“And she didnt show?

“No.

“When was that?

“August.

“Just last month?

“No, thats the problem. August 1997.

“Oh. Prince was silent for a moment. “And her fathers been calling ever since?

“Hes called the first of the month every month since I got here. I assume he had been doing so before. Corcoran didnt stick around long enough after I showed up to fill me in.

“Doesnt it say in the file?

He took a last look at the photograph stapled inside the folder. She was a looker, Cheryl Montgomery, a long fall of straight fair hair, large blue eyes with ridiculously long lashes, a dimple in her right cheek. Born in Juneau, a graduate of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, she had been a wildlife biologist working for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Anchorage. Twenty-six years old. A daughter who at the very least deserved a phone call once a month.

Just another overconfident backpacker swallowed up by the Alaskan wilderness. He closed the file and tossed it to Prince. “Corcoran wasnt into keeping up with the paperwork. I talked to John Barton about it, and he said the family was all over the Wood-Tikchik for four months. They fought us suspending the search. And they fought the presumptive death hearing.

“And now her father calls us the first of every month, checking to see if weve found her.

“Yeah.

Prince closed the file and tossed it back. “Okay, you can be boss.

“Gee, thanks, Liam said, but he knew what she meant. Next to domestic disputes, reporting deaths to surviving family and friends was the law officers least favorite job.

The phone rang and they were called out to a shooting at a home eleven miles up the road to Icky, which turned out to be an accidental discharge by a thirty-six-year-old man who shot himself in the hand with a.401 shotgun while taking it down from an overcrowded gun rack. His five-year-old daughter had been standing next to him at the time, and had caught some buckshot in her shoulder. Joe Gould, Newenhams local and it would seem only paramedic, judging from the many crime scenes where Liam had encountered him, was already there, soothing the girl with a cherry Tootsie Roll Pop as he picked pellets out of her shoulder with surgical tweezers. She was sitting on her mothers lap. The mother would occasionally glare over her shoulder at the father, who sat in a corner, largely ignored, weeping and wailing over a hand that would never pull the trigger on a weapon again.

Prince got the story out of the man (between sobs) and observed to Liam, “Id call this a violation of basic safety rules, wouldnt you, sir?

“I would, and Id arrest him for it, too, Liam said, so they did and brought him before Bill for arraignment. Bill flayed what skin the guy had left with a blistering indictment of his lack of judgment, and they delivered him into the tender hands of Mamie Hagemeister at the local jail, who turned out to be a bosom buddy of the guys wife and godmother to his daughter. They found out later that she didnt feed him for two days.