“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?”

“Young.”

“Oh.” She thought. “That's interesting.”

“How so?”

She hesitated. “Nobody actually said anything…”

“Yeah, but?”

“Well, I get the feeling there was something going on between Larsgaard and Molly Malone.”

Liam remembered Larsgaard's hesitation in speaking of Molly Malone. “I got that feeling, too, when we were all up at the Malones' house.”

“Shall I interrogate him on it?”

“We both will. We're flying back in tomorrow morning.”

“Eight, right?”

“Ten,” he said firmly, and repressed a chuckle at her expression. “I've got some phone calls to make. The M.E. might have some preliminary findings, and I want to talk to him before we leave.” He drained his mug. “That all you got?”

“I haven't been able to track down Max Bayless yet.”

“I've got someone working on that for me. Anything else?” She hesitated. “Well…”

“What?” He stretched, yawning. “I'm bushed. It's been a long day. Time to hit the rack.”

Her triumphant smile stopped him. “I found a witness, sir. A deckhand on a boat that broke down in Kulukak toward the end of Monday's period.”

That caught him in midstretch. “You're kidding.”

“No. Chad Donohoe, from-”

His tone was deceptively mild. “And you didn't think this was information important enough to tell me first?”

Her smile slipped. “Well…”

He met her eyes. His face didn't change expression but hers did. “Next time? Just run it down in order of importance. Especially at this time of night.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, subdued. She flipped to the appropriate page in her notebook. “Chad Donohoe, from Mount Vernon, Washington State. He was deckhanding on board theSnohomish Belleand she broke down just as the period was ending, about five-thirty. The skipper-Anders Ringstad-had to call in an order to Newenham-Reardon Marine-and have it flown into Kulukak late that night, about ten o'clock.” She added parenthetically, “That strip must be rated for after-dark operations. I'll have to check. Of course, if you're not flying passengers, the rules aren't as stringent. Anyway, Ringstad sent Donohoe to Kulukak in the skiff. Where they were fishing is about an hour from the village by skiff. He should have been back by midnight, twelve-thirty at the latest.

“But…” Prince looked at Liam over the top of her notebook. “It seems that Donohoe has a girlfriend in Kulukak. Among other places.”

“Aha.”

“So it was about three a.m. when he got back to theSnohomish Belle.”

Liam cut to the chase. “What did he see?”

“He says it was real foggy out, first of all. Worse than it was this morning.”

Liam groaned. “Oh great.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought, and it was right down on the water, too, he couldn't see but fifty feet off the beam-what's a beam?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“Anyway, he couldn't see fifty feet off the beam in either direction. But he says a New England dory-what's a dory?”

“A skiff. A big skiff.”

“Oh. Donohoe saw this New England dory pass real close off to starboard-that's right-about ten minutes before he got back to theBelle.Almost sideswiped him, he said, it was that close. He never would have seen it otherwise. He could hear the engine, of course.”