by Stan Jones
“I had a visit from the Chukchi social worker just now. They’re doing an assessment.”
“An assessment? My god, of what?”
“What do you think? Of whether I’m a fit mother. I know the gal pretty well—Minnie Wilkins—and she was really sympathetic, but apparently they got a referral from that Stewart guy that I’m an uncooperative witness and probable suspect in his investigation of Jason’s murder and now they have to do an assessment of whether I can keep Nita.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That she had to talk to my lawyer. But Nita told her something.”
“Oh, no.”
She grinned wryly. “She was home for lunch and Minnie asked her how she was. Before I could tell her not to answer, she said pretty good, except her mom wouldn’t let her get a tattoo. Minnie said she agreed with me, so maybe I got a couple points there, ah?” She grinned again, but it stayed even farther from her eyes.
“You call Fortune?”
She nodded. “He said refer Minnie to him, which I already did.” She said it with a shaky little catch in her voice, almost a sob. “Which I suppose makes me even more uncooperative and suspicious. Oh, Nathan.”
She rolled into his arms and he bear-hugged her for a long minute until her breathing steadied. She murmured something too muffled by his parka to be heard.
“What, baby?”
She pulled away a little. “Nothing, really. That bitch isn’t getting Nita, is all.”
“Minnie? I doubt she—”
“Helen Mercer. You know she’s behind this.” She watched his face and caught something. “And that’s not all you know, is it?”
He looked away.
“Come on, dammit.”
“The famous scratches?” He touched his neck. “Mercer filed a complaint with the Alaska Police Standards Council. There was an investigator in my office this morning, a guy named Bill Ashe. She says I gave them to her.”
“She’s accusing you of sexual assault now?”
He shook his head and briefed her on the complaint and the talk with Ashe.
“And what can this police council do if they find you…guilty, is that what it’s called?”
“If they find the complaint justified, is the terminology. They can yank my certification. I’m out of work. Out of a career, basically.”
“That bitch,” she said through clenched teeth. “She’s not getting you either.”
“Oh, she made me an offer. Right after Bill Ashe dropped in.”
“What?”
Active told her about the weird, elliptical conversation with Mercer.
“That bitch,” Grace said.
“Yeah, you said that. Think I should cut a deal and call off the Pete Wise investigation?”
“You’d do that? You?”
He looked away. “For you.”
“Hell, no,” Grace said. “A, if she forces you to sell out, she’ll still be getting you, in a way. And, B, how do we know she wouldn’t want something else someday and hold all of the same crap over our heads.” She grinned. “I said it before, I’ll say it again, that bitch is not getting Nita and she’s not getting you.”
“Excellent,” he said. “So I guess I need a lawyer now.”
Her lips curved into a wolfish grin. “How about Alex Fortune? I’ve heard he’s pretty good. And I guess we’re both dirty rotten scoundrels now where Helen Mercer’s concerned.”
He grinned back. “I’ll give him a call.” He pulled out his phone and remembered it was turned off. He showed her the blank screen. “What’s this about?”
She shrugged. “I don’t trust that bitch. I have to assume she’s tapped everything we own or use.”
“I don’t think even Helen Mercer can…”
“Can what?”
“Can…” He thought about it for a long time. “I don’t know what she’s capable of any more,” he said. “You’re right. We shouldn’t say anything on the phone we don’t want her to hear.”
“Or at work or at home, either,” she said.
“You do realize she’s driving us both crazy?”
She grinned and kissed him goodbye and they promised to keep each other posted. She started across Beach Street as he turned on his phone and leaned on the rail of the overlook to call Alex Fortune, trying to decide how much to say now that somebody might be listening to everything he said.
The phone vibrated to let him know it had powered up, and he looked down to find the lawyer’s name and number in his contacts, or, if it wasn’t there, to search for it with the phone’s tiny web browser.
Over the top of the screen, his eye caught something fluttering deep in the smashed ice along the seawall. He turned his attention back to the phone, then swore a silent oath and peered into the ice, his head suddenly hot.
It was dark down in the ice, and whatever was fluttering was dark, too. He needed a flashlight. Why hadn’t he brought the Chevy? Getting down there was hopeless—the space was too narrow.
He galloped across Beach Street, cadged a flashlight out of the owner of the Arctic Dragon, and returned to play it into the chasm. Nope, just a bag of someone’s trash. Even here, the ravens had been at it, with papers and disposable diapers spilling out, even a sheefish head.
He dialed Gabe Anders’ number from memory and the fire chief came on.
