Signet wanted to do an anthology based on detectives doing their “what I did on my summer vacation” thing. Well, I sort of, um, perverted those parameters into the story of Bill and Moses’ first meeting. You’ll remember Bill the bartender/magistrate and Moses the drunk/shaman from the Liam Campbell series. I hope.
Published in And the Dying Is Easy.
Excerpt from “Missing, Presumed …”
In the past three months since she had been sworn in she had stumbled through her first arrest warrants, fumbled through her first search warrants and muddled through her first arraignments. She had figured out how to set bail, and how high. She had issued half a dozen restraining orders, and had taken emergency action in one case of child abuse that still gave her nightmares.
She had tried, convicted and sentenced no less than sixteen drunk drivers. She had tried and convicted one fisher of fishing without a permit, a second for fishing past the end of the period, a third for harvesting female opilio, a fourth for harvesting undersized kings, and a fifth for fishing outside the district to which his permit restricted him.
She had learned to discount most excuses offered by fishers, especially the ones she heard most often. If all the engines alleged to have broken down in her courtroom really had, half the Bering Sea fishing fleet would be in dry dock.
She was beginning to build a reputation. Just the night before in the bar she’d heard one fisher mumble at her approach, “Gawd, here she comes, hanging Bill.” No compliment in her life had ever tasted so sweet.
This, however, was her first presumptive death hearing.
Alaska ate more than its share of missing people. Pilots wrecked planes. Hikers disappeared into national parks. Climbers fell down mountains. Snow machiners started avalanches. Cross-country skiers fell into glaciers.
And, as in this case, fishers fell overboard. Alaska had thirty-six thousand miles of shoreline. Much of its living was made on the water.
Many of its missing people were lost on that water.