by Stan Jones
“I didn’t use it,” Helen Mercer said. “I only used my old Expedition. I think my snowgo days are over now that I gotta run our nation’s largest state.”
“Mm-hmm,” Active said. “And Pudu?”
“He better not have,” the First Mate said. “He’s got his own machine and he knows that one’s mine. It’s hands-off other than me and Helen.”
“Anyway, once we got back, Pudu spent the whole time editing video, except for going to the banquet,” the governor said.
“And did you check on the snowgo after you got back from the race?” Active asked.
“Hmm,” the First Mate said. “I can’t say that I did. Like I said, I was running around to get the dogs squared away and lining my brother up to watch them till I get back up there again, then we went to the banquet and I came down here yesterday.”
Active scanned his notes. “So, if I’m hearing you right, the machine could have been stolen any time from a couple days before the race up through yesterday morning when it hit Pete Wise, assuming the state lab confirms your machine was in fact the one that hit him?”
“Sounds right to me,” the First Mate said.
“Me, too,” said the governor. “Do we need to file a police report about it being stolen, or can this be it?”
“This can be it,” Active said. “It’s all in my notes here.”
“Thanks, Nathan. And you’ll keep us posted if you find out who took it?”
“When we can, yes.”
They disconnected and Active pushed the phone back across the desk. “Well?” Procopio said.”
Active shook his head as he emailed the recording to Procopio. “Back to square one, I guess.”
“Alan went to the house again, right? Maybe he came up with something.”
“Ah,” Active said. He tapped Alan Long’s contact in his cell phone.
“Hey, Chief,” Long said in a few seconds.
“Anything so far?”
“Not really. Found an Arctic Cat cover blown up against the wall of the house and kinda snowed under.”
“Brad Mercer just told us he parked his Cat behind the house under that cover a couple days before the race and it must have been stolen.”
“Makes sense,” Long said. “But I can’t see any tracks from anybody doing that now. Too much blow-in and new snow.”
Active thanked him and disconnected.
“Yup,” Procopio said. “Square one.”
“WHAT, OUR KOREANS are Vietnamese all of a sudden?” Grace grinned a little as she scanned the new menu at the Arctic Dragon.
Like almost every restaurant in town, the Dragon was run by a Korean named Kyung Kim. As long as Active had been in Chukchi, the Dragon had confined itself to burgers and Chinese food. The new menu had a page headed “Pho Saigon.”
Active grinned back. “You think Kim knows anything about Saigon? Or pho?”
“I think it’s ‘fuh,’ ” Grace said.
“What?”
“It’s ‘fuh.’ You said ‘foe.’ ”
“‘Fuh’ Saigon?”
Grace nodded.
“What is that, anyway? Pho.” He said it right this time.
“Soup, I think.”
Active ran his eye down the menu. “You must be right. Look at the phos. Pho this, pho that, pho everything, pho Pete’s sake.”
“How about a pho seafood superbowl? We could split it.”
“I was thinking a bacon cheesebur—” Active stopped at the sight of an arched eyebrow. “a bacon cheeseburger would play hell with my cholesterol, so a seafood superbowl would be perfect!”
Grace grinned.
He grinned. “Did you pass a pleasant night in Leroy’s tent?”
She leaned in and he knew she was up for a little dirty talk.
“You kidding?” she said. “You’re gonna pay for leaving me in that state.”
“Happily,” he said. “I never welshed on a debt in my life. Plus, I always dreamed I’d die from having my skull crushed between a woman’s thighs. Did I ever tell you that?”
She grinned. “You did not, and I’ll thank you not to do so again. A lady does not care to hear such talk. Well, not more than a dozen times a day or so.”
“No hope of a rematch tonight, looks like.” He pointed out at the blow.
“Getting pretty thick out there, all right,” she said. “Darn it. But we’ve got a few weeks before the ice goes out, so fish camp will keep.”
“How’d you guys finally get home?”
“With Christina and her mom, like we talked about. We jumped outta bed at the crack of ten-thirty and loaded up and made it into town, what, about an hour ago?”
“Mm-hmm. Sounds very fish-campy, all right. No trouble finding the trail in this weather?”
“Christina’s mom must have a GPS in her head.” She paused as if she expected him to speak. “So. You found your snowgo last night?”
He nodded.
She tilted her head and narrowed the silver eyes. “And?”
“It’s police business. You know. Fifty shades of secret.”
She snorted, but in a ladylike way. “In Chukchi? Stand and deliver, Chief Active.”
He chewed his lip for a moment, then told her who owned the sunken Arctic Cat.
“Brad Mercer? You’re kidding.”
He shrugged and explained the Mercers’ explanation of how the First Mate’s snowgo might have come to kill Pete Wise.
“You believe it?”
“Why not? This is Chukchi. My guys spend half their time chasing stolen snowgos. A ten-year-old could hotwire one. And anybody in the mood for a little joyride could figure that one wouldn’t be missed for a while, what with the Mercers heading back to Juneau and all.”
“Uh-huh.” Grace nodded and pursed her lips.
“What?”
“It’s just that I talked to the governor this morning, too.”
“What?”
