“You ever seen a dig site before?”

“One.”

“Really?” Erik looked and sounded surprised. There probably weren’t many people who responded to that question in the affirmative. “Where?”

“Outside Newenham.”

“A Yupiq site? I don’t—oh. Des McLynn?”

Liam nodded. The archeological community in Alaska couldn’t be so large they wouldn’t all know or at least know about each other.

“What an asshole.”

“Agreed.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Investigating.” Liam waited. This was always the turning point in meeting new people. A lot of cops called those they were sworn to serve and protect “civilians.” He preferred “neighbors” himself, but he’d found that he’d had to prove himself in every community in which he’d served, and that his job lost him a lot of friends from the moment they became aware of his profession.

“That’s right, Blue Jay called you a trooper.”

Liam nodded.

“Wait a minute,” Erik said. “Newenham. You’re that guy. The Storyknife Killer.”

There were many ways Liam could have answered but he settled on, “Yes.”

Erik shook his head. “Murder by archeological artifact. That’s not a headline you see every day.” He jerked his head. “You want to see what I’ve got going on here?”

Liam relaxed. “Why I defied death getting down here. You said at Jeff’s that you thought human habitation went back farther in the Bay than is generally understood.”

Erik snorted. “Yeah, mostly because archeologists just don’t fucking listen.”

“Listen to whom?”

“The people who lived here first, for starters.”

“Alaska Natives, you mean?”

“The Sugpiaq locally. Aleuts or Alutiiq they’re better known by, but their own name is Sugpiaq. And then the Russians showed up and of course that’s where all the history books start.” He shook his head. “Littera scripta manet.” He saw Liam’s blank look. “The written word survives. It’s pretty much the only thing that does. Why we get Homer forced down our throats in high school.”

“I remember,” Liam said, with feeling. “So, you’re saying because the Sugpiaq didn’t have a written language—”

“Exactly.”

“So there’s no written record there was a trail but—”

“Exactly,” Erik said again, beaming.

“Have you asked them? The Sugpiaq?”

“Not yet. I’d like to have some concrete evidence before I do.”

The guy was so excited that it was hard not to like him. “Where is your evidence?”

Berglund grinned. “Trooper,” he said without heat.

Liam grinned back. “Guilty as charged.”

“Too much to eat not to have,” Erik said. “There was a monograph written by Hilary Houten—the old fart you saw yelling at me at the brewpub, he’s not a fan—anyway, Houten wrote a paper thirty-odd years ago that claims the lack of artifacts proves that no one settled here, or at least on this side of the Bay. Well, maybe they didn’t settle here, but they sure as hell used it.” He stood in front of one of the tables, where many unidentifiable objects were neatly laid out and labeled. At least half the names on the labels were followed by question marks. “This is for sure a harpoon head—see the barbs? No flies on the old folks when it came to building something that would hang on to what they stuck it into.”