“Long day?”
“Just getting used to the territory. And the help. Takes some concentration.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “And you’re in mufti.”
“What does that even mean, Judge?”
“Means you’re not in uniform, and so might not be experiencing that deference your office might otherwise expect.”
“I’ve had some issues with my uniforms in the past.” He looked down at his Pendleton shirt and jeans, worn at elbows and knees but otherwise clean and neat. “And I’m not officially on duty until next Monday.” She snorted. “Ah,” he said. “You know Colonel Barton then.”
“We’ve met.”
“In court?”
She toasted him and sipped. “Indeed.”
A battle of the Titans, he thought. Or maybe just the immovable object meeting the irresistible force. Would have been nice to have had a front row seat to that. So long as he wasn’t testifying.
“You were the trooper who found the wreck of the World War II plane.”
“Not personally, no, but I investigated the cases that were associated with it.”
“I’m an Alaska history buff,” she said. “Bunch of planes lost in Alaska during that war.”
“May be the first murder solved by global warming,” he said. “If the weather hadn’t warmed up to the point that that glacier melted to where the plane crashed into it, people would still be looking.” He sipped again and let the Scotch sit for a moment on his tongue. “Are you aware of why I’m here?”
“I helped Barton build the files he gave you.”
He sipped, waiting.
“I get tired of seeing the same faces up before me year after year.” She drained her cup, refilled it, and held up the bottle. He shook his head and she recorked it and made it disappear. He mourned a little but then he had Glenmorangie at home. “And a lot of those people are becoming nuisances to their neighbors. I don’t know what it is about meth cookers and junkyards, but as soon as one shows up the other follows.”
She spoke with a certain bitterness and he hazarded a guess. “One of your own neighbors, perhaps?”
Her smile was as frosty as her name. “Perhaps.”
“You live outside the city limits?”
Her expression didn’t change but there was some feeling there he couldn’t quite detect. “You’ve met Chief Armstrong then.”
“We had lunch.”
She evidently had no intention of bringing him into the loop at this early stage of their relationship. “In fact I do live outside the city limits.”
Liam foresaw a cruise down the judge’s street in his very near future, and made a mental note to have Ms. Petroff look up the judge’s street address at her earliest convenience.
“I want probable cause every time, Sergeant Campbell.” This was the judge speaking now, not the fellow drinker next to him at the bar, and his spine straightened. “No shortcuts or no warrants. Am I rightly understood?”
He very nearly saluted. “You are, ma’am.”
“I don’t give a damn how badly you or I want them, I don’t even care how guilty they are, they cross the line first. You have reasonable grounds as defined by statute and precedent you can wake me up at three a.m. if you want.” She reflected. “My husband may have an issue with that but that’s his problem.” She bent a stern glare on him. “And no rough stuff. I mean none.”
Liam tried not to take offense, but his voice hardened nonetheless. “I don’t do rough stuff, Your Honor.”
“Hold that thought. The academy should have given you all the de-escalation training you need and I know this because I consulted for the panel that wrote their standards. If I catch even a whiff of excessive force used on any defendant you bring before me I will shitcan your case on the spot and thereafter make it my mission in life to hound you out of the Alaska State Troopers and if necessary the state of Alaska itself. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said smartly.
“When was your last refresher?”
“Two years ago.”
She grunted. “I recommend you immediately form working relationships with the homeless shelter, the women’s shelter, the food bank, the public assistance office, and the community mental health center. You’ll be able to hand off a lot of the situations that you encounter on your calls if you have all of them on speed dial. It would help if they knew who was calling.”
Liam noticed she hadn’t included the local PD and wondered why.
“What do you know about the community itself?”
He marshaled his thoughts. “Blewestown has some of the lowest per capita crime stats in the state. The economy runs mostly on summer tourism, but a lot of Alaskan gray hairs from Fairbanks and Anchorage are building vacation and retirement homes here, which might explain why there are two brewpubs, three coffee roasters and, for once in an Alaskan community, the bars outnumber the churches. And excellent Wi-Fi, too, which was a nice surprise.”
“Newenham not so much?”
“One meg download speed.”
“Not a streaming hotspot, then.”
“It was faster to print out and mail a report than it was to try to upload it online.”
She nodded. “What else?”
“There’s still some commercial fishing, salmon, halibut, and cod, but they deliver to the only processor left on the Bay in Engaqutaq. There seems to be a thriving arts community with an accent on music, including two festivals, one in the spring and one in the fall. One high school, two middle schools, two grade schools. If you don’t count the charter schools, which seem to pop up like mushrooms everywhere you look.” He blessed Wy for having looked all this stuff up before they made the decision to move.
“And shrivel up again the moment they’ve managed to rake in as much federal funding as they can,” she said, nodding.
“There’s a homeless problem but then there’s a homeless problem everywhere you look, in Alaska and Outside.”
“And a drug trade, mostly homegrown meth, that is increasing by leaps and bounds. Barton’s not wrong about that. Sometimes I think Walter White