So sure of death (8 page)

Fine, Liam thought. He looked at the rest of the council for a thoughtful minute. None of them met his eyes, none had offered any additional information. Old Walter sipped his coffee and continued to look at and say nothing.

All right. Let them think Liam was done with his questions. He would return, perhaps tomorrow morning, when they had become used to his absence, when they had let down their guard a little, and ask more. “Could I see the Malones' house now, please?

The Malone house was a sprawling affair that had its origins in a one-room log cabin. The logs still formed part of the exterior wall, the southeast corner facing the dirt road that ran north of Kulukak and dead-ended fifty feet beyond the house. Over the years it had acquired a second story and a cedar deck built over a dry dock that looked big enough to accommodate a boat the size of a state ferry. The front half of the house was built on pilings set into the ebb and flow of the tide, the back half rested its haunches on the steep, rocky shore, as if preparing to spring into the water at the first dangle of bait. The unpainted wooden clapboards had faded to gray and the roof needed new shingles, but otherwise it was a house that proclaimed the affluence of its owner in no uncertain terms.

“Mr. Malone was a successful fisherman, I take it, Liam said, one hand on the doorknob.

“Yes, Larsgaard Junior replied.

There was something even in that single, flat syllable that made Liam look around. “Beat you out for high boat a couple of times, did he?

There was no answering smile on Larsgaard's face. “A couple of times, he agreed in a level voice.

Liam turned the knob. The door opened. “Not locked, he said.

“Nobody locks their doors in Kulukak, Larsgaard said. “It's why most of us live here.

“Nice to know your neighbors, Liam agreed, and stepped inside.

There were four bedrooms, furnished well but not luxuriously, three bathrooms, an office with a computer, a printer, filing cabinets, a fax and a copy machine, a living room with a rock fireplace that had an unfinished jade hearth, a family room with a large-screen television and a bookcase full of videotapes, a Jenn-Air grill in the kitchen that Liam immediately covetedhell, he thought with a pang, remembering his sloshy awakening that morning, he coveted the whole house a breakfast nook and a dining room. The artwork was Alaskan, bought with an eye more toward investment than aesthetic value. Each painting, suitably framed, hung directly in the center of each walla Machetanz oil of a polar bear in the living room, a Birdsall triptych of Denali in the dining room, a Stonington watercolor of Child's Glacier in the family room. Even the family pictures had been winnowed down and confined to a couple of picture ledges, one in the office, one in the master bedroom.

It was all very neat, very clean. The spice cupboard had no dried parsley spilled on its shelves, all the clothes in the four bedrooms were hung neatly in closets, the washer and dryer in the downstairs half bath stood empty, waiting expectantly for the next load.

“She was a good housekeeper, that Mrs. Malone, Ekwok said.

Larsgaard Junior turned abruptly and walked out of the house.

David Malone had been as orderly in business as his wife had been in keeping house; Liam found the names and address of this summer's deckhands in a file marked “Personnel. Jason Knudson, eighteen, of Bellingham, Washington. Wayne Cullen, nineteen, also of Bellingham. He made a note of their names and addresses. Malone had gone so far as to note down next of kin, a sensible precaution in a business where life expectancy was so problematic that the people who wrote actuarial tables for insurance companies couldn't find a place low enough on their graphs for Alaskan fishermen.

Liam closed the top drawer of the filing cabinet and opened the bottom one, where he found retired files of previous employees, including Max Bayless. Max Bayless was twenty-seven, from Anacortes, Washington. Home address, telephone number and next of kin were noted, along with wages paid and taxes deducted. No reason was given for his termination, but Liam noted that his final check had been drawn on June 20 of the previous year, well before the red season got into full swing on the Bay.

He switched on Malone's computer. The screen requested a password. Without hesitation, Liam typed in “Molly and with a beep, a click and a whirr, Windows 98 loaded and icons filled the screen. It looked like the kids had spent a lot of time on Dad's computer, playing Sim City, Tetris and Solitaire.

