"Not after he tells the jury what I've got him saying on video."

  "What else do we have?" Winona asked.

  Christine traded a look with Ed.

  He said, "That's about it, Win, unless you've got some other ideas."

  “The palm print from Noah Adams. The rest of it sounds weak to me.”

  “Agree,” said Christine.

  Win continued. “Have we done any testing on Bussie?"

  “Such as?” asked Christine.

  "We could call a psychologist to testify her problems are consistent with what rape victims ordinarily present."

  "Nobody's denying she was raped. They're only denying it was them. So I don't see how that helps."

  "We use it in child victim cases. A lot."

  "Understood. But I don't think we need it."

  "Okay."

  "Well, that's about it, ladies and gentlemen."

  "Okay. 'Conviction' on three. One, two--"

  They joined hands in the center of their small group, then, "Three! Conviction!" they all cried in unison.

  "Now it's my turn," said Christine. "These sons of bitches are going to regret being born. I promised Bussie that and I'm going to deliver."

  "Will she be there?"

  "Just for opening statements. Just let the jury see her. After the new special prosecutor hit her with the two murder counts she was released to her parents' custody. Low bail; I think Mr. Speers posted a property bond. But she'll be there. She's promised me."

  "One other thing," said Winona. "We've also got the CSI workup. We’ll need to introduce it through the technician.”

  "Palm print," said Ed.

  "The smoking gun," said Christine. "Bang. Welcome to the Department of Corrections."

  * * *

  Back at the office, Billy was waiting with a handful of messages. One of them was a possible new case.

  "Who've we got?" she asked Billy.

  “More whiners. And that new guy again. The one about the house in the river.”

  “Let me call the complainers first. They’re too easy to put off.”

  "No, call the Alaska guy first.”

  Fifteen minutes later she hung up from the call to Alaska. She buzzed Billy back into her office.

  "We're going to Alaska," she told him.

  His eyes lit up. "I'm in! When?"

  "Tonight. We'll leave at eight. See you at O'Hare."

  "Be there. How cold is it up there?"

  "Find out online. I'm clueless."

  "See you at eight. Dress warm, I'm guessing."

  "Thanks, Billy."

  23

  Ketwautnee, Alaska

  The house was nothing to write home about: two bedrooms, one bath, narrow kitchen, faded wallpaper that pre-dated the Second World War, and plumbing that moaned like an old man passing urine. However, the house had the one key feature everyone wanted: a paid-off mortgage.

  It was owned by Jesse Osako, a fourth generation fisherman who lived in the small house with his toothless wife, Milee. Joining them were two Weimaraners with watery blue eyes and seven fat cats. (There's always an abundance of fish when your owner's a fisherman.) The thing was, the place was priceless to Jesse and Milee, for the house was warmly insulated against the Alaskan winters, there was no rot in its bones and a new roof kept it dry even in Alaska's snow monsoon. Move outside and you would be stepping into Alaska's coastal rainforest--like walking into a cathedral. Two-hundred-foot spruce and cedar trees soared overhead while sunlight filtered gently through the canopy to the forest floor like dreams of calm. Amid the lush shrubs and ferns and damp, mossy remnants of fallen trees, you might see deer browsing or a grizzly bear ambling its way to the nearby salmon river.

  Pristine, yes, but things were changing.

  The U.S. Forest Service continued to offer large tracts of the surrounding old-growth forest for intensive logging. Private interests--having already logged their own portion of this ancient forest--constantly lobbied Congress to put more of the Tongass National Forest in private hands. Yet, further clear-cutting would come at the expense of those who relied on the forest to support the region's fishing and tourism industries. Meanwhile, large areas that had been clear-cut were slowly growing back into dense thickets of young trees that were nearly impenetrable to wildlife. Old logging roads sprawled in disrepair, filling salmon rivers with erosion and blocking the way for fish. Rivers overflowing their banks, rivers running amok were the new order.

