"Kate Shugak, Mr. Meany," Kate said, "and this is Sam Dementieff, my uncle." Maybe not technically, but close enough for government work. "Sam owns the Freya, the tender anchored out in the bay there. Your brother delivered to us last period." Neil Meany glanced out the window and nodded. The light caught his face half in and half out of shadow; he looked tense and strained, natural enough in the circumstances. "Who is everyone else here, please?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "This is Frank and Dani Meany, my niece and nephew. And Evan McCafferty, our summer hand."

"How do you do," she said. The summer hand smiled again. She ignored it. "We took your brother's body back to town this morning." She paused, but nobody asked. "The state trooper flew in and took the body to Anchorage."

Meany frowned. "Anchorage? Why Anchorage?"

"Because there has to be an autopsy, Mr. Meany."

He went very still, eyes fixed on her face. "Autopsy?"

"Yes. To determine how he was killed."

"You mean he didn't just drown?"

"No." At the sink Marian Meany turned around. Her face was backlit by the window and Kate couldn't make out her expression. This was awkward but necessary. Kate said levelly, "It looks like your husband was murdered, Mrs. Meany."

"Oh."

She didn't seem much interested in how, Kate noted. Or perhaps she already knew?

The brother said it for her. "How was he killed, Ms. Shugak?"

"We don't know." She added, just to see the expression on their faces when she did, "It could have been one of several ways."

Neil Meany stared at her. "I beg your pardon?"

Kate hesitated, more over how to phrase it than over fear of hurting anyone's delicate sensibilities. "Well, you could say whoever did it wanted to be very sure your brother was dead."

An expression of revulsion crossed the mannered face, and Neil Meany put up a hand palm out. "Never mind. I don't want to hear it."

Marian Meany remained silent. Kate looked at the boy sitting on the bottom bunk. "Your name is Frank, isn't it? Frank Meany? Is there anything you can tell me about your father's death, Frank?"

"You're not the cops," the boy said, his heavy features, so like his father's, cast in the same sullen mold as the last time she'd seen him. "We don't have to talk to you."

"No, you don't," Kate agreed. "But you're going to have to talk to somebody, sooner or later."

The boy ducked his head down, refusing to look at her, but she could see the miseryand perhaps fearon his face.

"Frank," Neil Meany said sharply. "This kind of behavior doesn't help us."

The girl in the top bunk turned her head to look at him. "Fuck off, Neil. Like, you know, you have anything to say about anything we do. Don't talk to her if you don't want to, Frank."