Shaman Pass (5 page)

“SO, THAT’S about it,” Active said an hour later as he finished his briefing, closed his notebook, and looked up at Captain Patrick Carnaby, commander of the Chukchi detachment of the Alaska State Troopers. “We obviously have to find Calvin.”

“Obviously.” Carnaby chewed his lower lip for a moment. “Calvin Maiyumerak, huh?”

“You know him?”

“A little. Seen him around town, heard him ranting on the radio about Inupiat sovereignty . . . kind of a hothead, I guess.”

“There was definitely that bad blood between him and Victor,” Active said. “Nobody likes being called
anaq
all the time.”

“Yeah, I guess old Victor could be a real son of a bitch.” Carnaby nodded, seeming lost in thought.

“And Silver says Calvin kills dogs with his bare hands, so that old Dolly can sew them into ruffs and mittens for the tourists.”

“Really?” Carnaby said. “Who’d a thunk it? So how you gonna find Calvin?”

“I guess I don’t see any point in going after him.”

“Oh?” Carnaby lifted his eyebrows in the white expression of inquiry.

Active shook his head. “There’s two possibilities. One, he’s out hunting caribou, like Dolly says, even though she professes not to know where. If that’s true, he’ll come back on his own.”

Carnaby nodded. “And?”

“And possibility two is, he’s not hunting caribou, he’s running.”

Carnaby nodded again, and grinned. “And where’s he going to go?”

Now Active nodded. “Exactly. I think he only has three real choices, all bad. A, he can hide out on the tundra, but eventually he’ll run out of supplies and have to come into a village, or maybe somebody will just run into him out there.”

Active pointed at a map of Alaska on the wall behind Carnaby’s desk. “B, maybe he can make it on that wreck of a snowmachine to someplace where he can catch a plane, but we’ll be waiting.”

Another nod from Carnaby.

“Or, C, he can hide out with a friend or relative in one of the villages, maybe Ebrulik, where his parents live.”

Carnaby grinned again. “In which case it’ll be all over town in about five minutes.”

“So we wait,” Active said. “We watch Dolly’s house here. I already put the word out to the airlines, the public safety officers in our villages, and to the troopers and city cops in Nome, Barrow, Kotzebue, Fairbanks, and Galena. And I put a message on Kay-Chuck saying the troopers need to contact Calvin Maiyumerak and anybody encountering him should let us know. He’s bound to turn up.”

“Sounds right.” Carnaby’s grin was bigger than ever. “Low-impact police work. Low impact on our travel budget, low impact on the manpower situation in this office.”

Active grinned, too, at how cheap Carnaby was. Still, the Republicans in the legislature were always pounding on state agencies to do less with more, and Carnaby seemed to find ways to put life into the vapid political cliché. “Plus which, Chukchi P.D. is carrying part of the load on this one because of the museum burglary,” Active said, to make Carnaby feel even better.

“What about the harpoon?” Carnaby said. “Any fingerprints there?”

“Didn’t check yet. You want to?”

Carnaby nodded, grinning in enthusiasm. He was known to the officers beneath him—and those above—as the Super Trooper. That wasn’t just because, at six-two, square-jawed and broad-shouldered, he was a walking recruitment poster. It was also because he had some kind of ESP about cases and could normally juggle intradepartment politics with his left hand while juggling local politics with his right.

Besides which, he was a fingerprint expert. Not just an expert, but an enthusiast also, who wrote papers about cold-weather fingerprinting for law-enforcement journals.

Active went to his office and brought the harpoon to Carnaby. “I’ll let you know in a couple of hours,” the captain said.

Active trotted downstairs and stopped at Dispatch to see if he and Lucy Generous were still on for lunch.

They were, she told him with a huge smile, so they drove to the Arctic Dragon in the trooper Suburban.

After they ordered—Szechuan beef for him, teriyaki salmon for her—he sketched the Victor Solomon murder for her. That was one of the advantages of having a dispatcher for a girlfriend. You could discuss cases with her. Plus, Lucy was a lifelong resident of Chukchi. She normally knew more about a breaking case than most of the cops in town, including himself.

“Do you know either of them?” he asked when he was finished. He dipped a spoonful of the Arctic Dragon’s miso soup and waited for her reaction.

She frowned for a moment, then squinted a no. “Not really. Victor lived alone and didn’t have many friends that I ever heard of, except maybe a few at church. I think maybe he was too mean to have friends. And Calvin only moved down here from Ebrulik a couple years ago. I don’t think I ever met him.”

She giggled, covering her mouth in that way she had, her loveliness momentarily distracting him from what she was saying. “But I did dispatch on him a couple times. Like when he put the seal oil in the tour buses.
Aqaa!
”

Active refocused and grinned. That was another word in his small but growing vocabulary of Inupiaq. It meant “Stinky!”