  Jesse's home was situated on the bank of one of those rivers intent on cutting away its banks. Once a friend to Jesse and his wife and a source of much of their diet, the river was now a mounting threat as it eroded and undercut man's best efforts at taming the Alaskan wilderness.

  Jesse had put on a new roof two years ago. Padded knees against shingles, pounding tacks on the rooftop, he had watched the salmon spawn in the whitewater of autumn lust--but that had been two seasons ago. Now the fingerprints of industry were everywhere upon the land and last fall there had been no spawn. The fish had moved on--to where, the ancient fisherman had no idea. "They've gone wherever fish go to die," Jesse told Milee over Folgers dark roast. "They won't be back, not in my lifetime."

  The spring also brought with it the rising waters of the snowmelt. With each passing day the river grew deeper and wider. Jesse kept a wary eye on the water. But he believed because there had been other passive spring times and snow melts, this melt would flow away to the Pacific Ocean just as passively.

  But the erosion knew better. The erosion knew the loggers had removed the trees and grass that held the riverbanks in place. Now the erosion wanted to gobble up Jesse's house.

  So it waited until the pre-dawn hours, and in its swirl below the riverbank that supported Jesse's house it washed away the concrete foundation.

  The house cracked in the center and slid halfway into the rushing current. The upriver side of the house collapsed and the water cascaded into the bedroom. It then blew apart the downriver wall, leaving a free-flowing river where once there had a been a warm, dry bedroom.

  Jesse awoke with a start, astonished to find himself floating. The water was freezing cold. Milee's hand briefly protruded from beneath the waterline. He reached for her, but he was too late. The downriver wall breached, and Milee, like the puff of an extinguished match, was gone. Taken by the river, not to be found until six miles away, a trout-fishing Indian spotted her nude body on the sandbar where he was wading. The rocks and sand had peeled away her skin. When the authorities brought Jesse in to ID her, they showed him only her head, leaving the rest covered with a sheet. But even that was too much, for her nose was missing, sanded away. He wept and had to be helped from the morgue.

  Overcome with grief, Jesse returned to his ruined home and spent the next three days retrieving what belongings he could from its carcass. He found he now possessed a dresser drawer, a gun cabinet, a two-drawer file cabinet that had refused to float away and sundry clothes that had once been part of his life but were now water-soaked and mostly useless. His old Sony laptop was still intact and, miraculously, fired right up. He spent his first three days of widowhood on the computer.

  His next three days were spent purchasing a new double-wide and moving it onto the lot where his house had stood--but further away from the river by twenty yards. He declined to allow the seller to set it in place permanently--he wanted to be able to hitch up to the double-wide and move it if the erosion kept doing its worst.

  On the seventh day he made a phone call. He found the lawyer in an Anchorage newspaper story about a young man named Noah Adams. Jesse studied the woman's picture at great length. She had the look of honesty. Her name was Christine, she worked out of Chicago and she would fly up to see you if she thought you had a case.

  He called her up and introduced himself and told her what had happened.

  She said she would touch down in Ketchikan by the next morning and drive all day to reach him. Would he wait? Of course, he said. He wasn't going anywhere. Even if they pushed the whole damn forest into the river, he wasn't leaving.

  But he hoped it wouldn't come to that. She thought it wouldn't. She told him she had an idea.

  So Jesse slept soundly that night as he waited for Christine to arrive. Three times he felt across the covers for Milee and discovered only a flat, empty place where she had spent sixty years of her life.

  He began counting the hours.

  Christine Susmann, the lawyer, would be there in eighteen hours.

  He was timing her.

  * * *

  On the way to Anchorage, Christine was educating herself with an article about the Tongass National Forest.

  "At nearly 17 million acres, the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is our country's largest national forest," the article said. "This magnificent landscape of western hemlock, Sitka spruce, western red cedar and yellow cedar is part of the world's largest remaining intact temperate rainforest. The Tongass comprises thousands of mist-covered islands, deep fjords, tidewater glaciers and soggy muskegs that host some of the rarest ecosystems on the planet. It is ideal habitat for a vast array of plant and animal species--including all five species of North American Pacific salmon, steelhead and resident trout, brown and black bear, Sitka black-tailed deer, bald eagles, and wolves, among many others. The Tongass includes more than 15,700 miles of clean, undammed streams and 4,100 lakes and ponds that provide optimal spawning and rearing conditions for the region's abundant wild salmon and trout."

