Their guy‘s energy leached away with them and Kenny and Jim bagged him along with a trailer full of stolen property, including a closet full of weapons. The most interesting of these was an assault rifle with a canvas grip full of loaded clips. Ah, Mr. Kalashnikov, I presume, Kenny had said. And if I‘m not mistaken, a Type 81. I wonder where the hell that came from. He looked at Jim. Other than China originally, I mean.

Jim didn‘t care. He wasn‘t a gun nut. He could clean and load a 9 mm Smith & Wesson automatic and his backup piece, an M&P .357, and produce a respectable grouping of shots on the police silhouette target he printed out on his computer once a month. He wasn‘t a hunter, he didn‘t own a rifle, and he owned no recreational weapons. A closet full of probably stolen and certainly unpermitted weapons, a majority of which appeared to qualify under AS 11.61.200(h)(1)(C) as prohibited, looked to him like a Class C felony and nothing more.

The good news was Bobbie Singh was going to be able to keep the perp out of his hair for at least five years and probably more if Jim was any judge of his character. The gentleman did not appear to him to be a viable candidate for time off with good behavior.

Still, yesterday‘s had been a tense afternoon, made more so by a close encounter of the newspaper kind, this in the form of an interview by one Benjamin Franklin Gunn of the AhtnaAdit, the town‘s weekly newspaper. He made Kenny and Jim pose for a photograph in front of the pile of illegal weapons. Jim liked trophy shots about as much as he liked interviews. He was left feeling sore in body and in spirit, neither of which was alleviated by the necessity of reopening an investigation into a case that had been disposed of a full month before. While he did not grudge Dewayne Gammons his return to the ranks of the living, he was seriously pissed off over the prospect of trying to identify the month-old remains of yet another idiot who had gone wandering off in the Park without a clue as to what was lying in wait for him there.

The only way to make something foolproof was to keep it away from fools. He didn‘t know who‘d said that but it was a rule to by god live by if he‘d ever heard one. He wondered when science would invent a buzzer that would go off on Maggie‘s desk when a fool stepped off a plane at the Niniltna airstrip.

All he wanted now was food, a hot shower, and a bed. And the promise of at least a few fool-free moments.

Kate was on her way home, too, by prior arrangement detouring first by Auntie Edna‘s. The best bulk cook among the four aunties, she always had something on the stove in a quantity large enough to feed the crew of an aircraft carrier. Her father had been a Filipino and a damn fine cook and he had taught Auntie Edna well, and today what was on the stove was lumpia, chicken adobo, and rice. None of that was new. What was new was the line at the door, made up mostly of, you guessed it, Suulutaq Mine workers. Kate arrived to find Auntie Edna in the act of exchanging a recycled garbage bag containing four white Styrofoam containers for a fistful of cash from a young mine worker who might have been drooling a little out of the corner of his mouth. Kate didn‘t blame him, given the collection of aromas wafting from Auntie Edna‘s kitchen.