The second book in the Liam Campbell series, 1999

“Now, there is the sound of someone not flying his own plane.”

“Shut up and breathe.”

Wyanet Chouinard sank obediently into a modified Horse Stance as the float plane roared overhead. She was a grown woman, the owner and proprietor of her own air taxi service and the mother of a soon-to-be-adopted son. She didn't have to take orders from anyone, but she would from this one old man.

The old man was Moses Alakuyak, short, thick through the chest and shoulders, with his Yupik mother's brown skin and flat cheekbones and hints of his unknown Anglo father in his height, in the high bridge of his nose, the roundness of his eyes, the suppressed curl and color of his hair. Some called him a shaman. Some called him a drunk. On occasion, he was both, and neither.

This morning he was a teacher of tai chi, a sifu, and he demanded his student's full attention and submission. He got it, too, the little despot, Wy thought without rancor. He was standing to her left and a step behind. She could feel his eyes on her, checking the level of her hands, the depth of the cup of her palms, the tilt of her chin, the angle behind her bent knees, the straightness of her spine, the focus of her eyes.

“Lower,” he said. “How'n hell you supposed to strengthen your thigh muscles for the real work if you don't push them in Horse Stance?”

She made a silent and anatomically impossible suggestion as to where he could put his Horse Stance, and bent her knees, which after ten minutes were starting to tremble, to a deeper angle. Her center of gravity seemed off, and she swayed back an inch or so. There. She was supposed to feel the balls and heels of her feet rooted to the earth, the crown of her head suspended from a string. Root from below, suspend from above. Her breathing deepened. Her eyelids lowered, her gaze unfocused on the horizon.

The sneaky little son of a bitch waited until she was completely engrossed in the first position of the Yang style of tai chi chuan before he brought out the big gun. “How long you gonna wait before you talk to Liam again?”

She couldn't control the start his words gave her, but she could-and did-bite down on her verbal response. She said nothing, trying to recapture the peace of mind that had been hers only moments before.

“It's going on three months, Wy,” Moses said. He stood upright and walked around to face her. “Too stubborn, is that it? Too damn proud to make the first move?”

She stayed in position, staring straight ahead as if she could bore through his skull with her eyes. If only.

He waited. He was good at it. It was six a.m. on a sunny Sunday morning in July. The birds were singing or honking or chirping or croaking. At the foot of the cliff the massive Nushagak River moved by with stately unconcern. Wy had a six-week contract to fly supplies into an archaeological dig ten miles west of Chinook Air Force Base. Moses had volunteered to take Tim to his fish camp upriver for the silver run, away from the rough crowd of boys he had fallen in with during the school year. He'd learn to run a fish wheel, salt eggs, fillet and smoke salmon and, she hoped, realize what a rush it was to earn money of his own. Best of all, he'd be out of the reach of his birth mother, who was prone to fly in from Ualik and, after a night at the bars, shove her way into Wy's house and demand Tim's return, even if the last time he'd been in her custody he'd wound up in the hospital, broken, bruised and bleeding.

All in all, the next month looked positively rosy, especially when she compared it to the previous three years. She was marginally solvent, content in her work and her family, and if the lawyer handling Tim's adoption called a little too frequently for more money, it was summertime and the flying was frantic. She could hear the cash register ringing on every takeoff and the cash drawer sliding out on every landing.

So what if it was three months since she'd spoken to Liam Campbell? There were other fish in the sea, and in particular, there were a whole hell of a lot of other fish in Bristol Bay, with and without fins. The small voice that pointed out that she had allowed only Liam to swim up her stream and spawn could and would be ignored. She was content. She used the word like a mantra. She didn't need anything more-or anyone else-to complicate her life.

Wy became aware that her teeth were clenched so hard that her jaw ached, and made a conscious effort to relax.

Moses, naturally, persisted in attempting to suck the well-being right out of her. “You want him. He wants you.” Her sifu snorted. “And it sure as hell ain't like you're getting it anywhere else.”

“I have Tim to consider.” Her voice had a pronounced edge to it.

Moses pounced. “Give your menfolks a tad more credit than that, Wy. Liam's a grown man, and he had a son of his own. He knows how to handle kids. And as for Tim, hell, having a man- the same man-around on a regular basis would be a new experience for him. Would teach him all men don't get drunk and hit. A good thing for him to learn, I'd've thought. Of course, that's just me.”

Wy felt her teeth clamp together again. “I didn't mean it that way.”

“Oh, really? How did you mean it, exactly?”

Her neck got warm. “I meant that I have to look good to the adoption board. They look at your lifestyle, at your habits.”

“Ah.” Moses gave a judicious nod. “I see. So the adoption board won't let kids go to prospective parents who have the audacity to have healthy, normal lives of their own.”

The warmth seeped from her neck up into her cheeks.

Moses' eyebrows, thick and black, rose into interrogatory points. “Anything to say about that? Besides ‘I'm sorry for trying to bullshit you, Sifu’?”

She hadn't.

“Good,” he said briskly. “On your feet.”

She rose shakily to her full height, five feet eight inches; five inches taller than Moses, not that it ever seemed like that much of an advantage. Her dark blond hair, streaked with gold by the summer sun, had come loose from its ponytail. Thankful to have something to do with her hands, she made a business out of tying it up again. That done, there was nowhere to run. She blotted her forehead on her sleeve and sought refuge in work. “I've got an early morning flight, I'd better get going.”

“You said some harsh things to each other in May,” Moses said to her retreating back. “Hurtful things. Especially you.”

That did it. She spun around, her face furious with anger, shame and guilt. “I handed him my heart and he ate it for lunch. I am not on the dinner menu!”

Pleased with what she felt was a splendid exit line, she turned to march up the stairs and into her house.

From behind her she heard Moses' voice, acerbic and irascible as always. “How about dessert?”

The slam of the door was his answer.

The old man sighed and shook his head. “Youth is wasted on the young.”

He waited for the voices to kick in. For a change, they didn't. Mostly they were insistent, forceful, regular spiritual bulldozers, determined to make him a legend in his own time.

He stepped to the edge of the cliff and looked at the beach below, strewn with boulders and tree trunks, the occasional fifty-five-gallon drum, the odd Styrofoam cooler. It wasn't that far down, but far enough. He could shut the voices up for good. That option had always been open to him, from the time he first heard them when he was twelve and they made him tell his mother that his father was going to kill her. She didn't listen, of course, no one ever did, but that didn't make the voices let up any.

They seldom told him anything straight out, though, and they had a marked tendency to be both insistent and peremptory. Sometimes he wondered if, in seventy-eight years of a very full life, he had perhaps acquired enough wisdom to make his own judgments, his own rulings, his own estimates of what kind of trouble his extended family, stretching from Newenham to Nome, needed his help to get out of.

Not that anyone ever looked happy when they saw him coming. Foresight, the open eye that looked inward to the future, was more of a curse than a blessing. Uilililik, the Little Hairy Man who snatched up children and took them away, never to be seen again, was more welcome in the villages than he was.

He thought of Cassandra, and sighed again. Doomed forever to tell the truth, and equally doomed forever to be disbelieved. She'd died young. Lucky for her. He stepped back from the edge of the cliff, from the fifty-foot drop to the vast expanse of southward-moving water. It wasn't the first time. It wouldn't be the last.

As he walked around the old but well-maintained house set twenty-five feet from the cliff's edge, he thought about the float plane on a short final for the elongated, freshwater lake that served as Newenham's seaplane base. Wy had been right; that had definitely been someone not flying their own plane. There was no need to be at full RPMs on final; it didn't do anything but make a lot of noise and move up the time for an overhaul. Hell, there was no need to be at full RPMs after takeoff, or at least not for long. Once the plane was in the air the pilot should back off on the throttle and the prop pitch. If he didn't, the mini-sonic booms generated by the tip of the prop exceeding the speed of sound were enough to rattle windowpanes for a mile in every direction. The sound was a dead giveaway that the guy or the gal on the yoke didn't have to pay to fix his or her own engine. Or had enough money not to care about maintenance costs.

But this pilot-ah, now, this pilot. Moses smacked his lips and grinned. There had been a gold shield on the pilot-side door, bright with gilt. Wyanet Chouinard might fancy herself content with her life, but she was about to receive a first-class wake-up call. Good.

Meanwhile, he squinted at the sun. Seven-thirty, he estimated, give or take five minutes. “About time for a beer.”

He might not be able to drown the voices, but he could and would drown them out, at least for a time.

Once you have smelled the odor of burned flesh, there is no mistaking it for any other. Liam had once had a case in which the perp had killed his wife, wrapped her in Saran Wrap, put her under their trailer and over the next three months doused her body with Clorox whenever the smell interfered withMonday Night Football.Clorox might be hell on wine stains on linen napkins, but it didn't do much to hide the smell of decay; a neighbor had reported it and the smell had led the responding officers directly to the body. All this time the guy had been sleeping in this same trailer, eating in it, showering in it, sitting on his ass and scratching it in his trailer. He had to have been among the olfactorily challenged, a new minority group invented on the spot by the crime scene techs.

Still, that smell wasn't as bad as this one. He heard a sound next to him and turned to see Trooper Prince's pale face going even paler. He didn't bother asking if she was okay. She had to be.

So did he. He took a shallow breath, stiffened his spine and opened the door to the smoke-stained cabin.

It looked like one of the rings of hell in Dante'sInferno.It seemed as if there were charred bodies everywhere he looked, on the floor, fallen forward across the galley table, at least one under it.

He pulled his head out and took a deep gulp of air. “Go get the body bags,” he told Prince.

Her head snapped up and color returned to her face with a rush. “I'm fine, sir, I-”

“I know you are,” he said. “We still need the bags.”

She hesitated. He pulled a pair of rubber gloves from a pocket, pausing to raise an eyebrow in her direction that said clearly,And you were waiting around for-what, exactly?She turned and stepped to the float, her boot heels echoing against the metal grating. The set of her shoulders looked stiff, as if she were holding them straight by sheer effort of will.

Liam took two steps and leaned one hand against the mast, unmindful of the soot smearing his palm.

He'd been a trooper for almost twelve years now, and he had seen his share of carnage. There was the time Norman Murdy shot five people at a holiday camp on the Tonsina River, and then shot a trooper pursuing him in a helicopter. Ray Doucet had ambushed a husband and wife goldpanning on the Telaquana, had shot the husband and raped and murdered the wife. Billy Svenson had taken his father's AK-47 to Tok Middle School for a show-and-tell that resulted in the death of two students, one teacher and the principal and the wounding of nine others.

He had responded to all of those scenes and more, and contrary to popular belief, the emotions inflicted on the people who saw such things first did not, over time, diminish in any way, shape or form. Time numbed your reactions, allowing you to pretend something like composure, but the horror was always there, and the disbelief, and the shock. It still amazed Liam to see how much blood there was in the human body. He opened his eyes and looked around him.

Kulukak was a small village of two hundred, mostly Yupik souls. It sat on the northwest side of Kulukak Bay, a circle of water eight miles across and ten miles north to south, enclosed by rolling hills and thick green vegetation that reminded Liam of Puget Sound without Seattle. It was calm and still, not a ripple marring the surface of the bay, each hill and tree and rock and narrow beach represented on that surface with mirrorlike fidelity. A low-lying mist clung to the tops of the trees, which reflection gave the scene an eerie black and white look, and a still, moody, almost sullen air.

There was no road to Kulukak, and the bay froze over in winter, so the only means of year-round transportation in and out was by air. As an indication of its importance to the life of the village, a gravel airstrip had been carved out of the center of the tiny settlement. There was an orange wind sock on a pole stuck in the ground at one end, today hanging limp, inert. On the other side of the strip was a hangar, and inside it a road grader equipped with a twelve-foot blade.

A few of the homes were built of aged logs, the rest of prefabricated materials shipped up from Outside in a kit, green and blue and cream siding beneath shallow-pitched corrugated metal roofs. A big building set apart from the others on a small hill behind the village had dark blue siding and the American and Alaskan flags hanging out front. Probably the school. The building was too big for a post office in a village this size. The Postal Service probably contracted out to one of the locals, who would run the post office out of his or her living room, as was the practice in the smaller Bush villages.

The boat harbor was a quarter the size of Newenham's, with one dock extending from the narrow strip of gravel and sand that formed Kulukak's waterfront, one gangway descending from the dock and slips enough for forty boats, most of them occupied today. The boat he was on was tied up to the slip farthest from the dock, the closest boat moored three spaces distant. The rest of the fleet seemed to be pressing against the sides of the harbor, keeping as far as they could get from theMarybethia.

He realized he was stalling. A soft croak came from above and behind him. He whipped around and beheld a raven sitting on top of one of the light poles illuminating the boat slips. “What the hell?” Liam said involuntarily. “What are you doing here?”

The raven cocked his gleaming black head. His black beady eyes met Liam's, unblinking, as he let loose with a stream of even softerkuk-kuk-kuks.

There was a stir behind him and a few muttered phrases. He dropped his hand from the mast and stood erect. It couldn't be. Newenham was fifty miles to the northwest; there was no way that this was the same raven that had been haunting his steps since his arrival at his new posting. He turned his back on the shiny black incubus and tried not to flinch when a long, derisive caw came from the top of the light pole.

Five men were standing on the slip, waiting, and he turned to meet their eyes, one at a time. All of them bore traces of at least a partial Yupik heritage-one had the high, flat cheekbones, another the thick, straight ebony hair, a third the narrow, tilted eyes. Four of them had the seamed faces of elders, age lending them at least the illusion of wisdom and authority. The fifth was younger, a short, thickset man in his mid-forties with steady dark eyes. He didn't look friendly. The other four looked, not unfriendly, exactly, but more like they were reserving judgment.

Liam doffed his cap and bent his head as a gesture of respect to the authority of the elders. “My name is Liam Campbell, of the Alaska State Troopers, Newenham post.” He waited. It never helped to rush anything in the Bay, and it was offensive to the Natives besides, who had made a pretty good living for thousands of years by waiting: waiting for the fish to come up the river, waiting for the caribou to come down out of the mountains, waiting for the bears to wake up in the spring, waiting for the berries to ripen in the fall. Patience wasn't just a virtue for the people of the Bay, it was a way of life. Liam, as new as he was to his posting, knew that much.

The younger man said, his voice curt, “Walter Larsgaard. I'm the council chief. This is the council.”

He didn't introduce them. Liam forced the issue, stepping down to the slip and extending his hand to each man in turn. “Willie Kashatok.” “Robert Halstensen.” “Mike Ekwok.” “Carl Andrew.” They spoke English easily, albeit with the guttural inflection and heavy rhythm common to those whose first language was Yupik.

“How do you do,” Liam said gravely. “In any other circumstances, I'd be glad to meet you. This…”-he gestured behind him-“this is awful.”

This frank acceptance of the horror of the situation and the open way in which he shared it caused a perceptible relaxation among the four older men, who exchanged glances and looked back at Liam, still watchful but less on guard. One of them- Ekwok, he thought-even went so far as to give an approving nod, and mutter something to the man standing next to him- Halstensen?-that sounded like, “Tookalook,” which probably wasn't anything close to what it was. Yupik was allk's andt's and pretty much all of it sounded like “tookalook” to Liam's Anglo ears. The two old men looked from Liam to the raven on the light pole and back again, and said no more.

Larsgaard alone showed no sign, of approval, or anything else. He waited, silent and wary. His straight black hair fell across his forehead and shadowed his eyes, so that Liam couldn't get a read on what he was thinking.

“Who owned this boat?” Liam said. “I see that her home port is registered here.” He pointed at the stern,Marybethia,and below thatKulukak, Alaska,in no-nonsense lettering, spare, neat, easy to read, no unnecessary serifs or flourishes. Some of the names painted on the sides of boats were so elaborately curliqued they were next to impossible to decipher. This boat even had the state registration number lettered on the bow beneath the name, something you almost never saw on anything bigger than a skiff.

“David Malone,” Larsgaard said, after a pause just short of inviting a repeat of the question. “And yes, the Malones live here.”

Or did, his eyes said.

“Who does he fish with?” Liam said, thinking of the number of bodies he had seen littering the galley.

“His family,” one of the elders-Andrew or Ekwok-said.

Liam's heart sank. “His whole family?”

The elder nodded. It was Ekwok, the shortest and fattest member of the group. He had round black eyes set in a round brown face, and he peered up at Liam with all the curiosity of a fiveyearold child meeting his kindergarten teacher for the first time. At six-three, Liam felt like a clumsy giant, and repressed an impulse to squat down so he could meet Ekwok at his own eye level. “The first thing you do upon arrival at a crime scene is to establish an air of authority,” his instructor had told him at the academy. “You are the law on two legs. Let people know that up front and don't ever let them forget it.” Somehow Liam felt that squatting on his haunches would be counter to that directive.

“His wife, his brother, his two children,” Ekwok said.

“And two deckhands,” a second elder-Kashatok?- volunteered. “Gussuks.”

“They were allgussuks,” Ekwok said with an impatient look. “So what? They were our neighbors.”

Everyone looked at Larsgaard, as if expecting him to contradict them, and then studiously away again. The raven mocked them from the top of the light pole. “Oh shut up,” Liam said without thinking. The older men looked up at the raven, back at Liam, down at their feet, almost as if-what? Liam thought. As if what? They looked respectful and wary at the same time, on the alert, ready for action. It was very odd. It also wasn't anything he had time for.

“Do you want to see the Malones' house?” Larsgaard said, still without emotion.

“Yes,” Liam said. “Later, after…” He waved a hand at the boat. They understood.

Ekwok's cherubic face hardened into purposeful lines. “Do you want help, moving them out?”

Liam forced a smile. “Thank you. We'll get them out on deck. Afterward, we could use help in getting them to the plane.” He nodded at the Cessna, its floats run up on the wooden skid fastened to the end of the slip closest to the mouth of the harbor. Prince was closing the door, a bundle of heavy black plastic under one arm. She came toward them, long legs eating up the distance. They all turned to look.Gussukthough she was, Diana Prince was worth a look. She was, Liam thought, surveying her critically over the heads of the other five men, one of the few women he'd met who looked good in a uniform. He knew a mild urge to rip it off her, and glanced at the faces of the other men to see if they shared in the impulse. Impassive expressions or no, he was pretty sure they did.

If she was unnerved by the steady, unwinking regard of six pairs of male eyes, she didn't show it. She looked controlled and very much in command. She halted in front of them. “ Gentlemen,” she said crisply, looking each one of them straight in the eye, one at a time.

Liam groaned to himself. “We have to bag the bodies,” he told the council, unable to dull the harsh effect of the words. “We also have to take pictures and notes of the scene. It'll be a while before we can move the bodies to the plane, and after that I'd like to see the Malones' house and talk to their neighbors. If you could come back in a couple of hours?”

He got a curt nod from Larsgaard and another grave bow from Ekwok and Andrew. The five men turned and moved off in a group. Liam watched them go, noticing they were not speaking to each other as they went.

He turned to Prince. “It's best not to look village elders in this part of the state directly in the eye.”

She thought it over. “Because I'm a woman?”

“Mostly. Plus you're a trooper, an employee of the state government. People in general don't like cops, and people in the Bush don't like the state.”

“A double whammy.”

“Yes. It behooves us to walk very softly.” He didn't say anything about a big stick.

“I'll remember.” Prince handed him a white cloth mask.

“Thanks,” he said, although he doubted anything less than a rebreather would help. He doffed cap and jacket, hoping to keep them free of the smell, put on the mask and the pair of rubber gloves and reopened the door to hell.

The white Blazer with the shield on the door was parked right in front of the post, and any hope Wy had had of just leaving a note (Liam, Dig gofer stabbed, body at X longitude, Y latitude, Wy) died aborning. She raised her chin, climbed the steps, opened the door and halted in her tracks.

There was a trooper on the phone behind the desk, but it wasn't the trooper she was expecting.

“Thank you,” the trooper said. “We'll be waiting for your call.” She hung up the phone and looked at Wy. “Yes?”

“Who are you?”

“I'm Diana Prince of the Alaska State Troopers. Who are you?”

“Wyanet Chouinard. What are you doing here?”

The trooper looked amused. “I work here. More to the point, what are you doing here?”

“What do you mean, you work here?” Wy knew a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Where's Liam?”

Up with the eyebrow again, as if to say, Liam, is it? “Trooper Campbell is away on a case. How can I help you?”

The sick feeling eased. “He still works here, then?”

“Last time I looked.”

“He's still assigned to Newenham?”

“He is still assigned to Newenham,” the trooper affirmed gravely. “Now, how may I help you, Ms. Chouinard?”

“Call me Wy,” Wy said automatically.

Mercifully, Trooper Prince did not as automatically respond with Why not? Instead, she said, for the third time, “How may I help you?”

Her manner was so indulgent that Wy bristled. “I found a body.” She was pleased when the trooper sat up straight in Liam's chair.

“You found a body?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“On an archaeological dig about fifty miles south of here. Ten miles more or less west of Chinook Air Force Base.”

The trooper stood up and went to the map of Bristol Bay tacked to the wall. “Show me.” Wy showed her. “There's a strip there?”

“Not a strip, exactly. More like a flat piece of ground just long enough for a Super Cub to roll out before it falls into the river. I own and operate the-”

“Nushagak Air Taxi Service,” Prince said.

Wy turned from the map. “Yes. How did you know?”

“Trooper Campbell may have mentioned it.”

“Oh. I see. Of course. Ah.” What had she been saying? “Right. I'm on a three-month contract to the state to fly the people working on the dig in and out.”

“And this morning?”

“And this morning I was flying the archaeologist-”

“One moment, please.” The trooper produced a notebook and a pencil. “Go ahead.”

“His name is McLynn, Desmond X. McLynn, and I was flying him to work this morning. We landed and found the body of his gofer, Don Nelson.” Wy hesitated. “Uh, it didn't-it wasn't-I don't think-oh hell.” She expelled an impatient breath. “He didn't just die,” she said bluntly. “He was killed.”

As if a switch had been thrown, the indulgent air vanished and the trooper went on alert. Wy could almost hear the howl of the bloodhounds. She'd seen the same expression on Liam's face too many times to mistake it now.

Prince said, “What makes you say that?”

Wy remembered Nelson's body and repressed a roll of nausea. “Well, the handle of the knife sticking out of his mouth was my first clue.”

“I see.” The trooper seemed to sniff the air. “Where is Professor McLynn now?”

“At Bill's. He wouldn't stay at the site, so I dropped him off on the way into town from the airport.”

“Bill's?”

“Bill's Bar and Grill,” Wy elaborated.

“This McLynn a drinker?”

“He is today,” Wy said, her mouth a grim line. “I would be, too, if I didn't have to fly.”

The trooper reached for her cap. “I'll follow you there.”

When Liam didn't respond, Ekwok repeated in a louder voice, “I know who did this.”

The raven erupted with a staccato “Kuk-kuk-kuk-kra-kuk”that sounded eerily like the cadence of Ekwok's own speech patterns. Ekwok looked up with an apprehensive expression. His eyes hardened and he said for the third time, “I know who did this.”

Liam wished with all his heart that just once it could be that easy. Well, hell, maybe it could be. “And who might that be, Mr. Ekwok?” he said, pulling out his notebook.

“That David Malone, he fired a guy last year. A deckhand. He wouldn't even give him a ride from Seattle when he brought theMarybethianorth. This deckhand, he was angry. He said he would kill Malone.”

Ekwok shut up, his expression suggesting that he had said all he had to say. His attitude clearly indicated that he had solved all Liam's problems and that he, Liam, should go away now and attend to them.

Quoth the raven,“Kwark, click, click.”

“Will you knock it off?” Liam said.

“Knock what off?” Ekwok said.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Ekwok, I meant him.” Liam jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Ekwok examined him with an expression on his face that was impossible to read. “You talk to the raven?”

Liam pulled himself together. “No. No, of course not.” Pen poised, he said, “Do you know the name of the deckhand that Malone fired?”

Ekwok shook his head. “No.”

“Do you know someone who might?”

“Walter will know. Walter hired him last summer, after Malone fired him.”

Had he indeed. “Could you take me to Mr. Larsgaard's house, Mr. Ekwok? I'd like to ask him a few questions.”

Summertime in the Bush smelled like Off. Well, Off and salmon. Wy smelled of both, but she smelled most strongly of herself, a scent somewhere between lilac and lemon peel, half sweet, half tart, part seduction, part challenge. Liam strapped himself into the shotgun seat of the Cessna and concentrated on that smell. It was easier than thinking about hanging his ass out over a two-thousand-foot precipice for the next hour.

Liam hated to fly. He was, in fact, terrified every time he got into a plane, Super Cub or 737, single or twin, floats or wheels. It simply wasn't natural to trust your existence to two wings and the lifting properties of something as ephemeral as air. You couldn't evenseeair, as he had pointed out to Wy on innumerable occasions when she had tried to alleviate his fear with a technical explanation of the theory of aerodynamics. After a while she'd given up, and Liam continued to sweat his way through more hours in the air than many private pilots. That he had the courage to force himself into the air in spite of his fear was a tribute to his strength of character, not anything his father had ever acknowledged, but then his father, the jet jockey, had never managed to mask his disappointment that his son had not followed him into the Air Force and the elite ranks of zoomies.

However, it didn't matter what Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell thought, because Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell was safely assigned to flight training at a naval base in Florida, over a thousand miles away, about as far as you could get and still be in America, hooray. Liam, a grown man, an Alaska state trooper for eleven years, the holder of a B.A. in criminal justice and an M.S. in counseling psychiatry, the investigating officer on the Houston serial killings and the Cyndi Gordon murder, both high-profile cases resulting in convictions celebrated in headlines as far away as Boston and the latter now an illustration in the textbook of a dozen police academies nationwide, this man had no need of paternal approval.