“So Victor went to church?” he asked.

She nodded. “All the time, pretty much. He was Catholic, a parish deacon, I think.”

Active frowned. “Hmph.”

“What?”

“I’m surprised to hear he was so churchy.”

“Why?”

“He sounds a little un-Christian. Had no friends, always called Calvin
anaq
.”

“Is that why Calvin killed him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you think your grandmother knew him?”

“Aana Pauline? I don’t know, she goes to the Friends Church and they don’t mix with the Catholics too much. But I could ask.”

He lifted his eyebrows and they moved on to a discussion of that night’s dinner.

She would be in class at the community college when he got home from work, but she would leave something in the oven for him. Pauline had traded some mittens she made for half a caribou and the roast was from that. It would still be hot when he got there, and he could eat that, but he had to promise to eat some salad with it. He bobbed along pleasantly on the flow of her chatter, then lifted his eyebrows again when she was done.

As always, he felt slightly guilty about the marriage-like state they shared. He was getting what a man normally got out of marriage—sex, food, and laundry. But she was not getting what a woman normally got: commitment, children, and financial support.

He gazed out the Dragon’s picture window, which overlooked Beach Street and Chukchi Bay. Under the bright, hazy sky and a dim red eye of sun, the west wind was still rolling in. It must have picked up a little—now it was sweeping before it a thin layer of snow that undulated over the sea ice like fog.

It was not exactly the imbalance in the relationship that made him feel guilty, he thought as he watched the snow ripple toward them. It was his knowledge that she disliked this imbalance, but was too uncertain of his affection to challenge it.

“What?” she was saying when he came around to the conversation again.

“Nothing. I very much enjoy your company, is all.”

“And I love you,” she said.

He had no comeback to this, so he smiled and busied himself with his Szechuan beef. Lucy lowered her eyes and concentrated on the last bites of her salad, then started on the salmon.

CHAPTER SIX

“ IT’S JIM SILVER.”

Active struggled to swim up from his recurring bullet dream and take the phone he sensed had trilled a few seconds earlier. But he drifted down into it again, jerking the trigger of the useless gun pointed at the shadowed figure coming at him with a butcher knife. The knife was hard to see this time, though. Perhaps it was something else, a—

Lucy Generous poked him in the shoulder with the stubby antenna of the cordless. “Wake up. It’s Jim Silver.”

He started, awake at last, and rolled onto an elbow to take the phone. “Yeah, this is Nathan.” He was panting as usual from the bullet dream and Silver picked it up over the phone.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” the chief said.

Active got his breathing under control, then forced out a chuckle that he hoped sounded lewd enough to confirm Silver’s mistaken guess. “Nothing that won’t keep,” he said. “What’s up?”

“One of my officers just called in,” Silver said. “He cruised past Dolly Maiyumerak’s house a minute ago and Calvin’s snowmachine was parked in front.”

Active cleared his throat and walked into the bathroom as he spoke. “Your guy talk to him?”

“No, he called in for instructions.”

Active filled a glass under the faucet and took two quick swallows. “Anything going on inside the place?”

“Doesn’t look like it. The lights are all out.”

“OK, I’ll get right over there,” Active said. “Ask the officer to wait and keep an eye on things, will you?”

“Maybe I’ll cruise on over there myself.”

“Sure,” Active said. “You know Calvin already.”

He clicked off the phone, stepped out of the bathroom, and looked at Lucy, who was staring at him with the familiar mixture of reproach and anxiety. He looked away.

“It was the bullet dream, wasn’t it? And you’ll go see Nelda Qivits again.”

He was silent. These charges no longer required a plea.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Her voice was soft now, caring rather than challenging.

“I just can’t. You know that.”

“Well, have fun then! God knows we haven’t been having much of that in this bed lately!” She rolled onto her right side and pulled the quilt up until it just covered her left ear, which was how she slept.

He stood frozen, not wanting to leave it like this but unable to think of a way out. Maybe a joke.

“You’re not worried Calvin Maiyumerak might harpoon me?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Active shook his head and returned to the bathroom to rinse his face in the bathroom sink, inspected the result, and decided the image of the troopers would not be tarnished beyond repair if he didn’t shave today, as it was a Saturday.

He went out to the kitchen of the trooper bachelor cabin and tried to think of a breakfast that wouldn’t take long to make or eat. Since Lucy had moved in more or less full-time a few months ago, he had lost what little knack he ever had for food preparation. Lucy bought the groceries and cooked them, and only she could cook what she bought. Her groceries were too complicated for him—they had to be mixed, blanched, blended, basted, battered, marinated, and subjected to other procedures he couldn’t name—which was probably why they were delicious when she cooked them.

He rummaged in the refrigerator and came up with a slice of caribou roast from the night before. He put it on a pilot bread cracker, poured ketchup on top, and thought about coffee.

