. No one, before Wy, had ever taken enough of an interest in him to be proprietary about his future.
“-then you need to be able to recognize that expression. It's called stonewalling.” To Liam, Jo said, “I'll be in touch.”
“I'll be around,” he said blandly, regaining his composure. “Now if you'll excuse us, I have some business to discuss with my associate.”
He saw them to the deck. Tim hopped to the slip, followed by Jo. She paused, looking up at Liam. “Nice legs, by the way,” she said, and winked at him before following Tim down the slip to the ramp.
He waited until they were mounting the ramp and safely out of earshot before returning to the cabin. He wouldn't put it past Jo to sneak back and eavesdrop. “You want some coffee?” he said to Prince.
“I could use some,” she admitted.
Water boiled rapidly on one of the gas burners, and he poured it through a two-cup cone filter. She picked up the package of coffee. “Tsunami Blend? Never heard of it.” She sniffed. “Smells good. Dark roast?”
Nowadays everyone was a coffee snob. “Yeah. Captain's Roast. I order it direct from-”
“Homer, yeah, I've been. In fact, I completed my FTO program there.”
“Is that right? Who were your field training officers?”
“Portlock, Wosnesinski and Doroshin.”
Liam grimaced. “Talk about dropping you in at the deep end.”
“They were all right,” she said stoutly, although the undercurrent of surprise that this should be so was unmistakable to Liam's trained ear. “Tough, but fair.” She hesitated, and said with a burst of candor, the first totally nonprofessional expression he'd heard from her, “I don't mind saying I was a little nervous going in. At the academy I heard a story about a recruit washing out on report writing because of a personality clash with his FTO.”
“I heard that same story,” Liam said, turning, mugs in hand. “That's why a recruit has to satisfy three separate officers that he or she is a ready and worthy candidate. That way, if one of the officers has bad chemistry with the recruit, the other two can cancel him-or her-out.”
There wasn't enough room for both sets of long legs beneath the tiny galley table, so he sat on the bunk and sipped his coffee.
She shifted her feet out of his way, looking at the imprints her shoes left behind in the carpet. “Uh, sir-you do know that the floor is wet in here?”
“It's Liam in private, Diana, and yes, I do know the floor is wet in here. This boat is sinking.”
She blinked at him. “Sinking?” Her voice faltered. “As in, below the surface of the harbor?”
“Slowly.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Never mind that. What brings you down here at this time of night?”
Recalled to duty, she sat up straight and made a praiseworthy attempt to forget that the boat she was sitting in was sinking, however slowly. “I flew back out to Kulukak this evening.”
He went very still. “I thought I told you to get some rest.”
“I wanted to canvass the villagers for information on the Malones, and pick up what information I could on Monday's fishing period.”
“I see.” Liam sipped his coffee and waited for his irritation to subside. Well, what the hell, she'd already done the deed, he might as well let her tell him what she'd learned. Her air of suppressed excitement clearly indicated that she had discovered something. He lowered the mug and said in a deliberate understated tone, “What did you find out?”
She made a wry mouth. “Well, first off I found that none of the villagers wanted to talk about it.”
“I'm not surprised.” Her brow furrowed, and he explained. “Most of them were born there, have lived there all their lives. Their first loyalty will be to their neighbors.”