In the meantime, he stared straight ahead through the windshield, eyes fixed on the distant horizon, and concentrated on slow, deep breaths. His concentration was not what it should have been, given that he was sitting next to Wy, the closest he'd been to her in three months. Her hands were strong and capable on the yoke, her feet quick and deft on the rudders. Her dark blond hair was bound into a loose French braid, her jeans and plaid shirt clean and neat. A blue billed cap advertising Chevron fuel topped the ensemble. A headset with a voice-activated microphone was strapped on over the cap, and sunglasses in gold aviator frames hid her eyes. The ultimate in Bush chic.

She reached up and unhooked a second headset. “Put it on.”

He put it on.

She taxied to the end of the runway and turned, adjusted the flaps, pushed in the throttle, pulled back on the yoke and they were airborne. Liam helped her, holding 68 Kilo up in the air by white-knuckled hands wrapped around the edge of his seat.

Not by word or deed did Wy betray how very awkward she must be feeling. A fair man, Liam figured she had to be at least as uncomfortable and tongue-tied as he was. “Your new trooper sent me out to pick you up,” she had said briefly when she climbed out of the plane.

“Why didn't she come herself?”

“You've got yourself another murder.”

“What!”

She nodded, holding the door for him, all business. “I'm supposed to get you back ASAP.”

“Who? And where?”

“Don Nelson. He's been working for Professor McLynn at that archaeological dig on the Snake River.”

He thought for a moment. “Yeah, an old Yupik village site or something. Some archaeologist has been digging up things there, right? About ten miles west of the base?”

She nodded, still brisk, waiting for him to get the hell on the plane.

“Who found-what was his name? Nelson?”

There was a brief hesitation. “I'm on contract to the state to support McLynn's project. We flew out this morning. That's when we found him.”

“Son of a bitch,” was all he could think of to say.

Her eyes met his for the first time, with the merest trace of perceptible humor. “My sentiments exactly.”

He had turned to Ekwok, standing pretty much at attention at Liam's elbow. “I left the boat taped off. I'd appreciate it if you'd make sure that no one goes on board.”

Ekwok glowed. “You mean I'm your deputy? Like John Wayne and Dean Martin?”

“Close enough,” Liam said.

The climb to two thousand feet took maybe ten minutes, followed by the comparative bliss of level flight. The fog dissipated as soon as they were out of Kulukak Bay, and the sun chased cumulus clouds around the horizon. Liam's stomach took another five minutes to settle, at which time Wy's scent came back with a vengeance, teasing his nostrils, reminding him of the last time he'd seen her, and before, the last time he'd slept with her, that rough, hurried coupling in the front seat of her truck, the memory of which alone had been enough to let him live on hope for the last three months. It wasn't going to stay enough for much longer.

Maybe it was being in the air, maybe it was being in the air with her, but he found his body reacting to that memory. He shifted his legs, hoping she wouldn't notice, and then saw her wipe her palms down the legs of her jeans, changing hands on the yoke in a manner too studied to remain unobserved. A rush of heat suffused his body and pooled in his groin. “Wy,” he said.

“We'll be there in forty-five minutes, relax,” she said.

He looked at the back of that obdurate head, and a wonderfully welcome burst of anger washed away every other feeling he had, including fear of flying. He grabbed her braid and pulled her head around. “Set her down,” he said.

“What?”

“Set her down!” he roared, and shoved the yoke forward with his right hand.

The Cessna took a nosedive.

“You son of a bitch!” She grabbed the yoke. “All right, you want down, you get down!”

The Cessna went into a shallow spiral, down, down, down, and Liam felt all the blood rise from his groin to pool just beneath the top of his skull. His lungs stopped working at fifteen hundred feet, his heart at a thousand, his sphincter muscle at five hundred. The needle on the altitude gauge backed off until the number one, one hundred feet, and Liam risked a look out his window to see the gear about to skim the tops of trees, growing ever larger in his terror-stricken eyes. “Wy!”

Her face was tight but she said coolly enough, “You're paying the freight. You wanted down, you get down,” and in the next second the trees ended and a gravel runway appeared. The Cessna set down on a surface that was more root than rock and bounced to a lurching halt. Wy slammed her headset into its cradle and baled out to march up and down, swearing at him, swearing at herself, swearing at the strip, just generally laying a pretty good curse on life, the universe and everything.

Liam waited for his heart and lungs to resume normal function and his stomach to settle, and climbed out on shaky legs.

Wy wheeled around and poked him in the chest with a furious finger. “Of all the goddamn dumb things for you to do, that took the cake! You want to land, we can land, but I'll do it! You want to talk, we can talk, but on my terms! Don't you pull something like that in one of my planes ever again, do you hear?”

“I hear,” Liam said, a bit light-headed and very glad to be back on terra firma. The strip, made of gravel and sand, seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, with no reason for its existence, a not unheard of occurrence in the Bush. The rustle of the black cottonwood and the balsam poplar in the gentle breeze, the tumble of water down a creek, the distant cry of an eagle were all that broke the silence. “What is this place?”

“Some oil company built it to drill a test well for natural gas,” she said curtly, still steaming.

“Was there any?”

“No.”

“Wy,” he said.

Her head snapped up, but whatever she'd been about to say died on her lips when she met his eyes.

“I think three months is enough,” he said. “You were angry. So was I. We said some things we shouldn't have. It hasn't changed how I feel about you.” His smile was brief and painful. “ Sometimes I wish it had. Sometimes I think you're more trouble than you're worth, Chouinard.”

“You should talk,” she replied automatically, but her hackles went down. She pulled off her cap and shook back her braid. There was a downed tree to one side of the runway and she walked over to sit on it.

He walked over to sit next to her, carefully maintaining a discreet distance. He wanted her right down to his fingernails, but the words were important, and came first. Before him, he thought with a inward grin, and almost laughed out loud.

“What?” she said, eyes on the cap she was pulling through her fingers. “What was so all-fired important you had to nearly wreck my plane to tell me?”

All impulse to laugh faded, and he sorted through what he'd been planning to say for three months, if not quite in this fashion or in this setting.

“You live awhile,” he said slowly, feeling his way. He wanted to get this right. He wasn't as confident as he used to be of his ability to do that, not anymore. There were a lot of things he wasn't as sure of as he used to be. “You live awhile,” he repeated, “and you gain some knowledge, and you hope a little wisdom, and you build this picture of yourself. You have sense, and integrity. You know what you will do, and what you won't. You draw a line, a line you know you won't cross, because you're a better person than that.”

He glanced at her. She was staring hard at the opposite side of the runway.

“And then something happens, something you never expected, something you never imagined, and you find yourself doing something you never thought you'd do. You cross that uncrossable line, and that picture you had of yourself shatters. If you ever want to be sane again, you have to pick up the pieces and try to put the picture back together. But now it's flawed, cracked, out of focus. It'll never be the same.”

He stopped, unable for a moment to go on.

“I know.” Her voice was soft. “I know everything that you're saying. I know because I went through the same thing. But there is more to it than that.”

He turned to look at her. “What?”

“I could have lived with the loss of my integrity, Liam,” she said. “I could even have lived with the loss of your love. But I missed my friend.”

He closed his eyes briefly.

“My integrity was gone, that picture of myself was gone, my lover was gone. And my friend was gone. We were friends first, Liam. I knew you were married. I knew about Charlie. Left to myself, I wouldn't have pushed it beyond friendship, not ever, no matter how much I was attracted to you. I don't do that! I've never done that, ever.”

“And I did,” he said, his voice wooden.

“Yes,” she said. “You did. But I let you. I'm not blaming it all on you. We did it together. That's part of it, too. I'm not a homewrecker.” She paused, and added painfully, “And then I was one.”

There was silence for a few moments. Liam could think of nothing to say.

A raven croaked somewhere off in the treetops. Liam looked up, but couldn't see him.

“I've got a puritan streak a mile wide, Liam. No matter how much I hated the waste of what we could have given each other, of what we could have been, of what together we could have given others, there was a little voice inside that said we did the right thing. You belonged with Jenny and Charlie, and I had no business, no right to try to tempt you away from them.” She faced Liam squarely. “You said the words, Liam. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, so long as you both shall live. Till death do you part.” She shook her head. “Nobody ever thinks about what those words really mean when they say them.”

“Maybe not nobody,” Liam said. “But damn few.”

She nodded. “Damn few,” she echoed.

“And not me.”

“No,” she said softly.

There was a short silence as they listened to the creek chuckle beyond the trees. “Jenny's dead,” Liam said.

“I know. Moses told me. I'm sorry.” She turned to meet his eyes. “I mean that, Liam. From everything you told me, I think Jenny and I could have been friends.” She swallowed, and added in a painful whisper, “And I know you loved her. Maybe not like… Well. I know you loved her. Loved them.”

“Yes.” He thought of little baby Charlie, all cherub cheeks and lion's roar, and grieved again.

There was another silence. “What now?” Liam said at last.

She didn't look at him. “You'll notice I've never said those words. So long as you both shall live.”

“I've noticed,” he said, a little grimly. “And I have, and I didn't keep them.”

“That's not where I was headed, Liam,” she said, a little impatiently. “God, let's just set aside the blame for one minute, okay? We both made mistakes, big, fat, juicy ones, all right?” She turned to look at him, eyes level and serious. The sun sidled out from behind a cloud and turned her hair into a gleaming helmet of dark gold. “You asked me to marry you, remember?”

“I remember.”

“You had no right to, and I had no right to listen. But you asked.”

“You didn't answer.”

“No. I didn't.”

“Why?”

“Because however much I loved you, I wasn't sure I could say those words and mean them,” she said simply.

It hurt, more than he would have expected it to. It took him a moment to form a reply. “And now?”

“And now?” She turned away from him. “I don't know, Liam.”

His heart seemed to stop beating. “Don't you love me enough?”

Moments crept by. “I don't know,” she said at last. “I want you, you know that.”

“I know that. It's not enough.”

“No.”

He was angry suddenly. “Goddamn it, Wy. I've waited long enough. I want an answer.”

“I'm not ready to give you one,” she said levelly.

“Fine.” He got to his feet and dusted off his pants. “Let me know when you are. I may or may not be around. No promises.”

“Liam-”

“No.” He cut off her words with a chopping motion, and fixed her with a piercing stare. “Just so you know, I'm not looking for one meal. I'm in the market for a lifetime supply of grub.”

An involuntary laugh escaped her lips. “Liam-”

“No,” he said, furious now, with her amusement and his own inability to put his feelings into words that would be taken seriously. “We've said all there is to say.” He reached down a hand and hauled her to her feet. “Think about this, too, while you're thinking things over.” He kissed her then, roughly, angrily, cupping his hands over her ass and grinding against her. She melted into him and his touch gentled without him realizing it.

That's all it took, all it had ever taken. His hands slid up and there was nothing but the taste of her mouth, nothing but the feel of her breasts against his palms, nothing but the sound of her breath coming in short, hard pants, of the little moans she gave as she strained against him. He felt the earth come up against his back with a solid thump. The material between his hand and her skin was suddenly intolerable and he ripped the front of her shirt open and shoved her bra up and took her nipple into his mouth. He wasn't gentle but she didn't want gentleness, tearing at the front of his jeans and thrusting her hand down the front of his shorts. “Oh,” she said, when he filled her hand. “Liam, please.” She knotted a fist in his hair and pulled his mouth from her breast. She bit his lower lip, and pulled one of his hands down between her legs, pushing up against it. “Liam, please!”

Her face was flushed, her eyes wild, and every instinct he had screamed yes. It would be fast and furious, hot and supremely satisfying, it would fulfill every dream he'd had in the last three months, hell, in the last three years. The heat came off her in waves, scorching him. She shoved him down and straddled his body, and it was his turn, eyes closed. “Wy…” He felt her hands tugging at his jeans and heard something halfway between a growl and a groan rip out of his throat.

“Shut up. Just shut up and let me- Jesus, Liam.” Her hand closed around him and she leaned down.

He felt her breath on his skin and nearly came right then. “Wait,” he said. “Wy, wait.”

“What?” She sounded dazed.

He took her upper arms in his hands and sat up, sliding out from under her.

“Liam?”

He climbed to his feet, turning his back to fasten his fly. It wasn't easy, and it didn't help that his blurred vision couldn't seem to find the zipper tab, and when it did, that his fingers couldn't seem to hold on to it.

Behind him he heard the rustle of clothing, and knew she was putting herself back together, too. He took a couple of deep, steadying breaths. When his vision cleared the first thing he saw was his cap lying on the ground where she had thrown it after pulling it off. He swept it up and turned to face her.

The pulse was beating in her throat, hard enough to cause her collar to flutter. She was trembling, and she wouldn't look at him, fussing instead with one of the buttons on her shirt.

It would have been so easy to have taken each other then and there, on the rocks of the riverbank. He remembered in detail the clasp of her warm, wet flesh, the sound of the hitch in her breath, the salt taste of her tears, the smell of her sweat and that elusive, sweet-tart fragrance that was all her own. The way she arched up when she came, the surprise and pleasure in her voice when she cried out. And he remembered what it was like to kiss and touch and talk his way through a night with her, to come into her, to come inside her.

But one night was not what he wanted. One quick rutting on the deserted bank of a river was not what he wanted. Before, he had settled. Now, he wanted more, more than a hasty coupling in the front seat of her truck, or on the side of a deserted airstrip.

She finally finished with her shirt, but she still wouldn't look at him. She turned and took a step toward the plane. He caught her arm and pulled her to a halt.

She didn't try to pull away. He could feel the faint tremor in her body. “Why?” she said, her voice husky. “Why, Liam?”

Liam took a deep breath and expelled it. He pulled off his cap again and ran his hand through his hair, trying to choose the right words. “Because this isn't all I want,” he said at last. “I want it, mind.” He tried to smile. “Pretty hard to hide that.” His smile faded. “But it isn't all I want.”

Her voice was almost inaudible when she spoke. “What if it's all I want?”

He set his teeth and took his time resettling his cap on his head. “I'm a domesticated man, Wy. Okay”-he held up one hand- ”maybe I wasn't always. I had my share of fun. But I liked being married. I liked waking up in the same bed every morning. I liked coming home to the same house every night.” He hesitated. “I loved being a father.”

He met her eyes straight on. “I want it all, Wy. All or nothing. Marriage, kids, starting with Tim, so long as we both shall live. For better or for worse. For richer or for poorer. Till death do us part. I know what the words mean now, Wy. Take it or leave it.”

And then, with as much dignity as a man with an erection straining at the front of his jeans can muster, he turned and limped to the plane.

The borrowed Super Cub, a two-seater with more wing than fuselage, looked familiar. “Didn't we spot herring in this puppy three months ago?” he wondered out loud.

Without answering, Wy pushed the pilot's seat forward on its tracks. Liam wedged himself into the seat behind, disposing his long legs in the limited space as best he could. “You sure the dentist from Anchorage isn't going to show up on the next Alaska Airlines jet and want to go fishing?”

“You want to get to the dig or not?” she demanded.

“I want to get to the dig,” Liam said meekly.

“Fine.” Wy climbed into the front seat and pulled it forward, which helped. This craft had no matching headsets, and Liam watched as she fastened the fold-up door and started the engine. Her fat braid hung down the back of her seat, curls escaping around her hairline and from every plait. She wore her hair long, she had told him, because it was easier to care for. Wash-andwear hair, she had said, laughing at his intent expression as he used a blow-dryer to tame his own thick pelt.

He tried not to remember what her hair looked like loose on a pillow, a mass of blond-brown curls that wrapped around his fingers with a life all their own. He was still trying when they took off, so that he barely noticed when they became airborne, one good use his obsession with her served.

He approved of the thought the old ones had put into siting Tulukaruk, on a bluff where what looked like half a dozen streams joined before heading southeast into the Bay. Easy to defend, and an escape route if defense proved inadequate. Food and water plenty to hand, in the form of those selfsame creeks and the salmon that swam up them to spawn. The Natives were still waiting for them, at sites like this one, all over the Bay and the Delta. The fish fed their families and their dog teams. When the dog team was replaced by the snow machine, fish sold to Outside processors paid for their gasoline.

The last two years hadn't been good ones. Some people said it was the trawlers, the ones with nets a mile long, dragging the bottom of the north Pacific Ocean and hauling up every species, endangered or not, in its way to the surface. Some said it was El Niño, causing an increase in the ambient temperature of the Gulf of Alaska and moving new species north, as witnessed by the tuna caught off Kodiak Island for the first time last summer. Some said it was nature, and the cycle of life. No one really knew.

Some fishermen were selling up and moving Outside. Others were taking odd jobs, working construction in Anchorage or Prudhoe Bay, enrolling in computer classes, doing anything to maintain their families until the next big run came in.

As they approached the bluff and the remains of the tiny settlement, Liam wondered why its inhabitants had left. Had the salmon deserted them, too? Or had they been chased off by another, bigger, stronger clan who wanted the site for their own? Had thegussukbrought annihilation in the form of measles or influenza? He remembered reading in Alaska history class about the great flu epidemic of 1919, as terrible in Alaska as it was worldwide, how it had wiped out entire villages.

He saw Wy's cub, 78 Zulu, on the ground at one end of the bluff, and nearly swallowed his tongue. “We're going to land there?” he managed to croak.

She ignored him. They circled once over the camp and what Liam saw made him forget his fear for the second time. “Hey!”

“I see her!” Wy yelled over the sound of the engine. She banked to line up with the edge of the bluff and throttled back so far Liam thought the engine had died. They touched down lightly and rolled to a halt. Liam was out of the plane the instant it stopped moving and his longs legs ate up the ground between the bluff and the tents in seconds.

He knelt next to Prince, who was lying on her back, half in and half out of one of the tents, her hat a few feet away. “Prince? Diana?” He felt her throat for a pulse, and was infinitely relieved when it thudded against his fingertips.

Wy went past him and bent over the man.

“Is he alive?”

“Yes.”

Prince's eyes opened. “Whozzit?”

“It's Liam Campbell, Diana, and Wy Chouinard. You're at the village site with… ah…” He looked at Wy for help.

“Professor McLynn,” she said, and helped McLynn, groaning, to a sitting position. The left shoulder of his khaki shirt was stained with blood, which did not obscure the neat hole through his sleeve.

Prince sat up on her own. Her hand went to her head and she groaned. “Damn. I have got the worst headache.”

She reached up. Liam caught her hand. “Let me look.”

The hat and her thick hair had cushioned most of the blow, but there was a goose egg, swollen and tender, swelling her scalp. “Somebody clobbered you a good one.” He sat back on his heels. “What happened? Can you remember?” Head injury was frequently associated with short-term memory loss; he hoped that was not the case here.

He watched her struggle to regain some kind of composure. “I don't know. Wait a minute.” She closed her eyes briefly, opened them again. “There was a four-wheeler. When we landed.”

“Where?”

She pointed with a shaking finger, and he got up and walked around the tent. There were fresh tracks, but no four-wheeler. He returned to Prince. “How long ago?”

She looked at the no-nonsense watch with the large round face and the big numbers strapped to her left wrist. “I don't… Fifteen minutes. Thirty. Maybe an hour? We were late getting off from Newenham, I had to preflight the Cub.” Prince sighed, looking suddenly tired, and closed her eyes. “We saw the four-wheeler from the air. He was hiding inside the tent. He clobbered me with something, I don't know what. Felt like a sledgehammer. That's all I remember.”

There wasn't any point in asking her if she recognized the guy; she was too new to the area. McLynn might have, though. “Mr. McLynn?”

The man's voice was faint but definite. “Professor McLynn.”

“Professor McLynn, did you see who shot you?” McLynn muttered something inaudible. “I beg your pardon?”

McLynn opened his eyes and shouted, “Miserable grave robber!”

“Did you see who it was, sir? Did you recognize him?”

Wy pressed him forward to glance down at his back, and he gave an involuntary, pain-filled groan.

“Wy? How's he look?”

She was shaken but her voice was firm. “He's only creased. He can make a fist. He's not bleeding much anymore. His skin is clammy and his pulse is fast but steady.”

“You have a first-aid kit in the plane?” She nodded, and got it. Between them, they patched McLynn's shoulder and Prince's head. Liam closed the kit and stood up. “Wy?”

She looked up from helping McLynn to a seat on a log. “What?”

“Get in the air and start circling the area. Look for a four-wheeler heading away from here. Don't try to stop them, just figure out where they're going.”

Prince got up and moved forward slowly. “It's all right. I can secure the scene. Go with her, sir.”

He gave her a sharp glance. “Are you sure?”

“I'll be all right. I'll secure the scene.”

For the fifth time that day Liam got into an airplane. This time his rage eclipsed his fear of flying, and he waited almost impatiently for Wy to climb into the front seat and start the engine.

Diana Prince was an Alaska state trooper. Nobody, nowhere, nohow assaulted an Alaska state trooper and got away with it. Liam wanted this perp's scalp, and he wanted to be the one personally to take it. “Come on,” he barked. “Let's get the lead out.”

Wy let down the flaps and pushed in the throttle and the Cub shot off the edge of the bluff, dropped a little and then grabbed for air and soared. “Don't get too high,” Liam yelled. “Make a circle close in first. Then move out, a little at a time. I don't want to miss anything.”

She nodded and banked left. Liam set his teeth and held on to his seat and stared out the left window. The area beneath them unfolded like an uneven patchwork quilt made of silver and green. Sections of river, flashes of streams, glints of lakes alternated with stands of cottonwood, poplar, aspen, birch and evergreen. Diamond willow bordered swamp, swamp edged lakes, lakes flowed into streams and rivers, and, “There!” In a move reminiscent of their experiences herring-spotting the previous spring, Liam hit Wy on the shoulder and pointed. “Right there!”

A four-wheeler trundled over the top of a rise in front of them. Wy dropped down to a hundred feet and roared right over the top of it. The driver cast a white-faced look over his shoulder and gunned the motor.

“Do you know him?” Liam yelled. Wy shook her head. “Go around again!”

She nodded to show she'd heard, and banked left to make a wide circle around the man on the fleeing four-wheeler.

Liam unsnapped his holster and pulled his weapon with his right hand. With his left he reached for the fastening on the door, folding the top half up until it latched against the underside of the left wing. Below, brush and trees and ponds and streams slid past at an unhealthy rate of speed.

Wy's head jerked around, even as they regained level flight. “What the hell are you doing, Campbell?”

“Find me a lake in front of him. Drop down as low as you can without landing and throttle back as far as you can without stalling!”

“Liam-”

“Just do it!”

She twisted her head enough to see his weapon, a ninemillimeter automatic, now stuffed into a gallon-size freezer Ziploc bag he'd pulled from the box of essentials she kept in back of the passenger seat, including a roll of duct tape, which he used to tape the bagged pistol to his right hand. With his left hand he folded down the bottom half of the door. Wind and the noise of the engine howled through the plane.

“No!” Wy shouted. “Liam, you can't! Don't-”

“You're working for me, Chouinard! Find me that goddamn lake or I'll jump right here!”

Her hands moved and the Cub took a nosedive, this time the throttle going back so far he thought for a fleeting moment she'd cut fuel entirely. They dropped to fifty feet above the deck, drifting above the ground like a kite.

Liam was terrified and furious and grimly determined. If all they did was follow, either the four-wheeler or the Cub would run out of gas. If it was the four-wheeler, the Cub still had no place to land nearby and the driver could disappear into the brush. If it was the Cub, the four-wheeler could make its escape while they were refueling in Newenham. A man was dead and two people had been assaulted, and Liam simply couldn't take the chance that the man on the four-wheeler, at the very least a material witness and at most the perpetrator himself, would get away.

He tossed his hat behind his seat, grabbed with his left hand for the handhold on the interior fuselage above Wy's head and twisted around to extend his left foot between the edge of the fuselage and Wy's seat, over the side, feeling for the tiny, treaded step bolted to the strut. He couldn't find it at first, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He forced himself to look down, spot the step and guide his toe to it.

A quick look at Wy showed him a pulse thudding at the side of her neck, her lips pulled into a snarl. Her hands were clenched on the yoke, and her eyes glanced from the dials on the control panel to the terrain below like someone watching a tennis match. His body weight hanging off the left side of the plane threw the trim out of kilter, and the muscles of her wrists stood out in an effort to hold the Cub to its slow turn.

She glanced in his direction and saw him looking at her. She unclamped her jaw long enough to shout over the sound of the wind roaring through the cabin, “If the fall doesn't kill you, Campbell, I will! Lake coming up! I'll count down from five! Jump on my mark!”

He nodded, all the response he was capable of, and settled his right foot on the edge of the fuselage where the door folded down. His left hand gripped the handhold like grim death and his right, awkwardly because of the pistol taped to it, grasped the edge of the door opening.

“When you jump, don't just fall, push yourself away! I'll bank right! Do you understand?”

He nodded.

She trimmed the plane, adjusted the throttle, checked their airspeed, ran a swift calculation for drift. “All right! Five!”

His fingers tightened.

“Four!”

The plane hit a bump and his right hand jerked free. The right side of his body swayed away from the fuselage, his hand flailing wildly for a grip, his body throwing the aircraft even further out of trim because of the wind resistance. Wy cursed and banked a short, hard right, and Liam fell forward, grasping at the doorframe. He'd just gotten hold of it again when his right foot slid off the edge. The entire weight of his body was supported between his left hand on the handhold and his left foot on the strut step.

The plane, mercifully, leveled out. “Three!”

The four-wheeler passed beneath them, the driver a transitory impression of black hair and faded blue plaid, hunched over the handlebars, driving desperately toward an escape that just wasn't in the cards.

“Two!”

Liam looked over his shoulder and wished he hadn't. They were skimming maybe twenty feet above the surface now. A clump of white spruce jumped out in front of them and Wy swore, and the Cub hopped up and over like a startled rabbit. Even at their reduced pace their airspeed felt entirely too fast for comfort, and like warp nine for someone about to jump.

