Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

“I didn't hear otherwise, I just heard a lot of wishing she did.” She paused. “You got any idea who killed them?”

Liam shook his head. “Not so far. Something going on with the tribal chief out at Kulukak. I asked a few questions, I'm letting him stew for now.” He sighed. “The boat was adrift, looked like it had been overnight. They'd been fishing, everybody agreed on that because everybody else was out on the water, too. Nobody saw them come home, so it probably happened out there. Could have been any one of fifty fishers. Darrell Jacobson says he saw a skiff leave Kulukak harbor about ten o'clock last night. Didn't recognize who was driving it.”

“Great. What now?”

“I called the Malones' lawyer from the post. Next of kin is David's sister in Anacortes. He's calling her, and he'll call me back. A tender was picking up fish during the period.”

“Which one?”

“TheArctic Wind.”

Bill nodded. “Seafood North. Right here in town.”

“Yeah. I'm going to want to check all theArctic Wind's fish tickets for yesterday's period in Kulukak, get a list of the boats that delivered. If Seafood North is reluctant-”

“Not a problem,” Bill said, waving a dismissive hand. “I'll slap a warrant on Virgil Ballard so fast it'll drop his socks.”

In the absence of a judge, Liam relied on the magistrate to back him up, and truth be told, Bill was more than delighted to oblige. On occasion she had even been known to take the law into her own hands, the most recent incident having been a man apprehended by the local police in the act of beating his wife. Drunk, disorderly and abusive, he'd made the mistake of hitting the arresting officer.

The Newenham Police Department was understaffed, underfunded and underestimated, although Liam could only judge by reputation, as he had yet to meet any of them. The chief of police had resigned six months before under suspicion of embezzlement of public funds; in that same six months two officers had been accepted into the state police academy, leaving the remaining two officers overworked, overburdened and overwhelmed. During the past three months the two of them had either been in the middle of an armed conflict or sleeping under guard of wives armed with shotguns whenever Liam had tried to contact them.

All he knew for sure was that this particular officer had greeted this particular perpetrator's assault with such enthusiasm that the alleged perpetrator had been wheeled into the magistrate's hearing on local EMT Joe Gould's gurney. Bill had greeted his arrival with enthusiasm, deputized Moses to pull the public defender off his fishing boat and empaneled twelve people from the bar who had taken forty-five minutes to find the perp guilty of assault in three different degrees (he'd backhanded his eight-year-old son on the way to his wife). Bill thanked the jury for their service, dismissed them and sentenced the new felon to six months in jail then and there. As a magistrate Bill had no business trying anything but misdemeanors, but that didn't stop her. She didn't hold much with jury trials anyway, deeming them a waste of honest, hardworking citizens' time. “People got to work,” she told Liam indignantly when he tried, delicately, to show her the error of her ways.

Liam hoped mightily that their district was never subject to review by the state Department of Justice, and that they never got a better public defender than the one they had now. Any case arising from judicial misconduct in Bill's court was bound to go all the way to the Supreme Court.

On the other hand, it was a Rehnquist court. Comforted, he said, “Thanks. I appreciate the help.”

“No problem. You heading back over there now?”

Liam shook his head. “I've got another problem out at that village site that this university guy is digging up.”

“I heard. McLynn was in the bar, trying to drink away the memory. Your new trooper came in after him.” Bill raised an eyebrow.

“She's not my new trooper, she's the trooper newly assigned to Newenham.”

The eyebrow stayed up. “Funny, I got the distinct impression she was working for you.”

Liam took a deep breath. “I suppose she was here the same time as my father?”

Bill nodded, smile fading when she saw Liam's expression.

“Did he say what he wanted?”

Bill looked at him for a moment. “He's your father, Liam. He doesn't need a reason to see you.”

Wanna bet? Liam thought. “Okay, I'm headed back to the airport. Wy's flying me into the village site where she and this guy found the body. See what Prince has dug up. So to speak.”

She winced and followed him into the kitchen. “Have you had lunch?”

A loud sizzling sound as raw potatoes hit boiling grease was echoed by the growl of his stomach. Suddenly he realized he'd flown a hundred miles on no breakfast, and that fear of flying burned calories better than the Boston Marathon.

“Wy, either, I suppose.” He didn't have to say a word. “Dottie! Two burgers and fries, one to go, for the trooper!”

Dottie's expression didn't change. “I told you to peel some more potatoes, Paul! Get to it!”

Paul got to it.

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.