There were grounds in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator, he knew, and a gleaming black-and-chrome Mr. Coffee on the counter by the microwave. But it seemed like too much business for so early in the day.

Then he remembered that he had not emptied and washed the Mr. Coffee from yesterday morning. He shook the urn and heard the blessed sound of sloshing. He poured a cup, set it in the microwave, punched in ninety seconds, and hit the start button. He hoped, as he recalled that he hadn’t closed the bedroom door, that the sound of the microwave’s fan wouldn’t wake Lucy.

“That’s not yesterday’s coffee, is it?”

Well, at least she was letting go of the bullet-dream thing and willing to argue about something normal. He looked through the glass of the microwave door at the cup, which was sending up the first tendrils of steam. “No, I’m just heating up some of that leftover caribou.” He held his breath to see if her truth radar had kicked in yet. When she hadn’t answered after fifteen seconds, he released the breath.

When the ninety seconds were up, he wolfed down the pilot cracker and caribou, went outside, set the coffee in the Suburban’s cup holder, and started the rig. Then he unplugged the cord for the Suburban’s engine heater from the electric socket under the light outside his
kunnichuk
, coiled the cord, and looped it around the radio antenna. When he got in and turned on the blower, it produced a little heat and no squeal, making him glad the Trooper energy-conservation program didn’t extend to living quarters.

It was a little after seven, the haze gone, the west wind gone, the new day coming on clear and sharp as broken ice. The sun was just above the eastern horizon and throwing shafts of yellow and blue over the village as he drove to Dolly Maiyumerak’s cottage. Silver was there in his Bronco, stopped driver-to-driver beside a green-and-white Chukchi Police Department pickup.

Both men had their windows down and were talking as Active pulled the Suburban over and parked on the side of the street. He walked to Silver’s Bronco, opened the passenger door, and leaned in. “I see the lights are on now. Any other sign of life?”

Silver nodded and looked at his watch. “Dolly looked out the front window beside the
kunnichuk
there and waved at us four minutes ago. That’s it so far.”

“You been up to the door?”

Silver shook his head.

Active studied the scene. Maiyumerak’s snowmachine was parked to the right of the
kunnichuk
, just outside the circle marking the radius of Kobuk’s chain. The sled, Active saw, was empty, with no sign of blood or hair in the basket. “Look at that,” he said. “No caribou.”

“Nope,” Silver said. “Guess the hunting wasn’t so hot.”

“Guess not,” Active said.

Kobuk sat on top of his oil-drum house, watching the three visitors without much interest. Active surmised that Silver and his officer had been there so long without doing anything that Kobuk had become bored.

“I guess we should go in,” Silver said.

“We could,” Active said.

“Or?”

“Or we could call Dispatch on the radio, and get them to call Dolly on the telephone, and ask if Calvin would like to come out and talk to us.”

Silver grimaced and said nothing.

“Seeing as how Dolly already knows we’re here and all,” Active said, twisting the knife a little because of the ladies’ model thing.

Silver said, “Good idea,” keyed the microphone in the Bronco, and gave the instructions to the dispatcher. A couple of minutes later, the radio crackled back to life. “Dolly says Calvin is having his morning coffee and you guys can come in and have some with him. She’ll come to the door.”

Active looked at Silver, who rolled his eyes and picked up the mike. “Roger.”

Silver nodded toward the cop in the pickup. “Nathan, you know Alan Long here?”

Long was Inupiat, about the same age as Active, round faced and bucktoothed with a little too much enthusiasm. He was, Active recalled vaguely, an army veteran who had served with the military police and was mildly obnoxious. Active nodded and said, “Hey, Alan.”

“Active,” Alan said with a nod of his own.

Now Active remembered what it was that made Alan Long obnoxious. In a town where everyone who knew him even slightly called him “Nathan,” Long called him “Active.”

Active pulled his head and shoulders out of the Bronco and Silver drove it ahead far enough to park behind Long’s pickup. The chief stepped out onto the late-winter hardpack, as did Long, and they gathered by the tailgate of the pickup.

Active saw curtain movement in a window and then Dolly Maiyumerak’s eyes on them as he unsnapped the hammer strap of his holster and tucked it out of the way of the Smith & Wesson. Silver eased his own pistol up an inch, then reseated it in the holster.

“Alan, you got your shotgun in the truck there?” Silver asked.

Long nodded, went to the passenger door of the pickup, and returned with a short-barreled pump.

“Buckshot?” Silver asked.

Long raised his eyebrows and said, “Double-aught.” He worked the pump and a load snicked into the firing chamber. “I got your back, Chief.”

Silver glanced furtively at Active with a grimace.

“Maybe he could go watch the rear door,” Active said. “In that
kunnichuk
, three of us won’t be any better than two.”

