Bone Rattle

by Marc Cameron

  Beason started to protest, but Lola cut him off, looking at Van Dyke.

  “Your caller said this guy was trying to sell her a shaman’s rattle. Native culture is probably going to be germane to the investigation.”

  Cutter looked at Maycomb with a wary eye. He hated to agree with Beason, but he wasn’t completely convinced either. “You familiar with shaman’s rattles, things like that?”

  “Of course,” Maycomb said. “I’m happy to help however I can.”

  “Settled,” Lola said. “It might be good to have someone along who has more than a cursory knowledge of artifacts.”

  Rockie Van Dyke closed her eyes, the muscles in her jaw tensing. “You say so. But she’ll let us down. I guarantee it.”

  * * *

  “Odd deal all around,” Mary Dutchik said. “Strange men aren’t exactly at a premium around here, but this one is especially weird.”

  Dressed in a fashionable wool cardigan and matching gray gabardine slacks, she reminded Cutter of one of his high school English teachers. Short silver hair was still wet from a walk in the early-morning rain. She looked tired, as if she’d come in earlier than usual. It made sense. Cutter couldn’t imagine the foot traffic at an art gallery would be very heavy at seven in the morning when there were no cruise ships in town.

  The waist-high display cases contained an assortment of engraved silver and gold bracelets and other Native carvings of spruce and cedar. Each item was set against black velvet to make it pop from its surroundings and neatly spaced so it stood out from everything else. The cases formed a U on the three sides of the showroom – all but for the storefront itself, and a small gap that led to what Cutter assumed was an office or storage area.

  Bright lighting gave the gallery a sparkling feel, like a high-end jewelry store. Wooden masks of Raven, Bear, and men with twisted faces hung on the wall above the cases between similarly painted canoe paddles and other art. Like the totem poles Cutter had seen around Southeast Alaska, the predominate colors were red and black. Everything was beautiful, bright, and expensive. No made-in-China tchotchkes here.

  “And the artifact,” Mary Dutchik continued. “That was very unusual as well. As far as I know, most Tlingit rattles were carved of wood. Raven steals the moon, Frog, man, that’s the general motif. I’ve seen some with small deer dewclaws tethered to the outside that sound when the rattle is shaken. Others have stones inside a carved, gourd-like hollow. The thing is, wood rots, so only a very few authentic artifacts have survived that are older than the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Those were discovered on expeditions in the early 1920s—”

  “Robbed from graves,” Lori Maycomb whispered.

  Dutchik shrugged. “That’s sad, but it is the truth. In any case these would have rotted as well but for the fact that they were found and put in museum collections.”

  “The one from this morning,” Cutter asked. “Do you think it was authentic?”

  “I believe so,” Dutchik said. “But it was different. The body of this rattle looks like it was made of animal horn, likely Dall sheep, boiled so it could be shaped. A length of long bone – probably from the same sheep that provided the horn – made the handle.”

  Cutter looked directly at Maycomb. “And that’s unusual?” he asked. “A… bone rattle?”

  She gave a noncommittal shrug. “But it makes sense. Some Tlingit traditions say the first animal hunted after the great flood was a bighorn sheep. Many taboos are associated with the animal. Hunters going after sheep could not have sex for a day before a hunt. Their wives refrained from heating water and did not comb their hair during the duration of the hunt, for fear of combing their husband off the high cliffs where he was hunting. Bones would have been important to a Tlingit shaman, part of a hard versus soft duality of nature. Shaman often wore ceremonial aprons with bits of bone and hoof dangling from the front. A rattle made of sheep horn and bone might have held some serious power. Any carvings on it?”

  “Raven,” Dutchik said. “Frog, maybe.”

  “Yehk,” Maycomb said. “Shaman had spirit helpers who often took the form of animals. Yehk.”

  “Look at you,” Van Dyke sneered. “Guess you did prove useful after all.”

  “Did he tell you where he got this rattle?” Beason asked.

  “I asked him,” Dutchik said. “But he refused.”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head, looking even more like Cutter’s high school teacher. “I told him the artifact’s provenance was vital in order to be certain it’s from a private collection and not robbed from some grave.”

