KS13.5 - Wreck Rights (6 page)

It had taken thirty-six hours for that family to die, and for the troopers not to respond to repeated calls reporting their disappearance. It had not been the Alaska State Troopers’ finest hour, and Liam felt very much on probation in his new posting. It didn’t help that the dead were Natives, and that a large portion of the population of Newenham and its environs was also Native.

All this Trooper Diana Prince would know, and probably more. It seemed to Liam as if the last two years of his life had been lived largely on the front pages of every daily newspaper in the state; the automobile accident, Jenny’s coma, Charlie’s death, the trial, the drunk driver’s second arrest by none other than the surviving member of the family, Liam himself. The deaths in Denali were the nadir of three horrible years, all of which made for fine reading in the Sunday papers, oh yes indeed.

He pulled himself together. “John Barton brief you on the post?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s Liam. Call me Trooper Campbell in front of civilians.”

“All right, s— Liam. I’m Diana.”

She smiled, and it was a revelation, a broad, thousand-watt beam that lit her eyes and transformed her face into that of a little girl’s — enthusiastic, energetic, optimistic, all illusions intact and trumpeting a touching allegiance to truth, justice and the American way. She probably still believed in honor. She was undoubtedly willing to lay down her life for duty. “When did you graduate from the academy?” Liam said.

“Last year,” Diana Prince said promptly.

How the hell did you get a seven-step posting? Liam wondered, and knew without having to ask. Newenham was a Bush posting, which meant troopers assigned to it received a seven-step pay increase in recognition of the fact that they were living and working in the back of beyond. Because of the high pay, and because retirement was calculated on the last years you worked, these posts were competed for fiercely by troopers with enough seniority to make it stick.

Newenham was an exception. The previous first sergeant assigned to the post had publicly screwed up a very high profile case, and then capped his activities in the area by impregnating the trooper also assigned there. He should have been removed from his posting immediately; that he was not was due to favoritism within the good-old-boy trooper hierarchy. Corcoran had lasted ten years in Newenham, to the outrage of the community and the detriment of the troopers. By the time he left, the sour smell of the posting was evident as far away as Juneau.

At minimum staffing, a post this size should have had a first sergeant and two troopers assigned to it. In the three months since Liam’s arrival, Liam had been it.

No, Newenham was not the usual seven-step plum. Nobody wanted to take it on. The more superstitious among the force might even have said it was bad luck to be posted there. His boss, Lieutenant John Dillinger Barton, supervisor of Section E and Liam’s boss both in Glennallen and Newenham, had sent Liam to Newenham for two reasons: one, to tuck him safely out of sight until the fallout from the Denali debacle had deteriorated to a less toxic level, and two, in John’s words, “to take the fucking hoodoo off that posting.”

And now here was Trooper Diana Prince, John’s latest exorcist, all fresh-faced and newly minted and ready to go out and be a hero. Liam made a mental resolve to go through any doors second. “How’d you get here?”

“I flew.”

“Commercial?”

She shook her head. “I brought in one of the new Cessnas.”

His gaze sharpened. “Floats or wheels?”

“Floats. The gear’s coming on Alaska Airlines.”

Shit, Liam thought. No need to call Wy now. A couple of hours alone in a plane in the middle of nowhere promoted personal intercourse. A flight to — where had it been? that murder-suicide in Dot Lake? — was how they had first met. “Good,” he said, tearing himself from that memory as well. He resettled his cap on his head and sternly quelled the rumble of queasiness that always precipitated his reluctant rise to any altitude above sea level. “Let’s go.”

“Where?” she said, following him out the door.

“Kulukak.”

“What’s there?”

“Bodies.”

Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage and raised on 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere and after having a grand old time working in the Prudhoe Bay oilfields on the North Slope of Alaska, making an obscene amount of money and going to Hawaii a lot, found it in writing.

Her first crime fiction novel,
A Cold Day for Murder
, won an Edgar award, her first thriller,
Blindfold Game
, hit the
New York Times
bestseller list, and her twenty-eighth novel and nineteenth Kate Shugak novel,
Restless in the Grave
, will be released in February 2012.

Find her on the web at
stabenow.com
.

A Cold Day for Murder
A Fatal Thaw
Dead in the Water
A Cold-Blooded Business
Play with Fire
Blood Will Tell
Breakup
Killing Grounds
Hunter’s Moon
Midnight Come Again
The Singing of the Dead
A Fine and Bitter Snow
A Grave Denied
A Taint in the Blood
A Deeper Sleep
Whisper to the Blood
A Night Too Dark
Though Not Dead
Restless in the Grave (2012)

Fire and Ice
So Sure of Death
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Better to Rest

Second Star
A Handful of Stars
Red Planet Run

Blindfold Game
Prepared for Rage

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