"Was he alone?"

"I didn't see anybody else," Gull said. He added, "Of course, Meany was on the flying bridge, and like I said, he was running dark. There could have been somebody in the cabin, I suppose. Like ten or twelve women," he added, "all married to somebody else. I'm telling you, Kate, the guy went for quantity."

"Did you have words?"

"I yelled at him," Gull said with satisfaction. "He didn't bother yelling back, he just slammed her into reverse so fast he rammed the slip and damn near stripped the gears. Some kind of boat jockey he is." He snorted, sounding like a disdainful bull.

Kate thought about that for a few moments, then for the time being abandoned it. Gull had no motive, other than the continuing battle over transient parking, a battle he carried with enthusiasm to every skipper of every boat, sport or commercial, seiner or drifter, who dared preempt a foot of the transient float. There ought to be signs, like the blue-and-white wheelchair they had for Handicapped Parking. Maybe a fluorescent decal every ten feet of float with a flying saucer on it. Alien Anchorage. Outlander Landing. Put it next to a red circle with the figure of a man in the center of it and a red slanted line crossing him off. Little Green Men and Bug-Eyed Monsters Only. Kate wondered what shape the Fomalhauters took, and decided not to ask. "So that was about ten o'clock."

Gull nodded, then brightened. "It must have been about twenty after when I came in, because I turned on the TV in time to watch Jackie Purcell lie about the weather."

So Meany was still alive at ten, and his son may or may not have been on board. She should head on out to Alaganik, start banging on hatches, talking to fishermen to find out if they'd seen anything at Alaganik the night before. But they'd chased him off hours before the period ended, none of them had given pursuit, none of them had been fishing except for Meany, and most of them had been drinking and partying besides, and Meany had been such a popular guy that none of them would be inclined to care one way or the other if the murderer was caught, anyway.

Except the murderer.

She ought to take a look at Meany's boat, too. They'd left it in Alaganik at anchor. Someone had given the son a ride to his family's setnet site, where his mother and uncle were supposed to be. Her next stop, she thought drearily.

They were startled out of their separate reveries by the crackle of the radio and Lamar Rousch's voice, rendered thin and reedy by the FM bandwidth, announcing the next fishing period. Gull leaned over to turn up the volume, and when Lamar signed off, turn it down again. "No period," he said. "Escapement must be down."

"For crying out loud," Kate said, "about a million reds must have gone up the Kanuyaq yesterday from Alaganik Bay alone, and nobody was hanging any nets in their way. Well, two, but hell."