  Maycomb scoffed. “Which still translates as robbed from a grave, just not recently.”

  “True again,” Dutchik said. “Modern collectors want to share the blame with somebody who went on an expedition a hundred years ago. It makes them feel less dirty.” The gallery owner had obviously covered this ground before, probably with the people who’d provided all the contemporary Native art for her to sell.

  “How much would something like this be worth?” Cutter asked. “If it’s authentic.”

  “Two or three hundred,” Dutchik said.

  Lola gasped. “Two hundred bucks seems like chump change for a one-of-a-kind bone rattle.”

  Dutchik laughed out loud. “Oh no. I meant two or three hundred thousand. The man who brought this one in had done his research. He knew of a Raven rattle that recently sold for over half a million dollars.”

  “Five hundred thousand reasons to commit murder,” Beason said.

  Cutter nodded, eyes half closed, the kind of nod that said he didn’t agree at all but was in the process of thinking things through.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” he said at length. “How much would you have given him?”

  “Nothing remotely close to that,” Dutchik said. “I have a small fund I use when I want to buy things and get them back in Tlingit hands. He knew I wouldn’t give him much when he came through the door.”

  “How’s that?” Beason asked.

  “Well,” Dutchik said. “He told me about the half-million-dollar sale, then said he was willing to take ‘pennies on the dollar.’ I said I could give him a few thousand.”

  “So,” Beason said, accusingly. “Did you?”

  “I did not,” Dutchik said. “I told him I needed to examine the artifact in person, have it appraised. He had several photos of it on his phone, from all angles, but he refused to show me the actual rattle.”

  Beason brightened. “Does he plan to bring it back, do you think?”

  “I believe he had it in his pocket the entire time.”

  Cutter tapped the top of a glass display case, still thinking. “I want to go back to something you mentioned a minute ago. You said, ‘the man himself is especially weird.’ It sounds like you’ve met him before. Is that how he knew you might be the person who would buy something like this bone rattle?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Dutchik said. “I didn’t make that clear, did I? He came into the gallery once before, about three months ago, and sold me a large formation of crystals. I paid him in cash. He didn’t give me his name then either.”

  “Crystals?” Cutter mused.

  “Quartz,” Dutchik said. “Big ones, like something you’d see in Superman’s lair or something. This formation was about the size of a soccer ball. He said he’d found them in a mine.”

  “Do you know which mine?” Detective Van Dyke asked.

  “I’m not certain,” Dutchik said. “But I’ve only seen crystals like that come from a mine near Port Snettisham, to the south. Not surprisingly, it’s called the ‘Crystal Mine.’”

  Cutter shot a glance at Beason to see if he had any further questions. The FBI agent shook his head. Grudge match or not, both were professional enough not to let it bleed into their interviews.

  “Okay then,” Beason said. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Dutchik. Do you think you’d be able to help a sketch artist put together a drawing of this man?”

  “I’ll do better
than that,” Dutchik said. She removed one of the wooden masks from the wall. Cutter guessed this one was a bear from the rounded ears and big teeth.

  Dutchik removed a small camera from the mouth of the mask. “Bear is always watching. Most of the art I have in here is one of a kind, quite valuable.”

  Beason put on his all-knowing FBI hat. “Studies show that it does more to deter theft if people can see the cameras.”

  Dutchik smiled sweetly. “I don’t want to deter them,” she said. “I want to catch them in the act and send their thieving butts to jail.”

  Lola patted Dutchik on the shoulder and gave her a wink. “If you were twenty years younger, I’d give you an application.”

  Chapter 33

  “The Valkyrie is also out near Port Snettisham,” Lori Maycomb said, as soon as they were all out of the gallery and walking up Franklin Street. “I did a report about the mine owner a couple of months ago. Harold Grimsson. Fancies himself a modern-day Viking.” She sneered. “My piece was a feel-good story about all the philanthropic work his mine does for the community.”

  Van Dyke bristled. “You have a problem with the industry that built this area, put us on the map?”

