Frozen Sun

by Stan Jones

  “Stand by,” Lucy said, all-business for real, now. She clicked off and the city’s hold music, a feed from Kay-Chuck, came on.

  She was back in less than two minutes. “OK, everybody’s on their way. Chief Silver asked if we have a suspect.”

  “Tell him I have one in custody.”

  “Who? You mean Grace? Grace shot him?”

  “Apparently.”

  “That’s terrible.” Lucy sounded relieved.

  He hung up and looked at Grace Palmer, still crumpled in the chair, but no longer crying, eyes now on her hands. She was toying with the zipper of her parka. Up four inches, down four inches, up again.

  “You killed him, huh?”

  She raised her eyes to his. “I, I need your help, Nathan.”

  He returned the gaze for a moment before speaking. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to be speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.”

  “Then get me a fucking lawyer, Goddammit!” She fished in the big side pockets of the parka, finally pulled out a semiautomatic pistol, pushed his cup of pens and pencils aside, and dropped the gun onto his desk. It bounced onto the paperwork from the Nimiuk case.

  A few days after Jason Palmer’s death, Active gave his statement to Silver and Charlie Hughes, the Chukchi district attorney. He told of Grace’s arrival in his office with the pistol that the state’s Anchorage crime lab had swiftly established as having fired the two bullets that had hit the principal of Chukchi High.

  The statement also described Grace’s days on Four Street, Active’s trip to Dutch Harbor, her seduction attempt, her fantasy of drowning the reflected man, her howl of rage and terror when she learned the orphaned Nita had gone to live with the Palmers, and the call to Active’s home from the Junction a few nights before the shooting.

  And Active noted that she was the subject of another murder investigation, headed by a Lieutenant Boardman of the Anchorage Police Department’s homicide unit, and finished off with a summary of the Angie Ramos case.

  “Christ,” Silver said after some moments of silence. “What a story.”

  The chief was tall and paunchy with an acne-cratered face. He had been around Chukchi since before Active was born. Active imagined that Silver would still be there, like the blizzards and mosquitoes, when he, Active, had moved on.

  Silver shook his head. “Even for a Chukchi kid, she … Jesus.”

  “No shit,” said Charlie Hughes, who sat beside Active across the desk from Silver, blue eyes twinkling above rosy cheeks. Hughes was a reluctant Chukchi resident whose main ambition, Active had gathered from working with him, was to avoid any mistake that might prevent him from being transferred to a warmer jurisdiction as soon as possible.

  “Yeah, she’s had quite a life.” Active shrugged. When he had first told Grace Palmer’s story in full, to Lucy Generous, he had been awestruck himself. Now it just depressed him. “So how does this match up with whatever else you’ve got?”

  Silver told him that Jason Palmer had last been seen alive a little after one o’clock on the day he was shot. He had been working in his office at the school, little Nita there with him to give Ida some rest, when Ida had called to remind Nita to go to the store to get some things for dinner. Nita had taken off for Arctic Mercantile and the next thing anybody knew, Grace Palmer was dropping a Colt semiautomatic on Nathan Active’s desk. There were no witnesses. With classes out for the summer, the school had been empty, except for some kids playing pickup basketball at the other end of the complex. They hadn’t heard a thing.

  Hughes rubbed his chin. “It makes me a little uneasy, that it was a call from the mother that got Nita out of his office. I don’t know.”

  Active looked at the prosecutor. “Was that unusual, her sending the girl to the store?”

  Hughes shook his head. “Apparently she does it a lot, now that it’s hard for her go herself. And the little girl likes it, because she gets to pick the dessert. Routine, according to the people at the store. And Nita, too.”

  “Then it probably is,” Active said. “What does Grace have to say about it?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Hughes said. “Her lawyer entered a not guilty plea for her and that’s it so far.”

  Active raised his eyebrows in the white expression for ‘go figure.’ “Who’s her lawyer, anyway?”

  “Theresa Procopio,” Silver said. “New public defender, Stanford Law, supposed to be pretty good. I imagine she’s out here to keep the big, old evil system from abusing the poor, downtrodden rural Alaskans.”

