Kate didn‘t like it at all.

When you coming home? George said, waving the waiting crew on board. Tonight if I can, tomorrow if I can‘t.

He nodded. I‘ll keep a seat open for you every flight until we‘re ready to button ‘er up. You be careful out among the English.

It was his favorite line from his favorite actor from his favorite film. Kate laughed and waved him off.

She called a cab from the office and fifteen minutes later was unlocking the door to the Westchester Lagoon townhouse.

The townhouse had belonged to Jack Morgan. Kate now held it in trust for his son, Johnny. They‘d talked about renting it out or even selling it off, but Jack had carried an insurance policy that had paid off the mortgage when he died. Monthly fees, annual taxes, and occasional maintenance came to less than what they would spend on a hotel room every time they came to town, especially in the summer, and besides, she liked the idea of Johnny having some property of his very own. An unoccupied condominium was also less at risk of break-in than an unoccupied house would be, and Kate made sure to bring smoked fish in for the neighbors on both sides at the end of every summer in hopes that they‘d keep an eye on the place. It came very well furnished, including the Forester in the garage. Seven years old, hadn‘t been driven in months, it started on the first turn of the key that was left in the ignition. As she always did, she took a moment to enjoy the electric garage door opener before putting the car in first and heading out.

The crime lab was a square gray building on Tudor Road that looked as all business on the outside as it did on the inside. Kate handed over the holster and Gammons‘s file and told Brillo what she wanted. He kicked when she said she wanted it by that evening (Do you know the backlog we‘ve got already, Shugak?) but he‘d worked with her before and he knew it would be easier to make her go away if he just gave her what she wanted. She left him yelling for someone from ballistics to get their ass in there.

Kurt and Brendan‘s offices were downtown and Providence on the way there, so she turned off Tudor on Bragaw. As expected, she found a parking space in the hospital parking lot in the row nearest the door, because during an Alaskan summer no one had time to be sick. Inside, she asked her way to Dewayne Gammons‘s room, and found him a building over and a couple of floors up, on a small, hushed ward which, if brief glimpses through open room doors were any indication, seemed to cater to silent, unhappy people who didn‘t get a lot of visitors.

Gammons himself was sitting in a chair, clad in hospital pajamas and robe and those horrible hospital slippers consisting of a thin sole and a wide band over the instep that were guaranteed to either fall off or, worse, trip you at the first step. He was staring out the window at the Chugach Mountains, green and lush in the bold, brash light of an Arctic summer day. There was more animation in the still scene on the other side of the glass than there was on his face.