  Maycomb, arguing from the high ground, was having none of it. “Technically, my people built this place, and we were ‘on the map’ eons before your people got here. But to your question, I love iPhones, computers, electron microscopes, and all the other things built with metals we dig out of the ground. I’ve done stories on both of the bigger mines in this area. They’re great. No problems at all there. This Harold Grimsson character just rubs me the wrong way. You know, the kind of handsy, condescending jerk who calls you ‘sweetie’ and ‘hon’ and looks at you with X-ray vision.”

  “She’s not wrong about that,” Van Dyke said. “Grimsson is a weasel. A big weasel with a beard that looks like a skunk.”

  “His wife supposedly drowned in the bathtub,” Maycomb said. “Way out on his little private island. No witnesses. Odd circumstances if you ask me.”

  Van Dyke scoffed, climbing back on her hating-horse. “So now you’re a homicide detective? Give me a break, Lori, and let us do our jobs.”

  Maycomb shrugged it off. “Anyway, Grimsson donates money to the library, supports Juneau Douglas High School sports, provides a lot of jobs – so he buys himself the title of hero. But he’s been cited something like twenty-seven times for safety and land-use violations. Indigenous groups have sued Valkyrie Mine Holdings because the mine is located right on top of our ancestral lands. A couple of months ago, Grimsson was trying to get an old right-of-way approved as an existing road so he could dig another hole… or at least, dig deeper in an old one. Apparently, there’s still a lot of gold in them thar hills. Most everyone was surprised when he got approval so quickly, but there were rumors he had a couple of politicians in his pocket.”

  “Senator Fawsey?” Lola mused.

  “That was the whisper,” Maycomb said. “But nothing was ever substantiated.”

  “Maybe that’s what Donita Willets was going to substantiate,” Lola said.

  “Grimsson had to get approval for a road on his own claim?” Cutter asked.

  Van Dyke nodded. “The Tongass is one hundred percent roadless. If there was no old road there already, there can’t be any new road now…”

  Beason rubbed his face again, squinting hard as his thoughts cut through the exhaustion. Cutter didn’t blame him there. Few things were less exciting than land claim disputes – but it was often the boring particulars that provided motive for murder.

  The agent blew out a forceful breath, trying to wake up.

  “Okay,” he said. “Check and see if JPD or the Troopers have had any calls for service out at the Valkyrie or dealt with any Valkyrie employees recently.”

  The man was a level 10 jerk, but he was also a decent investigator.

  Van Dyke gave him a thumbs-up, stepping to the back of the group, bringing up the rear while she called her office.

  “How far away is this Port Snettisham?” Lola asked.

  “About thirty miles south of here,” Maycomb said. “On the north side of Stephens Passage.”

  “And the Crystal Mine?” Cutter asked. “Who operates that?”

  “No one,” Maycomb said. “It’s been closed for decades.”

  Beason’s phone rang at the same moment Van Dyke trotted forward, catching up with Cutter.

  “Turns out we did get a call for service,” she said. Beason put his cell phone to his ear and, for a time, tried to listen to two conversations at once. In the end, he brightened, said, “Is that right?” and then fell to the back of the group to concentrate on his own call.

  “Go ahead,” Cutter said to Van Dyke.

  “JPD got a welfare check request yesterday from a Mrs. Merculief in Anchorage. She said her son, Isaac, is an archeologist working on contract at Valkyrie mine. She hasn’t heard from him in two days.”

  “Why would the mine need an archeologist?” Lola asked.

  “Some contracts require it,” Maycomb said. “I imagine that was one way Grimsson got his go-ahead to push through construction on the old corduroy road easement, even though it’s been proven to be on our ancestral grounds. An archeologist on-site would make sure nothing was damaged or disturbed.”

  Cutter’s eyes widened. “Like a bone rattle.”

  “Exactly like a bone rattle,” Maycomb said.

  “Anyway,” Van Dyke said, looking miffed that Maycomb was still playing explainer when she had more to say. “Initial calls to Valkyrie Human Resources say Isaac Merculief hasn’t shown up for work for two days.”

  Maycomb’s phone rang next. She checked the caller ID, then said, “Sorry, have to take this.”