One of the few nongame icons to pop up was Quicken. He clicked on it and a list of accounts appeared, including a checking account with sixty-five hundred dollars in it, two credit card accounts, both zeroed out by the most recent monthly payment, a self-employment retirement account in both David's and Molly's names worth a quarter of million after taxes and a savings account holding over one hundred thousand dollars in cash.

David Malone has been a very successful fisherman indeed.

There was an email icon; Liam clicked on it and was requested to provide a password. “Kerry didn't work; “Michael did. Liam shook his head, and clicked on inbox. Wasn't much in it, or in the outbox, or in the trashbox. Kerry had a pen pal in Las Vegas, New Mexico, David had written the Social Security Administration to ask for an updated Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement, probably to ensure a hard copy of his earnings before the Y2K bug ate their hard drive, Michael had ordered new sneakers from Nike Town, and Molly wasn't represented.

IRS paperwork going back ten years filled a second two-drawer filing cabinet. So far as Liam could tell, Malone had never been audited. There was a copy of a will that divided everything into thirds, with the children's portions held in trust with Molly and Jonathan as trustees. No provision had been made for the simultaneous death of everyone named in the will. Molly Malone's given name had been Marybethia. Liam made a note of the lawyer's name and Anchorage address. It was a considerable estate. It would be interesting to discover who benefited.

He sat for a moment, thinking. On an impulse he pushed back the chair to go upstairs and into the master bedroom.

The picture ledges on the wall opposite the bed held fourteen three-by-five prints, their wooden frames painted in bright primary colors and arranged like a prism in two rows of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. There were two baby pictures, newborns with red, squinched-up faces and no hair, and the only way Liam could tell them apart was by the color of the blankets they were wrapped in. He remembered his first sight of Charlie, rosy and wrinkled and irate at being thrust from a warm, safe world into the glaring lights of the delivery room at Providence Hospital in Anchorage.

The pictures featured the two children, alone or with one or the other of their parents. The eldest was the girl, Kerry, redheaded and freckle-faced and gap-toothed childhood growing into an auburn-haired adolescent with a thrust-out lower lip she obviously thought gave her mouth a sultry curl, but which only made her look like a ten-year-old who'd been told to go turn off the television and do her homework. Her cheeks were round and full, her chin soft, her nose a snub, her eyes a wide, innocent blue. Although there was no real physical similarity, she reminded Liam of early pictures of Marilyn Monroe, without the jaded knowledge that being Marilyn Monroe brought with it. If she'd survived, the young Malone girl might have lived into the promise of that pout.

The youngest, Michael, had dark hair and eyes and an almost grave expression. He looked straight at the camera, a questioning lift to one dark brow. It seemed to Liam that he should be wearing glasses, or at the very least have Albert Einstein's afro, some outward, manifest indication of the intelligence contained behind that broad brow, some hint of the determination indicated by that strong chin.

How could those two tiny scraps of humanity, brother and sister, both sprung from the same seed, nurtured in the same womb, have grown into two such different creatures? And then of course he thought of Wy, Wy with her Yupik grandparent and her blond hair. No matter what Mr. Kaufman had taught him in sixth-grade science, Mendel's beans made even less sense to him now than they had then.

There was a flushed and excited Kerry in a cheerleader outfit (the Kulukak Kings, green and silver); Michael with a basketball; Kerry with one eye heavily mascaraed and the other eye not, trying to force the bathroom door closed; Michael, a grin splitting his face, standing in front of a blue Super Cub and displaying a hacked-off shirttail, the mark of a successful solo. There was one picture of both children on the deck of theMarybethiain jeans and sweatshirts and hip boots and monkey gloves, up to their knees in salmon, looking sweaty and tired and jubilant all at once.