“One!”

Liam summoned up every ounce of courage he had and tightened muscles he didn't even know existed. A flash of silver glinted ahead.

“MARK!”

He closed his eyes and pushed, the hand with the gun in it knocking awkwardly against the side of the plane. The Cub fell away from him as if slapped aside by his thrust alone, and he had just enough time to hear the roar of the engine as Wy shoved the throttle all the way in.

She'd brought the Cub so low he didn't have time to curl into a protective ball, and his back hit the water with a loudsmack!He froze, more at the shock of impact than at the temperature of the water, which seemed almost lukewarm compared to his imagining. The reason became clear when he brought his legs down and touched bottom almost immediately. Shallow waters, even shallow waters in Alaska, had warmed up by the third week of July.

He stood up and his head broke water. The lake came to his chest. An explosion of sound he momentarily mistook for the Cub crashing came from the opposite end of the lake, and he turned to see a terror-stricken moose crash through the brush and vanish into the undergrowth.

His hearing was a little watery. He slapped the sides of his head to clear his ears, and was rewarded by the irritated buzzing of the Cub. He looked around and found it making a tight circle in the air just over a knoll to his right. He waved reassurance, and the Cub waggled its wings and pulled out of the circle to head back in the direction from which they had come, an arrow pointing his way.

Liam took a step forward and found the bottom of the little lake, barely a hundred feet across, rich with mud and rotting vegetation that clung lovingly to his feet. He slogged out eventually. The edge of the lake was not an improvement, a soggy marsh interspersed with pools of water and grassy hillocks.

He plodded grimly on until he reached the top of the knoll Wy had buzzed, where the ground was comparatively drier. The sound of the plane was nearer now, as was the sound of the fourwheeler, and his head cleared the top of the fifty-foot summit to see the Cub make a very low pass over the four-wheeler, only missing the driver's head with the gear by inches. The fourwheeler swerved and almost overturned and then straightened at the last possible moment.

The Cub came back for another pass, and this time, by god, she clipped him, the gear catching one of the handlebars with a thump. This time it was the Cub that wobbled off.

“Wy!” Liam roared, angry and terrified. “Goddamn it, be careful!”

Wy steadied the Cub, banked right and came back for a third pass. The driver of the four-wheeler pressed his chest to the gas tank and opened the throttle up as far as it would go. It hurtled up the slope of the knoll Liam was standing on and directly at him.

“Christ!” Liam yelped, and leapt to one side.

The man at the controls opened his eyes, saw Liam, let out a terrified yell and tried to swerve, but it was too late. Man and machine missed Liam with a foot to spare, and flew over the top of the knoll. They parted company about halfway down and crashed separately into the other side. Liam regained his feet and took the hill back down in giant steps, reaching the man as he got to all fours, shaking his head.

“Halt!” Liam said, and pointed his nine-millimeter.

The pistol was still in its Ziploc bag, still duct-taped to his hand. The man, revealed to be young and Yupik, looked at the gun, looked at Liam and got to his feet to run.

Liam had had just about enough of jumping out of planes and out of the way of oncoming four-wheelers, and he wasn't about to go haring after someone through the Alaskan Bush, especially in July. The mosquitoes had already formed a fierce cloud around his head. He felt for the trigger and fired a round skyward through the plastic. The resulting boom echoed for miles. “You run, by god, I'll shoot your ass off,” he said, and he meant it.

The young man surrendered.

The owner of the four-wheeler had fallen asleep, his head sunk to his chest at an awkward angle. “You know this man?” Liam asked McLynn.

“No,” said McLynn, who looked pale and strained but alert. “Looks like he's from the village.”

“A village,” Liam said, agreeing, “but which?” He walked over to the four-wheeler and put his hand on the man's shoulder, giving it a gentle shake.

The man woke up with a phlegmy snort. “Whuh? Whazzat?” He blinked at Liam. “Who you?”

“I think that's my question,” Liam said. The man looked confused. “Who are you, sir? What is your name?” Start with the easy stuff first, the information they had no reason to lie about.

“Frank,” the young man said, willingly enough. He seemed less out of it that he had been when apprehended, although the smell of alcohol that emanated from his breath and clothes was still strong. His voice was low, and, like the Kulukak elders, he had the accent of someone who had grown up speaking Yupik at home and English at school.

“Frank what?” Liam said patiently.

“Frank Petla.”

“Where are you from, Frank?”

Frank took time out to remember. “Koliganek.”

Koliganek was a Yupik village halfway up the Nushagak River. “What are you doing so far away from home, Frank?” Liam said, perching on the four-wheeler seat, folding his arms and assuming the mien of someone who had all the time in the world to shoot a little breeze. It was after four o'clock, the afternoon sun was warm on their faces and a light wind was keeping the bugs off. His uniform was damp and uncomfortable, but he ignored it. He heard Prince shift restlessly behind him and turned his head to give her a warning look. Her eyes widened, and she subsided. Wy had moved from the borrowed Cub to her own, cowling up, head down in the engine, back turned to the others, the set of her spine a clear indication that he was still being ignored.

“Fishing,” Frank said. He could have added, What else? but he didn't. Liam's uniform, damp or not, had finally registered. “You a trooper?”

“Uh-huh,” Liam said peaceably.

Frank gave his wrists a futile tug. “You the one got me tied up here?”

“Yeah.”

Frank frowned a little, thinking. “You jumped out of a plane.”

“Sure did.” Although it was something he'd rather not think about.

Frank was impressed. “Jesus, man, you coulda killed yourself.”

From the corner of his eye Liam saw Wy's back stiffen. “I had to talk to you, Frank.”

“Jesus,” Frank said again. “You're worse'n the Mounties.”

Liam smiled. “Why, thank you, Frank. I don't think anyone's ever made me a nicer compliment.”

Frank's expression indicated that a compliment was not exactly what he'd had in mind. Awareness, and with it truculence, settled over him like fog down a mountain.

Liam did not depart from geniality. “What were you doing up here on the bluff, Frank?”

Frank tried bluster. “I don't know what you're talking about. I wasn't up here, I was minding my own business, riding my four-wheeler around, when you come flying out of the sky. You threatened to shoot my ass off,” he remembered suddenly. He became indignant, or pretended to. “Waving that gun around like nobody's business.”

“Speaking of waving a gun around-” Prince said hotly.

“Trooper,” Liam said. He didn't raise his voice, but she shut up, jaw closing with an audible snap. He smiled at Frank. “I've got this problem, Frank. Maybe you can help me.”

Frank eyed him suspiciously but didn't say he wouldn't.

“I've got a couple of people assaulted on this bluff, right here, less than two hours ago, by someone we think drove in on a four-wheeler.” He clicked his tongue. “I'm sorry to have to say it, but yours was the only four-wheeler around.”

Frank tried bravado. “That don't mean nothing. Hell, everybody's got a four-wheeler in this country.” He jerked his head in the direction of the air base. “The goddamn military's got a dozen, they're all over the place looking for stuff that falls off their planes. Not to mention shooting moose they got no right to,” he added bitterly.

“You're probably right, Frank,” Liam said, nodding. “Still, I have to say we did a pretty thorough search from the air, and yours was the only vehicle we saw anywhere near here.”

Frank hunched a shoulder. “Not my problem.”

“Probably not,” Liam said. He waited.

Frank grew uneasy in the silence. He tugged at the cuffs, and tried whining. “Man, can't you loosen these up? My hands are hurting.”

“I'm sorry, Frank,” Liam said, shaking his head sadly. “I can't do that.”

Frank tried belligerence. “Why not? You got no right to hold me, man, I'm a Native. You got to turn me over to my elders.”

“Your elders are about eighty miles northeast of here,” Liam said dryly, “and I don't think they're going to want to have anything to do with you anyway. Village elders don't hold with murder any more than the state does, Frank.”

Frank tried bluster again. “I don't know what you're talking about, man.”

Liam became serious. “I think you do, Frank. I think you know exactly what I'm talking about.” He saw the panic in Frank's eyes, and dropped his voice to a confidential level. “Look, Frank, I know how it is, you get a few drinks in you, you get in a fight with your girl, you climb on the four-wheeler and light out. You drive out over the tundra, you wind up here, you don't really know how, and you find a couple ofgussuksmessing with the bones of your ancestors.”

“Yeah,” Frank said, eyes locked to Liam's. “Messing with my ancestors, man.”

“So you lose it. You coldcock one, you let off a couple of rounds at the other, winging him-nice shooting, Frank, by the way.”

“Thanks, man,” Frank said involuntarily.

“So you did shoot him,” Liam said softly.

Frank tried panic. “No! I didn't shoot nobody! I don't even have a gun!”

Liam looked surprised. “You don't? Well, gee, Frank, who does this rifle belong to, then?” He picked up the.30-06 he'd leaned against the left front tire. “You had it when I caught up with you.”

“I found it,” Frank said. “It was laying on the ground.” Inspired, he added, “I almost ran over the top of it with my four-wheeler, man. Somebody must have dropped it.”

“Maybe a hunter,” Liam suggested. “Sure,” Frank said eagerly. “A hunter.” Liam scratched his chin. “Well, maybe that's so, Frank.” He paused, and looked skyward for revelation. “It's a pretty nice rifle, guy what owns it must take pretty good care of it. Doesn't look like it's been laying out too long.”

Frank hunched a shoulder.

“What do you think he was hunting?” Liam said.

“What?” Frank said. “Who?”

“The man who lost the rifle,” Liam said patiently. “What do you think he was hunting?”

“I dunno,” Frank said, bewildered. “Ducks, I guess. Geese? Plenty of those around, this time of year.”

“Well, sure,” Liam said, warmly congratulatory. “Ducks and geese.” He paused, and added reluctantly, “Of course, they aren't in season at the moment. Another month or so to go before you can even buy a duck stamp.”

Frank forced a smile. “That don't mean nothing out here.”

“No,” Liam agreed. “You're surely right about that, Frank.” Frank brightened, until Liam added, “Of course, I don't believe a lot of hunters go after ducks and geese with a thirty-ought-six, now, do they? You'd have to be a mighty fine shot to do that, wouldn't you?”

“I dunno.”

“A shotgun would be more likely for someone looking to bring home some birds for the stew pot, now, wouldn't it?”

“I dunno,” said poor Frank.

“And I think any hunter worthy of the name takes better care of his firepower than to leave it lie in a swamp somewhere.” Liam shook his head disapprovingly. “Lousy thing to do to a fine piece of equipment like this here Winchester.”

“It's a Remington,” Frank said. “A two-eighty. Oh.” He looked wildly around for support and found none.

“It's your rifle, isn't it, Frank?” Liam said sorrowfully.

“I guess so,” Frank said, looking ready to burst into tears.

“And you shot this man and hit this trooper with it, didn't you?”

Too late Frank realized what he'd admitted to and tried desperately to backtrack. “I never shot nobody!”

“I can see how it would happen,” Liam said, ignoring Frank's outburst to paint a revised scenario. “You're fishing out of Newenham, you're between periods, you borrow a four-wheeler and you come here to visit the village. Maybe your folks come from here, and you've come to pay your respects.” Liam folded his hands and did his best to look pious. “But maybe you had a few before you came, and when you got here you found two people poking their noses in where they didn't belong.”

“Now, wait just a minute!” McLynn exploded. He was on his feet, and feeling much healthier, if the look of outrage on his face was any indication. “This man was grave-robbing! I got here and he was stuffing all the artifacts that I had excavated over the summer into a bag!” He pointed, triumphant. “That bag right there, tied to the handlebars!”

Liam looked thunderstruck, and slid the drawstring of the dark blue nylon stuff sack from the right handlebar to hold it aloft. Its contents pressed against the sides to cause interesting bulges in the thin fabric. “This bag?”

“That exact bag!” McLynn stood where he was, glaring. “I was going to stop him and he shot me!”

“Frank,” Liam said, his heart broken. “This can't be true.”

“I didn't shoot anybody,” Frank said obstinately.

Liam emptied the contents of the sack on the ground.

McLynn pounced. “There, there's the carvings we found in two-E, probably amulets. This is the needle we found in five-F, and this is the awl we found in six-C.”

“And this?” Liam held up what looked very much like a knife carved from a translucent length of bone. It had a short hilt, carved with figures long since worn to little more than faint ridges, and a short, wide, slightly curved blade that came to a sharp point. There was blood on it, dried brown and flaking, but it was something Liam had seen too often to mistake now.

Frank looked frightened. He said nothing.

McLynn hesitated.

“That's a storyknife,” Wy said from behind Liam.

He'd known she was there and didn't jump, but Prince and McLynn did. “What's a storyknife?”

Too interested in the artifact to maintain her attitude of frozen fury, she took the knife and held it up. “I've got one of these. Mine's made of ivory. It's much smaller, though. This is beautiful. Look at the carving on the hilt. And it's old, too.” She lowered the knife and looked at Prince. “It's a toy used by young Yupik girls. They take their younger siblings down to the riverbank and carve stories into the sand. Teaching stories, mostly, about kids who disobey their parents and are subsequently killed and eaten by monsters.”

Prince chuckled. “That'll teach 'em, all right.” She winced and put a hand to her head.

“I'm surprised to see one here, though,” Wy said. “I thought storyknifing was a custom practiced only on the Delta. North of the Kuskokwim Mountains, anyway.”

McLynn came forward and nipped the storyknife out of her hands. “Yes, well, that's all very well, but it is an important part of my research and my paper-”

“That's the knife we saw sticking out of Nelson's mouth when we found the body,” Prince said.

“I thought it might be,” Liam said, and took the knife from McLynn. He looked at Frank.

“I didn't do it!” Frank said frantically. “I found the sack! It was laying on the ground!”

“Right next to the rifle, I bet,” Liam said.

Frank didn't even hear him. “I didn't take nothing! I didn't shoot anybody! I didn't kill nobody! I didn't do anything! I want a lawyer!”

A mile from the dig he found the dump Nelson had referred to in his journal and, glad to delay the inevitable, stopped the fourwheeler. It was a mound of dirt fifty feet across, and some of it had been there long enough for the grass to sprout. There was even some Alaska cotton, white tufted blooms waving in the breeze, and some dwarf fireweed, although those two hardy plants would probably sprout before the lava cooled off after a volcanic eruption. Over the other, fresher dirt, there were marks of some tracked vehicle, a small bulldozer maybe, or a backhoe. Liam walked all the way around the mound, and found a hole dug in the far side, away from the dig. He wondered if Don Nelson had been digging there. He kicked at the sides of the hole, and the clods came away easily, not yet hardened into place by the passage of time. He didn't see anything but dirt and more dirt, so he climbed back on the four-wheeler.

It took over an hour to get to the Air Force base, and by the end of the journey Liam was heartily sick of trying to keep the four-wheeler upright. There was nothing intrinsically unstable in the design-handlebars, a seat and a freight rack equally balanced over four wheels-but for some reason it threw his balance off. The only time he'd been on the direct path to the base was when he'd been crossing it, and he'd had to get out and push his way through the mud three times, which didn't improve his frame of mind. The knowledge that he was going to face his father for the first time in over three years with a stained uniform and muddy footgear soured his mood even further.

He knew enough to go around the runway, not across it, but they were waiting for him anyway, a Jeep with a couple of M.P.'s in white helmets sitting in front, identical quizzical expressions on their very young faces. Military men always wore the same mustaches: a thin fringe of hair that never quite seemed to fill in. Theirs were brown and blond, and only served to make them look even younger and more government-issue than they already were.

Liam said who he was and what he wanted, and the driver slammed the Jeep in gear and made a wide, flamboyant circle around Liam to lead the way. Liam fell in behind, the fourwheeler marginally more stable now that he was on pavement.

He'd been born on an Air Force base in Germany, and he'd spent most of his formative years on Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. Here were the same regulation buildings lined up at the same regulation angles, the bunkhouses for the enlisted men, the shops and hangars lining the runways, the command and administrative offices, always the biggest buildings on any base. Everything was made of the same material, too, siding and shingles covered with regulation gray paint, all purchased in bulk by the Department of Defense from the lowest bidder, who was usually one of the larger contributors to reelection campaigns of members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Squares of regulation-height grass fronted the living quarters and the administration building, and someone had taken the time to comb the banks of the Nushagak River for regulation-size rocks, paint them a regulation white and line them up around the regulated squares of lawn. The benevolent old sun bathed everything in deceptively mellow light, miles of gleaming black tarmac, the runnels of the corrugated tin roofs, the surface of the great river and the Bay beyond.

That selfsame sun positively glittered off the metal wings of the aircraft parked on both sides of the strip, outlining the silver fuselage of the jets, the camouflage patterns of the Hercs and the bright orange paint jobs of the AirSea Rescue units with almost painful clarity. Heavy equipment was lined up like soldiers next to a garage, a tractor with a big silver blade, a road grader with an even bigger blade, a dump truck, a front-end loader, a back-hoe and some others Liam didn't recognize. He'd bet the Air Force base's taxiways were clear of snow before the runway in Newenham was.

Liam followed the Jeep along a regulation route and pulled in next to them in front of the regulation Base Officers' Quarters, which naturally had the largest lawn, the nicest view and was the farthest away from those noisy runways. The M.P.'s got out, straightened their regulation uniforms and trod the regulation steps. The second waited for him, regulation door held open.

Liam interrupted his snide inner commentary with a pithy warning to pull up his regulation socks. Okay, he'd affronted his father, a career man, by refusing a similar life in the military, and he'd further annoyed Charles by being afraid to fly, thus condemning himself to a lifetime of not necessarily silent disapproval. That said, Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell was not the entire United States Air Force. Chinook Air Force Base was a pretty little base, neat and tidy, in a beautiful setting, and seemed prepared for action. The men and women stationed here were serving their country for a paltry remuneration and at considerable personal sacrifice, most of them far from homes and families. He brushed futilely at the dirt on his pants, squared his hat, thanked the men in the Jeep with grave courtesy and climbed the stairs, trying not to feel that he had descended from the tumbrel only to ascend to the guillotine.

There was a comfortably furnished sitting room, with chairs and couches and tables and lamps scattered here and there. A writing desk sat in one corner, furnished with notepaper, envelopes and pens. A small refrigerator hummed in another corner. A baseball game played on television, courtesy of the satellite dish on the roof outside. An open window looked toward the river and the opposite bank, a mile away. At night you could probably see the lights of Port of Call, the tiny little village perched at the eastern edge of the river mouth. Every five or six years a winter storm took out more of that sandy bank, and every year those who refused to give up and move into Newenham moved their houses back another ten feet.

The room held only one occupant. Charles Bradley Campbell flicked off the television and rose to his feet. The M.P.'s stiffened into braces and snapped off salutes. “Colonel Campbell? This is Alaska State Trooper Liam Campbell. He says he's looking for you.”

Liam's father gave Liam's uniform the once-over and his brows drew together. “I'm not sure I should claim him, boys.”

The boys didn't risk a smile.

“Dismissed,” Charles told them, and they fell back a step, pivoted and marched out.

“Dad,” Liam said.

“Son,” Charles said. He held out a hand. Liam took it. His father's grip was warm and strong and didn't linger. “How have you been?”

“Swell,” Liam said.

One dark eyebrow went up, but all his father said was, “I was sorry I couldn't make it back in time for the funeral.”

“Either of them,” Liam heard himself say.

The eyebrow came down. “I called you.”

“Yes.” Both times.

“I was on duty when Charlie was buried, Liam,” Charles said in a level voice. “In the Gulf.”

Translation: I was under arms, serving my country in the front lines. Personal considerations must be sacrificed when the fate of the nation hangs in the balance. “I know,” Liam said.

“And as for Jenny, it happened so fast. I couldn't have made it back in time.”

You fly jets at twice the speed of sound, Liam thought. You couldn't have signed one out for a cross-country check ride, two days there and back again? “I know,” he said again. “I'm sorry.”

His apology was less than sincere and they both knew it, but it gave them room to move on. “What happened to you?” Charles said, indicating Liam's uniform.

“I fell into a lake.”

Charles sat down and waved a hand. Liam brushed at the seat of his pants and sat down opposite him. “How did you do that?”

“I was in pursuit of a suspect.”

Charles smiled. “Did you catch him?” Liam nodded. “Good. That's all that matters, then.”

Not quite all, Liam thought. “What are you doing in Newenham?”

Charles shrugged and sat back. “The 611th Engineer Squadron is doing a risk assessment study of Chinook Air Force Base, prior to an evaluation as to its continued viability.”

Liam fast-forwarded the words through a mental decoder, militaryese to English. “They thinking of closing the base?”

“It's a possibility.”

Chinook Air Force Base funneled a lot of cash into the Newenham economy. Combined with the last disastrous fishing season and the one currently in the making, the closing of Chinook might provide the third strike, you're out. It would severely impact Liam's job as well; an economic downturn invariably coincided with an upturn in alcoholic intake, and alcohol already fueled eighty percent of the offenses on his arrest reports. Child abuse, spousal abuse, assault, rape, murder-he could look for increases across the board. “Sometimes I think the fall of the Berlin Wall wasn't entirely a good thing.”

“It's not a done deal,” Charles said, “or even a sure thing. But with long-range jets and midair refuelings, we can police the North Pacific very efficiently from fewer and more centrally located bases.” He shrugged again. “And, as you say, the fall of the Wall hasn't provided an incentive for Congress to continue to pour funds into national defense. The Cold War is over, we won, and it's time to stand down.” A lift of his lip told Liam what Charles thought of Congress's take on the situation.

“What will happen to the base?”

“That's what we're working on now. The Air Force is committed to a safe community reuse of its former facilities.” Charles sounded as if he were reading from a press release. “The base has a lot of potential. We're reaching out to the local Native association. The state Department of Transportation is interested. It could even be turned into an extension of the University of Alaska, bunkhouses for dormitories, plenty of classroom space in the admin buildings. You could put an aviation school here; you've got runways and hangars and fairly consistent weather. Maybe set up an AirSea Rescue training facility. Or perhaps a fish-processing operation. But like I said, it's not a done deal. I'm here to talk to the base commander and his staff, and to evaluate their operation, see how necessary it is to the Alaska Defense Command.”

“They pick you because of your time at Elmendorf?”

“My familiarity with the Alaskan Air Command didn't hurt.”

“How long will you be here?”

“I don't know. A week, ten days, maybe.” Charles changed the subject. “I met a friend of yours this morning.”

In spite of everything he did to prevent it, Liam's shoulders tensed, and Charles's twenty-twenty pilot's vision spotted it right off. “Who was that?” Liam said.

“A local pilot, name of Schwenard.”

“Chouinard,” Liam said automatically, and cursed himself. Hell. Might as well go the whole route. “Wy Chouinard.”

“Ah. What kind of name is Wy?”

“Lakota Sioux. Short for Wyanet. Means beautiful.”

“Um.” Charles was good at those noncommittal noises that said nothing and meant everything. It was part of Liam's patrimony, and a useful adjunct to his interrogation technique, but he wasn't in the mood to be grateful today. “She mistook me for you at first.”

Liam refused to be drawn. “Well, you know how men in uniform all look alike.”

Charles laughed, a sound of genuine amusement. “I don't think that was it.” He raised his brows, a clear invitation for Liam to confide in him.

Liam thought about what his father would say if he knew that Liam and Wy had had an affair before Jenny's death, and decided to keep his own counsel, although exactly why was beyond him. Why should it matter what Charles thought of him? It wasn't like the older man was around all that much, it wasn't like they had anything in common to begin with, it wasn't as if anything in Liam's life was predicated on the fact of their kinship.

And it wasn't like Liam knew exactly what his relationship with Wy was at present, anyway. He remained silent.

Charles's expectant smile faded, and he said in a flat voice, “I also met the other trooper for the area. An Officer Prince?”

Liam relaxed, just a little. “Yes. She's new. Just arrived today, in fact.”

“She's also a pilot, she tells me.”

Liam nodded. “The troopers are looking for pilots nowadays.”

Yet another conversational pit yawned in front of them. Charles Campbell had done his best to cure Liam, stuffing his ten-year-old son into the cockpit of a Piper Tri-Pacer and talking him through endless takeoffs and landings, but Liam's fear was real, visceral and debilitating to the point of making him physically ill. Charles had persisted with recreational flying trips to Talkeetna and Seldovia and Iliamna, up until Liam was sixteen and reached his full height, six feet three inches, and could look Charles straight in the eye and say, “No.”

Liam supposed he should be thankful for Charles's attempts, as they had taught him just how tightly he could hold his sphincter muscles, a habit which proved invaluable when he became a trooper and flying into remote communities became part of the job.

But he wasn't.

Unwisely, Charles said, “Ever thought of trying to learn again yourself?”

“No.”

Subject closed. “She's a looker,” Charles said. “Your new trooper,” he added when he saw Liam's moment of confusion.

With an effort, Liam recalled Prince to mind. “I guess so,” he said.

“You guess so?” Charles chuckled. “I know so.”

Liam's gaze sharpened. “You're here for a week, ten days tops. Don't.”

If anything Charles's smile widened. “She's a grown woman.”

What could Liam say? It was true. He got to his feet. “I'd better head back into town.”

“What's the rush?” Charles said, rising in turn. “I thought you caught the guy.”

“I caught one. I'm working two cases at the moment.”

“What's the other?”

“A mass murder in Kulukak.”

“A mass murder? How many?”

“Seven.”

Charles grimaced. “Ouch. Sounds like a battlefield.”

Liam shrugged, the movement an unconsciously perfect copy of his father's, a smooth integration of muscle and bone that made both men look like big, lazy tigers just before they attacked. “Dead is dead,” he said, not quite lying and not quite telling the truth, either. “Can I hitch a ride into town?”

