"I know," Jim said, "but I can't force one on him." He raised his voice. "Riley?"

Kate silenced him with an upraised hand. She pointed to the door. Jim frowned and shook his head. She kept pointing. He sighed, handed her the key, and stepped into the hall. He left Mutt behind, though.

"Mr. Higgins." Kate kept her voice low and calm. "May I please come in?"

The novelty of being asked permission to enter his jail cell did not fail to have an effect. Higgins rolled to a sitting position and looked at her with anxious eyes. "Do I know you?"

"No, sir, we haven't met. My name is Kate Shugak." She let her hand rest on Mutt's head. "This is Mutt."

He met Mutt's yellow stare and smiled. "What a beautiful dog." He reached a hand through the bars. Kate tensed and almost warned him, and then his hand was scratching Mutt between the ears and the big gray half wolf was leaning into it.

There was a dead silence. Kate pulled herself together enough to say, "May I come in, Mr. Higgins?"

"The door's locked," he said apologetically, as if she wouldn't know that, and as if he were committing some dreadful social solecism by confessing to it.

"I have a key. May I?"

"Oh. Certainly." He rose to his feet as she entered, Mutt padding at her side. There was a chair opposite the bunk, next to the sink. The jail kept its cells clean, but there were some smells you can never scrub away, and human vomit, urine, and excrement were three of the most pervasive. Kate sat down in the chair. Higgins waited until she was seated before sitting on the bunk. He had awfully good manners for a murderer.

His dark hair was thinning and cut to above his ears, his face gaunt, lined, and freshly shaven. His hands, clasped in front of him, were large-knuckled and scarred. He was so thin, his body was little more than a layer of skin over bone. He was probably fifty, fifty-five. He looked a hundred.

"You're from Illinois, I understand, Mr. Higgins."

He looked startled. "Yes, I am. Carbondale."

"All your life?"

"Yes. Well, except for when I was in the army." He ducked his head. "You know what the worst thing about jail is?"

"What?"

"No windows. In the movies, there are always windows, with bars on, that you can see out of."

"With John Wayne on the other side."

He smiled, delighted that she would play. "Right."

"That was always in Texas. Be cold here."

He frowned. "Oh, I guess. I hadn't thought about it."

"It's a long way from Illinois to Alaska."

"Yes. I mean, I guess so."

"A long drive for someone traveling alone."

He looked away. "I walked."

The AlCan was fifteen hundred miles long, plus however many miles it was from Milepost Zero to Carbondale, Illinois. "Hitchhiked, do you mean?"

"Yeah, that’s what I mean," he said too quickly.