“The phone at the house was ringing when I got in from camp.”
He took a moment to line it up in his mind. “So this would be a couple hours after Theresa and I called her about the snowgo?”
Grace raised her eyebrows.
Active was about to say, “What the hell did she want?” when a Korean kid with bleached hair and a ring in his lip came to the table. Active kept silent as his mind cycled through the possibilities and Grace ordered the superbowl, plus tea for herself and a Diet Pepsi for him. She passed their menus to the waiter and he left.
“What the hell did she want?”
“To apologize.”
“Helen Mercer apologized? Seriously? For what?”
“For those rumors about the scratches on her neck. She assured me they were self-inflicted and that your behavior in that tent was strictly honorable.”
“It was.”
“I hope so,” Grace said. “I think so. But her call coming when it did….”
“Yeah. The timing.”
“She went on to say she hoped the rumors hadn’t caused problems between us and then she asked how the women’s shelter project was coming. And she said to let her know if I needed anything. I almost said, ‘Posilutely.’ ”
“Almost?”
“What I did say was, ‘Thanks, Suka.’ ”
“Very prudent.” Active relaxed a little. “She apologized and she offered to help. That’s it?”
“Not quite. Then she asked me how Nita was.”
“Huh.”
Grace gazed out the Dragon’s window, across Beach Street into the semi-blizzard brooming snow across the ice. Then she read his face.
“What?”
“Remember when she came in last week and shanghaied me to play bodyguard?”
Grace raised her eyebrows, yes.
“There was some of that conversation I didn’t tell you about.”
“Didn’t tell me—wait, she mentioned Nita then?”
He nodded. “She called her your little girl.”
“My little girl. Oh, God. She kno
ws that? How could she?”
“Maybe she just assumed it. I said Nita was your cousin you adopted after her mother’s death and she seemed to accept it.”
Grace studied his face and narrowed her eyes again. “What else?”
“She said her people looked into the records of your father’s death.”
“His death? No.”
He nodded. “But—
“Oh, Jesus.”
“But she said it was only due diligence so she could offer me the Trooper job.”
“The woman scares me to death.”
“My point is, that was long before I called her today about the snowgo or Pete Wise was even killed. So how could it be connected?”
Grace didn’t speak. Her lips took on a stubborn set.
“And she did offer to fund your crisis centers,” Active said. “And to run money through my public safety budget for the cell towers on the Isignaq. And she is coming back up from Juneau just to cut the ribbon at your center on Friday.”
The marimba ring tone sounded from Active’s shirt pocket.
“Jesus,” Grace said. “That better not be her.”
“If it is, I’ll let it go to voicemail.” He looked at the caller ID and felt the tension drain from his shoulders. “Nah, it’s a Chukchi number.” He moved the slider to answer.
“Chief Active.”
“I have a friend in the court system,” the tired voice said. “She says, you want to know about Pete Wise’s sex life, you should go to the courthouse.”
“The courthouse? Why?”
“Just don’t get my friend in trouble, OK? She shouldn’t have told me.”
Active disconnected with a frown and tapped Procopio’s contact on his phone.
“What’s in court?” Grace asked as the prosecutor answered.
Active held up a finger. “Theresa? We need to look Pete Wise up in court.”
“What?” Procopio said. “Why? How do you know?”
“A source, that’s all. Can you do it?”
“Call you right back.”
He punched off and looked at Grace.
“Pete Wise was in court?”
“Supposedly. We’ll see.”
“And your source is?”
“Sorry, this one really does need to be secret.”
She frowned for a moment, then nodded.
“So where were we?” he asked.
“Discussing Helen Mercer.” She shrugged. “As usual lately.”
“Well, again—it did start long before there was a Pete Wise case. Last week, remember? The only thing that’s happened since we found him on the tundra is, she called to apologize about the scratches and wish you and Nita well. And maybe that’s because she figured out why you skipped the musher’s banquet and she wants to help patch things up between us. How is that scary?”
“I don’t know. It just is. Call it woman’s intuition.”
He paused as the waiter delivered their order.
“Look,” he said when they were alone again. “Maybe we should take this all at face value. She does want to help us, she was doing due diligence for the Trooper job, she is sorry about the rumors, she does wish you and Nita well. It’s just her way. An idea a minute, popping out unfiltered. That gerbil wheel of a brain in overdrive, as usual.”
Her chin unwrinkled a bit. “I guess.”
But she didn’t look very convinced as she dipped into the pho seafood.
Active was dipping his own spoon into the superbowl when his phone marimbaed again. He checked the caller ID, then his watch as he put the phone to his ear. “Theresa. You went to the courthouse already? That was quick.”
“Modern times, Nathan,” she said. “We lawyers got our own computer system, too.”
“Ah. I forgot about CourtView for a minute. Whatcha got?
“Just get over here. You have to see this for yourself.”
“How about the short version?” he said. “What is it?”
She was already gone.
“Pete Wise was in court?” Grace asked. “What about?”
He took a last spoonful of pho and pulled on his parka. “I’m about to find out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Wednesday, April 16
“PETE WISE FILED a child custody petition against the governor of Alaska?” Active looked over Procopio’s shoulder at her computer screen again. “Holy shit, but what does it mean?”