Charles's brows went up. “How did you get here?”

“Prince flew the perp I caught back to Newenham. There wasn't room in the plane for all three of us, so I drove his four-wheeler here. It was a shorter drive to the base than it was to town.”

“What do you want to do with the four-wheeler?”

“Somebody else can pick it up. I'm not driving it another inch, let alone forty miles.”

Another officer passed them as they came out of the building. He saluted Charles and did a double-take at Liam. “Hey, you the guy who jumped out of the plane? Man, are you crazy?”

Charles's head whipped around. The other officer said to him, “You should have seen it, sir. We saw this Cub buzzing around about ten miles west of here, and we started monitoring things through the scope. And then this guy bails out, just bails out and splashes down into a lake.” He shook his head, half in admiration.

Liam said shortly, “I don't know what you're talking about,” and followed his father to a row of trucks lined up in front of a bull rail; Detroit-issue steeds with government plates and Air Force brands on the doors. Charles climbed into one, Liam took the shotgun seat and as they rolled through the base gates Charles said, “Just how did you apprehend your suspect, Liam?”

“Have you talked to Callahan lately?” Liam said. “Last time I saw him, must have been fifteen years ago. Has the old bastard taken retirement yet?”

And they spent the forty miles of gravel road between Chinook Air Force Base and Newenham talking of old acquaintances from Anchorage and Elmendorf. One thing about Campbell Senior, he could take a hint. If he wanted to.

He dropped Liam in front of the trooper post, came inside ostensibly to check out Liam's office, really to see if Prince was there, which she wasn't, and made a date with Liam for dinner the following evening at Bill's. Liam stood on the porch, watching the truck go around a corner and out of sight. “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly. “You're a pilot, not an engineer.”

He went back inside and called his father's office in Florida. It was six o'clock Alaska time, which made it ten o'clock Florida time, so there was no answer. Tomorrow, he thought, hanging up the phone.

He tried the number David Malone had had on file for Max Bayless, and got the not-in-service message that began with those three loud and infinitely irritating tones that jarred the phlegm loose in his sinuses. He called Directory Assistance. The phone on the other end rang thirteen times-he counted-and then was answered by a breathless voice that had to rise over the noises of squabbling children in the background to inform him that she had no listing for a Bayless, Max, a Bayless, Maxim, a Bayless, Maximilien, or a Bayless of any kind, for that matter. A dead loss to the state of Alaska of sixty cents.

Prince walked in. “You been to the hospital?” he said.

She nodded. The gesture didn't look as painful as it had a couple of hours before. “I'm okay. They gave me some pain pills if I need them.”

“You need them?”

“No,” she said firmly, and made her report. She had managed to get Don Nelson's body on the last plane out to Anchorage. Frank Petla was locked up in one of the six cells located behind the local police department's dispatch office, waiting on arraignment. If Liam couldn't talk Frank around his request for a lawyer, he would have to delay further interrogation for either an early return of silvers, which would precipitate an equally early return to town by local public defender Cecilie Lundren from her fish camp up the river, or request a public defender from Anchorage. The way the fishing season wasn't going, it looked like requesting a P.D. from Anchorage would be preferable, although with state cutbacks it would probably be a week before one showed.

There was no longer any pretense in the American judicial system of a swift and speedy trial, Liam thought. So much for the Sixth Amendment.

But the sooner Liam informed Bill Billington of Don Nelson's death and Frank Petla's apprehension, the sooner she could swear out a felony warrant and the better for his chances of a conviction. Liam dearly loved convictions, and he didn't want this one screwed up because he'd violated the doctrine of habeas corpus. Too bad Frank Petla couldn't be tried before Bill. The letter of the law did not worry Bill a great deal, and her trials, conducted at Bill's Bar and Grill with Bill presiding over the bar and before a Greek chorus of bar patrons, most of whom were a little worse for the wear, frequently achieved the level of performance art.

He thought of Teddy Engebretsen, defendant in the first of Bill's trials Liam had witnessed, and grinned involuntarily. “Sorry, Prince. No, go ahead. What else?”

The phone rang as Prince was finishing her report. Liam picked up the receiver and said, “One moment, please,” and covered the receiver with his hand. “Have you looked for a place to stay?”

Prince shook her head. “Well, go look. I'd recommend the local hotel. It's expensive but it's clean, and it has hot and cold running water.” She started to speak, and he overrode her. “You're off duty, Trooper, as of now. There's a truck in the lockup out back.” He fished for the keys in the desk drawer. “Eat, grab some sleep and be back here in the morning ready to fly.”

She looked eager. “We'll be going back to Kulukak?” He nodded, and she said, “I'll be here at eight.”

“Fine,” he said. “I'll be here at ten.” He waited until the door closed behind her before saying into receiver, “Alaska State Troopers, Newenham post, Campbell speaking.”

The blast from the other end of the line nearly knocked him out of his chair. “What the hell you mean, wait a minute! What the hell kind of way is that for an Alaska state trooper to answer the phone! Supposing somebody was shooting me; was I just supposed to take a number while you got around to talking to me?”

Liam sat back up, crossed his feet on the desk and said, “Well, hey, John. How've you been?”

“Who the hell cares where I been! What's this I hear about you jumping out of airplanes!”

“News travels fast.”

There was a short, electric silence. “Jesus!” Barton spluttered finally. “You mean it's true?”

“Yup,” Liam said, and waited.

The explosion was not long in coming. Barton erupted into the phone, called Liam ten kinds of fool, questioned the legitimacy of his ancestors to the fourth generation, libeled his education, condemned his training and subjected his intelligence to a scathing review. He paused for breath, and Liam said sweetly, savoring the moment, “Just doing my duty, John. You know we troopers always get our man.”

Another eruption followed, and Liam waited it out, checking the level of paper in the printer tray, rearranging the inbox, the outbox and the to-be-filed box. By the time John ran down the second time, he'd closed two files, one for drunken driving and reckless endangerment on the road between Newenham and the Air Force base, one for sexual assault in the third degree, and had started on a third, embezzlement of funds from the local Native corporation. This last was being closed because there was no point in a prosecution, as no one could be found to testify for or against anyone else, no matter how much money was missing, and the person who had reported it gone had been fired and the person accused of stealing it named to the board of directors.

“Liam!”

The bellow broke his concentration. “John? You still there?”

“Yes, you smug bastard, I am still here.” A pause. Almost pleadingly, his boss said, “What the hell were you thinking?”

Liam put down his pen and sat back again. “I was thinking that a guy who maybe killed one person, who actually did shoot another and assault a third-one of our own, I might add-I was thinking this guy was going to get clean away if I didn't do something, and do it fast.”

A brief pause. “You're sure this guy did it?”

“The shooting and the assault, yes. I don't have his confession on the stabbing yet, but he was there, he had the murder weapon, he was fleeing the scene. And he was drunk. He looks pretty good to me.”

Another pause, while they both thought about what booze did in the Alaskan Bush to keep up the rates of child abuse, rape and murder every month. “There wasn't any other way to apprehend him?”

“No.” There might have been, but Liam had been the trooper on the spot, and it had been his decision to make. He wasn't going to back away from it.

Another pause. “All right.” A long sigh. “But, Jesus, Liam.”

Liam grinned at the calendar on the opposite wall. “Well, John, you know how I hate to fly.”

“Fine,” Barton said, “then just don't get on them in the first place. You don't have to jump out of them in midair.”

He didn't say and Liam didn't mention that if you were a trooper in the Bush, you flew.

Their minds must have been following the same track, because Barton said, “You ever think about learning to fly, Liam?”

“No,” Liam said for the second time that day.

“All right, all right,” Barton said, “never mind, it was just a suggestion. Who was this guy and what'd he do?”

Liam told him. Barton grunted. “Nice he returned to the scene of the crime.”

“You know what they say,” Liam said blandly. “That is your standard deviant sociopath's customary behavior.”

Barton made a rude suggestion as to what Liam could do with “they say.” “What about this boat thing?”

Liam's smile faded. He fished out the picture of the Malones in Hawaii. It was a little waterlogged but Molly's impact was undiminished. “Seven dead; father, mother, two kids, father's brother and two deckhands. Or so I gather, from talking with the locals and going through the father's business records. We'll have to wait for the M.E.'s ID to be sure.”

“Why?”

“There'd been a fire.”

“They die of smoke inhalation?”

Liam didn't hesitate. “I don't think so.”

Barton's voice sharpened. “Why not?”

Liam paused, putting things in order in his mind before he said the words out loud. He hated repeating himself, and he knew Barton hated listening to people repeat themselves. “Let me run it down for you. At approximately nine this morning, a couple of fishers spotted theMarybethia,drifting. At first they didn't think anything of it, but then they noticed she didn't have her nets out. When she got closer, they could see what looked like soot and scorch marks and nobody on deck. So they pulled their gear and took a look. Seven bodies and a boat that looked like it had been on fire. The fire was out by the time they got there. So they took her in tow, only she was down so much in the water they took another look around.”

Liam could hear the rat-a-tat of a pencil hitting Barton's desk. “And found what?”

“Do you know about drain plugs?”

Barton's chair creaked. “Yeah, the plugs in the stern. Usually rubber or plastic? You pull them when you pull the boat out of the water, to drain it. Also allows for snowmelt to drain when you've got it in dry dock over the winter.”

“Right. Well, someone pulled those plugs.”

Dead silence. “You don't say.”

“I do say. And not while they were in dry dock.”

“Interesting.”

“Very.”

“What else?”

“They towed theMarybethiato Kulukak, a little village on Kulukak Bay.”

The chair creaked and there was the sound of footsteps. “Where?”

“About forty-some miles east of Togiak.”

The sound of a finger tracing a map, mumbled curses. John had trouble distinguishing latitude from longitude. “Okay, got it.”

“Then they called me. I flew out with Prince-thanks for telling me she was coming, by the way-and boarded her.” Liam took a deep breath and said evenly, “It was a charnel house, John. All bodies burned beyond recognition. You could tell there'd been five adults and two kids by the difference in size, but that was about it.” He didn't mention the smell. He was doing his best to forget it.

Footsteps, creak of chair, thump as feet went on the desk, rata-tat of pencil. “So what makes you think this was anything more than a boat fire?”

“First, the plugs.”

“Yeah, but that happens, sometimes even to the most experienced fisherman. You hear about it all the time. Like the float planes on Lake Hood. Every other fall or so, somebody leaves taking off the floats until it's too late and the floats freeze in the ice. Or in the spring somebody forgets to take off the skis and put on the floats and the lake melts and their plane sinks. It happens. That all you got?”

“No. At least one of the adults was shot in the head.”

Creak of chair, thump of feet on the floor as Barton sat straight up. “Are you sure about that?” he said sharply.

“As sure as I can be without confirmation by autopsy. There is a wound in the left temple of one of the adult males that looks exactly like the entry wound of what I'd say was a nine-millimeter bullet.”

“Was there an exit wound?”

“I think so, but it's hard to tell for sure. The fire messed that side of him up pretty good.”

The pencil tapping resumed. Barton couldn't sit still at gunpoint. “You want me to fly an arson investigator out there?”

“The sooner the better. I had to leave the boat moored in the Kulukak small boat harbor. I've got one of the tribal council members watching it, but the Malones lived in Kulukak.”

Liam didn't have to say anything more. “I'll call the fire marshal tonight. He owes me a few. I'll have someone on the way first light tomorrow. When's the earliest flight into Newenham?”

“Nine, I think.”

“Okay, probably leaves Anchorage around six-thirty, seven. I'll have somebody on it.”

“Thanks.”

A pause. “Which came first, pulling the plugs or the fire?”

“Maybe he killed them and pulled the plugs to sink the evidence. Maybe she wouldn't go down and he set her on fire to cover up the evidence. I don't know, John. It's all just speculation at this point. Forensics will tell us more.”

“Did you find a gun on board?”

“Yes. A rifle, a thirty-ought-six. Couldn't tell if it had been fired. I sent it in with the bodies.”

“I'll call Bob down at the crime lab, make sure he gets right on it. Could be a murder-suicide thing, you know.”

“Could be.”

“But you don't think so.”

“No.”

Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat. “How many people fishing in that area yesterday?”

“I don't know for sure. There was a tender taking on fish in Kulukak. The processor they work for operates out of Newenham. I'm going over to their office to talk to the superintendent.”

“You must have some kind of estimate on the number of boats in the area.”

Liam sighed. “The locals told me upwards of fifty.” Silence.

“What the hell, John,” Liam said wryly, “if it was easy, everybody'd be doing it.”

“You need help?”

“Not yet. I may. I'll let you know.”

“Prince working out all right?”

“She calls me sir.”

Barton grunted. “Good. She's working for you.”

It was Liam's turn to be quiet.

“Oh hell.” Barton blew out a breath. “You're back up to corporal.”

Liam waited, trying to sort this out. “I haven't been a trooper for four months.”

“Corcoran put the hoodoo on Newenham,” Barton said bluntly. Corcoran had been the trooper sergeant in charge previously assigned to Newenham. “No one wants to transfer there. Somebody needs to be boss. You've got the time in. You have management experience. You're it.”

“That's why I got a probationer,” Liam said. “She's too new to know the difference.”

“That's why,” Barton said. “She'll be okay with a little seasoning. If it's any comfort to you, she scored in the top three percent of her class.”

“It isn't.”

“I don't blame you,” Barton said, and in an eerie echo of Liam's own first impression, “Just be careful how you go through any doors.”

“I plan on it. In the meantime,” Liam added, “you better make sure the media doesn't get hold of my promotion. They yelled loud enough when you didn't fire me.”

Barton hung up. Liam replaced the phone in its cradle and folded his hands on the desk, studying them with a frown.

In another life, John Dillinger Barton might have lived up to the promise of his first two names, but fortunately for the citizens of the state of Alaska he had been seduced early on into the practice of law enforcement, and rose high and fast through the ranks. At one time, there was nothing that Liam wanted so much as to move as high and as fast, even aspiring to as lofty a goal as colonel in charge of the entire organization.

And now, here it was for the second time, against all odds, against all expectations: preferment. Congratulations, he thought. You're a corporal. Again.

He waited for the surge of pleasure the news had brought the last time. It didn't come, and what was even more odd, he didn't miss it. The affair with Wy and the deaths of his wife and son and of those five people in Denali National Park had changed his perspective. He was still ambitious, but his ambition had been tempered by events. Being a trooper was important, but it wasn't everything.

Right now, today, he had a job he was good at, that he enjoyed, that contributed to the well-being of the community. He had at least the hope of a relationship with a woman he had thought lost to him three years before. He'd made a friend in Bill. He'd been more or less adopted by Moses. He was getting to know the people in his district, from the tiniest village upriver to the most isolated coastal community. He'd even begun to recognize a Yupik word here and there; thegatchahe had heard Halstensen use today in the Malones' living room. It was a word with a heavy accent on the second syllable and appeared to be used for exclamatory purposes, as when, coming out of AC, an old Yupik woman had slipped and spilled her groceries. “Gatcha!” she had said, clearly annoyed. He tested it out now, trying to imitate the sounds, putting thegin the back of his throat and loading it down.

There was a squawk from outside that sounded unnaturally close to a human chuckle. He got up and looked out the window, and a black and beady eye met his with an inquisitive cock of its head.

Even the goddamn ravens seemed to have stamped him with their croaky seal of approval.

He was putting down roots.

Not a man accustomed to introspection, Liam looked inside himself and for the first time in a long time did not despise what he saw.

It was a start.

Seafood North was a big square building painted a solid sea green. Their logo was a stylized fish head with a diamond-shaped patch of roe behind it, white on blue. It looked as if it had been generated by a computer: neat lines, perfect circles and no artistic value whatsoever. Liam thought of Nelson's remark about Yupik style, and wondered what the logo would have looked like if the company had asked a local to design it.

They were canning, Liam could tell by the thunks of the chink that echoed from within the building, chopping off the salmon heads before passing the bodies down the line to the butchers, who cleaned and gutted them before passing them down to the canners, who stuffed the raw fish into cans before the cans passed through the lidders and then into the pressure cookers.

Prior to his arrival in Newenham, what Liam had known about the science of salmon processing could have been writ large on the back of his badge, but over the past three months he had been at some pains to become familiar with his new posting, and that included the economic force which drove it. As any good beat cop could tell you, when you lived where you worked, when you knew all the players on a first-name basis, you were halfway to the solution of any crime practically before it had been committed.

The office was located in the right-hand corner of the building that fronted the road leading down to the docks. He opened the door and went in.

A young woman sat behind a counter, filling out a form. “Just a minute, please.”

A counter stood between Liam and the girl's desk. Behind her were the doors to what looked like two offices, both closed. The walls were lined with the cheap, quarter-inch dark wood paneling that had been the last, chic word in interior decorating in the fifties and sixties, before people had come to their senses and started Sheetrocking. In Alaska the paneling was particularly egregious because of the long hours of darkness during the winter, when you needed all the light in a room that you could get.

The paneling in this room was pockmarked with nail holes and patched with duct tape and maps. There were maps of the Bay area, fishing district by fishing district, the Ugashik, the Egegik, the Naknek, the Kvichak, the Nushagak, the Togiak. There were three different maps of Alaska, one geographical, one political and one divided into the twelve Native regions. There was a map of the North Pacific, with lines drawn between Seattle, Anchorage and Tokyo. There were a scattering of maps that upon closer inspection proved to be published by the Alaska Geographic Society, and variously depicted the Wrangell-St. Elias International Mountain Wilderness, the Aleutian Peninsula, prehistoric Alaska, the Kuskokwim River and Alaska's Native People, Their Villages and Languages.

He stepped to take a closer look at this last one, searching for Tulukaruk, but the only village listed on the thumb was Manokotak. It was a long way from Bristol Bay to the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta, too; he hadn't realized quite how far until now. There was a mountain range in between the two, the Ahkluns, that began where the Kuskokwim Mountains left off. Probably one of the reasons there were trees in the Bay and not on the Delta. Like the trees in Kulukak, he thought, although the fog had obscured most of them. He wondered how the old ones had made it over those dividing mountains to settle in the Bay. Probably paddled around. With their storyknives.

The rustle of paper made him turn. The girl was neatening a stack of yellow forms. The lighting was rectangular and fluorescent, with two of four tubes burned out. The only natural light was from the window in the door. The place felt like a cave. The girl at the desk still hadn't looked up. He cleared his throat. “All right,” she said sharply. She looked up and saw the uniform. “Oh.”

“Hi.” Liam removed his cap. “My name is Liam Campbell. Alaska State Troopers.”

She got to her feet. “Tanya Bernard.” Her hand was warm and a little sweaty, her handshake firm and businesslike.

He smiled. “Hi, Tanya. Is the superintendent in?”

She blinked under the influence of that smile, and looked down at her feet, as if surprised to find herself on them. She pulled herself together. “Certainly. I'll tell him you're here.”

She got halfway to the office door on the left-hand side and stopped. “Did you have an appointment?”

Liam shook his head. “No.” With a faint air of apology, he admitted, “I'm afraid there has been an incident with one of your fishing boats.”

“Which one?”

Liam saw no reason not to tell her; the Bush telegraph being what it was, the news would be all over the state before midnight. “TheMarybethia.”

She paled. “Dave Malone's boat?”

“Yes.”

“Is he all right?” She recollected herself. “Molly? The kids?”

“I'm afraid not,” he said regretfully, watching with interest as more color washed from her face. “I really can't say any more, Tanya.” She remained still, staring at him, and he said gently, “Your boss?”

She recollected herself with a start. “Oh. Right. Just a moment.”

She walked back to the office on not quite steady feet. Interesting. She tapped on the door. “Mr. Ballard?” She waited a moment, then opened the door just wide enough to stick her head in.

It was wide enough for Liam to see the feet propped on the desk, and certainly wide enough to hear the crash when the chair tipped over. There were some oaths. Tanya, with a discretion worthy of a personal assistant of many years' experience, slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

A few moments later the door opened, revealing a tall, bald man with a solid beer belly, wearing a rumpled navy blue sports coat over a brown plaid cotton shirt and khaki pants. “Yes?” He stifled a yawn and looked mildly puzzled. “Er, you're a trooper?”

“Yes,” Liam said. “I need to talk to you about one of your fishermen. Could we go into your office?”

He went in as Tanya went out. “I'd appreciate it if you would stick around until I can talk to you,” he told her.

She met his eyes with perfect composure, armor firmly in place. “Certainly.”

Wy had dogged Prince from the dig all the way into Newenham, unloaded McLynn and accepted a last-minute charter to Three Lake Lodge for two corn growers from Iowa. They were both blond and blue-eyed, short and stocky and pink-cheeked with excitement. They'd never been to Alaska before, they'd never fished for salmon and, as it turned out, they'd never flown in a small plane, either, as was made manifest when one of them had to throw up into his brand-new hip waders while they were going through Jackknife Pass.

The good news was that he did use the waders, without spattering so much as a drop on the brand-new carpet she'd just installed in the 180, and that they paid in advance in cash. She arranged to pick them up a week later and made the trip home a short one. It had been a long, long day, and she was weary to the bone.

“Tim?” she said, as she walked in the door of the white clapboard house on the bluff of the Nushagak River. “You home?”

“I'm in here.”

The kitchen. It figured. Tim spent half his life with his head in the refrigerator.

“What's for dinner?” She closed the door.

“I have to cook again?” he whined, but she heard the smile in his voice.

“It's your turn, I told you that this morning,” she said, and then halted in surprise in the kitchen doorway. “Jo!”

The short, stocky woman with the blond, frizzy hair came around the counter and enveloped Wy in a warm, solid hug. “Hey, girl.”

Wy returned the hug with as much energy and enthusiasm as she was capable of on this day, and Jo pulled back. “You're a wreck.”

“Gee, thanks, you look great, too.”

“I can go away, if you need me to.”

Wy made a rude noise. “Like hell. If I can't be mean to you, who can I be mean to?”

Jo's green eyes were shrewd. “Liam?”

Wy looked at Tim, leaning against the kitchen counter, dipping a plain hot dog into a jar of mustard. He was slight and dark, with flat cheekbones and compact frame. His dark eyes were wary and suspicious, and much older than the rest of him. No child of twelve should look out on the world with such distrust.

Tim saw her looking and thought it was at the hot dog. “Just a snack,” he said, and with one bite made the rest of it disappear.

“Uh-huh,” Wy said. “Is that what we're having for dinner again?” He drew himself up, offended. “No. We're having something different, like you said you wanted.” He stepped back, revealing the culinary riches behind him on the counter. “We're having polish sausage and sauerkraut,” he said proudly. He held up an empty package of Alaska Sausage's finest, and pointed at a quart jar of Claussen's Crisp Sauerkraut, also empty.

Wy, who after a year's steady indoctrination knew enough to be grateful that Tim allowed himself to be part of the kitchen crew rotation, said, “Looks good. Do I get anything green along with that?”

He looked doubtful. “Well,” he offered, “the sauerkraut used to be cabbage, and cabbage is green.” He brightened. “I got ice cream for dessert, though.”

“What kind?”

His smile was sly. “Häagen-Dazs. Vanilla.”

Wy sighed. “I am so easy.”

Jo laughed, and tugged Wy out of the room. “Come on, let's get you cleaned up while Chef Paul here does his thing.”

In her bedroom, Wy stripped off her clothes as Jo lounged on the bed. “Still sleeping alone, I see.”

Wy stopped, half in and half out of her jeans. “How can you tell?”

Jo made a face. “I'm a reporter. I notice the details. Like a fullsize bed in the room of a woman hankering after a king-size-bed guy.”

Liam was six-three. Wy tossed her jeans in the hamper and grabbed for the Sea Wolves T-shirt she used for a robe. “I'll be right back.”

She used up all the hot water and then some. When she came back into her bedroom Jo had picked up the little embroidered box on Wy's dresser, identical to the one Jo had on hers, both of which had been acquired on the isle of Crete during the European vacation that had been the reward of both sets of parents following a successful graduation from college. “Remember the store where we got these, how the guy behind the counter tried to pick us up?”

“Remember how we let him?” Wy said dryly, stepping into clean underwear.

“Ah yes, the Labyrinth by moonlight,” Jo said dreamily. “One of my favorite memories.”

“All you saw was stars, girl,” Wy retorted, “which is generally what you do see from lying on your back outside at night.”

“Slander, calumny and defamation of character,” Jo said peacefully. “I'll sue. What's this?”

Wy pushed her head through the neck of her T-shirt and peered over Jo's shoulder. “That? It's my high school class ring. Mr. Strohmeyer told me not to buy one, that I'd probably never wear it again. He was right, as usual.”

“Don't you just hate that? What's this?”

Wy looked, and her hands stilled on the zipper of her jeans. “A pair of earrings, what do they look like?”

“They are beautiful. I don't generally like gold nuggets, but these are really nice.” Jo held one of the flat, heavy loops up to her ear, admiring the effect in the mirror. “Where'd you get them?”

“A friend,” Wy said. She was sure there was no inflection in her voice to give warning, but she felt Jo's eyes boring into the back of her head. Being friends with a reporter could be a pain in the ass. “What are you doing in town, Jo?”

“Liam gave them to you.”

A real pain in the ass. “Yes.”

Jo put the earring back in the box and the box back on the dresser. She regarded it for a moment, and then turned to look at Wy. Jo had newspaper eyes, a steady, unwinking, patient stare that watched and weighed and waited, waited for the answers to her questions, waited for the truth. You could dodge, evade, equivocate, you could even lie, but those newspaper eyes would wait you out every time.

