His dimples deepened. Master Sergeant James M. Chopin was a die-hard flirt who made his home as state trooper in residence at Tok, a small community to the north of the Park that didn't quite qualify as Bush because there was a road through it. Rated on both fixed wing and helicopter, he kept the peace of the Park's twenty million acres from the air, the only way to get around Bush Alaska, and had been doing so for the last fifteen years. He'd been seducing Kate's female relatives for at least that long, earning himself the nickname Father of the Park, used with affection by some (usually female) and with opprobrium by others (usually male).

His legendary charm left Kate cold, or so she told herself; she had fended off his advances in the beginning because she disliked the idea of standing in line, and now kept it up more out of habit than anything else. Habit and Jack, she reminded herself. She blinked in the face of that steady blue gaze and with an effort did not step back from it.

Flirtation aside, Jim was the consummate professional law enforcement officer, and she respected his instincts, his ability and his sangfroid in the face of the call of the weird. She remembered only too well the scene in Bernie's Road-house nearly three years ago, when the drunk pipeliner had pulled a gun and placed the muzzle at Jim's forehead. Without batting an eye, Jim had said, "What seems to be the problem here?" The drunk pipeliner, made aware of who he was up against, surrendered.

The feeling of respect was mutual, and he said, as he climbed into the cab of the rump-sprung pickup she'd borrowed from Gull, "What have we got, Kate?" knowing that her observational skills were acute, her judgment was sound and she would lay out events in concise, chronological manner, without histrionics and without coloring the facts with personal prejudice.

Although there had been a moment there, last spring, when he thought she'd shown signs of becoming less an adjunct to law enforcement and more a champion of tribal sovereignty. It was a moment, in fact, when by some mysterious alchemy she had taken on the authority of her grandmother. He still wasn't entirely sure she hadn't lied to him about that domestic disturbance he'd responded to in Niniltna, to find her already in place and the situation resolved. Just by the quality of silence that surrounded the incident he knew he'd missed something, but long experience with the parochialism of Bush villages kept him from pressing the issue. A few discreet questions had revealed that the parents had enrolled in the Native Sobriety Movement and that the kids were turning in B's and C's in school. He was all for local solutions to local problems, and so long as the situation remained stable and the kids were doing all right, he was willing to walk away.

Besides, if he accused Kate Shugak of obstruction of justice he'd never get into her pants.