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ISBN 0-425-13301-X

It’s December in the Park, and a ranger is missing. It’s no great loss to the rest of the Park rats, they figure he’s stumbled into a snowbank and will re-emerge come breakup, just in time for the ground to thaw and them to bury him. But when the man sent to look for him also disappears, Kate Shugak, ex-investigator for the Anchorage D.A. and Park homesteader, is sent in search of them both. First in the Kate Shugak series.Dana’s Note: Yes, this is the one that was lost for two years in my father’s garage and went on to win the Edgar award.

About the Dedication

For Don Stabenow
my very own personal air taxi service
and pyrotechnical adviser

Don Stabenow was my father. When I told him I was leaving a $63,000-a-year job to become a writer, he said without missing a beat, “Shit, kid, if that’s what you want, you go for it.” Never once in all the years it took to get published did he say I might be better off trying my hand at something else. When I ran low on money he installed me in his spare bedroom and wouldn’t even let me pay for groceries.

He was the best. He died in 1998, and I miss him every day.

Audio Excerpt

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Book Excerpt

The log cabin in the clearing sat on the edge of a bluff that fell a hundred feet to the half-frozen Kanuyaq River below. Beyond the far bank of the river the land rose swiftly into the Quilak Mountains, whose sharp peaks were still emerging slowly from behind the mauve curtain of the sky. The cabin, looking more as if it had grown there naturally than as if it had been built by human hands, stood at the center of a small semi-circle of outbuildings. Beginning at the left and slightly to the back there was an outhouse, tall, spare and functional. Several depressions in the snow around it indicated it had been moved more than once, which gave him some idea how long the homestead had been there. Next was a combined garage and shop, through the open door of which could be seen a snow machine, a small truck, and assorted related gear, the sight of which indubitably twentieth-century products he found infinitely reassuring. Next to the cabin stood an elevated stand for a dozen fifty-five gallon barrels of Chevron diesel fuel, stacked on their sides on a weather wooden frame. Immediately to the right of the cabin was a greenhouse, its Visqueen panels opaque with frost. Next to it and completing the semi-circle stood a cache elevated some ten feet in the air on peeled log stilts, with a narrow ladder leading to its single door.

Paths through the drifts of snow were cut with almost surgical precision, linking every structure to its neighbor, making a half-circle that was packed firm between tidy berms as level as a clipped hedge. All trails led to the wood pile opposite the cabin from the fuel oil supply, which he judged held at least three cords, split as neatly as they were stacked. Another pile of unsplit rounds stood next to the chopping block.

There were no footprints outside the trails. It seemed that this was one homesteader who kept herself to herself.

The glow of the wood of each structure testified to a yearly application of log oil. There wasn’t a shake missing from any of the roofs. The usual dump of tires too worn to use but too good to throw away, the pile of leftover lumber cut in odd lengths but still good for something, someday, the stack of Blazo boxes to be used for shelves, the shiny hill of Blazo tins someday to carry water, the haphazard mound of empty, rusting fifty-five gallon drums to be cut into stoves when the old one wore out, all these staples were missing. It was most unbushlike and positively unAlaskan. He had a suspicion that when the snow melted the grass wouldn’t dare to grow more than an inch tall, or the tomatoes in the greenhouse bear less than twelve to the vine. He was assailed by an unexpected and entirely unaccustomed feeling of inadequacy, and wished suddenly that he had taken the time to search out a parka and boots, the winter uniform of the Alaskan bush, before making this pilgrimage. At least then he would have been properly dressed to meet Jack London, who was undoubtably inside the cabin in front of him, writing “To Build a Fire” and making countless future generations of Alaskan junior high English students miserable in the process. He would have been unsurprised to see Samuel Benton Steele mushing up the trail in his red Mountie coat and flat-brimmed Mountie hat. He would merely have turned to look for Soapy Smith moving fast in the other direction. He realized finally that his mouth was hanging half-open. He closed it with something of a snap, and wondered what kind of time warp they had wandered through on the way here, and if they would be able to find it again on the return to their own century.

The smaller man took a deep breath and the frozen air burned into his lungs. Unused to it, he coughed. “So this is her place?”

“This is it,” the big man confirmed, his deep voice rumbling over the clearing. As if to confirm his words they heard the door to the cabin slam shut. The other man raised his eyebrows, cracking more ice off his face.

“Well, at least now we know she’s home,” the big man said placidly, and dismounted.

“Son of a bitch, what is that?” his passenger said, his face if possible becoming even more colorless.

The big man looked up to see an enormous gray animal with a stiff ruff and a plumed tail trotting across the yard in their direction, silent and purposeful. “Dog,” he said laconically.

“Dog, huh?” the other man said, trying and failing to look away from the animal’s unflinching yellow eyes. He groped in his pocket and gave a silent sigh when his gloved fingers wrapped around the comforting butt of his .38 Police Special. He looked up to find those yellow eyes fixed on him with a thoughtful, considering expression, and he froze. “Looks like a goddam wolf to me,” he said finally, trying hard to match the other man’s nonchalance.

“Nah,” the big man said, holding out one hand, fingers curled, palm down. “Only half. Hey, Mutt, how are you, girl?” She extended a cautious nose, sniffed twice and sneezed. Her tail gave a perfunctory wag. She looked from the first man to the second and seemed to raise one eyebrow. “Hold out your hand,” the big man said.

“What?”

“Make a fist, palm down, hold it out.”

The other man swallowed, mentally bid his hand goodbye and obeyed. Mutt sniffed it, looked him over a third time in a way that made him hope he wasn’t breathing in an aggressive manner, and then stood to one side, clearly waiting to escort them to the door of the cabin.

“That’s some fucking doorman you’ve got out there,” he said, once he was safely inside the cabin and the door securely latched behind him.