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from a broad brow, falling into a natural part over her right temple, the ends apt to curl into inky commas around her ears. Her cheekbones were high and flat and just beginning to take on that bronze tint he had noticed during previous summers, all gifts of her Aleut heritage, although the high bridge of her nose was all Anglo and the jut of her chin as Athabascan as it got.
     
    She seemed tall but wasn’t, reaching a neat five feet on a lithe, compact frame. She had a tall personality, he decided. There were curves, plenty of them, from which the inevitable T-shirt and jeans did nothing to detract, but they were sheathed in a deceptively smooth layer of muscle, firm and well-toned, that gave her a grace of motion that could fool the eye into thinking she wasn’t as strong as an ox and as quick as a snake. She was both.
     
    She became aware of his steady, unblinking scrutiny, and the smile went out like a light. It was replaced with a wary expression, shuttered, watchful. Vigilant, perhaps, was the most appropriate word. The watch was set, bayonets fixed, ready to repel invaders. He hid a grin. It suited him to have her on her guard around him. She wouldn’t have been worried if he didn’t constitute a threat. And Jim Chopin wanted very much to be a threat to Kate Shugak. If only in the most horizontal meaning of the word.
     
    Their eyes met, and he smiled at her, a long, slow smile filled with memory and purpose.
     
    The sizzle of moose burgers hitting olive oil filled the room, followed by the inviting smells of charred meat and garlic.
     
    “Tell me what you know about Len Dreyer,” Jim said over coffee. They had remained at the table following dinner, which had been received with healthy noises of appreciation, to the chefs great pleasure.
     
    “He was good at just about everything,” Kate said. “Mechanics, carpentry, fishing. He worked for everybody in the Park, I think, at one time or another. I think he helped Mandy out one year on the Iditarod when Chick was still drinking. He could turn his hand to pretty much any task.”
     
    “I know all that. What else? Was he married? Divorced? Girlfriend? Children? How long had he been in the Park? When did he get here? Did he have any fights with anyone? Anybody mad at him? You know the drill, Kate.”
     
    She did, indeed. “I haven’t heard anything like that. I knew who he was, he did work for me on the homestead, but we weren’t friends.”
     
    “You didn’t like him?”
     
    “It’s not that,” she said, taking refuge in a mouthful of coffee. He waited.
     
    Johnny was on the couch, feet up, scribbling something into a notebook, earphones on, the so-called music he was listening to mercifully the faintest of annoying buzzes. Even in the Park, you couldn’t get away from Britney Spears. If Duracell ever stopped making batteries, every kid within twenty million acres would rise up in revolt.
     
    “Len was kind of reserved,” Kate said. “He was polite, even friendly, but he didn’t volunteer information about himself. I don’t remember him hooking up with anyone, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Sometimes I only go into town to pick up my mail. Ask Bernie, he’ll know.”
     
    “Yeah,” Jim said. “That’s the problem.”
     
    “What is?”
     
    “I’ve got a hit-and-run outside Gulkana, one dead, one in critical condition in the hospital in Ahtna. I’ve got an aggravated assault in Spirit Mountain, where the husband’s screaming attempted murder but it’s looking more like battered wife syndrome and self-defense and I need time to find out for sure. I’ve got a guy busted for dealing wholesale amounts of coke out of a video store in Cordova, who says the owner was the dealer and so far as he knew he was just renting out movies, and I need to get into that.”
     
    “There’s no mystery about Len Dreyer,” Kate said sharply, “you know he was murdered.”
     
    “Yes, I do. Until the ME tells me different, I’m