  She read it again. Seventeen million acres? That was bigger than several states in the Lower Forty-Eight. Massive.

  Christine, Billy, and Jamie, who had once again accompanied her on the flight, picked up a rental car at the airport and continued their trip. Falling in behind them was a gray minivan with Alaska plates. It was directly behind Christine's rental vehicle as it drove up and into the ferry to Ketchikan.

  The driver of the minivan was Arthur Andrews, who was an Iraq War veteran, honorably discharged from his duties as a Marine sniper, and a Risk Management employee of Great Northern Timber and Energy, a conglomerate operating across the dark, cold reaches of the globe. GNTE's home office was Anchorage but they had eyes everywhere, including Ketchikan. All non-local private aircraft were routinely monitored by Great Northern Timber and Energy in its various installations around the globe; the fact that their computers had selected Christine Susmann as a person of interest was not extraordinary, but it meant she would be surveilled while on the ground in Alaska.

  Andrews allowed two cars to off-load ahead of him. They turned north on Tongass Highway after unloading from the ferry. Sometimes he had a clear view of the Bronco; sometimes he lost it on a curve. Eventually the in-between vehicles turned off, leaving Andrews a mile to the rear. Which was exactly how he liked it.

  Wearing binoculars slung around his neck, Andrews steered the minivan through the forest. Every few miles he would put the glasses to his eyes and zero in on the Bronco transporting the threesome he'd watched arrive on the Gulfstream. The names of the aircraft's occupants had been obtained from the flight manifest and a quick study had turned up the owner of the aircraft as Susmann Law Firm, P.C., a business incorporated under the laws of the State of Illinois. A Subchapter S Election had been made with the IRS and the sole shareholder listed was Christine Susmann. When the driver of the minivan paid more cash for more data, Christine Susmann, it turned out, was a lawyer based out of Chicago who had let it be known she would be concentrating her law practice in public policy law.

  When the Bronco stopped for gas, Andrews drove right on past and picked them up again at the next overpass. When they stopped for lunch he lolled outside in the minivan, snacking on Dolly Madison cupcakes and Diet Pepsi, chased with two bags of Corn-Nuts.

  * * *

  Christine, Billy and Jamie took the designated turnoff, followed directions for two miles, and rolled in at half past two that afternoon. Driving the Ford Bronco from the airport had been a breeze, Christine told Jesse.

  Jesse looked over his three visitors: Christine wearing jeans, sweatshirt, windbreaker, and hiking boots; Billy wearing jeans, Bears sweatshirt, navy jacket and hiking boots; and Jamie, wearing jeans, navy sweatshirt that said "Wired," fleece-lined denim jacket and hiking boots.

  Jamie leaned forward on his crutches and smiled at Jesse. "This is cool up here," he said. "What kind of fish do you catch?"

  "We catch all kinds of fish. We net them."

  "Net. Is that real fishing?"

  Jesse shook his head. "I don't know what that means. Does it support Milee and me? Yes. That's about all I know."

  Christine formally introduced her crew and shook Jesse's hand.

  "Now," she said, "why don't you show me around?" She held up her camera as she said it.

  "What do you want to see first?"

  "Show me the flooded house and then we'll look at the forest."

  Jesse was eighty-one and walked with a limp, thanks to a fall one stormy night on his fishing boat. A titanium knee now occupied the knee capsule where before there had been flesh, tendon, and bone. His walk looked painful. Still, he got around well enough that his time on the water didn't suffer as he fished for his livelihood.

  With Jesse in the lead, they made their way from the double-wide to the bank of the river. Unseen by any in the group, the Andrews minivan crept past and beyond Jesse's property, circled east, and came back up behind them, hidden from view by the trees and underbrush. Andrews climbed to the top of the van, where he sat cross-legged, studying the group through his binoculars and munching Corn Nuts.