“Good point,” Silver said.

Long said, “Roger that, Chief,” in a disappointed tone and trotted to a rear corner of the cottage, where he could see the back door and still have a little cover.

Silver looked at Active and grimaced again. “I gotta find that kid a woman. He watches too many videos.”

Active grinned, said, “Roger that,” and pointed at the sled hitched to Maiyumerak’s snowmachine. The butt of a rifle stuck out of a scabbard lashed to a rail. “You think we’re overengineering this?”

“Doesn’t hurt to be careful,” Silver said. His parka was unzipped and Active noticed for the first time the bulk of body armor under the police chief’s shirt.

Active lifted his eyebrows in the universal expression for “I’m impressed.” Silver shrugged, looking a little sheepish.

They walked into the
kunnichuk
, Active wondering if he should have worn a vest, too. Then he noticed a long-barreled shotgun leaning against a shadowed corner of the
kunnichuk
and relaxed slightly, though he said nothing to Silver.

A large chest-type freezer filled most of Dolly Maiyumerak’s
kunnichuk
. The inner door to her house was left of the freezer, and there was room for only one person to stand between the freezer and the end wall of the
kunnichuk
to knock on the door.

“I could knock,” Silver said. “I’ve got the vest.”

Active shook his head, thinking of the shotgun in the corner and the rifle outside on the sled. “It’s a trooper case,” he said. “And Kevlar probably wouldn’t stop a harpoon, anyway.”

He stepped up, knocked, and stepped back, Silver standing behind and to his right in front of the freezer. Active didn’t quite put his hand on the Smith & Wesson, but he did flip back his parka and hook both thumbs on his belt so that his right hand was near the pistol.

He heard Dolly’s voice saying, “Look like they finally got up their nerves,” then something unintelligible in a male voice, then steps coming toward them and then he couldn’t help it, his fingers crept down over the grip of the Smith & Wesson as Dolly opened the door and glared out at them.

She took in the scene, shook her head, and swung the door wide open, disclosing Calvin in his underwear at a small and battered folding table, a coffee cup and cigarette before him. He took a puff and flashed his gap-toothed grin. “I’m just having a last smoke before you shoot me.”

Trying not to be obvious, Active removed his hands from his belt and let his parka swing back into place over the Smith & Wesson. He heard a little stir from behind him as Silver did something similar.

“You could sit down,” Dolly said.

They sat on folding chairs at the card table and she brought them coffee while Calvin smoked away and said nothing. He looked almost as if he were enjoying himself. “What about that other guy?” he said finally.

“What other guy?” Active said.

“The one that go around behind.”

Silver shook his head. “Shit. Alan. I’ll send him back.” He stood up and headed for the door. Dolly hobbled to the single bed against the wall, sat down with her legs sticking straight out, and pulled a red thigh-length down parka across her lap. A wolf ruff was partly attached to the hood, and Dolly took up sewing it where she had presumably left off when they knocked.

Active, wondering if the ruff was really wolf, pulled out a notebook and looked at Calvin. “Your grandmother told you why we’re here?”

“She say you think I kill Victor Solomon.”

“Do you want a lawyer?”

“I never kill nobody and I never need no lawyer.”

Silver returned from the
kunnichuk
and took his seat again as Active was asking Calvin what he had been doing the night Victor was killed. Calvin’s sketch matched the accounts they had had from Dolly and Queenie. It matched right down to the two hours of
quiyuk
with Queenie of the headlights and bumper, which brought a smile to the lips of Dolly Maiyumerak, who was watching them from the bed.

“Your sled’s empty,” Active said.

Maiyumerak shrugged.

“Some people tell me you’re a good hunter. But you didn’t get any caribou.”

“I never find the herd. That doesn’t mean I’m bad hunter. Or that I kill anybody.”

Active cocked his head at Maiyumerak. “Who else could it be? Someone got thrown out of Victor’s meeting. Victor called someone
anaq
and threatened to throw him in a honey bucket. Who else would want to rob the museum and kill Victor?”

This brought a loud grunt of disgust from the bed, but only another gap-toothed grin from Calvin. “You want to know who do it?”

Nobody said anything, but Active lifted his eyebrows. Dolly Maiyumerak growled from the bed and rattled off something in machine-gun Inupiaq that went completely past Active. She was looking at Calvin, but Active thought she was watching him and Silver, too.

Calvin looked at her and said something soft in Inupiaq. The only word Active caught was
aana
. Dolly growled another unintelligible snatch of Inupiaq, and resumed work on the parka.

Calvin turned back to Silver and Active. “Uncle Frosty do it, that’s what I think. I think Uncle Frosty’s made cold by the universe and he break out of the museum, then he hang around and kill Victor Solomon because Victor want to put him in that display case for the
naluaqmiut
tourists to see.” He nodded as if that explained everything.