He came to the last picture on the second ledge, which included both parents and both children in the stern of a sailboat surrounded by blue, blue water. He picked it up and moved to a window, holding it up to the light. An island was in the background, and the tanned leg of someone he presumed was the skipper in the foreground. Molly, Kerry, Michael and David sat in a row against the starboard rail. All their feet were tangled together in the middle of the picture, the mystery ankle on top of Molly Malone's, Molly's on top of her daughter's, her daughter's on top of David's, David's on top of his son's. David was smiling at the camera, a quiet smile from a contained face of regular features, nothing too excessive or exuberant, a face that gave very little away. Liam could see his daughter in his eyes, his son in his chin.

Molly, on the other hand, nearly sizzled with life: vital, vibrant, glowing with energy and enthusiasm. Blond curls exploded in ringlets past her shoulders, just begging for a man's hands to get tangled up in them. Bright blue eyes laughed straight at the camera, her daughter's pout made provocative reality on her full, redlipped mouth, and she was so lush in flesh that she seemed about to spill out of her fire-engine-red halter top and shorts. She radiated sexuality, a delicious, visceral sexuality that demanded recognition, adulation and especially satisfaction.

Every male instinct in Liam sat up to attention. “Christ, he said involuntarily.

“She was a looker, all right, a voice agreed, and Liam jumped and looked around to see Carl Andrew standing next to him, regarding the picture with appreciation. “A man'd have to hustle to keep up with that. He grinned. “But it'd sure be fun trying.

“And how, Liam said, the trooper momentarily subverted by the man, and forgetting for the moment the necessity of establishing his air of authority. He pulled himself together and broke open the frame. On the back of the picture sprawling handwriting said, “Me, Kerry, Michael, David on board theScotch Misten route between Lanai and Maui. That's Skipper Chris Novak's knee. March, 1998.

From fishing boat to sailboat. A busman's holiday. The Malones, it would seem, never liked to get very far from the water. Liam looked at the reverse side again for a moment before slipping it between the pages of his notebook.

“What, you need a pinup or something? Andrew said, offended.

“I'll need pictures of all the deceased, Liam said, setting the pieces of the frame down on the nightstand. “Sometimes a picture is all it takes to trigger someone's memory of events. He paused. “What was the brother's name? Jonathan, that's it. He worked as a deckhand on theMarybethia,and he lived here, right? Wonder why he didn't go to Hawaii with them.

Andrew snorted. “He probably went to Vegas instead.

Liam went downstairs. The rest of the council was standing around the living room, unwilling to make themselves too comfortable in a house where there was no host to ask them to sit down. “If the kids dead, who get the house? Halstensen was saying. He had his back to Liam, and continued, “Damn fine house, this. Good house for big family. When you get married up, Walter,gatcha,you should buy this house.

Something in Larsgaard Junior's expression must have warned him, because he turned and saw Liam standing in the doorway. He didn't look embarrassed at being caught in a premature division of the spoils, he merely shut up in the presence of agussuk,and a stategussukat that. Liam didn't hold it against him, either the silence in the presence of the enemy or his practical disposition of the belongings of the dead. Housing, as he knew only too well, was a commodity in short supply, and this house, once the formalities were out of the way, wouldn't be on the market for longer than it took to accept an offer. Liam wished he could make one, and for a moment actually toyed with the idea.

But that would have meant a twice-daily flying commute. He shuddered. No. It was bad enough that his job entailed responding by air to villages as far away as New Stoy and Togiak. He didn't need to add to his air time.

He directed his attention from that ghastly prospect to the matter at hand. “What time was the fishing period in Kulukak yesterday?

“Six to six, Ekwok said. “The tide was low at four-thirty, so everybody dropped their nets right at six.

“Were you all out there?

“Yes. We all fish this period.

“You each have your own boat? Nods all around. “So, you were all in the Kulukak at six a.m. on yesterday, Monday morning. Did you see theMarybethia? You did. Had her nets in the water, did she? Did she fish the whole period?

Ekwok scratched his chin and looked at the other men. “Well, it's not like we were keeping track, but yeah, I guess she was there the whole time.

“I saw her at three o'clock, Kashatok said. “She was pulling away from the tender just before I pulled alongside. Molly, Jonathan and the kids were on deck, working on the gear along with those two deckhands. David was on the bridge, at the wheel.