  Upon viewing the half-submerged house, Christine asked, "Do you have flood insurance?"

  "Can't get it. Not this close to a river."

  "That's too bad. So what do you do about the wreck?"

  "Dunno. Leave it, I guess. I've already gathered up the good stuff and put it in storage."

  They walked around the east side of the house and made their way to the river. Jesse was impressed when Christine sat down, removed her hiking boots and socks, and waded knee-deep into the water for a better look. Billy and Jamie and Jesse watched from the riverbank.

  "Oh, yeah," she yelled up to them. "You can see where the current undercut your foundation. Big slabs have been washed away."

  "Figured."

  "Let me get some shots here. We're going to need them."

  For next half hour Christine took every imaginable picture of the river, the house, and the gaping hole where once there had been foundation. Then she moved inside, taking pictures of all the rooms, the water damage, and the bed where Jesse and Milee had slept when the water invaded. As she took her pictures, Billy dictated a continuing narrative of the house and damage and his impressions into his phone.

  Jamie struggled on the slanted floors of the remaining structure, but he was game. He made it through with the rest of them, just like he always did. Watching her son bringing up the rear, Christine felt a warmth spread through her chest--pure love for the boy. He always persevered, always managed, somehow. He's just not going to be held back, she thought, and she was glad he'd come along—at his insistence.

  Then she waded into the flooded portions of the house and took close-ups of the walls and of what could be seen of the foundation and floor. Finally she was done and waded out of the house and onto dry ground.

  She looked at the back of her Nikon. "I've taken a hundred and four shots. That should get us started."

  "Nice. What next?"

  "Take me upriver a mile or two. Let me get pictures of upriver changes along the bank. Then we'll work our way downriver and do the same thing. Billy, you and Jamie wait here. Take measurements of the house. Do you have the tape in your pack?"

  Billy nodded. He had brought along a backpack laden with tape measures, baggies, Sharpies, crime scene tape, a second camera, legal pads, and other items used in investigations.

  Christine and Jesse set off upstream.

  Twenty yards into the Tongass Forest, it wasn't easy going in either direction. The scrub trees and bramble bushes hugging the river made it all but impossible to pass. In spots, Christine waded into the water and made her way along, this time with her boots on her feet. Jesse patiently followed.

  "No need to worry about wet feet," she told him. "Boots will dry out. What you've lost won't ever come back."

  He nodded sadly. His wide brown eyes squinted and tears ran down his cheeks. "She's gone. She's all I had, my wife. She's all I ever wanted."

  "I understand."

  Christine waded out of the water, climbed up on the bank, and approached the diminutive fisherman. She pulled him close, patting his back as he shed tears for his wife. She told him she respected how great his loss was and that it was okay to express it even with her present. A bond of trust began forming, and Christine knew she could never let Jesse down.

  Then they continued upstream until they had gone a mile. Along the way they saw no other houses or people. Christine made her way sometimes in the water, sometimes fighting through the brush with Jesse. It was all running together in her mind, all looking the same, and she began to wonder why she had wanted to walk up this way. But she also knew her own methods: she would literally leave no stone unturned.

  She took pictures of cut banks. She followed an abandoned logging road for several hundred yards, taking pictures of how the road had washed away back down to the river. Then she called a halt.

  "We've come far enough," she said. "Frankly, we’ve had a fairly good overview of what logging has done here. But this is far enough."

  Jesse came up to her. "Do I have a case?"

  "You have a case. What it all means, I'm not sure. But I promise you this: we will find out."

  "How?"

  "Well, there's much to be done, just like there always is at the beginning of court cases."

  "Such as?"

  "For one, we need to find other plaintiffs to join you in the lawsuit. I want at least ten names on your side of the 'versus' in the lawsuit. Let's go back and we'll make some plans. Do you have coffee in that double-wide? I need a coffee and a bottle of water."