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ISBN 0-312-98565-7

It’s never what you know, it’s who you know.

About the Dedication

This one is for Janice Weiss, a longtime friend of mine. We went through the MFA degree program at UAA together, and she is now the head of education at the Hiland Mountain Women’s Correctional Facility.

I’ve seen her at work, and I’ve heard her stories. If only we could clone her. Someday some nosy little grad student at UAA is going to make a study of recidivism rates at Hiland, and they will find them to be way down during Janice’s tenure. Many of the inmates have never had a chance at any kind of reasonable life, and Janice is busy getting them their GEDs, getting them college credit, helping to set up the greenhouse where they can learn to be master gardeners and run a plant sale every summer. Last June I emceed the first performance of an eight-piece string orchestra. Every March the women care for sick dogs who scratch from the Iditarod.

If anyone who gets out of Hiland falls back on bad ways, it won’t be Janice’s fault. She’s showing them that they have a choice. I’m proud that she is my friend.

Book Excerpt

“Who did she kill?”

“She didn’t kill anyone.”

Kate, wearily, realized that she was dealing with someone who actually believed in the benefit of the doubt. “Okay, who didn’t she kill?”

Again, Charlotte hesitated. She dropped her eyes to the mug clamped between her thin fingers. This time when she spoke her voice was so low Kate couldn’t hear her. “I beg your pardon?”

Charlotte raised her eyes. They were her best feature, large, gray-green, and thickly lashed. The gold of her hair made a nice frame for them. Probably Charlotte’s stylist had already pointed this out to her, so Kate didn’t. “My brother,” Charlotte said finally.

Kate stared. “I beg your pardon?”

“My mother was convicted of killing my brother.”

Kate absorbed this in silence for a moment. Okay, even she had to admit that this was a tad bit out of the norm. If anything, it made her even less inclined to listen to Charlotte’s sob story, but the other woman was still drinking Kate’s coffee, so she said, “How?”

“They said she burned down the house with him in it.”

Arson, Kate thought. One of the easiest crimes to detect, given the current state of forensic technology. It was next to impossible to hide even the most minuscule remnants of a timer, no matter how unsophisticated, from an experienced arson detective with a good lab tech behind him, to say nothing of the dogs trained to sniff out accelerants. “How did they decide it was her?”

Now that the worst of the story was out, Charlotte was eager to speak. “It was mostly circumstantial. She lived in the house with us, she’d just taken out insurance policies on all our lives–“

“All?” Kate said.

“All three of us.”

“There was a third child?”

“Yes, my other brother, Oliver.”

“Where was he?”

“He was in the house, too.”

“But he survived.”

“Yes. He got hurt getting out, but he survived.”

“Where were you?”

“I was with my mother. We were coming home from my uncle’s house. There was a party that went on a little late.” Charlotte paused. It was obvious that the memories were painful. “When we pulled into the driveway, the house was already on fire. And then Oliver fell out of one of the upstairs windows.”

Kate was forcibly reminded of a night the previous May when she had driven into her clearing and found her cabin on fire. The cabin her father had built for her mother, that she had been conceived and born in, that she had lived in most of her life following their deaths. Johnny had been camping at the Lost Wife Mine, or she could have come home to something far more horrible than a pile of smoldering embers. In spite of herself, she sympathized with the pain she saw in Charlotte’s eyes. “Was he badly injured?”

“Yes. His right leg shattered on impact. He still limps.” Charlotte’s voice was stronger now, the words coming as if by rote, as if she had said them too many times before. “It wasn’t until the next day when the firemen were able to go into the ruins that they found William’s body. We were hoping he’d slept over at a friend’s house, and just hadn’t heard about the fire at home.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” Kate said. “You’re not exactly a kid, and I’m assuming your brothers aren’t, either. What are you all doing still living with your mom?”

Charlotte looked surprised. “Oh, we aren’t.”

“Well, then, I really don’t understand,” Kate said. “Were you all home on a visit? Did this happen over the holidays, or what?”

“Oh, no,” Charlotte said, “it was in spring.”

“This last spring? April, May?”

“Oh, not this spring. The fire and my brother’s death happened thirty-one years ago.”