Joan Dunaway was a reporter for theNews,and had been one since she and Wy had returned from Europe the year they graduated from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Wy with a degree in education and Jo with a degree in journalism. She'd built up a reputation over the years for ferreting out bad behavior on a legislative and bureaucratic level and writing pull-no-punches stories about it. One of the more delightful stories Wy remembered had exposed the invariable habit of the commissioner of the Department of Corrections in hiring longtime friends for jobs tailored to suit their special talents. One of them had been a grocer, Wy recalled. At least the Department of Corrections had made some terrific deals on fresh produce for the four and a half months of the grocer's tenure of office.

Jo's juciest story to date had concerned the then sitting governor who had vacationed, all expenses paid, in Baja, Bali and Biarritz courtesy of one of the North Slope's major oil producers. The executive responsible had made the grievous error of not recognizing Jo in the bar of the Baranof Hotel. He had compounded this error by picking her up, seducing her and afterward indulging in pillow talk that drew connections between the vacations and a revision of the state's subsurface mineral rights law being debated before the legislature the following day. This not unnaturally wound up on the front page of theNews.He was a very attractive slimeball, she explained later to Wy, with very blue eyes and an ass as firm and round as a Delicious apple. “I swear to god, I wanted to bite it,” she declared, and she was regretful when he and his ass were indicted and later convicted, fined and imprisoned for bribery of a public official. The governor narrowly escaped prison only by payment of a $330,000 fine, but when the legislature changed hands two years later, they vacated the judgment and repaid the fine to him, with interest. “Ah, Alaska,” Jo had said fondly when she heard. “Gays can't marry and you have to speak English, but you can legally smoke pot and embezzlers never go hungry. Gotta love it.”

And she did, and she wrote about it every day, not only stories of bribery and corruption in the legislature, but stories of how the state worked. She wrote profiles of the weights-and-measures man who checked to see that you got the five gallons of gas you'd paid for, the waitress at Simon and Seafort's who retired after nineteen years on the job, the Alaskan old fart who cut firewood from his lot in Talkeetna and delivered it, one cord at a time, to buyers in Anchorage. She wrote about the people who fixed the potholes and tarred the roofs and shoveled the snow and loaded luggage onto planes, about the gardeners at the Municipal Greenhouse and the clerks at City Hall, about the woman who answered the phone at Victims of Violent Crimes in Juneau and the man who ran the flight service station in Soldotna. She was on a first-name basis with just about everyone in the state, from the man who set the tracks on the cross-country ski trails at Kincaid Park to the ranger who tracked down poachers in the Gates of the Arctic. Some of them loved her. Some of them hated her. None of it stopped her.

And it didn't stop her now. “How's it going? You and Liam?”

“It's not,” Wy said, hoping that would be the end of it.

A vain hope. “Why not?”

Wy sighed. All right, then, and maybe it would help if she said the words out loud. “Jo, if he'd left Jenny and Charlie…” She stopped. It was incredible how, even now, three years later, she had to force their names out of her mouth. “Wife and child” were generic terms, without personalities, wants, demands. “Jenny and Charlie” were people, people with needs and privileges that superseded hers.

She looked at Jo. Jo looked back with an uncharacteristically solemn expression. “I've got a Puritan streak a mile wide, Jo. What I did was wrong. You don't screw around with someone else's husband, you just don't. And you don't take the attention that rightfully belongs to his child. Children need their fathers.” Her shoulders slumped and she sighed. “If he'd come to me, if we'd married, I would have spent the next fifty years trying to make it up to his son. I would have been oh so considerate and understanding, I would have relinquished my time with Liam so he could spend time with his son, I would have tried to be friends with his wife, no matter how much she hated me, and she was bound to hate me.”

“And after a while,” Jo said slowly, “you would have come to resent it.”

“Probably.”

“And to take it out on Liam.”

“Probably,” Wy repeated.

“And yourself.”

“Especially myself.” Wy stood up. “So you see, Jo, as much as it hurt, it was the right thing to do.”

“Cutting things off, never seeing him or talking to him again.”

“Yes.”

“Except that now you are.”

Wy wandered over to the window and looked out at the fascinating view of her truck and Jo's rental car parked in the driveway. “Yes.”

There was a brief silence. Jo looked at the top of Wy's dresser. There was very little clutter: the embroidered box from Greece, a few ivory carvings, one a walrus rearing up with his tusks on display and his fat sides wonderfully wrinkled, another that looked like a little knife, no more than three inches in length, with a curved blade and a mask carved into the hilt. From the right eye of the mask a tiny face looked out, laughing. “You still love him.”

“Only because NPR's Scott Simon's never given me a tumble, and that's only because I have not been afforded the opportunity to meet him, swamp him with my extensive personal charm and carry him off to my tent.”

Jo had the reporter's indispensable and extremely irritating ability to stick to the point. “Jenny and Charlie are dead.”

“I know. Convenient, isn't it?”

“Oh Jesus,” Jo said, disgusted. “Martyrdom does not become you, Wy.”

Wy turned. “What?”

“You heard me,” Jo said, the ruthless gleam back in her newspaper eyes. “You've steeled yourself to make this great sacrifice, you've even managed to round up a child of your own without having to betray the great love of your life-speaking of convenient-”

“Wait just a goddamn minute!” Wy said hotly. “Where do you get off-”

“-and now that the love of your life-we may fairly call him that, I suppose, since you haven't let anyone else within sniffing distance since, other than that wimpy little wing cover salesman-”

“He wasn't a wimp!”

“-now that the love of your life is free, due, I might add, to no fault of your own, so that the two of you can join hands and waltz off into the sunset together, you're so in love with this noble renunciation act of yours that you're willing to do it all over again.” Jo shook her head. “Shit happens, Wy. It happened here, and it had absolutely nothing to do with you.” She paused, and gave Wy a considering look. “You didn't even wish them dead, did you?”

“What?” Wy said, horrified. “No! Never!”

“God, you were right about that Puritan streak,” Jo said, disgusted. “Sometimes I think you're not even human. Saint Wyanet, your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure.”

“Fuck you, Dunaway!”

“Backatcha and times two, Chouinard!” Jo stepped up to go nose to nose. In your face was her specialty, and where she scored most of her best stories. “Jenny and Charlie were killed by a drunk driver. Liam is single, and has somehow managed to find you again.” Her brows snapped together. “Are you afraid that it wasn't real after all?” she said with sudden suspicion. “Are you afraid that what you could have with Liam won't measure up to what you did have?”

“Oh for crissake,” Wy exploded, “don't say ‘what we had’ like I was Streisand and he was Redford. ‘What we had’ amounted to twenty-three flights into the Bush, four days in Anchorage and a thousand dollars in phone bills. It wasn't like we ran away to Paris together or something.”

Jo's smile was sly. “What?” Wy said, on the defensive. She knew that smile.

“Twenty-three flights, huh?” Jo said smugly. “Pretty specific number. Interesting that you remember it so exactly.”

Wy blushed again. The hell with this. She went to the bureau and picked up her hairbrush, yanking it ruthlessly through her shower-tangled curls. “So,” she said in an artificially bright voice. “What are you doing in town, anyway?”

Jo weighed Wy's determination to change the subject, found it inflexible, decided she'd said enough and dropped the subject of Liam. For the moment. “Following up on a story.”

“Oh yeah? What one?”

“I can't say right now.”

Jo's voice was sober, and Wy put down the brush. “Why not?”

Jo saw Wy's expression and made an obvious effort to lighten up. “Because it has to do with government shenanigans at high levels,” she said teasingly. “My specialty.”

“What, theNewsis looking for another Pulitzer?” Wy said, falling in with the new mood. One reason they'd been friends for as long as they had was because they respected each other's boundaries. Another was that they could get mad at each other, secure in the knowledge that neither was going anywhere, no matter how heated-or personal-the debate became.

Jo shook her head. “I'm on my own on this one. A source contacted me with the story. I'm here to talk to him in person.”

Wy's brow creased. “It isn't about the killings, is it?”

“Killings?” Jo's eyes narrowed. “What killings?”

Wy hesitated, but there wasn't any point in not telling her. Like Liam, she was well aware of the efficiency of the Bush telegraph. “Seven people were killed in a boat fire in Kulukak. It might not have been an accident. Not to mention which, I found a-”

“Seven people?” Jo vaulted off the bed. “Jesus! Are you serious?”

“No, Jo, I made it up. Plus I myself just happened to-”

“And not an accident? You mean murdered?”

“Liam thinks so, and by the way, I-”

“Is Liam the investigating officer? Where's your phone? Kitchen, right?” Jo shot out of the room and down the hall, where Wy heard her badgering Tim for the phone. Sighing, she sat on her chaste, full-size bed and put on her socks. One body wasn't much by comparison to seven, she supposed. Still, stumbling across murder victims wasn't something she did on a regular basis. Once every three months was about her average.

She remembered Bob DeCreft, the occupant of the last body she'd stumbled across, and chastised herself, although Bob, the crusty old coot, would have been the first to laugh. She wondered how Laura Nanalook, Bob's daughter, was doing on her own in Anchorage. Well, she hoped. If anyone deserved a break, it was Laura.

Liam. His face rose unbidden before her eyes and she thought of Jo's words. Was it true? Was she so afraid that an actual relationship with Liam would pale in comparison to their affair? She winced away from the idea. She'd never thought of herself as a coward. She flew in Alaska for a living, didn't she? She'd taken on the raising of a twelve-year-old boy with a lot of nasty relatives, hadn't she? She'd returned to Newenham, hadn't she, risking contact with her birth family?

The first time she'd seen Liam he'd been just another uniform. Then, seated next to each other in her plane, on their way to a stabbing northwest of Glenallen, she'd noticed his hands gripping the sides of his seat. His knuckles were white and his face was the same color. Here was this big, tall, strong, good-looking man, an officer of the court, an enforcer of the law. Why did she suddenly feel the need to help him fight his fear? They'd talked about books that day. She'd been reading Barbara Tuchman'sA Distant Mirrorfor the second time, and they'd compared notes on the calamitous fourteenth century, arguing Tuchman's comparison of that century to this.

By the time they landed in Mentasta Lake they were old friends. How could anything be that simple? Nothing else ever in her life had been up to then.

She followed Jo into the kitchen, and found her talking rapidly into the phone as Tim set the table. He folded paper napkins and placed them beneath the flatware, a frown of concentration on his face. He performed the simple task the way he did every household chore, as if getting it wrong meant expulsion from Eden. Compared to what Tim had come from, a place where he'd been beaten regularly and the last time nearly to death, her home probably did seem like heaven on earth.

He stepped back from the table and surveyed it, reaching out to move a glass an inch to the left. He turned and saw Wy watching, and a faint color crept up into his cheeks.

She hugged him, ignoring the momentary stiffening in his body. He had yet to become accustomed to casual physical affection. For that matter, she was just now learning it herself, but she was determined that Tim, by the time he was eighteen and ready to go to college, would know how to give and receive a hug, and mean it.

Jo hung up the phone. “Where does Liam live?”

“The last time I checked, he was still sleeping in his office,” Wy lied with determined unconcern.

“He's bunking on a boat down at the harbor,” Tim volunteered.

Jo pounced. “Which one?”

Tim was startled at the ferocity of Jo's interest. “Uh, er, theDawn P,I think.”

Wy stared. “How do you know that?”

She cursed herself for not moderating her tone of voice, because he was immediately defensive. “I remember because it's named after this girl I go to school with.” As they spoke, he flushed a deep, vivid red.

Wy gaped, and Jo grinned. “Is she pretty?” Jo said.

Tim hunched a shoulder, and shot Wy a sidelong glance. “She's okay, I guess,” he mumbled. The lid on the pot on the stove gave a clatter and with the air of one rescued from the deck of theTitanicjust before the stern went under he leapt gladly around the counter and pulled it off the burner.

The sausage was a little charred, but Wy liked her sausage crisp. They ate in silence for a few moments. “Who was that on the phone, if it wasn't Liam?” Wy said.

Jo took a bite of sausage and washed it down with a long swallow of Killian's. Jo must have brought some with her, because Wy didn't drink beer. She stole a covert look at Tim. A strand of sauerkraut had latched on to the front of his Nike Town T-shirt; other than that, he looked reassuringly substance-free. Girls to booze in one night, she thought gloomily. Somebody was going to have to talk to Tim about birth control, THE TALK every parent dreaded, and she had a pretty good idea who that someone should be. She remembered THE TALK she'd had with her adoptive parents, two schoolteachers only slightly more uptight than Queen Victoria. Certainly she could do better than that, but she surveyed Tim with disfavor on general principles anyway. Whose bright idea had it been to adopt this kid, again?

“Pete,” Jo said, setting the bottle down with a satisfied smack and burping without apology. “My managing editor. He wants me to check out your story. I need to talk to Liam. He didn't answer at the post.” To Tim she said, “You know which slip theDawn Pis tied up at?”

He shook his head. “There's a map at the head of both ramps. It'll show you.”

“You want to walk down with me?”

He brightened. “Sure.” He looked at Wy. “Can I, Mom?”

“Why not?”

“Great,” Jo said, reaching for the Killian's again. She paused with it halfway to her mouth. “You could come with us.”

Wy shook her head. “Not just now. I was going to go down the bluff to the river, see if I could catch us a few late reds or a couple of early silvers. I want to get some in the can before they all get up the river.”

Jo waited until Tim's head was turned before mouthing the word, Coward.

Tim groaned. “Salmon sandwiches for school again.”

“Just for that, you little ingrate, I'm telling Moses I want ten gallons of blueberries, not five, when he brings you back from fish camp, and guess who gets to pick them?”

Tim groaned again.

“Life's tough all over, kid,” Jo said. “Now hurry up and finish, I want to catch up to that trooper.”

“Are you writing a story?”

“Sure am,” Jo said, rising to carry her plate to the sink.

“What about?” Tim said, following her.

Jo dropped her voice to a deep baritone filled with terrible secrets. “Murder and mayhem on the high seas, me boy.”

“Wow!” he said, brightening. “You mean like pirates?”

Jo paused in the act of putting dishes in the dishwasher. “Maybe,” she said slowly. “Maybe, by god. Anything's possible on the Bay.”

Before the door closed behind them, Wy heard Tim ask, “Jo, what's an ingrate?”

Back at the post, Liam assembled two piles of evidence. One pile consisted of Nelson's notebook, the pencil drawings he'd made of the scene of Nelson's death, the notes he'd made after talking to Frank Petla, Wy, Prince and McLynn. The other pile consisted of the notes he'd taken at Kulukak, the picture of the Malone family sailing in Hawaii, the notes of the conversations with the Kulukak elders, Bill, Tanya and Ballard, the tender summary, the two rolls of film he'd taken of theMarybethia.The film would have to go into Anchorage by pouch tomorrow morning for development into trial exhibits. He wouldn't need to see the photographs. The scene was etched on the gray matter of his mind for life.

It was after eight o'clock in the evening. The day was three hours away from sunset. He thought about going over to Wy's. He had this need to see her, to breathe her air, to feel her flesh beneath his hands. It was growing stronger with every day, and half the time when he started going somewhere in the Blazer he'd find himself on the road to her house.

He picked up the local paper and turned to the classifieds. There was an actual house for sale, south of town on the road to Chinook, two bedrooms, one bathroom, a five-acre lot. Neither price nor location was listed. He dialed the number.

The phone rang once. The voice that answered was male and brusque. “Yeah?”

“Hi, my name's Liam Campbell. I was calling about the ad in the paper. The house for sale?”

“What's your driver's license number?”

Liam blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“What, you don't understand English? I asked you what your driver's license number was. And I don't got all day.”

Liam found himself fishing out his wallet. He read the number off, and waited.

“Huh. You born here?”

“Germany.”

“Huh. Army brat, I suppose.”

“Air Force, actually,” Liam said, struggling not to sound apologetic. “We moved to Anchorage that year.”

“Huh.” The syllable was disparaging.

Liam maintained a hopeful silence. Although it was heresy to admit in Alaska, he kind of liked Anchorage, but he wasn't going to say so if liking Anchorage was going to make the man on the other end of the line deem him an unsuitable candidate to purchase the house.

“Well, you can come over and look at it, but I ain't making no promises. Somebody comes along with a lower number, I give them first consideration.”

“Right,” Liam said. “Makes perfect sense. I understand completely.” He paused. “Okay. No, I don't. Mind telling me why?”

“I guess you really don't understand English, do you? The lower your driver's license number, the longer you been in the state. The longer you been in the state, the more likely you are to stay. If you look like a stayer, you get the house. If you don't, forget it. When you coming over?”

“How about tomorrow morning?” Liam said meekly.

“Can't, I'll be out fishing. Next Monday. Nine a.m. And don't be late.”

“Wait! I need directions!”

There was a grunt, and then directions, grudgingly given.

“And what's your name? Sir? Sir?”

The dial tone was his reply. He replaced the receiver, wondered what was going to happen on Monday, remembered waking up on theDawn Pthis morning and decided that if the house had working plumbing and a good roof, he would take it, no matter what kind of price had been hung on it.

There was one other house listed for sale in the paper, in Manokotak, forty miles west by air, which, according to the ad, needed a lot of work, was ineligible for financing and was available for rent for fifteen hundred a month with an additional month's rent for a security deposit, but only until the owner found a buyer. If it had running hot and cold, Liam might have been interested.

On the other hand, there were three boats for sale, two thirtytwo-foot drifters and a fifty-four-foot seiner. One drifter was going for fifty thousand or best offer, one for two hundred thousand if you bought the permit, too, and the seiner for eighty, although the electronics needed replacing.

He folded the paper and put it down. Bristol Bay was looking at a fifty percent bankruptcy rate for fishermen these days, what with the vanishing salmon runs and the rise of farmed salmon everywhere but Alaska, where farmed salmon was out-lawed. A lot of people were making career-changing decisions, including sons and daughters whose families had made their livings on the Bay since back before engines were legal and all the Bay drifters operated under sail. It was anybody's guess what would happen next.

It didn't mean the availability of real estate was going up, or its price coming down, though.

His stomach growled. One of Bill's burgers sounded about right, but Bill's Bar and Grill was a public place. You never knew who you might run into there. He decided he was more in the mood for the deli takeout at the NC market, and a cozy evening at home with a couple of fingers of Glenmorangie and a good book.

Even if that home was slowly sinking into the boat harbor, one inexorable inch at a time.

The next morning dawned early, like all summer mornings in the Bush. The sun would be officially up by six-fifteen, although it had been light out for hours before that. By the end of July they were losing four minutes and twenty-four seconds of daylight every day. You'd never know it by the extended sunrise.

The advantage was that there were very few times of day or night during the summer when you couldn't see your way down the path. It was a steep one, carved into the crumbling side of the bluff, a length of manila line looped between wooden posts the only thing between Wy and disaster. Some of the steps were large rocks, flat sides up, set into the dirt. Others were reinforced with scraps of wood left over from various building projects, onebytwelves, two-by-fours and one piece of metal grating. On normal days she rather enjoyed testing the limits, seeing how fast she could get down to the beach, but this morning she walked slowly, one hand just touching the rope, tapping each post with her fingertips as she passed it.

The mouth of the Nushagak opened before her, a wide stretch of water gray with glacial silt moving with stately deliberation between banks a mile apart. It formed part of the lifeblood of the Bay, along with the other hundred rivers of the area, providing the way home for salmon returning from the sea. It was, as well, the umbilical cord connecting the interior villages to Newenham. It was to Newenham they came, by boat in summer and by snow machine in winter and by plane year-round, to shop, visit relatives, play basketball, buy duck stamps, apply for moose permits, attend school, stand trial, serve time, take communion. Wy flew the river every day, upstream and down, and its size and power and importance in all their lives never failed to impress her.

In her more fanciful moments, she thought of the river as a woman, old and infinitely wise, loving but stern, never capricious but never quite predictable, either. When she took a life, or lives, when she sucked down a skiff with swift gray intent, or opened a lead in her frozen winter face to swallow a snow machine, she had her reasons, good ones, and if those on shore were left to mourn, why, death was a part of life, after all, and that was the way of the world, and the river, to give and to take with the same hand.

The beach was a wide strip of gravel and sand littered with driftwood bleached white by time and tide. That driftwood made for wonderful fires, and Wy could see the smoke from several here and there. Fishermen out early for the first red of the day.

The closest one was right at the base of her cliff. The last step was a big one, twenty inches to the beach. She jumped it, landing both feet solidly in a patch of gravel that rattled loudly on impact.

The man feeding the fire didn't so much as turn around.

“I already practiced, old man,” she said to his back.

“I know,” he said. “I saw you on my way down.”

“Oh.” She hesitated, and then moved forward to sit next to the fire, a little apart from him.

They contemplated the flames in silence. The weight of the river pulled at the banks, tangling in its current here a downed spruce, there an empty skiff that had slipped its mooring. A river otter chittered at her young where a creek flowed into the river. An eagle soared overhead, causing a flock of ducks and half-grown ducklings clustered at the edge of the water to fall silent. The tide was out, revealing the muddy banks of the river and the goose grass growing there. The water was half salt, half fresh, and the marsh on the Delta supported a rich and varied avian lifestyle. The ducks were fattening nicely, and both Moses and the eagle eyed them with approval. When the last salmon had made its run up the river, the ducks and the geese would be next on the menu.

Wy looked at Moses. He wore a dreamy expression, one she didn't see often, one he did not permit to show through his usual cantankerous crust. His mouth, usually held in a disapproving line, was relaxed, caught in a half-smile. He seemed to be remembering something pleasant. It didn't happen often, and she didn't try to interrupt.

He looked up suddenly and caught her eyes in his. “Are you angry when it rains? Do you blame God?”

“Blame?” she said, puzzled. “Who's to blame? The weather's the weather. It happens.”

A light, brief shower of raindrops fell on her hair and she looked up, startled. There were clouds overhead, big, cottony cumulus clouds not heavy enough with moisture to shed any of it. Had they been there when she came down the bank?

“Are we less, then, than the rain?” he said softly, his face turned up into it. A sliver of sun, a deep, rich gold, appeared on the northeastern horizon. “Are we more than the sun?”

She sat very still. Moses was a drunk, but he was also a shaman, and, no matter how thorough her indoctrination had been at the hands of her adoptive parents and at the University of Alaska, Wy remembered enough of the first five years of her life not to reject the presence of what she couldn't see.

Moses opened his eyes and added a piece of driftwood to the fire. The salt crystals caught in the wood flared with color. The wood burned steadily, radiating warmth and light.

“You didn't answer my question,” he said.

“I don't have an answer,” Wy replied.

“No?” He smiled. “Need some help?”

Wy swallowed. She wanted to say no. “I don't know.”

“I say you do,” Moses said firmly.

Wy made a show of looking at her watch. “Gee, look at the time, it's past six-thirty. I'm flying in a couple of hours, so-”

“Sit down.”

She sat down with a thump, heart beating uncomfortably up high in her throat. “Look, I-”

“You will listen,” he said firmly, “and when questioned, you will answer truthfully.”

Sez you, Wy thought.

He eyed the mutinous line of her mouth and grinned, a wide, wise grin as full of charm as it was of guile. “Wy,” he said, his voice not ungentle, “what do you want?”

She huffed out an impatient breath. “I want to live my life. I want my business to succeed. I want to fly, and I especially want to fly this morning.”

Moses contemplated the fire. “You're in danger.”

She was startled again. She looked over her shoulder. No one nearby on the beach, no one on the river. “What do you mean?”

“What do you want?” he repeated.

“Goddamn it!” she shouted. “I want to adopt Tim! I want to live my life!” She leapt to her feet. “I want to be left alone!”

“Sit down,” he said again, and she subsided like a puppet who had lost its strings.

He picked up an eagle feather lying next to him in the sand, and used it to cup smoke from the fire over his face, eyes closed, expression meditative. She struggled for composure, and found it in the tuneless humming that emanated from his rusty old man's voice.

He opened his eyes. “Are you so afraid?”

“I'm not afraid of anything,” she said, and was immediately ashamed. She sounded exactly like a child whistling past the graveyard. “I'm afraid of everything,” she said, as her defenses fell with an almost audible thump. “I'm afraid customers will show up who won't fly with me because I'm a woman. I'm afraid I won't earn enough to make my loan payments. I'm afraid Tim's natural mother will steal him back. I'm afraid-” She stopped.

“Yes?” Still with that unnaturally gentle voice.

“You know what I'm afraid of.”

“He's a good man.”

“I'm not a bad woman,” she snapped. “I'm smart, I'm capable. I don't need rescuing, or redemption.”

“How about company?” he snapped back, a momentary backsliding of role, wise shaman to cranky drunk. “He's pretty good company, that guy, even if he is a cop.”

“There's nothing wrong with being a cop!” she said indignantly. “They catch the bad guys. They keep the peace. Every day they get their noses rubbed into the worst of human behavior. When someone's shooting off a gun, they have to go take it away. They don't get near enough credit or even half the pay they deserve.”

He smiled, a brief, nasty little smile, and she blushed hotly, annoyed at being maneuvered into defending Liam.

“So you don't object to his profession.”

“Of course not.”

“What is it, then? What stops you from going to him?”

“Maybe,” she said through her teeth, “just maybe I don't think there's anybody out there more fun to live with than me.” She pushed her jaw out, daring a response.

She got it, a full-throated belly laugh that rocked him backward. “Oh yeah,” he said, wiping away a tear, “oh yeah, you are just like your mother, just full of piss and vinegar, self-righteous and pigheaded and so damn sure you're right.”

She said sharply, “You knew my mother? My natural mother?” He said nothing. “Moses?”

“Yes,” he said finally. His smile faded. “I did. She's dead.”

“I know that much. And I know our family came from Icky. What I don't know is her name. Mom and Dad would never tell me.” She waited.

He rearranged himself, refolding his legs, and produced a pint of Chivas Regal. Uncapping it, he took a long swallow.

“Moses-”

“Make up your mind, Wy. You either want him or you don't. You don't have much time left. You may have none.”

