"He's lawyered up."

"Who?"

"Frank Rickard."

Kate winced. "Is Rickard the biggest a.s.shole magnet in the state, or what?"

Jim shrugged. "If Alaska fails to convict on the Macleod murder, Idaho's drooling at the prospect of indicting him on the truck stop homicides."

"Will Johnny have to testify?"

"Maybe." Jim raised his beer. "Here's hoping n.o.body else shows up from his. .h.i.tch north, okay?"

"I heard that." They clinked gla.s.ses.

At the end of the bar Nick Waterbury sat hunched over his beer, a full one waiting to one side, no Eve in sight. "Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said.

She looked past him at the aunties, receiving obeisances from a train of Park rats on their way home or to Ahtna from that day's meeting. "Howie isn't here tonight," she said. "He wasn't at the shareholders meeting today, either."

"Even Howie's smart enough to figure it'd be a good idea to stay out of the aunties' way for a while," Jim said dryly.

She looked back at Nick. At that same moment he raised his head and met her eyes, and she was struck by the similarity she saw between him and Al Sheldon. They were nothing alike physically, one tall, the other short, one dark, the other fair, one white, the other Native. They reminded her of Bernie, come to think of it. The loss of a child told the same story on all three faces in sunken eyes, drawn complexion, the agony of loss, the absence of hope.

She gasped. "Jesus Christ," she said.

"What?" Jim said. He looked from Kate to Nick and back to Kate. "Kate?"

They borrowed one of Bernie's cabins out back. Nick followed them there without protest. When asked the direct question, he confessed without surprise, in a flat monotone that had all the life leached out of it, a monotone that reminded Kate only too painfully of the interview with Al Sheldon.

Yes, he'd been at the post office that morning. Along with everyone else waiting for their mail he'd heard that Louis Deem was going to go free.

He'd sat in his pickup down the street from the trooper post, and when Louis Deem walked out and started up the road to the Step on foot, Nick had taken his shotgun and followed.

"I stayed far enough behind so he wouldn't hear me," Nick said. "When we were a couple of miles out of town, I caught up with him. And I shot him."

He didn't look at either of them as he sat there, big, gnarled hands hanging between his knees. He got up and followed Jim obediently out to Nick's truck and watched silently as Jim took his shotgun from the rack in the back window.

Later, at the post, he repeated his words and signed the statement and shuffled into the cell vacated when Greenbaugh was moved to Anchorage. He lay down on the bunk, clasped his hands on his chest, and closed his eyes. He looked ready to be placed in a coffin.

Kate and Jim gaped at him for some moments before Jim recalled himself and closed and locked the door. Back in his office he repeated Kate's totally inadequate words with force and feeling. "Jesus Christ. I feel like I ought to be fired. h.e.l.l, I feel like I ought to resign in protest of my own total and complete incompetence and malfeasance and just all around general stupidity."

He dropped his head into his hands. His voice sounded tinny and far away. "This is what comes of crossing the line, Kate. You think the right reason trumps doing the wrong thing, and then you never get to the truth, when the truth is mostly a good thing and almost always the best thing to get to."

"I can't believe I missed it," Kate said, still dazed.

"I will never do something like that again." Jim said it like he was taking a vow. "I don't care what the provocation is. I don't care if the perp is Satan himself. Never ever again."

"He was sitting right there in the courtroom when the verdict came down," Kate said.

"I was so sure I knew how Louis Deem died. I was so sure I knew who did it, and why, and I worked so hard to prove otherwise that I couldn't even see who had the biggest motive of all."

"We all saw how angry Nick was," Kate said. "It's Morgan's First Law. 'The nearest and the dearest got the motive with the mostest.' And I was so blinded by my hatred of Louis Deem that I didn't even think of it."

They sat in silence, trying to move beyond stunned disbelief to acceptance.

Kate looked up and said, "We have to tell Bernie."

He felt his expression change. "What?" she said.

