“There’s that,” she said, grinning. Although the memory was no cause for humor. They could both have been killed. Lucky she’d had that hacksaw in her tool box.

They parked to one side of a large, empty hangar, and started to walk the dirt road into town. “Who are we going to see, again?”

“Alexei and Kimberley Petroff,” he said. “They were at Gabe’s party on Monday night. He’s the chief of the local tribe and she’s his wife.”

“So, opportunity, and you say there are rocks all over the place so I guess there were means.”

“For everyone.”

“What about motive?”

“I don’t know. Depends if Alexei is a tree cutter or not.”

She knew what he meant. Some Alaska tribes wanted to exploit their resources; some wanted to protect what they had. In Alaska, no matter the community, it was always about what you could pull out of the ground and the water.

They walked up the dusty road to the bridge and crossed it into town. It was very small, one main street half a mile long paralleled by another small street and side streets connecting the two. It looked a lot like Blewestown’s grid, on a smaller scale. “Paved, with curbs and sidewalks and even street signs,” Wy said. “Just like downtown. I wonder who lives here with that kind of pull.”

She could be forgiven her cynicism. It always came down to who lived where when it came to apportioning the state’s budget. Sometimes Wy thought it would be more egalitarian to rotate legislative seats through all the villages, towns, and cities of the state on a regular basis. The pork might be sliced more thinly but at least everyone would get a piece. “Hey, there’s a bar.”

The Mussel Inn had a bar down the left and the inevitable old fart asleep with his head on it at one end. The right wall was lined with booths and the windows at the end overlooked the small boat harbor. It smelled strongly of deep fat frying and was lavishly festooned with fish nets decorated with corks, glass floats, and women’s underwear. The woman behind the bar, a diminutive dyed blonde with a pierced lip, narrowed her eyes when they asked for directions to the Petroffs’ home. “Why don’t I call them to make sure they’re home before you walk up?” she said, and didn’t wait on their answer to do so. It was a brief conversation and she hung up and said, “Up Castner, turn left on Kiska, right on Traversie, and up the hill. They’re at the top.”

She didn’t exactly hand them their hats but it was clear that if they weren’t drinking they weren’t welcome.

They followed her directions faithfully and came to Traversie and turned right. It was a short but steep climb. They emerged at the top to find a solidly built two-story log house that had been there for a while but looked well cared for, logs oiled, roof freshly shingled, the frames of the many sash windows newly painted a bright white. A fenced garden and a shop big enough to hold a small drifter on a trailer could be seen behind the house.