“What? What does that mean?” She rose to her feet as he did, and followed him to the steps. “Moses, you can't say things like that and then retreat into that goddamn druidic silence of yours! Talk to me!”

“Got me a smart woman in a real short skirt,” he said, winking at her, “or in this case, a pair of really tight jeans. Time I got back to her.” He took another swig from the bottle and headed up the steps.

“Moses?”

Something in her voice halted him halfway up.

“Did you know my father, too?”

There was a long silence, into which crept the sounds of a Bush village waking up: a light plane taking off, the hum of an outboard motor, the start of a truck, bird calls, fish jumping.

“Yes.” He began to climb again.

“Moses?”

He halted without turning around.

“Are you my father?”

He stood for a long time on the makeshift stairs, his back to her, and then he continued up and over the edge of the bluff. Moments later, she heard the engine of his truck turn over, heard it grind into gear, heard it leave the clearing and trundle down her lane to the road.

She stood where she was for a long time, listening, watching, waiting for him to come back. He didn't.

He stopped at NC for coffee and a roll, and headed to the post. Charlene Taylor was waiting for him. She didn't look happy.

Fifty years old, give or take a few, she had a round face topped by a fringe of flyaway brown bangs. Her ample waist was firmly restrained by a thick leather belt, and her epaulets and shoulder pads made her look twice as wide as the Sherman tank she already was. Her eyelashes, long, thick and curling, were disarmingly coquettish until you got past them to the unavoidable brown gaze they screened, a stare that weighed, measured, classified and stamped in one thorough glance. It reminded him a little of Alta's. It reminded him a lot of Bill's.

Liam, a man who had always loved women, was a bit afraid of all three of them. He wondered suddenly what Wy would be like at fifty, and gave an involuntary grin at the thought of what it might be like to live with her then. He'd have to check with Charlene's husband, the D.A. for this district, and see what he said.

“There's nothing funny about it,” Charlene said severely, rebuking his grin.

“Nothing funny about what?” Liam said, leading the way into his office.

Charlene planted herself squarely in front of his desk and folded her arms across an impressive chest. “I understand you have Frank Petla under arrest for murder.”

Liam, still in the act of pulling off his cap, looked surprised. “He hasn't been charged yet, but, yes, he's in custody.”

“He didn't do it.”

Liam took his cap the rest of the way off and took a minute hanging it just so from the hat rack on the wall. He went behind his desk, sat down, and took the lid off the coffee. “You want half?” he said, holding out the enormous cinnamon roll.

“He didn't do it, Liam.”

“Fine,” he said. “More for me.” He took a gigantic bite and washed it down with a swallow of satisfyingly strong coffee. “You sound very sure.”

“I know him. He's a drunk, but he's not a killer.”

“We're all potential killers, given the right circumstances, and you know it, Charlene.” He took another bite.

“You weren't,” she said pointedly, and he flushed a dark red.

“No, I wasn't.” The memory of the man who had killed his wife and child, kneeling in front of him in the rain, on a lonely road fifty miles from anywhere and anyone to see, flashed through his mind. He banished it, the way he always did. His appetite gone, he set the roll down.

“Aw hell,” she said, disgusted. “I'm sorry, Liam.” She removed her own cap and sat down heavily. “Low blow, totally unwarranted, completely out of line.”

“You aren't the first person to have made that observation.” A lot of people thought Rick Dyson should have been shot while resisting arrest, many of them within Liam's own command. Liam had felt the weight of their silent contempt every time he walked into headquarters.

Contempt was not manifest in Charlene's glare. “I said I was sorry.”

He held up one hand, palm out. “All right. Apology accepted. What makes you so sure Petla didn't do it?”

“Tell me what happened,” she said instead.

He told her. She followed the story intently. “How did you catch him when he took off on the four-wheeler? There's no place to land and intercept him around there.”

“I brought him back to the dig,” Liam said, avoiding a direct answer. “Charlene, he assaulted a trooper.”

She looked startled. “You?”

“No, we got ourselves a new trooper, fresh out of the academy, Diana Prince.”

“I didn't know that.”

“She came in yesterday. Green as she is, I have to say it helped having her here, what with the press of business and all.” It was a weak attempt at a joke and didn't earn him a smile. “You hear about theMarybethia?” She nodded. “We flew out to Kulukak yesterday morning when the news came in, I sent her back with the bodies. McLynn-you know McLynn?”

“I've heard of him.” Her dry tone indicated that she hadn't heard anything good.

“Well, Wy Chouinard's been flying him in and out, and when they flew in yesterday morning they found Nelson's body. Don Nelson,” he added parenthetically. “He was McLynn's gofer. McLynn and Wy flew back to town and got hold of Prince. Prince borrowed Wy's Cub and flew out to the dig with McLynn, while Wy picked me up in Kulukak and brought me back.” He omitted reference to the brief stop en route. He was getting good at skipping that. “We switched planes and flew out to the dig. When we got there, Prince had been clubbed, McLynn had been shot and Frank Petla was hightailing it over the horizon on a four-wheeler with a thirty-ought-six and a bag of Yupik artifacts from the dig strapped to the handlebars. Which bag of artifacts included the murder weapon, I might add.”

“What was the murder weapon?” He told her, and she grimaced. “I knew there was a reason I chose the Fish and Game side of this department. At least people are only murdering moose.” She pulled the brim of the cap through her fingers. “Okay.” She raised her head. “It looks bad for Frank. Given his presence and his behavior, you didn't have any choice, I see that.”

“How do you know him?”

Her mouth pulled down. “He boarded with us for a year when he was a teenager.” Her eyes met his, her expression troubled. “You know how it is in the villages, Liam. The elders are trying to hold things together, trying keep the kids off the booze long enough to grow up, but a lot of the time it's just too little, too late. Frank comes from one of the families for which it was too little and too late. His father ran his snow machine into a lead on the river when Frank was ten, and his mother never recovered. She's a great gal when she isn't on the sauce, but it's got her by the scruff of the neck and it's not about to let go. His sister Sarah died when she was thirteen, alcohol abuse. Frank was in trouble in the village, some underage drinking, some disturbing the peace, some small-time B &E-yeah, yeah, I know what this sounds like. Liam, he just never had a chance. The elders called in the troopers when he broke into the school one night and trashed the library, and the trooper brought him before Bill. Jerry and I-well, we don't have any of our own, and we take in a kid now and then, a kid who otherwise will get sent to McLaughlin in Anchorage and get lost in the system. Village kids got no business being sent to McLaughlin, Liam; all that happens there is they get advanced instruction in criminal behavior.”

Liam held up one hand. “You're preaching to the choir here, Charlene.”

She relaxed a little. “He was real good, the time he spent with us. Stayed sober, did his homework. Even had a girlfriend, Betty Kusma, smart girl, works as a checker at NC. We took both of them to the AFN convention that October, and he signed on with the sobriety movement.”

“What happened?”

Her mouth set in an unhappy line. “His mother got an attorney and forced DFYS to give him back to her.” She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. “He was only fifteen. If we could have kept him for just one more year, until he was sixteen and would have had a choice whether to go or stay, he might have made it.”

There was silence for a moment. “I'll dot all thei's and cross all thet's, Charlene,” Liam said at last. “I won't take anything at face value. But you have to know it looks pretty bad.”

“I know.” She opened her eyes and stood up. “Thanks, Liam.”

“Hold on a minute, would you?” He rose and walked over to the wall map of the Bristol Bay area. He tapped Kulukak. “Can you tell me what part of Kulukak Bay was open for fishing on Sunday?”

“Sure.” She came to stand next to him. “All of it.”

“For how long?”

She thought. “I'd have to look it up, but I think six a.m. to six p.m.”

“Hell.”

“What's the problem?”

“It's eight miles across,” he said gloomily, “and ten or more north-south. I'm trying to track the whereabouts of forty to fifty different boats on that Bay during a twelve-hour period.”

“Because all of it was open, doesn't mean all of it was fished.”

He looked at her. “Which means what, exactly?”

“It means that fishermen aren't stupid. They'll wet their nets where it'll do them the most good. In this case…” Her forefinger traced a section of the coastline on the northeast corner of Kulukak Bay. “Right about here.”

He inspected the bit of coastline. “Why?”

“Because that's where the Kanik River, the biggest creek on the bay, empties into the Kulukak,” she said. “You know? Every summer, salmon come in from the ocean to go up the creeks where they were born to spawn their own young? You must have heard something about this, surely.”

His ears reddened. “Not a lot of commercial fishing in Glenallen.”

“That's no excuse,” she said severely. “You've been on the Bay for three months now. Anyway, that's where most of your boats will have been, outside the markers of the Kanik, trying to get in between the fish and fresh water.” She pulled her cap on.

“One more thing.”

“What?”

“Ivory, walrus ivory.”

“The tusks. Sure, what about them?”

“I know only Natives can sell them. Can they sell them as is, or do they have to be carved into something first?”

“The law says it has to be carved on or into something. Walk into any gift shop on Fourth Avenue in Anchorage and look around. You'll see whole heads with the tusk sporting one little carving of a mask or an animal, just to make it legal.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why? Is there something you're not telling me, something going on to do with my side of the patch?”

He told her about the suspiciously fresh chunk of ivory tusk he had found in the service tent at the dig. She listened with interest, and when he was done said, “Like I said, it's the law, the pieces have to be finished.” She smiled. “But if everyone obeyed the law, we'd both be out of work.”

Charlene left the post, and as Liam returned to his desk the phone rang. It was a man, on the ragged edge of losing his selfcontrol, his voice so choked that Liam could barely understand him. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

The man cleared his throat. His voice was shaken but clear. “My name is Donald Nelson, Senior.”

Liam closed his eyes for a brief moment, and then sat up straight. “Yes, sir. This is Liam Campbell with the Alaska State Troopers. Are you Don Nelson's father?”

The voice broke again. “Yes.”

“I'm very sorry for your loss, Mr. Nelson.”

“Thank you.” There was the sound of a sob, quickly suppressed, and Liam set his teeth. “Please, can you tell me what happened? I just talked to Don last week, and he was fine. He was fine, he sounded happy, and excited about his work.” There was a sound something between a laugh and a sob. “He said Alaska was beautiful and the people were crazy.”

“He was right about both, sir,” Liam said gently. He would rather respond to a hundred scenes like theMarybethiathan talk to one grieving parent, but this was part of the job. He had a thought, and sat up. “Mr. Nelson, how did you find out your son was dead?”

“I don't know,” Nelson said drearily. “Some woman called.”

“When?”

“This morning. Just a little while ago.”

“What time?”

“I don't know. About nine o'clock, I think. Mary? When did she call? Yes, about nine.”

Eight o'clock Alaska time. Prince? “And you're calling from Seattle?”

“Why, yes,” the man said, bewildered all over again. “How did you know?”

“Your son's identification stated his residence. Who called you, Mr. Nelson? Who was it on the phone this morning?”

“I don't know. Mary, where is that piece of paper…” Paper rustled in the background, and someone blew his nose. Nelson's voice came back on. “Here it is. Somebody from Anchorage.”

Liam relaxed a little. “Someone from the medical examiner's officer, perhaps?”

“That was it. She told us he was dead, and when we asked how, she gave us your name. How did he die, Mr. Campbell? He was fine when we talked to him last week,” Nelson repeated. He sounded dazed. “He was-he was fine. Was it an accident?”

“I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Nelson, but no, your son did not die in an accident.” He thought of the hilt of the storyknife protruding from Nelson's mouth and added evenly, “There is evidence of foul play.”

“Foul play? Foul play? What the hell does that mean?”

Liam hated the phrase “foul play” himself; it made him think of an Agatha Christie novel. “Mr. Nelson, your son was killed,” he said bluntly. “I'm sorry,” he added.

“Killed?” Liam had expected the rise of anger in Nelson's voice; it always happened, shock, followed by grief, followed by rage. “Who killed him? Who did it?”

Liam looked at the door, which Charlene had closed firmly behind her. “We don't know yet for sure, Mr. Nelson.” He was thinking of Don Nelson's body lying in a sprawl so awkward it could only be death when he added, “But we do have a suspect in custody.”

“Who?”

“A local man,” Liam said circumspectly.

“How was he killed?”

Even more circumspectly, Liam replied, “Your son's body is at the medical examiner's office in Anchorage, Mr. Nelson. I expect cause of death will be pronounced within a few days. I can give you their phone number, if you like, so that you can make arrangements.”

“Make arrangements.” That was almost as bad a euphemism as “foul play.” Much as we do to sanitize it, Liam thought, everything we do to clean it up for public view, death is messy and painful, and will not be called to order. He thought again of Frost's poem.

“All right,” Nelson said, sounding suddenly exhausted. Liam gave him the M.E.'s number. “Thank you.”

Before very long Don Nelson, Senior, was going to want answers.Who, what, where, how and, above all, why? It was Liam's job to provide them. “You're welcome. Mr. Nelson, did your son have a particular friend here in Newenham? A girlfriend, maybe?”

“What? No. At least… he never said.” The tears were coming back. “He would have said, wouldn't he? If he'd met a girl, he would have said. He would have told his mother. He would have. He-”

“So there wasn't anyone?”

“No. Not that we know of. And if it had been serious, we would have known. We were very close.”

“I'm glad,” Liam said, and said it forcefully. “Did Don have any siblings? Any brothers or sisters that he might have talked to since he talked to you?”

“He had a sister, Betsy. She didn't say he'd called when we talked to her this morning.”

“May I have her phone number?”

Liam scribbled it down, and they said their goodbyes, Liam promising to call with any new information. Nelson Senior would call back first, he knew. It would take a day or two for him to filter the information Liam had given him through his grief, but when he did he would be on the phone breathing fire and smoke over the suspect in his son's murder, and if Liam was very unlucky, in less than a week he would be stepping off a plane at Newenham Airport.

The thought brought him to his feet. He donned cap and weapon and headed purposefully for the door. When he opened it, the white, shocked face of Tim Gosuk was on the other side.

“Tim?” Liam said.

“Is it true?” Tim said.

“Is what true?”

“Is it true that Mike Malone is dead?”

“How did you know Michael Malone?”

“I played guard opposite him at regionals last year. Is it true?”

Liam sat down on the top step, and with a gentle hand pulled Tim to sit next to him. “Yes, Tim, it's true.”

Tim sat, staring numbly in front of him. At twelve you are immortal and indestructible. This time next year is an aeon away, and the end of your life shrouded in mists you won't penetrate for another forty years. Death just doesn't happen when you're twelve.

It doesn't happen to your friends, either. “I can't believe it. I heard Mom and Jo talking about a boat burning and the crew all dead. I didn't know it was Mike's boat. He was-he was the greatest guy, Liam. Really nice. If you made a good play, he'd slap you on the back and yell, ‘Way to go!’ Even when you were on the other team. He was a good player, too, always had his hands up, had a great rebound.” Tim swallowed hard. Liam pretended not to notice. “He was just a great guy. I learned more playing against him than I did in a year's worth of practice.”

There was a rustle of branches overhead, a soft croak. Liam didn't look up. “Did you know the rest of his family?”

A trace of color rose up from Tim's neck. “I met his sister,” he said gruffly.

“Kerry?”

He nodded, his head turned away. The tip of his left ear was pink. “She was a cheerleader.”

“Pretty?”

Tim nodded again. “Is it true? The whole family is dead?”

“Yes.”

Liam's deep, slow voice was its own soporific. Tim's shoulders shuddered with a long sigh and he sat up straight again. “Kerry, too?”

“Kerry, too.”

“Damn it,” Tim said. “GodDAMN it.”

Liam dared to place one hand at the back of Tim's neck and squeeze. To his relief, Tim did not jerk away. “I'm sorry, Tim.”

“Me, too,” Tim said. “Me, too.” He swiveled around. “Mom says they were murdered, that somebody killed them. You gonna find out who did it?”

“Yes.”

Again, the deep voice was soothing in its certainty.

Another long, shuddering sigh. “Okay, then.” Tim stood up, thin shoulders squared, jaw up in a gesture that looked uncannily similar to the same gesture Liam had seen a hundred times on Wy's face. “Go get 'em.”

“All right,” Liam said obediently. He wanted to say, How's your mom? but stopped himself in time. It would have been like ninth grade all over again, in love with Mary Kallenberg and trying to discover if she liked him through his best friend, Cal, and her best friend, Melissa.

The raven sitting on the swaying spruce bow beat his wings and gave a raucous croak. Liam's head jerked up. The raven met his eye and croaked again.

“He's around here a lot, isn't he?” Tim said, looking at the raven as he straddled his bike. “I thought they roosted way out of town.”

“I just wish they did,” Liam said. He looked hard at the raven. It didn't do any good. He looked like every raven Liam had seen since coming to the Bay; big, black, beaky and beady-eyed. You had to perform surgery to tell a female from a male, and you had to catch one and stare down its gullet to tell how old it was. They all looked alike, those damn ravens, which was why he kept thinking he saw the same one over and over again.

He climbed into the Blazer and peeled out of the lot.

They landed in Kulukak and taxied the float plane to the dock. The place was still shrouded in what seemed to be its perpetual cloak of mist. No one was there to greet them, but then Liam hadn't called to say they were coming. He had confirmed with Charlene that there was no fishing period scheduled for that day, and so had a faint hope of finding the people he needed to talk to actually in the village. Of course they could be in Togiak buying parts, or on their way to Newenham to get laid, or, for that matter, headed for Dutch to refit for crab fishing.

Liam was an American to the very marrow of his bones-he supported the Constitution, he defended the Bill of Rights and he worked conscientiously to uphold his oath of office-but the distances involved in police work in Bush Alaska were so great that he sometimes secretly longed for the days of the Star Chamber, when you could toss anyone you liked for a crime into a dungeon until you were ready to talk to them. They might be a little rat-bitten when you pulled them out again, but at least they'd be immediately to hand.

They had a third party in the plane with them, an arson investigator from Anchorage who had stepped off the jet that morning with all the air of Stanley heading out into the heart of Africa. He was a short, thin boy with an eager face and a lot of straight, yellow hair shaved at the sides and long enough on top to flop into his eyes. He looked as if he ought to be in Tim's class, but he had the proper credentials, so Liam managed-barely-to refrain from demanding he show his driver's license for proof of age.

The boy, Mark Sandowski by name, redeemed himself by opening the large aluminum suitcase he had brought with him and going immediately to work on theMarybethiawith various implements and liquids. “We're headed uptown to talk to some people,” Liam called through the open hatch. Sandowski, nose an inch from a charred piece of deck, didn't even look up, and Liam's estimation of him rose another notch.

“Who first?” Prince said, heading up the gangplank.

Liam consulted his mental list. “Chad Donohoe, deckhand on theSnohomish Belle,said he saw a man answering to the description of Walter Larsgaard in a skiff heading away from the direction of theMarybethiaat approximately three a.m. on the morning in question, is that correct?”

“That is correct, sir.”

“Okay, let's go ask Larsgaard where he was that night.”

She was trying hard not to look eager. “It wasn't a positive ID,” she reminded him, and herself, warning them both against hoping for too much. “Donohoe isn't a local man, he's from Washington State.”

“You said.” He held back a grin. He remembered his own rookie days, when every interview was an adventure, every interviewee under suspicion. “Let's go talk to Larsgaard anyway.”

Five minutes later they were at Larsgaard's house. They knocked. There was no answer. They knocked again. Another minute passed before the door opened and Walter Larsgaard's father's face peered through the crack. He didn't look pleased to see them. “What you want?” he growled.

“We'd like to talk to your son, Mr. Larsgaard,” Liam said. “Is he here?”

“No.”

“Could you tell us where he is?”

The old man said something in Yupik that sounded less than complimentary, and the door shut in their faces.

Prince, predictably, wanted to kick it in. “No,” Liam said, “we have no probable cause. What's the name of Larsgaard's boat?”

Tight-lipped, Prince consulted her notes. “TheBay Rover.”

“Fine. Let's check it out.”

They marched back down to the boat harbor, where they ran into Mike Ekwok, who pointed out theBay Roverwithout hesitation, a trim little sternpicker about thirty-two feet in length, painted white with blue trim. There was a man at the deck controls, and as they watched, a plume of smoke came from the stack. The rumble of an engine was heard a moment later. “Son of a bitch,” Liam said, and hit the gangplank at a run.

“What's the matter?” he heard Ekwok cry over the sound of Prince's footsteps pounding behind him.

Liam almost overshot the other side of the float at the bottom of the gangplank, caught his balance just before he went head-first into the harbor and continued on toward Larsgaard's boat. He was close enough to see Larsgaard look over his shoulder, a drawn expression on his face, just before the fisherman cast off the stern line. TheBay Roverwas twelve feet from the slip when Liam skidded to a halt, too far to jump. “Goddamn it!” Liam roared.

“Come on!” Prince yelled, and he turned to see her pounding back to the Cessna. He followed, and by the time he got there she had already cast off and had the prop rotating. The engine caught with a roar. “Get on the float!” she yelled, pointing, and without thinking he stepped to the right float just as it moved away from the slip.

“What the hell are we doing?” he yelled over the noise of the engine.

“If I can beat him to the harbor mouth, we can box him in! If not, I can bring us alongside and you can jump onto the deck!”

Liam clung to the strut with both hands, the sound of the Cessna's engine roaring in his ears, the wind from the prop tugging at his hair, his boots slipping on the wet surface of the floats. He wanted to ask Prince if she was out of her fucking mind, but he was too scared that the physical activity involved in forming the words would jar him off the float. The leading edge of the wings ripped apart the wall of wet, clammy mist, forming droplets of water on the metal surface that with the force of the air coalesced into rain against which he had to narrow his eyes. He could barely see Mike Ekwok running down the slip opposite, waving his arms up and down and shouting something Liam couldn't hear. The front of his uniform was already wet through. The derelict hulk of theMarybethiaflashed by, Mark Sandowski's astonished face framed in the hatch.

Prince got the Cessna clear of the slip, moving at a speed that definitely violated the no-wake speed limit inside the boat harbor. Liam blinked his eyes again to clear them, and saw Larsgaard just coming out from between the two sets of floats. TheBay Roverheeled over on its right side and the wake foamed up behind the stern. Prince responded by opening up the Cessna's throttle. The rock face of the breakwater loomed dangerously close to the tip of the left wing. “Watch out!” he yelled.

“Get ready!” she yelled back.

TheBay Roverspeeded up. Forgetting where he was, Liam yelled, “Faster!”

“We're almost up on the step as it is,” Prince yelled back. “We go any faster we'll take off, and there's no room!”

Larsgaard looked over his shoulder, saw the Cessna bearing down on his port stern and pointed the bow of theBay Rovertoward the entrance of the breakwater. At that moment another boat, a Grayling bowpicker returning to its slip from the fuel dock, crossed the bow of theBay Rover.Its skipper stared at the oncoming boat with the float plane in hot pursuit, mouth open and apparently incapable of thought or action. Larsgaard heeled theBay Roverhard aport and slammed the engine into neutral and then reverse, at the same time Prince cut the throttle on the Cessna, abruptly slowing their forward motion.

That was all it took. Liam's hands lost their grip on the strut and he was catapulted off the float and onto Larsgaard's deck, which was passing inches in front of the Cessna's still-rotating propeller. He retained just enough sense to tuck and roll, and everything would have been fine if his somersault hadn't achieved momentum and rolled him over the opposite gunnel, which caught him painfully in the small of his back but didn't stop him from going over the side.

The cold, dark water of Kulukak's small boat harbor closed over his head, and for a moment all he could think of was what the salt water was going to do to his freshly cleaned and only other uniform. Son of a bitch.

He swallowed water and battled his way to the surface, to find the gunnel of theBay Roversix feet away, engine idling, boxed in by the Grayliner, the Cessna and the breakwater. Two overhand strokes brought him within reach, and he heaved himself up and over the gunnel and onto the deck. He looked up to see Walter Larsgaard standing over him, boat hook raised. He met Larsgaard's eyes and from somewhere found the air to gasp, “Walter Larsgaard, you are under arrest for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.”

Larsgaard stood where he was for a long moment. Liam gulped in more air and continued, “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right…”

The boat hook came down, and Larsgaard held it out, in the manner of a soldier surrendering a sword. Liam accepted it automatically.

“… to have an attorney present during questioning. If you desire to have an attorney and cannot afford one, an attorney will be provided for you.”

“What am I being prosecuted for?” Larsgaard said.

Murder, Liam thought, murder times seven, or else why were you running? “I'll think of something,” he said. “Do you understand these rights as I've explained them to you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Liam got to his feet, shoes squelching, uniform a soggy memory of its former sartorial splendor. The Newenham posting was hell on uniforms.

“I'd like to take the boat back to the slip,” Larsgaard said.

“Fine,” Liam said, waving a hand, an expansive gesture ruined when he had to cough water out of his lungs. “Take her on back.”

Larsgaard gave him a curious glance, and for a moment Liam thought he might smile. “I can't believe you came after me riding the pontoon of a float plane.”

“I can't, either,” Liam said wearily.

Although it wasn't like anyone had given him a choice.

“Doctors are lousy pilots,” Wy said. “Pisspoor, actually. They don't listen worth shit. You can't tell them anything, they're used to doing the telling. Guy says he's a doctor, he's not driving my plane and I ain't riding in his.”

Tim committed this to memory, and handed her a socket wrench.

“Thanks.” Wy tightened down the nut, wiped her hands on the legs of her overalls and closed the cowling before descending the stepladder perched at the nose of the Cub.

“How about troopers?” Tim said.

Wy looked at him, and he grinned. “Yeah, okay, smarty,” she said, “it was fine, she didn't hurt our baby any.”

“She better not've.” Tim sounded cocky and threatening and very proprietary as he put the wrench back in the red upright toolbox.

Wy eyed his back for a moment. “You want to learn?”