"Nothing," he said. "You're right. We have to tell Bernie, and the aunties. And Howie, the little weasel."

Later that night he lay in bed next to Kate and wondered why he hadn't told her about Willard right then and there. It had been the perfect moment.

There were lots of reasons.

It would hurt her.

It would hurt the aunties, because she would surely tell them.

It would hurt Willard, who would very likely wind up in long-term, court-mandated psychiatric care somewhere that wasn't the Park and might not even be Alaska, which would very probably kill him. He was cared for where he was, more or less, and absent the fell influence of Louis Deem was unlikely to be incited to burglary and murder a second time. His trigger was dead and buried.

And telling wouldn't change anything. Enid and Fitz would still be dead.

All telling Kate about Willard would do was make him feel better. Carrying around a secret this big was a blight and a burden. It weighed on him, preyed on his mind, made him feel guilty, which made him feel cranky and snappish. Confession was good for the soul, and all that c.r.a.p.

Still, he was a big, strong man. He'd taken an oath to serve and to protect.

But what it all came down to, really, was that telling Kate about Willard would hurt her.

It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to sleep with Talia Macleod. Attractive and willing and every bit the dog he was, how could he resist her? More to the point, why on earth would he? No doubt that it would have been a very enjoyable evening. Who would it have hurt? Not Talia. Not Jim. NotPark society, or he'd have been stoned to death by now.

Hard questions. Easy answer, though.

Kate. He hadn't slept with Talia because Kate would have been hurt.

Funny how more and more often the focus of serving and protecting, for him, came down to serving and protecting Kate Shugak.

He rolled over and slid an arm around her waist, pulling her into the curve of his body, tucking his knees into the backs of hers. He nuzzled the nape of her neck, and she made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a purr.

He slept.

A MONTH LATER.

ANCHORAGE, AK (AP): Global Harvest Resources Inc. (GHRI), the world's second largest gold producer, announced today the results of supplementary exploratory drilling in the Suulutaq Mine during last summer's drilling season.

A clearly euphoric Bruce O'Malley, GHRI's chief executive officer, said that core samples taken by the five rigs working 17 new holes had still not discovered the limits of the Suulutaq deposits. O'Malley said that GHRI would be mobilizing two more drill rigs next year. "It's now the second largest mine of this type in the world," O'Malley said. "If we keep drilling, we might get to be the largest."

GHRI currently estimates that the Suulutaq ore deposit contains 42.6 billion pounds of copper, 39.6 million ounces of gold, and 2.7 billion pounds of molybdenum. The gold alone at current prices is estimated to be worth over $35 billion. GHRI is estimating that it will take $3 billion to $5 billion to develop the mine, and hundreds of millions of dollars to operate it. "Global Harvest is in this for the long term," O'Malley said. "We'll see in the next five generations of Alaskans."

Suulutaq is located on state lands near the Iqaluk Wildlife Refuge and the headwaters of the GrueningRiver, one of the major tributaries of the KanuyaqRiver, home of the world-renowned run of KanuyaqRiver red salmon. The confluence of the two rivers is the calving grounds of the GrueningRiver caribou herd.

Significant opposition is developing among local residents, including fishermen, hunters, trappers, and some Alaska Natives who are concerned that by-products of the toxins used in the mining process will pollute the groundwaters that are the source of the Kanuyaq and irreparably harm salmon and other wildlife.

The Kanuyaq salmon fishery is currently valued at $110 million.

ALSO BY DANA STABENOW.

Prepared for Rage

Blindfold Game

The Kate Shugak Series

A Deeper Sleep

A Taint in the Blood

A Grave Denied

A Fine and Bitter Snow

The Singing of the Dead

Midnight Come Again

Hunter s Moon

Killing Grounds

Breakup

Blood Will Tell Play with Fire

A Cold-Blooded Business

Dead in the Water

A Fatal Thaw

A Cold Day for Murder