But he needs information, too, as he doesn‘t have access to the actual data that Allen is feeding True North. So King figures since Allen is already in place he might be willing to sell the information he is stealing twice, and he is right. Allen, by the way, had a bank balance in Minneapolis amounting to a little under three hundred thousand dollars.

Jim choked on his coffee. Kate watched the resulting mop-up with some satisfaction. So Rick Allen was a corporate spy, he said.

Yes.

For not one but two masters. He thought. Three, if you count the fact that he was also drawing a paycheck from Global Harvest.

He wasn‘t spying for Global Harvest, for them he was doing a real job. Fine, Jim said. That still doesn‘t explain why he and Gammons went tarryhooting out in the frickin‘ woods in May.

Kate leaned forward, her face lit with the excitement of the chase. Dewayne Gammons and Rick Allen are in the batch of first hires for the Suulutaq Mine. Lyda told me Gammons drove here with some of the other guys looking for work. What do you want to bet Allen was one of the other guys?

He made a come-on motion with his hand.

Okay, so we know from hearsay they were at minimum acquaintances. They could have driven up the Alcan together in Gammons‘s truck. According to our friendly neighborhood bigamist, Randy Randolph, when they were working nights they snuck into the kitchen together for pastry fresh out of the oven, while, and this is important, engaged in a macabre conversation about death and ways to die. You‘ll remember I‘ve met Randy Randolph, Jim said, and I find it difficult to believe that he has ever used the word macabre.‘ And that if he has used it, he has never pronounced it correctly.

Shut up.

Okay. Jim drank coffee. Tell me this much. Have we even got positive IDs on the goddamn bodies yet?

Brillo called me this morning just before we took off. The blood type on the skull is the same blood type in Gammons‘s file, which is to say Allen‘s. Preliminary finding is that prior to death occurring the skull received a serious blow to his forehead by a sharp object. It was gnawed on by a bunch of different critters after death. And the sharp object?

Brillo‘s best guess? The front hoof of a moose.

So even in Allen‘s case we‘re not talking about a murder. Jim wondered how he was going to justify what was going to be an astronomical contract fee to his boss. Wait, she said, just wait. Gammons‘s doc says he thinks one of Gammons‘s wounds was caused by a small bullet. He took photos and let me take ‘em over to the crime lab.

And Brillo says?

He won‘t swear to it, but he admitted it does bear a striking resemblance to a wound inflicted by a small-caliber bullet.

Did you ask him if the .22 you gave him was small enough?