He looked around. “Learn what?”

She hooked a thumb at the plane. “You want to learn to fly?”

He stood straight up, the toolbox drawer left open. “Learn to fly?” His voice scaled up and ended on a squeak of disbelief.

“Yeah.”

He stared from her to the plane and back again. He looked dazzled. “You'd teach me?”

“Yeah.”

“To fly?”

She grinned. “Hey. It's what I do.”

A warm wave of color washed up over his face. “You're just kidding,” he said gruffly. “Aren't you? I'm too young. Aren't I?”

“Younger than me when I started,” she agreed. “But then I started awful late. I was practically an old lady.”

“How old?” he demanded.

“Sixteen.”

“Do you mean it?” he said again.

He threw the question down like a gauntlet, a challenge to her to take it up. Promises had been made to him before, many promises over the twelve long years of his young life, promises made and promises broken. “Yes,” she said soberly. “I mean it.”

He still didn't quite believe her, she could see it in his eyes. “Next Sunday morning,” she said, turning back to the plane. “I don't have anything booked until four that afternoon. We'll take the Cessna up. She's got dual controls.” She thought about mentioning ground school, and left it for later. If she could get him hooked on flying, he wouldn't have a choice.

After a moment or two, she heard him wheel the toolbox back into the shed.

There was a shed just like it in back of every one of the light planes drawn up at the edge of the tarmac at Newenham General Airport, but theirs was the only one currently in use. The open door revealed shelves packed with tools and parts, as well as camping and fishing gear. A fifty-five-gallon Chevron fuel drum, cut in half, sat in one corner, filled to the brim with Japanese fishing floats made of green glass. Wy picked them up whenever she made a beach landing and sold them to tourists for as much as the traffic would bear.

“Wy?”

“Yeah?” Wy was in the shed, smearing Goop on her hands, trying and failing to get the oil that invariably migrated beneath her fingernails.

The possibility of slipping the surly bonds of earth had faded from his face. “You remember the Malones?”

Her hands stilled, and she looked over her shoulder. Tim had one hand on the Cub's right strut, watching an Alaska Airlines 737 bank left out over the river in preparation for landing. “You mean the people who were killed on the boat in Kulukak?”

“Yeah.”

Wy reached for a rag and went out to stand next to him. “I didn't know them, Tim. I don't think I ever met them. I don't think I ever flew them anywhere.”

The 737 lined up on final.

“I knew the boy. Mike.”

“Did you?”

“He played basketball.”

“What position?”

“Guard.”

“Like you.”

“Yeah. I had to guard him last time the Kulukak team was in town. Our last game of the season.”

“When was that, March?”

“Yeah.”

Wy thought back, in her mind trying to distinguish one adolescent from another on a court that seemed remarkably full of them. “Number twenty-two, right? Hands like catcher's mitts, arms that stretched from here to Icky, and a good sport?”

“Yeah.”

Mike Malone had guarded Tim like Tim was Bastogne and Mike was the entire 501st Airborne. “You played really well against him.”

Tim's shoulders rose in a faint shrug. “Have to, against a guy like that.”

“Did you meet his sister, too?”

“Yeah. He introduced me once.” A pause. “She was a cheerleader, traveled with the team.”

“Pretty?”

“Yeah.”

The 737 touched down just inside the markers in a runway paint job, the engines roaring immediately into reverse so they wouldn't miss the first taxiway. Hot dog, Wy thought. Definitely the sound of someone not flying their own plane.

“Liam says they're dead.” He looked at her.

Wy finished with the rag and turned to pitch it, accurately, in the wastebasket just inside the door of the shed. “Yeah.” She turned back. “When did you talk to Liam?”

“This morning. I went over to the post. When you left to take the mail to Manokotak.”

Bless the U.S. Postal Service, Wy thought automatically. A mail contract was the difference between red and black on the bottom line to a Bush air taxi. “Oh.”

“You didn't say I couldn't.”

“No,” she agreed. Did he ask about me? she wanted to say, but managed to refrain from anything that sophomoric.

“So they're dead,” he repeated.

“Yeah.” Her hand settled on his shoulder and squeezed, as the 737 popped its hatch and let down its rear air stair.

“It's-it's-itstinks,” he said, and his eyes when he raised them were dark and wounded.

“It stinks to high heaven,” Wy agreed. “Tim. Did you ever meet the rest of Mike's family? His mom? His dad?”

Tim shook his head. “No. Just Mike.” He hesitated.

“What?”

He colored, and looked at his shoes. “One time, it was like the first time we played the Wolverines, I remember Mike got benched for fighting.”

“What about?”

His color deepened and he wouldn't look up. “Somebody'd said something about his mother.”

“What?”

He said gruffly, “Said she slept around on Mike's dad. Called her a whore. So Mike beat him up, and the coach benched him.” He added wistfully, “That was the only time all year we beat them.”

“Who said that? Who did Mike beat up?”

“Arne. Arne Swensen. He plays guard, too. He's a senior this year, so he'll probably start even if he doesn't deserve to.” He looked up. “That stinks, too.”

Wy smiled and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah.”

He pulled back and anxiously patted his glossy black locks back into their previous perfect order. The last person off the 737 was a big, bulky man wearing a parka and mukluks. In July. “Tourist,” he said.

“And how.”

“Mom?”

He'd called her Mom from the first day she brought him home from the hospital, a direct and determined repudiation of his birth mother. Now that he felt more secure, he used Mom and Wy interchangeably. She did notice that when he was particularly bothered about something, he usually called her Mom. She steeled herself. “What?”

He fidgeted. “They weren't-they didn't-Kerry and Mike… nobody, well, hurt them, did they?”

It only took Wy a second to understand. Tim had grown up among a succession of people who had regarded his body as their personal punching bag. “No,” Wy said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Wy said. “I'm sure.”

She wasn't, of course, she knew nothing about the condition in which the bodies had been found, but she was willing to lie herself blue in the face before she contributed one more scene to Tim's recurring nightmares. Imagining how Mike, a boy he'd admired, and Kerry, a girl he might have had a secret crush on, had been tortured before being killed was not going to lessen their frequency or ease their intensity.

The 737 started loading passengers for the return trip to Anchorage. First on board was a skinny little blond kid in a blue nylon jacket, jeans and sneakers, clutching a silver briefcase almost as big as he was. He looked purposeful, on a mission. Wy wondered what was in the suitcase.

A shout distracted her attention, and she looked around to see Professor Desmond X. McLynn bearing down on them. “I'm outta here,” Tim muttered, and he grabbed his bike and shot off. Wy didn't blame him.

“What can I do for you, Mr. McLynn?” Wy said as the professor came trotting up.

“Do? You can fly me out to my dig, is what you can do. Where have you been all day? I was here at nine o'clock and you were gone! You've contracted to be my air support for the summer, and then you disappear when I need to fly! Give me one good reason why I shouldn't hire another pilot!”

Wy, one of the more reliable pilots on the Bay, bit back an invitationfor Professor Desmond X. McLynn to do just that, didn't say that she'd contracted to fly him in and out once a week, not twice, and plastered a smile on her face. “I do have other contracts to fulfill besides yours, Professor McLynn, but”-she overrode his protest-“I'm here now. We can be in the air in ten minutes.”

McLynn blustered for a few moments before giving in. They were in the air in the promised ten minutes. It was their fastest flight to the dig yet. “Are we back on a normal schedule?” Wy said, when she had him and his gear on the ground.

“What? Yes, yes, pick me up Friday evening.”

“Certainly, sir,” Wy said to his retreating back. She was in the air before he reached the work tent. She left his gear where it was.

Some jobs didn't pay enough. Some jobs wouldn't pay enough if you were making a thousand dollars an hour. Still, a job was a job, a paycheck was a paycheck and a lawyer's fee was most definitely a lawyer's fee. Wy brought the Cub around and headed back to Newenham.

Force of habit made him check his uniform before he went inside, except he wasn't wearing his, which had him at an automatic disadvantage. No help for it. He squared his shoulders and pulled open the door.

Charles was already there. Seated across from him was Diana Prince, who had changed into civilian clothes herself. She looked very nice in a dark red sweater and a string of pearls. Her hair had been ruffled up from its neat, restrained daytime style in that way women do that indicates they are off duty and on the hunt.

“Yeah, well, being found not guilty of driving an oil tanker onto Bligh Reef while drunk is not necessarily the same thing as being innocent of doing the same thing,” Charles was saying as Liam came up.

Liam winced. The investigation of the grounding of theExxon Valdez,like the deaths in Denali the previous winter, was one of those cases troopers didn't like to brag about.

It apparently wasn't bothering Prince, who laughed. Before her time.

“Liam,” Charles said, looking up. “I've invited Diana to join us. I hope you don't mind.”

“Not at all,” Liam lied courteously, and, choosing the lesser of two evils, sat down next to Prince.

“You've had a busy day,” Charles said genially, signaling Bill, who sent Maria, the server who had taken Laura Nanalook's place, over to take orders. Maria was in her mid-twenties and looked like she practiced bulimia as a religion. Her clavicles held up her T-shirt like a hanger, and her blond hair was so fine you could see her pink scalp between strands. Her lips didn't have enough flesh to stretch over her teeth in a smile, but she took Liam's order, whirled to the bar and was back in two minutes flat.

Liam, who had the feeling he was going to require backup, had ordered a Glenmorangie, a double. Charles raised his eyebrows. Liam had always hated those eyebrows. “Bill keeps it in stock for me.”

Prince was nursing a glass of white wine, Charles a beer. “What did you find out?” Prince said.

“Not now,” Liam said, more curtly than he'd intended. He opened his mouth to apologize, and felt someone standing next to him. He looked up. It was Wy.

For the first time since he'd seen her again in May, her hair was loose, the same tumbled mass of bronzed blond curls he remembered from those days in Anchorage. She was wearing a teal-blue T-shirt tucked into her jeans and wide gold nugget hoops in her ears. His eyes lingered on the hoops for a moment.

Her glance, when she met his, was direct and somehow questioning. Liam was burningly aware of two things: his memory of their in-flight stopover on the gravel airstrip the day before, and that his hip was touching Prince's. Carefully, he edged away.

“Well, hello-Wy, isn't it?” Charles said. He looked from Wy to Liam and back again. “Are you meeting someone?” Wy shook her head. “Then why don't you join us?” He moved over and patted the bench next to him.

Still without speaking, Wy slid in next to him. Her knees brushed Liam's. They both jumped.

An awkward silence developed, broken when Maria appeared. “Uh… wine,” Wy said. “Red.”

“Cabernet or merlot?”

“Cabernet.” In an obvious move to make conversation, she said to the others, “Merlots are sometimes too sweet. Same reason I don't drink white.”

Prince looked down at her glass. “I guess I like sweet.”

Wy shrugged. “To each her own.”

Liam drained his glass in one gulp. Everyone reordered. Silence until the new drinks came.

Charles said, “What about-”

Prince said, “Charles, why are you-”

Wy said, “How is the-”

Liam said, “When are you leaving, Dad?”

A brief silence. “I don't know, Liam,” Charles said. “I'll be around for at least another week, I think.” There was a clear invitation in his smile when he looked at Prince, and a corresponding sparkle in Prince's eyes.

“What are you doing here, precisely?” Prince said. “You haven't said. Where are you stationed?”

“Florida,” Charles said easily. “Hurlburt Field.”

Really, Liam thought. Somebody tell Hurlburt.

“And I'm here to see what the Air Force can do about turning over some of our disused buildings to the local communities.” He ran the same spiel by them he had run by Liam the day before, and, as they were supposed to, Wy and Prince looked politely impressed by the Air Force's commitment to public service.

Another hiatus in the conversation. Liam was trying hard not to stare across the table at Wy, was trying even harder to pretend he wasn't sitting next to Prince, although Charles had made his interest clear. For the first time in his life Liam was grateful for Charles's invariable habit of chasing the best-looking woman in every town he visited. Liam abandoned any concern for Prince's tender feelings; Charles was right, she was a grown woman, and besides, Liam was not about to appear protective of another woman in front of Wy.

His legs, too long for the booth, cramped, and he stretched a little, bumping again into Wy's. Their eyes met. Hers widened. His mouth went dry. He alleviated the problem with single-malt scotch, but refused a refill when Maria reappeared to take their orders for dinner. Since the only thing on the menu was beef, and since the choices were New York strip, rib eye or T-bone, they all had steak. Liam and Wy chose New York and rare, Charles and Prince T-bone and well done.

Until their salads came, Charles entertained them with an account of his tour in the Gulf, with an emphasis on sand. “It got into everything, your hair, your eyes, your mouth, your shorts, you name it. Not to mention the engines. You haven't lived until you've tried to change out the engine on an F-15 in the desert.” Prince listened, rapt, Wy said something noncommittal about engine maintenance and Liam contributed an occasional grunt and tried to remember when he'd last seen a bird colonel in the Air Force change out his own engine. He greeted his salad with relief and kept his mouth full. It seemed like a strategic decision worthy of Alexander.

He felt a foot press against his, and he looked up sharply. The last time he'd felt her foot, it had been hard against his shin, right before she slugged him. This time, she winked at him. His fork remained suspended in midair as Maria arrived with the main course. She whisked away the salad plates and replaced them with metal plates in wooden frames loaded with red meat. Wy dropped her eyes, Liam dropped his fork and Maria, nothing loath, fetched him a new one.

In the meantime, Charles had shifted the subject to Alaska and his experiences in the air over Elmendorf. He missed the Cold War, it seemed. He told of the time he'd taken a rubber mask in the shape of Ronald Reagan and worn it on patrol.

“Could the pilots in the Russian planes see you?” Prince asked, grinning.

“Hell, yes, or what was the point?” Charles laughed. “Next time we went up, one of theirs was wearing a Brezhnev mask.”

Prince laughed, obviously enchanted. Charles wasn't sleeping alone tonight. Unlike himself, Liam thought mournfully, and looked at Wy, who was listening with every appearance of interest to Charles and Prince's conversation. Eventually Prince realized that they hadn't heard from the other two guests. “How long have you been a pilot, Wy?”

“Since I was sixteen.”

“When did you start your business?”

Wy glanced at Liam and back at Prince. “The one I have now? Three years ago. I moved to Newenham and bought out an air taxi service.”

“Do you like it?”

Wy smiled and said, “The worst day flying beats the best day off. To coin a phrase.”

No one doubted the calm conviction that underlined her words. “You make any money at it?” Charles said.

“I do all right.”

“Ever want to fly jets?”

“Who hasn't?”

Charles smiled, pleased.

“Why did you become a trooper, sir?” Prince said, who seemed to have taken on the duty of hostess.

“Too muchHawaii Five-O,”his father said.

“I like order,” Liam said firmly, if a bit pompously. “I like rules. We're a pretty unruly race, when you think about it. The law, imperfect as it is, is the only thing that keeps us a step ahead of the apes.”

Prince looked at him, waiting.

“Oh all right,” Liam said. “And I like the action. I get a charge out of bringing down the bad guys.” He looked at her. “You're going to be a good trooper.”

She grinned and dimples flashed. “I already am.”

“Hold that thought.”

“So why? Really. Why?”

It wasn't something he talked about, so it was hard to put it into words. “The first case I rolled on after my probationary period was a guy beating up on his wife.”

“Ugh.” Prince shuddered. “Domestic disputes. Hate 'em.”

“Don't we all. This was a bad one: her eyes were swollen shut, her right arm was broken in two places, he'd strangled her so she couldn't talk.”

“Repeat?”

“My trainer said it was the sixth time in two months he'd had a call to their house.”

She looked sympathetic, or as sympathetic as someone can look with a mouthful of T-bone steak.

“Yeah,” Liam said, “I know. This time, he went away, seven years and change. I saw her two years later, and I didn't recognize her. She was healthy, and happy, she had a job, she was the manager of the produce section of the local Eagle store. She recognized me immediately, and came right up to thank me. I knew somebody at a shelter, and had given her the number that night. It changed her life, she said. I'd changed her life. I tried to tell her that all I'd done was give her a number, she was the one who had made the call. No, she said, it was me. I'd rescued her, and I'd have to live with it.” Liam grinned. “And then she tried to give me five pounds of nectarines.”

“Which you of course refused.”

“Hell, yes, there must have been fifty people in the store. Didn't want anybody to see me taking a bribe.” He ate a bite of steak, and added, “I told her to put 'em in the car.”

Charles laughed. After a moment, Prince did, too, although Liam could see she was trying to decide if Liam was joking or not about the nectarines. “How about you?” he asked her.

She shrugged and grinned at Charles. “I always wanted my own uniform, and the Girl Scouts don't issue guns with theirs.”

Maria bustled by, her size two jeans all but slipping off her behind, and inquired as to their needs. She brought back another glass of wine for Prince and another beer for Charles.

“How is the case coming?” Wy said to Liam, under cover of Charles's voice.

“Which one?”

She shrugged. “Either. Both.”

Liam cut a piece of steak. It was perfect, the best cut of meat this side of the Club Paris in Anchorage, the perfect ratio of exterior char to bloody interior. “Well, I've got one confession.”

“Which?”

“TheMarybethia.”

“Who?”

“Walter Larsgaard. Do you know him?”

She frowned. “Isn't he the mayor of Kulukak?”

“Tribal chief.”

“Same difference.” Her brow creased. “He killed them? All of them?”

“So he says.”

She put down her knife and fork. “Seven people? Did he say why?”

“He was sleeping with Molly Malone. She wanted to break off the relationship. So he killed her.”

“Why did he kill the rest of them?”

“Her husband, because her husband had her and Larsgaard didn't. The rest of them, mainly because they were there.”

Wy thought about this. “You should pardon the expression, it sounds a little like overkill.”

“It doesn't sound like it, it was,” Liam said.

She shifted and her foot bumped his again. She didn't move it away this time. Their eyes met, and she smiled. Bewildered at this sea change-maybe he wouldn't be sleeping alone tonight after all, he couldn't help thinking-he smiled back.

“I was talking to Tim today,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Me, too.”

“Yeah. He told me.” She toyed with one of the crisp, golden fries, what Bill deemed appropriate for a steak side. “He said he knew Mike Malone.”

“He told me that, too. Played guard opposite him, he said.”

“Did he tell you that Mike Malone got benched for one game for fighting with some boy who called his mother a whore?”

“No. Did Tim know who it was? Who Molly was sleeping with?”

“No.”

“Walter Larsgaard says it was him. Alta Peterson down at the hotel says Molly used to stay there once a month, and that she didn't sleep alone, but that Alta never saw who it was.” He stared down at his plate. “I'm thinking it's an awful long boat ride from Kulukak to Newenham. Even if it's only once a month.”

Wy shrugged. “I didn't fly him in, but then I'm not the only air taxi around. Unless… does Walter Larsgaard fly?”

“I don't know.” He turned to Prince, who was giggling like a fifteen-year-old-or so it seemed to Liam-at some joke Charles was telling. “Did you run Larsgaard through the system?”

In midgiggle she shifted from lovestruck girl to officer of the law. “Yes, sir.”

“Does Larsgaard have a pilot's license?”

“No, sir.”

Liam turned back to Wy, and raised his shoulders.

Maria came to clear away their plates and tempt them with dessert, Alaska Silk Pie, one of which Bill air-expressed in from Anchorage on Alaska Airlines every day she was open. She charged about a third of what the entire pie cost per slice, so it was worth it, and there was never anything left when the bar closed at night.

Liam was full of steak and Glenmorangie and the hopeful promise of Wy's foot pressed warmly to his when he became aware of Prince speaking. “You should have seen him. Dropping his coffee mug, stumbling into things, banging his head against the overhead, all the time hopping around on one leg trying to get into his pants. He acted like he thought he was about to be raped.”

Charles laughed, and Prince was encouraged to elaborate. “It was everything I could do not to start unbuttoning my uniform shirt. I think he might have gone right over the side.” She put her cup down and smiled at the man across the table, unaware that the man next to her was stiffening in outrage, not to mention fear. “In the end, I decided against it. He is the senior officer on the post, after all. It might have made working together in the future, well, difficult.”

Charles laughed out loud, looking at Liam to share the joke. Prince looked, too, and for the first time became aware that she might have overstepped the bounds of propriety. She flushed and frowned down at her wine glass as if it were all its fault.

Wy, watching him, saw the irritation and the fear. Both delighted her. She knew they shouldn't have, she knew only a lesser person than she was practicing to be would rejoice in the discomfort of someone else, but there it was. She put down her coffee mug and said, “Well, I'd better be going.”

“Me, too,” Liam said instantly, rising to his feet. “I-ah, I need to get back to the post.”

Scared sober, Prince started to get up, too. Liam waved her back with a frigid, “As you were. I'll see you in the morning. We'll start putting the case paperwork together then.”

“Sir-”

“Goodnight, Dad,” Liam said, directing a nod in his father's direction. Charles's gaze was full of knowing mockery. Liam directed his eyes to somewhere over his father's left shoulder. “Will I be seeing you again before you leave?”

“Certainly,” Charles said jovially, and smiled at Prince. “I'll be here awhile yet. No, it's on me,” he said when Liam and Wy reached for their wallets. “My pleasure.”

He watched them walk to the door, a careful foot of distance between them. “They got something going?”

Prince was watching them, too. “It looks like it.”

“I think so, too.” Satisfied, he turned his attention back to her. “Now, where were we?”

She fluttered her eyelashes. “You were just trying to talk me into a dance.”

“I was?” Charles looked around and saw a half-filled dance floor swaying to the strains of “That's What Living Is to Me.” “I guess I was,” he said, and led her out onto the floor.

Liam rose early, stood post and practiced all sixty-four movements of the form with what he was sure was exquisite grace and superb style, showered briskly and was at his desk, whistling while he worked, by seven-fifty-nine. He called the medical examiner's office in Anchorage and left a message on the machine for Brillo Pad to call him. He went through the evidence he'd collected from the archaeological dig at Tulukaruk. Don Nelson's journal made very interesting reading, but there was nothing in it that Liam identified as pertinent to his murder. He reviewed his notes on the interview with Alta. Molly and Larsgaard's last meeting had been the previous Monday. One week alive and loving, the next dead and buried. Sounded like a line from a country-and-western song.

He got Bill out of bed at eight-thirty, and heard an irritated Moses complaining in the background. Everybody got some last night but him, but the thought did not depress him as much as it might have.

“Dick Ford?” she said. “Nice guy. Good fisherman, too, but he's such a soft touch that he never hangs on to any money. A four-wheeler? I don't know, Liam, he's never driven it into the bar.”

He called Dick Ford's phone number. No answer. He saddled up the Blazer and galloped purposefully down to the harbor, pulling up in front of the office door for Seafood North. Tanya paled when he walked in the door, and then looked relieved when he said, “Is Dick Ford a fisherman of yours?”

“Yes.”

“What's the name of his boat, and do you know its slip number?”

Of course she did. She even accompanied him out to the dock to point out the boat. “Right there, theSelina Noel,slip number one-eighty-seven. Pretty name, isn't it?”

“Thanks.” He waited until she had turned to go and said, “Oh, one more thing.”

Her back was almost as nice as Wy's, slender, straight and at the moment vibrating with tension. “Yes?” she said, looking over her shoulder and narrowing her eyes against the still-rising sun.

“You were meeting David Malone at the Bay View Inn, weren't you, Tanya.” He made it a statement, rather than a question.

For a moment, one very brief moment, her shoulders slumped. She turned to face him fully, looking naked and defenseless in the bright morning light. “Yes.”

“Once every couple of weeks for the past three months.”

“And last summer. Yes.”

She offered no apologies and no explanations, and he admired her for it. “You don't have to worry, I'm not going to tell anyone, and if Alta Peterson down at the hotel hasn't by now, she won't be, either. The fact that you were having an affair with David Malone had nothing to do with his or his family's death, and it doesn't matter to the investigation.”

“It matters to me,” she whispered.

She looked very young and very defenseless, and he had a sudden vivid memory of Wy's face the day she'd walked away from him in Anchorage. Pain, loss, guilt, shame, more than he could put a name to, all of it reflected in the young face before him now. “Move on,” he said.

“I can't,” she said.

“You can't do anything else,” he said, and went down the gangway, leaving her standing on the end of the dock, staring out at the Bay.

“I need a ride,” Jo said.

Steam was rising from their coffee cups as they sat around the kitchen table, watching the sun rise up over the mouth of the Nushagak and the Bay beyond. The kitchen of Wy's house was flooded in golden light, and Wy didn't have any flights scheduled to anywhere until that afternoon. She put her feet up on a chair and said lazily, “You buying?”

“The paper is.”

“Where to?”

Jo added half and half to her coffee and stirred in another teaspoon of sugar. “I came out here on a story.”

“I know, you told me, but you wouldn't tell me what it was.”

“Yeah. The guy who contacted me about it didn't want me to spread it around.”

“Who was it?”

“Don Nelson.”

Wy sat up with a bump. “The guy killed out at the dig?”

“Yeah.”

“You know I found him? Well, me and McLynn.”

“Yeah. I mean, not right away, I went in to say hi to Bill last night and she told me. Saw you at dinner, by the way.” Jo's green eyes watched her over the rim of her mug.

“Oh,” Wy said. She could feel the color rising up into her cheeks. “Yeah, well. We had dinner.”

“So I saw.”

“It was just… it was dinner, okay? His father was there, the new trooper, it was just dinner. The ingestion of food in return for a caloric warming of cell tissue.”

“Uh-huh. With a little footsie on the side.”

Wy drank coffee. “I went to see him at the post afterward.”

“Did you?”

Wy glared. “Oh, stop being so fucking smug, Dunaway.”

“Then stop being so fucking evasive, Chouinard. Jesus, you're worse than Bill Clinton when it comes to talking about your sex life. It's true what they say, denial is not just a river in Egypt.”

