With a muttered curse she turned to face him, and when she did, the sight of his impassive expression caused a reluctant smile to cross her own face. "I don't want it to be the kid."

He nodded.

"It used to be a lot easier. You know?"

"I know."

When she'd worked for the Anchorage DA, her duty was clear. Identify the perp, build a case on means, motive and opportunity that would hold up in court, arrest him and assist the DA in prosecution, followed by, if everyone did their jobs properly, an extended sojourn at Hiland or Spring Creek or Palmer hosted by the ever accommodating state of Alaska.

She'd been a private citizen too long. She said abruptly, "Monday was the opener. July second. Flat calm, no wind, sunny, fish hitting everywhere you looked, fishermen filling up and delivering and filling up again and delivering again. Meany delivered that day. He had a load on, the drifter's trim line was damn near under water."

Still noncommittal, Jim said, "Lucky for him it was a no-weather day."

She nodded. "He had the son on board, kid maybe fifteen, sixteen years old. The kid did something stupid, something no worse than any other teenager with his hormones in an uproar hasn't done a billion times before anywhere in the world. Meany beat on him. He beat on him something fierce. He knocked him into the water, not once but twice. And then he kicked him."

He waited.

Her eyes met his. "The kid looked like it wasn't anything didn't happen once every day and twice on Sundays. He was used to it." She added, "I really don't want it to be the kid."

He thought. "Okay. So here we've got a fishermen, dead not by his own hand"he cocked an eye at Kate and she shook her head"who was beating on his kid, probably a repeat offender." He waited for Kate's confirming nod. "A fisherman who was viewed as a scab by a hundred striking fishermen. A fisherman who was screwing around with another fisherman's wife, and rumor has it, with others as well. That about cover it?"

"It does from what we know so far."

His gaze sharpened. "You have reason to believe there might be somebody else wanted this guy wasted?"

One shoulder raised, lowered. "Look at the pattern so far. This guy lived to piss off everyone around him." Kate remembered Tim's flushed, excited face late Monday afternoon, so proud of being high boat. I know this guy, Tim had said. And Tim had not mentioned his wife that day, only his mother. Unusual for a newlywed. Was the omission deliberate? Had he known Myra was screwing around? Had he known with whom?

She would have to ask him, she realized reluctantly, or Jim would, and it would be less threatening coming from her. She didn't look forward to it, though.

A memory of Auntie Joy's expression as she looked at Meany from the deck of the Freya flashed through her mind. She gave a mental shrug. That at least was something she didn't have to worry about. Auntie Joy had been at fish camp surrounded by five witnesses, one of whom was the chief investigator for the Anchorage district attorney.