  Hughes turned his incongruous, twinkly blue eyes on Active. “I was just wondering why Grace Palmer would surrender to you, Nathan. You have any thoughts on that?” Hughes sucked a little coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, waiting.

  “It may be that she thought I would screw up the case.” Active said this after some reflection, looking at his knees to avoid Hughes’ eyes. “When I interviewed her in Dutch Harbor about the Anchorage homicide, I, um, neglected to Mirandize her. It might have complicated things a little for APD when they took over, but they got it straightened out.”

  “Yeah, I think we heard something about that,” Hughes said.

  “Well, she wasn’t exactly in custody.”

  “Still, it’s a fine line,” Hughes said. “You never hear of a case getting thrown out because a cop did give the warning.”

  Silver waved a hand, looking sympathetic. “Don’t beat him up, Charlie. It happens.”

  “Not to me.” Active shook his head. “Not ever again. Not this time, for sure. When I read her her rights, she threw the gun on my desk, asked for a lawyer, and shut up.”

  Hughes nodded. “Maybe that’s why she came to you, then, hoping she’d get lucky. But there’s also some issues with the Colt.”

  “Did I hear through the grapevine it belonged to her father?”

  Hughes nodded again, and pulled some papers from the stack between himself and Silver. “Jason kept it with his flying gear, which he kept in the basement, according to the mother. Presumably Grace knew from childhood where he kept the gun. So she went to the basement, found it, went over to the school, and shot him.”

  Active nodded. “Makes sense.”

  Silver shook his head. “Except Charlie thinks he has a missing bullet.”

  “The Colt has an eight-round clip,” the prosecutor said. “We found five live rounds in it, a slug in Jason, and another one in the wall behind his desk, where it apparently lodged after passing through his hand. And we found the two empty casings on the floor from the two slugs. Five plus two is seven, so where’s number eight?”

  “Is this a quiz? You tell me.”

  “We can’t tell you, because we can’t find it,” Hughes said.

  “Maybe he only kept seven rounds in the clip.”

  “We also found a twenty-round box of ammo for the Colt. Eight rounds were missing. So where’s number eight?”

  “Maybe Jason fired a round,” Active said. “To test the Colt or the new box of ammo or something.”

  Hughes nodded. “Maybe. But why wouldn’t he reload the clip before he put the gun away?”

  “How important is this?” Active said. “There’s always loose ends in a case, right?”

  “Right, right, always,” Hughes said. “But they worry me, and your juries up here are tough.”

  “But the gun did kill Jason Palmer and it did have Grace Palmer’s fingerprints on it, right?”

  “Absolutely,” Hughes said. “Right on both counts, and there was residue on her right hand. The lab work is unambiguous.” Hughes was nodding, the blue eyes twinkling.

  But Hughes’ eyes always twinkled, Active had learned, and he still had that look on his face. “But … ?”

  Hughes shook his head. “But there’s no other fingerprints on the gun, just Grace Palmer’s.
Why aren’t Jason’s on there?”

  Active shrugged. “Good question.”

  “I don’t have the answer either and that worries me, too,” Hughes said. “Just like bullet number eight. Missing bullets, missing fingerprints, they all worry me.”

  Silver flipped a hand in deprecation. “I told him, guns rarely pick up much in the way of fingerprints, too many rough surfaces and too much oil. We were lucky to find Grace Palmer’s fingerprints on it.”

  “I know that, just like everybody else in law enforcement,” Hughes said. “But just try to make the jury believe it after Theresa Procopio chews on it for a while.”

  “Maybe Jason cleaned the gun before he put it away,” Active said.

  “There you go, Charlie,” Silver said. “Didn’t I tell you Nathan would come up with something to tell the jury? He’s smart, went to the university, the Trooper academy.” He winked broadly.

  “Yeah,” Hughes said. “Jason takes it out, fires it once, cleans it so carefully there’s not even a smear of a fingerprint left. Then he puts it away without reloading.”

