Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

Water boiled rapidly on one of the gas burners, and he poured it through a two-cup cone filter. She picked up the package of coffee. “Tsunami Blend? Never heard of it.” She sniffed. “Smells good. Dark roast?”

Nowadays everyone was a coffee snob. “Yeah. Captain's Roast. I order it direct from-”

“Homer, yeah, I've been. In fact, I completed my FTO program there.”

“Is that right? Who were your field training officers?”

“Portlock, Wosnesinski and Doroshin.”

Liam grimaced. “Talk about dropping you in at the deep end.”

“They were all right,” she said stoutly, although the undercurrent of surprise that this should be so was unmistakable to Liam's trained ear. “Tough, but fair.” She hesitated, and said with a burst of candor, the first totally nonprofessional expression he'd heard from her, “I don't mind saying I was a little nervous going in. At the academy I heard a story about a recruit washing out on report writing because of a personality clash with his FTO.”

“I heard that same story,” Liam said, turning, mugs in hand. “That's why a recruit has to satisfy three separate officers that he or she is a ready and worthy candidate. That way, if one of the officers has bad chemistry with the recruit, the other two can cancel him-or her-out.”

There wasn't enough room for both sets of long legs beneath the tiny galley table, so he sat on the bunk and sipped his coffee.

She shifted her feet out of his way, looking at the imprints her shoes left behind in the carpet. “Uh, sir-you do know that the floor is wet in here?”

“It's Liam in private, Diana, and yes, I do know the floor is wet in here. This boat is sinking.”

She blinked at him. “Sinking?” Her voice faltered. “As in, below the surface of the harbor?”

“Slowly.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Never mind that. What brings you down here at this time of night?”

Recalled to duty, she sat up straight and made a praiseworthy attempt to forget that the boat she was sitting in was sinking, however slowly. “I flew back out to Kulukak this evening.”

He went very still. “I thought I told you to get some rest.”

“I wanted to canvass the villagers for information on the Malones, and pick up what information I could on Monday's fishing period.”

“I see.” Liam sipped his coffee and waited for his irritation to subside. Well, what the hell, she'd already done the deed, he might as well let her tell him what she'd learned. Her air of suppressed excitement clearly indicated that she had discovered something. He lowered the mug and said in a deliberate understated tone, “What did you find out?”

She made a wry mouth. “Well, first off I found that none of the villagers wanted to talk about it.”

“I'm not surprised.” Her brow furrowed, and he explained. “Most of them were born there, have lived there all their lives. Their first loyalty will be to their neighbors.”

“Yes, but-”

“Second, most of them are still pissed at our boss for fighting the Venetie sovereignty case all the way to the Supreme Court.”

“John Barton went to court?”

“Our boss the governor.”

“Oh.” She nodded, still not quite understanding. “I've never paid much attention to politics.”

“I'm tempted to say that now would be a good time to start, but I don't know. Maybe the more ignorant you are, the better.” He sipped his coffee. “You vote?”

She was insulted. “Of course I vote.”

“How do you choose, if you don't pay much attention to politics?”

She hesitated. “Well, actually, I call my father and ask him how he's going to vote.”

“You let him tell you how?”

“No,” she said, and reached to her collar to loosen her tie. “No, then I vote the exact opposite.”

He looked up. She was dead serious. “Oh.” Liam decided they didn't know each other well enough for him to pursue that line of inquiry. He wondered how many times he and his father had canceled each other's votes out. He wondered if everyone had a love-hate relationship with his or her father. He wondered how he was going to get through dinner the next evening.

Diana set her mug down, pulled out a notebook and returned to the subject at hand. “Since I couldn't get much from the villagers, I went down to the harbor and went from boat to boat.” She paused expectantly.

“And?” Liam said obediently.

“And I found a few fishermen who weren't local who knew the family. The Malones have lived in Kulukak for fifty years. David Malone's grandfather served in the Aleutians during World War II, and took demobilization in Anchorage after he sent for his family. In 1948, they moved to Kulukak.”

“Wonder how he got to Kulukak.”

She flipped back a page. “One of the people I talked to-darn it, where is that?-here, a Sam Deener told me that Malone Senior, was looking for a place to get away from it all and raise his family in peace and safety.”

His son had found neither, following in his father's footsteps, Liam thought.

Unconscious of irony, Diana plowed on. “He and his wife, Mae, had one son, David. David went away to school, took a fisheries management degree from the University of Oregon and brought Molly home when he graduated. They've lived there ever since. Every five years or so, David buys-bought-a bigger and better boat. They've been adding on to the house at about the same rate.”

“Mmm.” Liam drank coffee and thought. “How many other white people are there in Kulukak? Year-round residents, I mean?”

She looked puzzled. “I never thought to ask.”

“The answer might be interesting.” She still looked puzzled, and he relented enough to explain. “A lot of these smaller villages don't tolerate outsiders coming in.”

She looked back down at her notebook. “I didn't get a feel for anything like that.”

“You wouldn't; you're white, too. There's a lot they won't tell you, or me, for that matter. Not only are we cops, we're white cops.”

He could see by her expression that she understood. “They covered that pretty thoroughly in the course on community relations.”

“They did in my time, too.” And to give the academy credit, the emphasis laid on the responsibility of troopers posted to the Bush to keep everybody's peace, regardless of race, was thorough and decidedly firm. The present colonel was Native, too, which by itself was enough to raise everyone's consciousness a notch.

But, in the end, the troopers worked for the state of Alaska. They enforced laws passed by the Alaskan legislature. Going into a Bush village, Liam never forgot he was white and an employee of the state, and that of the two, the latter would get him into more trouble than both together. Prince would have an added disadvantage; she was a woman.

“Why doesn't Kulukak have a vipso?” Prince asked. “It's big enough, they could use a local cop.”

Liam sighed. The Village Police and Safety Officer Program took rural applicants into the trooper academy in Sitka, trained them in police procedures and then sent them back to keep the peace in their villages. An excellent idea, but it had its drawbacks, one of which was that in any small Bush village, the chances of any local applicant's being related in some way to the rest of the village was very high. “They had one,” he said. “About four years ago. Or so I hear tell, as I have been making some calls of my own. He was young, bright, good at his job. Then he quit.”

“Just like that?”

“Not quite. He got caught in the sack with a woman of the village. Name of Patty.” He met Prince's eyes, and added ruefully, “Patty Larsgaard. When he left town, she went with him.”

“Oh,” she said. Comprehension dawned. “Oh, I see. Wife?” He nodded. “Young Walter or Old Walter?”