“It’s what we call a putative father case. It means Pete Wise thought he was the biological father of at least one of the governor’s kids. He probably wanted a DNA test to prove it so he could get shared custody.”
“At least one? Good grief, she’s got four.”
“Maybe it’s all of them, who knows.” Procopio pointed at the screen. “CourtView doesn’t show that kind of detail.”
“I see Pete named both Mercers as defendants? Not just Helen?”
Procopio shook her head. “They’re called respondents in this kind of case. But, yeah, both of them. That’s because the First Mate is legally the father if they were married at the time of birth, no matter who she did the actual deed with. Or deeds.”
Active dropped into a chair beside her. “I suppose you caught the date Pete filed this thing?”
“Yep,” Procopio said. “Monday of last week, three days before Helen hit town for the Isignaq 400.”
“Huh. Whereas Brad had already been here a while gearing up for the race,” Active said. Procopio nodded. “So, assuming he got served reasonably fast, he had a couple days to stew about it before he got a chance to confront her.”
“Must have been a fun conversation,” Procopio said.
“And then three days on the trail to brood some more about Pete Wise in bed with his wife.”
“Maybe even giving her a warm welcome-home while he was staring at four hundred miles of dog butts,” Procopio said. “A guy could work up a pretty good head of steam picturing that out there on the trail all by himself.”
“And by Tuesday morning, maybe he decides to settle up with Pete before they go back to Juneau.”
“Highly plausible, given my limited understanding of the male brain.”
“Huh,” Active said again. “So this CourtView summary. I don’t see anything about a hearing while the Mercers were here?”
“You wouldn’t expect one so soon after the case was filed. There wasn’t even one scheduled by the time Pete died.”
“Who’s listed as Pete’s attorney? Maybe he’ll give us a copy of the file.”
“Nobody’s listed.”
“He was representing himself?”
Procopio shrugged. “I hope not, for his sake. Not against the governor of Alaska. But that’s kind of what it looks like. People sure do stupid things sometimes.”
“So it’s off to court we go?”
“You go,” Procopio said. “I got some paperwork on your honeybucket murder. Just ask the clerk to copy the file. Bring it back here and we’ll go over it.”
Active shrugged into his parka and started for the door.
“No peeksies!”
“Ha!”
BUT GETTING TO the courthouse was not simple, as things in Chukchi tended not to be. A Honda four-wheeler, it seemed, had driven into the side of a city garbage truck. The Honda sustained much damage, the garbage truck none, and the fourteen-year-old driver of the Honda a bruised, perhaps fractured, left forearm. She denied texting while driving, despite the “LMFAO” still present on the screen of her phone when Active arrived to investigate. While the passenger, uninjured, recorded the encounter on her own phone, no doubt for Facebook, he ticketed the driver for texting and underage driving before the EMTs rolled up to haul her to the emergency room.
By the time Active reached the clerk’s office, it was past two. He didn’t recognize the lumpish gray-haired white woman at the counter, but that wasn’t unusual. Turnover and absenteeism both ran high in the court clerk’s office, particularly when spring or fall hit and the sheefish or caribou passed
through. The court system often had to send in temporary help from Fairbanks. This one was dome-shaped and her name was Doris, according to her nametag.
“Sorry,” Doris said when Active asked for the Wise-Mercer file. “It’s sealed.”
“Sealed?” He touched his badge and looked at hers. “Doris, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Nathan Active, the borough public safety chief here, and this is for a criminal investigation.”
Doris shook her head. “Judge Stein sealed it about thirty minutes ago.”
“But—”
“Talk to the judge. His ruling.”
Active swore to himself and started down the hall.
The front desk in Stein’s office was vacant. Active walked into Stein’s chambers, where the judge was scrawling notes in the margins of a sheaf of legal papers.
Stein had arrived in Chukchi as a lawyer representing poor people with Alaska Legal Services a couple of years before Active himself showed up. No doubt Stein had also planned to rack up some experience in the Bush, then move on to Anchorage for a bigger job with a bigger title and bigger money.
Instead, like Active, here he still was in Chukchi. Active supposed Stein had missed too many planes. But he had made a better job of it than Theresa Procopio. He was now a full-on Bush rat, complete with boats, snowgos, a wife from a Chukchi family, and a fish camp on her Native allotment up the Katonak River. He’d been clean-shaven with a decent head of black hair when Active first met him. Now the hair had started to go, but he had grown a full beard, perhaps to compensate.
Stein put down the brief and pulled off his glasses. “Nathan! Sit, sit. So good to see one of Chukchi’s finest. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Active nodded. “It’s business, actually. You sealed Pete Wise’s custody case against the governor and her husband? What—”
Stein shrugged. “The governor’s lawyer moved to dismiss and seal it on the grounds it’s moot now that Wise is dead, so I did seal it. Probably dismiss it, too, in another day or two. Pretty routine, actually.”
Stein saw the look on Active’s face and cocked his head. “Or maybe not?”
Active chewed his lip for a moment, then plunged. “Brad Mercer is a, er, person of interest in Pete Wise’s death.”