  “So what are you saying? You don’t believe she did it?”

  “Oh, I believe she did it, all right. But I got my doubts a jury’s gonna believe it with all these little holes. I can just hear Theresa now, telling ‘em how Grace found her father dead and did what any conscientious, law-biding, citizen would do, which is to turn the gun over to the cops.”

  There was a gloomy silence that lasted until the light broke over Active. “We’re idiots,” he said.

  “What?” Hughes and Silver said together.

  “The reason we’ve got these holes is that she put them there,” Active said. “She shoots Jason, wipes down the gun to take off his fingerprints, handles it again to leave hers on it, throws away a round of ammunition and presto. Confusion, questions, reasonable doubt.”

  Hughes puckered his lips and made a sucking sound. “You think she’s smart enough to do that, Nathan?”

  “Absolutely. Remember the bingo cards and … trust me, you never know where the bottom is with her.”

  Hughes looked depressed. “Shit. We gotta find that other cartridge. Jim?”

  Silver threw up his hands and shrugged. “It’s not in Jason’s office, that’s for sure. We went over it with tweezers. She could have pitched it anywhere. In the bay, on the tundra, anywhere.”

  “I’m fucked,” Hughes said. “I know it.”

  “You think they’ll drag in the child-molesting thing to justify her killing Jason?” Active asked.

  “They won’t need to,” Hughes snorted. “I have to drag it in myself. Otherwise, what have I got for a motive? I told you I was fucked.”

  He looked from Silver to Active, obviously hoping one of them would explain to him why he wasn’t fucked. Neither offered any comfort.

  Hughes shook his head. “But to answer your question, there’s no sign of what they have in mind. Like I said, they ain’t sayin’ nuttin’ yet.”

  Active flipped through the folders till he found one labeled “Ida Palmer.” He scanned it and looked up at Hughes and Silver. “So Grace’s mother still insists he never molested her?”

  Hughes nodded.

  Active shrugged. “Well, there’s that. And, Jason was no threat to Grace now, so it wouldn’t meet the test for self-defense even if it was true. And her thinking he might molest her cousin someday isn’t any kind of justification.”

  “Legally, no.” Hughes’ cherubic countenance sagged in depression again. “But the men on the jury are going to see this beauty queen talking about what her father did to her, she’ll get tears in those eyes of hers, and they’re going to be outraged against Jason Palmer, the ones that aren’t jealous of him, and they’ll convict him by acquitting her.”

  Hughes looked more depressed than ever as he continued. “And the women on the jury—how many of them are going to have a daughter or a sister or a girlfriend who went down the same road as Grace Palmer but never came back? Those ladies are going to sit there and tell themselves, ‘This is a man’s world and it’s hard for girls, pretty ones especially, and even if Grace did go too far trying to protect her little cousin Nita, sometimes a woman has to break the rules because it’s men that make up these rules.’”

  Active studied Hughes with new respect. He was showing unexpected depth.

  Hughes looked from Silver to Active and sighed. “What do you think, Nathan? Was she telling you the truth about Jason?”

  Active gazed out the office window, not seeing the traffic outside on Church Street or the rain ruffling Heron Lake near the lagoon. Grace Palmer had been convincing in Dutch Harbor, and distraught in the call from the Junction. And something had certainly sent her reeling down Four Street, but there was no way to know what had done it. Perhaps it was nothing more complicated than the susceptibility to alcohol that Eskimos had, or so he believed, because they had first been exposed to it only a few generations before.

  “I think she believes it,” he said. “Whether it’s true, I don’t know. She … she can be very persuasive.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Hughes said.

  Silver cleared his throat. “What was that business her father was talking about? The Electra complex and erotic, ah - -”

  “Erotomania,” Active said. “It’s when somebody fantasizes a sexual relationship that doesn’t exist. You read about a crazed female fan stalking a male celebrity, that’s erotomania.”

  Hughes nodded. “And the Electra complex has to do with a little girl wanting her mother out of the way so she can have Daddy all to herself. So you put them together and - ”

  “Daughter gets the hots for dad, never grows out of it, and eventually starts to fantasize the relationship has been consummated?” Carnaby looked at Active, then Hughes.