“It's not sex.”

“Not yet.”

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

Jo's smile was wide and salacious. “I want to, I want to.”

Wy fiddled with the sugar spoon, raising spoonsful of sugar and letting it fall back into the bowl. “Maybe you weren't wrong, some of those things you said the other night.”

For once, Jo maintained a prudent silence.

“I told Liam what you said. Some of it, anyway.”

“What'd he say?”

“Not much.” Wy let the spoon fall. “He just wants me, Jo. Just flat out wants me, all of me, marriage, kids, for better or worse, so long as we both shall live, until death us do part, everything, the whole nine yards.”

“Kids?”

Their eyes met. “I haven't told him.”

“You'll have to.”

“Not yet,” Wy said, a plea in her voice.

“I'm not your mother, Wy, or your conscience.” Jo drained her mug. “I don't have to be, you've got enough conscience for any ten people I know. You want to be happy with him for a little while before you lower the next boom, okay, I get that. But not telling him now means you don't trust him enough to understand and accept. He won't like that. And it is a lousy way to start any relationship, let alone this one.” She stood up. “In the meantime, I want to take a look at that archaeological dig-what did you call it?”

“Tulukaruk.”

“Everything around here starts or ends with ak,or both,” Jo said, grumbling. “Tulukaruk, Kulukak, Manokotak, Stoyahuk, Koliganek, Egegik. Anyway, I want to see the place with thek's where Nelson died.”

“What did he write to you about?”

Jo hesitated. “He said he'd found something that would make a great story. It had to do with a government cover-up.”

“Government?” Their eyes met. They both knew what kind of government institution was closest to Tulukaruk.

Wy was silent until they got to the airport. As they were strapping into the Cub, she said, “When did Nelson first contact you?”

“I got his letter four days ago.”

She pulled the throttle, adjusted the mixture and started the prop. The headsets crackled into life. Wy got clearance to taxi and the Cub rolled off the apron and down the runway. Just before they took off, she looked around at Jo. “Colonel Campbell has been here almost a week.”

“I know,” Jo said.

“Sir! Sir!” An ungentle hand shook his shoulder. “Sir, wake up!”

Liam swam up from a great depth. The light was dim and distant at first, steadily increasing in wattage, until it became so bright it hurt his eyes. The light resolved into a long, rectangular fixture on a ceiling somewhere. The two fluorescent bulbs behind the white plastic cover seemed to burn right through his retina, and he closed his eyes. Somebody groaned.

“Sir! Are you okay?”

His head hurt. No, that wasn't right, his head was thumping, pounding, hammering with pain. He felt his gorge rising. He opened his eyes again and this time saw Prince, her expression anxious. “Help me up.”

“What?”

“Help me up.”

Prince helped him sit up, and he staggered to the sink and vomited. The water ran cold and clean from the faucet and he held his head under it. The water swirling in the bottom of the sink turned pink. He kept his head under the faucet until it ran clear again. She was waiting with a tea towel when he stood up.

“Help me to a chair.”

He propped his head in his hands. “How long have I been out?”

“Over an hour, if you got clobbered right after we split up.”

He explored his scalp with tentative fingers; there was an enormous lump over his right ear and his right eye felt puffy. “Am I going to have a shiner?”

Prince regarded him gravely. “It looks like it. Who hit you?”

“I didn't see him. Where's my cap?”

Prince found it where it had rolled beneath the table. It no longer fit around his head. He adjusted the band to its widest extension. It perched on top of his lump at a precarious angle.

“Who do you think hit you?”

“I don't have a clue,” Liam said. “How about you?”

Head trauma often resulted in short-term memory loss. Prince pulled out a chair and sat down. “I got Chad Donohoe's statement.”

“Good.”

“He saw the skiff pass him that night, he thinks around three a.m. Monday morning.”

“You told me that two days ago.”

“He signed his statement.”

“Good.”

“So did Fred Wassillie.”

Liam squinted at her through his one good eye. “You didn't say Donohoe had somebody with him.”

“He didn't.”

Liam sighed and shifted carefully in a tentative attempt to sit upright. His head didn't fall off, so he was more patient than he might have been. “Look, Prince, you've obviously discovered some new evidence that you think is important, and any other time I'd be willing to let you lead me to it a piece at a time, but I've just been sucker-punched by an unknown assailant, I'm sitting here with a lump on my head the size of Denali, I've just lost my breakfast and most of last night's dinner, I can only see out of one eye and NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO GET CUTE!” Yelling hurt. He dropped his voice. “Talk. And keep it short and to the point. Who's Fred Wassillie, and what'd he say?”

Prince looked hurt. “He saw the skiff coming out of Kulukak Bay, too,” she said stiffly.

“So we've got two witnesses. All the better.”

“He saw it three hours earlier.”

A short, charged silence. Liam wanted to lay his head- carefully-in his arms and close his eyes for the next month. “At midnight.”

“Right around.”

“He's sure of the time?”

Prince cleared her throat. “He was-ah-trysting with Edith Pomeroy on the deck of his boat at the time.”

“And-ah-trysting with Ms. Pomeroy was such a memorable event that he was looking at his watch?”

“Mrs. Mrs. Edith Pomeroy. Ralph Pomeroy's wife. Ralph is a local fisher.”

Liam looked at Prince, who was looking prim as a Victorian spinster. Maybe his father had slept alone the night before after all.

His father… Something nagged at the back of his mind. What was it, his father and-his father and… he couldn't remember. The walrus head on the opposite wall seemed to be laughing, head raised, ivory tusks ready to strike. “And he was persuaded to share this information-how, exactly?”

“I-ah-overheard him telling a couple of his friends about it. On my way back to theSnohomish Belle.About seven friends, actually. It seems Mrs. Pomeroy had been pretty elusive, and Mr. Wassillie was-er-collecting debts now owed him.”

“I'm surprised he noticed the skiff.”

“Apparently Mr. Wassillie thought it might be Mr. Pomeroy in search of his wife.”

In spite of the throbbing of his skull, Liam had to smile. “You know, there sure were a hell of a lot of boats wandering around out there in the fog that night.”

“It moves in, it moves out.” Prince shrugged. “We keep finding holes to land through.”

Liam repressed a shiver. “Don't remind me. Who was it? In the skiff? Who did Wassillie see?”

“He described a skiff-a dory, excuse me, a New England dory, a big skiff about twenty feet long. If not the twin, then very similar to the one Donohoe saw.”

“Did he see who was in it?”

Prince didn't even try to hide her triumphant smile. “A man very similar to the one Donohoe saw.”

They sat in silence for a moment, digesting this. “So he went out twice?”

“It would explain the two hours between the shootings and the fire.”

“Yes, but why? Why go out twice?”

With some asperity, Prince said, “This is a man who can kill one woman for leaving him, one man for having her and three men and two kids for being there when it happened. I don't think we can expect rational thought from someone like that. I don't think we have to.”

Mike Ekwok skidded in the door. “Sheriff!” he cried.

“It's Trooper,” Liam said tiredly.

Ekwok saw Liam's shiner and the lump that was giving his cap a rakish tilt and his eyes widened. “What happened, Sheriff?”

Liam gave in. “Somebody coldcocked me when my deputy wasn't watching my back.”

Prince looked offended, but Mike Ekwok's round face hardened into determined lines. “I'll back you up, Sheriff.”

“Thanks, Deputy.” Liam got to his feet, carefully avoiding Prince's gaze. “Are Wassillie and Donohoe somewhere around?”

“They're waiting on board theCheyenne.”

Liam spoke more sharply than he intended. “They're not in the same room, are they?”

“There's an old guy watching them. I snagged him off the dock and told him to stand guard, not let them talk.”

The walrus leered at him from the wall. “The old man,” Liam said suddenly. That's what he'd been trying to remember. “ Walter Larsgaard's father. Is he here? In the house?”

“I… don't know. I didn't look.”

“Well, look. Mike, help her.”

Ekwok sprang into action. Five minutes later they were back. “House is empty, Sheriff.”

“Did you check everywhere? Closets, basement, attic?”

“It's a crawl space, not a basement, and there is no attic.” Prince's expression was quizzical. “Why?”

“I don't know, I…” Again Liam thought of his father. “Damn it, there's something I'm missing-wait a minute.”

“What-”

Liam silenced Prince with a wave of his hand. His father. Don Nelson's father. Frank Petla's ancestral fathers, tribal fathers, his real father, his adopted father. Walter Larsgaard's father. Fathers and sons. Sons and their fathers, and what they did to each other, and what they did for each other. He remembered something he'd read in Don Nelson's journal, and his own reaction to it, and suddenly he understood. “Mike?”

“Yessir?”

“Are you a good friend of Walter Larsgaard, Senior?”

Mike's face showed his bewilderment. “I guess so. I've known Old Walter since we were kids.”

“That's not what I asked. Were you friends?”

“We've lived in the same village all our lives.”

Liam sighed. “Never mind. Did he drink?”

Ekwok shuffled his feet and looked at the floor.

“Mike-Deputy,” Liam said sternly, “this is important. Was Old Walter a drinker?”

Ekwok shuffled some more and looked everywhere but at Liam. “I guess he'd been known to knock back a few Olys,” he muttered finally.

“He do it often?”

“No more than anybody else.”

“Does he or his son own a big skiff? A New England dory, a twenty-footer?”

Relieved to be off the hook, Ekwok gave an eager nod. “Sure. Nice big dory, new last summer. Twenty-one feet long. You could get to Togiak in it if you had to.”

“Is it in the harbor?”

“I guess.”

“Did you know Walter Junior was sleeping with Molly Malone?”

Mike Ekwok's face showed first surprise, and then envy. “No kidding? That lucky-” He turned whatever he'd been about to say into a cough. “No, Sheriff, I didn't know that.”

“How would Walter Senior have felt about that?”

“I-hell, I don't know. He didn't poke his nose into much, Old Walter. He minded his own business, and he let people mind theirs. He was a good neighbor.” Mike Ekwok sounded as if he had only just learned this fact, and was surprised that it was so.

“Sir-” Prince said.

“Did Wassillie say if the guy was rowing the dory, or if he had the outboard going?”

Prince consulted her notes. “Rowing.”

“That matches the Jacobsons' statements. But Donohoe said the dory he saw had the kicker running.”

Comprehension dawned. “Two different boats.”

Liam shook his head. “The same boat. Two different men.” He leaned his aching head on one hand. “I'm in his house,” he muttered, staring at the walrus head. It wasn't leering now. “Who else would hit me?”

“Who do you think did?” Prince said, but she knew. So did Ekwok if his open mouth and staring eyes were any indication.

“Old Walter, that's who. He was in the first skiff, the one Jacobson saw going out, the one Wassillie saw coming in. He shot the crew of theMarybethia,and then he came home and either told his son what he'd done or his son guessed. Young Walter went out to destroy the evidence, and that's who Donohoe saw.”

Prince stared at him, mouth slightly open.

“Young Walter must have been frantic to get rid of the evidence. He set fire to the boat, but it wouldn't burn, so then he tried to sink her. He must have been pretty sure he'd succeeded because he left to go back into town.”

They left Ekwok behind in their run for the boat harbor. In spite of his aching head and the accompanying slight sense of disorientation, Liam was first down the gangway when they arrived, and first to step on board theCheyenne.So it followed that he was the first to see the bodies.

“Son of a bitch!” Prince's voice rang out across the harbor. She leapt first to one downed man, then the other. “Mother-fucking son of a BITCH!”

“Donohoe and Wassillie?” Liam said.

Prince's face was red with rage. “Yes,” she said tightly, regaining her poise. Mike Ekwok, looking scared, edged away from her. She knelt, felt for pulses. “Both dead. Looks like shot.”

“Tell me this, Prince,” Liam said. “Did the little old guy you set to guard them look anything like Walter Larsgaard?”

She stared at him, confused. “I don't know, I-he was Native,” she said. “He was short, and he had black hair, and dark skin with wrinkles, and-”

“And besides, they all look alike,” Liam said.

She flushed.

“They better stop all looking alike if you want to get ahead in this job,” he told her. “I don't suppose you noticed if he had a rifle?”

“He was wearing a big coat,” she said. She looked down at the sprawling forms of the two fishermen. There is no attitude as awkward as death. It didn't matter if you were a ballet dancer; death took pride in the ungraceful splay of limbs, the disjointed twist of the neck, the ungainly looseness of hands and feet. To look at death and know some carelessness of your own had caused it was not pleasant.

“Where's the… what was his boat's name?” Liam asked Prince. She looked at him, mute. “Young Larsgaard. Where is his boat?” She remained silent. “Prince, snap out of it! Where's Larsgaard's boat?”

He felt a timid touch on his elbow. “I know where it is, Sheriff.”

But of course by then theBay Roverwas long gone.

Their dinner date had been postponed a week and changed to a picnic on the beach. They were one short, as Tim was long gone up the river with Moses, but as Wy was guiltily aware, they didn't even miss him.

“I was so smug,” Liam said, regarding the hot dog he held suspended over the flame with a critical eye. The raven croaked agreement from a convenient spruce branch on the cliff. “I had them both, both perps, locked up in the local jail. Petla was as good as convicted, and I didn't think twice about walking into Larsgaard's house. I didn't think for a moment Larsgaard Junior didn't do it. Sure, there were things wrong with his story, but hell, he had means, motive, opportunity.”

“So did I, in May.” Her smile was tentative, as if she wasn't sure it was permissible to joke about that yet.

He grinned at her. “Yeah, but you I'm hoping to get back into the sack at some point. I couldn't put you in jail.”

She laughed.

“Besides, Larsgaard had even confessed, for crissake.”

“True.”

“And then there's Frank Petla.” He looked at where the bandage showed beneath the arm of her T-shirt. “He was there, he had a gun, he was in possession of goods stolen from the scene, including the murder weapon, he'd assaulted two people in fleeing said scene, what more could I want?”

“Yeah, well, Frank kind of set himself up for that.”

“Still,” Liam pulled his hot dog out of the fire, decided it didn't pass and put it back. “So after we got back to town and find Don Nelson's real killer in your custody, I went after Dick Ford again. I found him this time, up in Icky helping Aneska Ugashik fillet her salmon so she could hang it. He tells me he loaned his four-wheeler to Frank Monday morning, and then he tells me that he was fishing the same section of river Frank was over the weekend, Cache Creek, and Frank was out there all day both days, and Charlene was right, he didn't kill Don Nelson.”

“He shot McLynn. He hit Diana.”

“He was drunk.”

“Don't make excuses for him, Liam. He's already made enough of them for himself.”

“You know who I think of when I think of Frank Petla?”

“Who?”

“Tim.”

“Tim?” Wy ruffled up. “He's nothing like Tim, he-”

“I didn't mean it like that. I meant, Tim gets a chance. You gave him a chance.”

“Charlene and Peter gave Frank a chance.”

“Yeah. Well. Maybe if they'd gotten to him sooner. Or for longer.”

“Maybe.” She didn't sound convinced. She'd taken a liking to Diana Prince, and she didn't take kindly to Frank shooting her. “Are things back to normal now?”

He thought about the nine funerals in Kulukak, the plain coffin shipped home to Seattle. “It is for us. Not for others. But yeah, for us, I think so.”

“Is your father gone?”

“Oh yeah.”

The raven let loose with a series of calls that sounded like one big, continuous belly laugh.

“Why do you say it like that?”

Liam thought back to two days before, two weeks after Don Nelson had been found dead on the site of the old dugout. “So you had the wrong man,” Charles had said.

“The wrong men,” Liam had said equably.

Charles shook his head. “Sloppy.”

“Fairly,” Liam agreed. “Must be hereditary.”

“I beg your pardon?” There was frost on Charles's vowels.

“I called your office. At Hurlburt Field.”

“Really?” Charles examined the contents of his glass with interest. “Why, when I'm right here?”

“You are no longer assigned to Hurlburt. You up for promotion, Dad?”

Charles laughed it off. “I'm always up for promotion.”

Liam had heard that kind of laughter before, the laughter of military officers trained to support one another in life-and-death situations and yet oh so aware that a misstep here, a missed salute there and you were retiring at your present rank. It was sharply edged, competitive laughter that gave no quarter and had nothing to do with humor. “Sure you are. You've been a colonel now, what, five, six years? About time to move up, isn't it? What's next? Major general?”

“Brigadier,” Charles said involuntarily. His mouth snapped shut and formed a thin line.

“That's right, brigadier,” said Liam, who had remembered that perfectly well but had wanted to see if Charles would jump at the bait. “Means you're off active flight duty, right, your next promotion?”

He waited with every outward sign of being willing to wait until this time next year for Charles's answer, until his father said reluctantly, “Not necessarily.”

“Yeah, but you'll be flying a desk sooner or later, so it makes sense that you'd already be looking for a job that suited you. So then I called your new office.”

Charles frowned down at his plate, disconcerted by Liam's sudden change of subject. “How did you get the number?”

“Innate charm,” Liam replied. “Also hereditary. You're working on some kind of Superfund cleanup task force, aren't you, Dad? In fact that's the real reason why you're here. Not to facilitate turning redundant Air Force buildings over to the local community, but to hide a toxic waste site.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I've got to get back, anyway.” Charles pushed his plate away and half rose to his feet.

“Sit down, Dad.” Charles had sat down, had glared at Liam from the other side of one of Bill's booths where they were hav- ing a meal before Charles shipped out. “Don Nelson had it all down in his journal. He found your dump site. He went down to the river below the dump site and smelled fumes, so he figured it was leaking. He wrote to a reporter for theNews.” A good one who could be your worst nightmare, Liam thought, and wondered why he hadn't said it out loud.

“I had a friend do some searching on the Net for me. Fuel spills into fresh water are less publicized than ocean spills, although spills into fresh water are way more destructive. Freshwater is more sensitive to a spill than salt water, plus people and other mammals drink fresh water, and birds nest in it, fish lay eggs in it, mosquitoes give birth in it, like that. And of course the fish eat the larvae and the birds eat the fish and the people eat the birds and pretty soon you've got toxic poisoning of human beings, never mind the environment. Did you know,” he added parenthetically, “that human beings are inedible? It's a fact. We sprayed DDT all over the place for years and it got into the food chain and now we're inedible. I ought to find that comforting, but I don't somehow.”

Maria stopped by with another round of drinks. Charles flashed his automatic smile. Maria wilted a little, rallied and moved on to the next table.

“You get the idea, Dad,” Liam said. “You spill petroleum or petroleum by-products into fresh water and it gets into everything from the algae up.” He took a bite of cheeseburger. “You want to know the worst kind of fuel spill there is?”

Charles, busy with his own burger, didn't reply.

“I'll tell you,” Liam said. “Light refined products. Kerosene. Gasoline. Jet fuel. It spreads like that”-he snapped his fingers-“and it soaks right into the ground. No surface tension to speak of, like crude oil has. Specific gravity is way lighter than crude, and viscosity… well, hell, jet fuel hasn't much more than lighter fluid. The fumes evaporate, there isn't any residue, you'd hardly know it was there.” Liam dug into his fries. “Until it starts showing up in your drinking water as benzene. A known carcinogen. Cancer-causing substance,” he added helpfully.

“I know what carcinogen means,” Charles snapped.

Liam wiped his mouth with a napkin and leaned forward, speaking in a low voice. “Good. Because I want you to know just what it is YOU'VE BEEN DOING OUT ON THAT FUCKING BASE!”

There was a reasonable lunch crowd at Bill's that day, and conversation stilled for a moment when Liam's roar echoed around the room. But people were eating and drinking and talking and laughing, and Jimmy was singing about fruitcakes strutting naked through the crosswalk in the middle of the week, so it was only a momentary lull. Bill eyed Liam narrowly before deciding to let it ride and returning to her New Orleans guidebook. It was open to the section on graveyards, which in New Orleans, she had informed everyone the previous day, were a tourist attraction.

For his part, Liam felt another root send out tentative tendrils into Newenham ground. He wouldn't have put it in quite those words, but he was rallying to the defense of his new home. He was telling his father, Air Force Major Charles Bradley Campbell, You may not shit in my nest. He let his voice drop back to a normal tone. “You've been burying fifty-five-gallon drums of byproducts, haven't you? I saw all the heavy equipment at the base. Thought it was mostly there for snow removal, and it probably was, to begin with.” Liam ate a fry with more relish than he was feeling. “Why, Dad? Do you make general quicker if you don't go to all the time and expense of disposing of toxic waste in an environmentally acceptable manner?”

Charles wiped his hands on his napkin and folded it precisely in fours. “You said there was a journal?”

“Yeah, there's a journal.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

Liam looked at the last of his cheeseburger with regret, and savored it as it went down. “I had the M.E. test a sample of Nelson's tissue. He and McLynn had been getting their drinking water out of the Snake River. They'd been filtering it, of course, for beaver fever. But Nelson had traces of benzene in his body.”

“I repeat,” Charles said, very controlled, “what are you going to do with the journal?”

“I don't know,” Liam said. His brow creased in deep thought. “Wy's a friend of that reporter Nelson wrote to,” he offered. “Do you think she'd be interested?”

Charles's mouth set in a thin line. “Cut the crap, Liam. What do you want?”

“I want you to dig up that dump east of the archaeological dig,” Liam said promptly.

“Do you know how much that would cost?”

“Nope,” Liam said. “Don't care, either. Dig it up and dispose of it properly. And I'll be checking, Dad. Wy and I will be doing fly-bys on a regular basis. Dig it up, move it out, dispose of it, and I don't mean drop it in the Nushagak. I'll find out if you do, and I'll resurrect that journal and the results of that tissue sample. I'm pretty sure this was all your own idea, so I don't imagine the Air Force would be pleased to hear officially about it.” He smiled. “One thing for sure after that: you wouldn't have to sweat out any more promotion reviews.”

“You're blackmailing me,” Charles said.

“Oh, you noticed,” Liam said. “It's my first attempt, I was afraid it wouldn't go over. Yeah, I'm blackmailing you, and it's a damn sorry thing to have to do to your own father.” He wiped his hands and tossed his napkin down. “You raised me better than that, Dad.”

Thinking back on it now, on this lazy evening on the beach, he looked down at the powerful flow of the Nushagak and wondered what an analysis of its waters would produce. Maybe that was one of those things he was better off not knowing.

He wouldn't give Nelson's journal to Jo. He never would have, no matter what he'd said to his father. Jo was going to have to leave without her story. He hadn't even told Wy about what Nelson had written.

For better or worse, Charles was Liam's father, and if you were any kind of a human being, you looked out for your own. He hadn't told Charles that, of course. He wasn't sure he ever would. But he had used Nelson's journal to start the fire which was cooking their dinner.

For now, he had a hot dog so burned it was about ready to drop off the stick onto the fire, just the way he liked them, and a bun prepared with mustard, onions, relish, shredded cheese and jalapeño peppers, just the way he liked them. He was sitting next to the woman of his choice, that goddamn raven was keeping his distance, and… “Wy?”

She was absorbed with putting the finishing touches on her own hot dog. “What?”

“I know you were really young when you left the village and moved to Newenham, but do you remember any Yupik?”

She looked up from the bun upon which she was lavishing mustard. “Some. A few words. Like the word for storyknife.” She said it, and it still sounded like “yawning ruin” to him, just like it had when Frank Petla said it.

“What about ‘tookalook’?”

“What?”

“ ‘Tookalook,’ ” he said. “I heard it for the first time this week, and I was wondering what it meant.”

“Tookaluk. Tookalook. Um, maybetulukaruk?”

“Oh,” he said, disappointed. “That's just the name of the dig.”

“Yeah,” she said, heaping chopped onions on the bun. “And raven.”

Overhead, the raven clicked,k-k-k-k-k-krACK.“Tulukaruk means raven?”

“Uh-huh.”

Liam thought about that afternoon on the island beach, with the hundreds of walrus between him and Old Walter. The old man had said two words. “Tulukaruk. Asveq.” Raven. Walrus. Had he seen a raven, there on the beach that afternoon? He said, “How long did you say Tim was going to be gone?”

“You didn't answer my question,” she said severely. “Why did you say, ‘Oh yeah,’ like that when I asked you if your father was gone?”

He fell in love all over again with her reproving frown and abandoned the hot dog to the fire to pull her into his arms. She came willingly and they tumbled down next to the big driftwood log they'd been leaning against. “God, you feel good.” He looked down into her face, at her eyes, her skin, her mouth, her hair. Maybe another man wouldn't see what he saw, maybe another man wouldn't see the beauty and the intelligence and above all the strength, but then maybe that was what made her the only woman for him. “You could live without me, couldn't you?” he said suddenly.

“I have,” she said simply, and smiled. “But I'd much rather not. If I have a choice.”

“You don't,” he said, and kissed her. He had her shirt up and her bra open and then he was cupping her breasts, biting her nipples so that she whimpered and arched her back, instantly ready. “That's what I love most about making love with you,” he murmured. “The way you respond. You go off like a rocket when I barely touch you, don't you?” He laved the nipple he'd bitten with his tongue. She moaned, her breath coming faster, and he felt like the king of the world. He slipped the snap of her jeans and slid a hand between her legs. “You're wet, ready and waiting for me. Only for me, Wy.”

“Please,” she said, “hurry.”

“I don't want to hurry,” he said. “I like you needy.” He rolled her to her back and captured her hands to hold them over her head.

“Liam.”

His free hand wandered, down, up, in. Her breath caught and her hips moved against his hand. He sought out another spot with his thumb and rubbed, oh so gently. Her eyes squeezed shut and she arched and cried out, and he watched with immense pleasure as a deep, dark flush rushed up over her breasts and throat and face. “You are so easy, Chouinard. How many times can I make you come?”

She opened her eyes to meet his. “That was one,” she whispered, and he was on her and in her before the last word was out of her mouth.