  “What do you think, boss?” Lola asked, looking at Cutter. “Go show a screen shot of our runner to the people at Valkyrie Mine Holdings, see if they know him?”

  They’d made it back to the hotel lobby.

  “And dig a little deeper into this archeologist,” Cutter said. “Beason may want to ask Judge Forsberg for a warrant so we can take a look at any reports Isaac Merculief may have on file.” A hard shiver racked his entire body. Standing in the warm hotel made him realize how chilled he’d actually become. “First, I’m going to put on dry pants.”

  Lola and Van Dyke went to the lobby couches to wait, while Beason with his phone call was near the front door, out of earshot. Still shivering, Cutter pressed the button to summon the elevator, but Maycomb walked up and put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

  “That call was from my radio station,” she said. “I asked a friend to do a little research. He found video on YouTube from when Levi Fawsey’s father was running for senator. I just watched a couple of minutes of it. I think it’s going to give us a direction to look for Donita.”

  “Outstanding,” Cutter said. “I’ll change and we’ll watch it on the way to Valkyrie’s main offices.”

  Lori Maycomb fiddled with an unlit cigarette and chewed on her bottom lip.

  “I’m banned from Valkyrie mining offices because of some of the questions I asked when I was doing my story. Rockie would love nothing more than to arrest me for criminal trespass if I go back.”

  Cutter chuckled, his teeth chattering badly now.

  The elevator doors opened, offering an escape to a hot shower. “You go do whatever it is you’re going to do with that cigarette,” Cutter said. “I’m going to put on some dry clothes.”

  Beason finished his phone call and yelled out for Cutter to wait.

  He let the elevator shut without him in it. Released a tremulous breath. Wouldn’t that be something? Dying of hypothermia in the hotel lobby.

  “What’s up?”

  Beason grinned. “Looks like all of this is going to be moot.”

  “How’s that?”

  Beason winked, like they were suddenly old buds. “The Hernandez brothers have agreed to cooperate in exchange for a plea deal. They’ll provide us with the answers we need.”
<
br />   “What about Donita Willets,” Cutter asked. “It’s not suddenly moot to her.”

  “I’m not saying that,” Beason growled. “But I can only do one thing at a time.”

  Cutter gave him a half grin. “That’s what you have us for. You’re going to keep a lid on this? Right? It leaks that the Hernandez brothers are talking, that just turns up the heat on Donita Willets.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job,” Beason growled. “Of course we’re keeping a lid on it. I wouldn’t even have told you if Warneke hadn’t ordered me to. It’s bottled up tight. No one outside FBI leadership and the US Attorney’s office.”

  Only fifteen or twenty people then, Cutter thought. Buttoned up all right. Like the Hell’s Angels’ famous credo: “Three could keep a secret – if two of them were dead.”

  Chapter 34

  It was relatively easy for Schimmel to steal a skiff after he’d tossed the kid. Everyone had been focused on the rescue, allowing him time to give the fuel priming bulb a couple of squeezes and set the choke on the outboard. It was a thirty horse, not a great deal of compression, but yanking on the starter rope was excruciating and sent arcs of pain across his chest and under both arms. The motor coughed and sputtered, but started after the third try.

  Schimmel sat on an overturned paint bucket at the tiller, throttle cranked wide open, running blind across Gastineau Channel through chowder-thick fog. Fortunately, it was the wrong time of the year for cruise ships, or he would have risked being crushed and chopped to chowder himself. The cops would be after him as soon as they pulled the kid out of the water. They’d probably shoot him if the kid drowned, or beat the shit out of him at the very least. What was he supposed to do? Let that big guy catch him? He didn’t know what that guy was selling, but he didn’t want any part of it.

  Halfway across it dawned on him that the cops had radios. The channel was barely a mile wide, less in most places, but they didn’t even need to drive across the bridge to catch him, or wait to fish the kid’s body out. They’d just call across and whatever troopers or JPD cops who happened to already be there would be waiting for him on the other side, probably all lined up at the harbor ready to blow his head off as soon as he rounded the breakwater.