  Both nodded.

  “Whew,” Carnaby said.

  “Uh-huh,” Active said.

  “You find this Regina Watkins, Charlie? Any hope there? She gonna say it was all in Grace’s head?”

  Hughes shook his head. “We found her, all right. She works in Kodiak these days, but she’s not gonna be much help. She did tell Jason about the Electra complex and the erotomania thing back in the day, but it was pure speculation, because Grace wouldn’t talk to her.”

  “So all she knew was what Jason told her.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Huh,” Silver said.

  “Exactly. But let’s say I do convince the jury she imagined the whole thing? Where am I then?”

  “They let her off for being crazy?”

  “Probably. The insanity defense is tough in this state, but maybe.”

  “So why aren’t they asking for a deal?” Active said. “If this Theresa Procopio went to Stanford, she ought to be smart enough to know our side’s tied in knots.”

  “Beats me. Maybe they’re shooting for acquittal.” Hughes frowned. “Like I said, my motive is her defense, besides which, any juror looking for reasonable doubt has the missing bullet and Jason’s missing fingerprints, in addition to whatever else Theresa Procopio can cook up at trial. I’m fucked, I can feel it.”

  “Aw, cheer up, Charlie.” Silver was jovial, relaxed, the cop who had done his part and handed the case off to the lawyers and the jury and the judge. “You’ll feel better when you actually get into court and start examining witnesses and making arguments.”

  Hughes’ blue eyes swung onto Active’s. “Why didn’t she run? Just get on a plane and find herself another place where people go to disappear like she did after she killed that girl in Anchorage?”

  Active stared at Hughes for a moment, thinking over the question. “You talk to her yet?”

  Hughes shook his head. “So far, Theresa Procopio has done all the talking, and without saying much of anything.”

  “She’s too tired to run.” Active paused and thought it over some more. “It’s so deep it doesn’t show until you do talk to her for a while, and I’m not sure she sees it herself, but it’s there. So
mething inside her just can’t run anymore. I think that’s why she came home.”

  Active stayed out of the case as Grace Palmer was indicted for the murder of her father and the horrible summer dragged on.

  The story was big news on Kay-Chuck, but not for long. Grace said nothing, her attorney entered a not-guilty plea and said nothing more. Bail was set at a million dollars because of the defendant’s vagrant past, and she remained in jail awaiting trial. Eventually, that was not worth saying again, and Kay-Chuck fell silent about the case for lack of developments.

  A few days after the arraignment, he heard through the Public Safety grapevine that Grace Palmer had changed the plea to not guilty by reason of insanity, supposedly over the objections of Theresa Procopio. At least it was an admission of sorts, in case there had been any doubt about who killed Jason Palmer. He pushed it away, grateful again it wasn’t his case.

  The Anchorage Daily News ran a story on the cover of its Metro section, headlined “Bush beauty queen charged in father’s murder.” But the paper, like Kay-Chuck, didn’t mention child-molesting, focusing instead on Grace Palmer’s days as Miss North World and running the same photograph that was blown up to mural size on the wall at Chukchi High. That, and the mug shot of a gap-toothed Grace Palmer after her prostitution arrest at the Junction. Either the paper had not done enough digging to hear about Grace’s charges, Active figured, or it hadn’t believed them.

  Things went rapidly downhill with Lucy Generous, starting with his loss of interest in sex, simultaneously with his loss of the ability to perform it, as they discovered but never discussed.

  What they did discuss, in their final discussion, was clothes.

  “Do you have a moment?” It was a Thursday evening and dinner was cooking, but they were no longer doing what they had done earlier in the summer while dinner cooked. Lucy was watching the Alaska news on the state-run Bush satellite feed, while he first paid some bills, then paced, then went to straighten out his closet.

  “Lucy? Do you have a moment?” Apparently she hadn’t heard the first time.

  “Sure, what?” she yelled from the sofa in the tiny living room of the Troopers’ bachelor cabin.