Free Fire and ice by Dana Stabenow Page B

like the end of the rainbow that night, the one dry place in Newenham he had a key to.
    Bad news keeps.
    And besides, it had been a very, very long day.
----
    FIVE
    There was a thump at the door. Liam, asleep in the office chair with his feet up on the desk, started awake. The chair rolled back and Liam slid off the seat and crashed to the floor. "Ouch! Goddammit!" His head gave a tremendous throb and then settled into a steady ache just above his left ear. He raised an investigatory hand. The wound was swollen, but less so than when he had come in last night. The cut on the crown of his head was better, too; still tender but crusted over.
    He shoved the chair away from him and it went, casters protesting creakily. He rose almost as creakily to his feet, rubbing at the small of his back. He stretched, popping his joints, and gave a mighty yawn, in the middle of which someone thumped on the door again, the same bone-jarring thump Liam recognized as his original alarm clock.
    Without waiting for an invitation, the door swung back on its hinges. In the door stood a man it took Liam a few befuddled moments to recognize. It was the Alaskan Old Fart, the drunken shaman, Moses Alakuyak. The shaman stared at him, hands on his hips.
    "Well?" Liam said testily. He wasn't a morning person.
    "Well," Moses said, emphasizing the word with awful sarcasm, "get your ass out here. It's late--we've got work to do." And he vanished.
    Liam blinked once, then felt around for his watch. The little red numbers blinked back at him --6:00 A.m. His teeth were furry, he'd had maybe five hours' worth of uneasy sleep perched on his makeshift office chair bed, and he needed to pee.
    "Get out here, dammit!" Moses' voice barked. Liam considered his alternatives, and then braved the shaman's displeasure by relieving his most pressing problem in the bathroom.
    He examined himself in the mirror. His hair covered most of the damage. He splashed cold water on his face, drank about a quart of it straight from the faucet, noticing a faintly sulfuric taste, and filled up the bowl to sluice the blood out of his hair. There was a roll of paper towels on the back of the toilet; he used those to dry off.
    "Goddammit," the shaman bellowed, "get your goddamn butt out here before I lose my goddamn temper!"
    He could always arrest Moses for disturbing the peace, Liam thought hopefully. And then bethought himself of Bill's burgers. Given the obvious relationship between Bill and Moses, it would behoove him to stay on Moses' good side. Or at least that's what Liam told himself. He took a deep breath and stepped out on the porch.
    The Newenham troopers' post was one small building consisting of an outer office, an inner office, a lavatory, and two holding cells. The right side of the building was surrounded by a paved parking lot enclosed by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. Current occupants included a rusted-out white International pickup, a brand-new Cadillac Seville, and a dump truck. Liam hadn't had time yet to look at the files and see why they had been confiscated.
    He could probably make a fairly accurate guess as to why the truck and the Caddy were there (Dwi for the one, drugs for the other) but the dump truck had him stumped. What could you do with a dump truck that was criminal? Haul toxic wastes, maybe, but that would be a federal offense. Wouldn't it? He made a mental note to look up the relevant statutes.
    The Newenham post sat on a side road a few blocks from downtown, a stand of white spruce crowding up against it, brushing the corrugated steel roof with long green branches. The road was paved, and there were five parking spaces in front of the building, what looked like a warehouse on one side, and a vacant lot on the other. Beyond the vacant lot was the city dock, and beyond the dock the mouth of the Nushagak River and the entrance to Bristol Bay.
    Something was wrong. It took a minute for Liam, balancing uncertainly on the top step, to realize what it was.