“Gabe, Nathan,” he said. “Have your guys searched the ice jammed up against the seawall from that storm last fall?”
There was a long silence. Then, “Shit. I’ll get ’em started.”
“I’ll put everybody we’ve got available on it, too. And bring lights. It’s dark down there.”
Active ended the call to Gabe, then poked in 911 for Dispatch.
CHAPTER TWENTY - EIGHT
Monday, April 21
THE CALL CAME two hours later.
“We found him,” Gabe said. “Looks like an accident to me, but I thought you’d want to see before we move him. We’re up Beach Street near the docks.”
Minutes later, Active pulled up and got out beside a cluster of police and firefighters gathered along the seawall. An ambulance was pulled up nearby, lights flashing.
Alan Long, he saw, was already as far down in the crevice as possible, at work with a department camera. He eased down beside Long, which still left his feet nearly a yard above the boy’s head.
“Anything?”
“Nothing,” Long said, his eye still on the viewfinder. “Take a look.”
Active flicked through the camera’s LCD. Long’s flash had picked up a few details not visible to the naked eye in the gloom of the crevice. The boy looked like a frosted statue, his face surprisingly relaxed under the gray pallor, his mouth slightly open and even showing the hint of a six-year-old’s gap-toothed smile.
“He looks kind of at peace, ah?” Long said.
“Maybe he just let go when the hypothermia set in and he started to feel warm.”
“You see his right hand?”
Active studied one of the pictures. The boy had his arms raised, as if signaling for a basketball pass. His left hand was still mittened, but the other was bare, with bloodied fingertips. “He put up a good fight anyway.”
He climbed out and Gabe walked over.
“Any hope of pulling him out?”
The fire chief shook his head. “Not a good idea, probably. Even if we could get a rope on him, I wouldn’t wanna pull too hard. We’ll get after it with chainsaws and cut the ice away till we get him loose.”
Active nodded. “Take him to the hospital till we can ship him to the M.E. in Anchorage.”
“You gonna talk to his folks?”
“Yeah, I guess it’s on me. They here?”
“Nope,” Anders said. “But I’m guessing they know already.” He waved at the crowd gathered across the street. “Probably can’t bear to watch and hope.”
ACTIVE CLIMBED THE steps to the deck and passed through the kunnichuk of Urban and Sally Shaw’s house on Second Street, a block back from Beach Street. Like
most Chukchi houses, it was small—not more than seven hundred square feet, he guessed.
He knocked on the inner door and checked out the kunnichuk as he waited. A washer and dryer, a shotgun and two rifles in a corner, away from the moisture inside the house, an outboard motor in another corner, an empty dog cage with boots and shoes stored on top and inside, and a collection of the flattened cardboard boxes that women spread on the floor to use for skinning and cutting game.
Inside, someone turned off a TV, then the door opened to reveal a mid-forties Inupiat woman with wet, red eyes behind her glasses. Active took off his hat and dipped his head. “You heard?”
She raised her eyebrows. “My sister call us from where they find him. You come visit?”
She led him down a hall into the house’s main room—two rooms, really—with a kitchen on one side and a living room on the other, separated by head-height cabinets in the kitchen. There was no dining table, he saw, a fact no doubt explained by the tininess of the kitchen and the presence of—he took a moment to count—five kids on the couch and floor, and a very old aana in a recliner who appeared oblivious to all around her. The three kids old enough to know what was happening stared at him and their mother. A man about her age emerged from a bedroom and came down the hall.
“Mr. Shaw? I’m Chief Active.” He put out his hand. “I’m sorry for your trouble.”
The man put out his hand for a single pump. “Urban Shaw.”
“Can we go talk in the kunnichuk? He gestured at the kids.
“Maybe down there.” Shaw pointed down the hall.
“Me, too?” said his wife.
Active nodded and they moved down the hall. He heard the TV come on behind them—a Pokemon cartoon from the sound of it—and they moved into a bedroom and closed the door.
“I know you’ve talked to one of our officers already, and somebody from the fire department, but could you tell me what happened?”
Urban Shaw started to speak, then stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Two days ago,” he said, “Jimmy’s being bossy around the house, same like always, so we tell him, ‘Go play out.’ When he’s not back around midnight, we call you guys but nobody never find him till now. He was down in the ice by Beach Street?”
Active nodded. “Between the ice and the seawall. It looks like he fell in and couldn’t get out.”
“Or maybe he crawl in to see what’s down there,” Urban said. “That’s Jimmy, all right, he always pukuk.” He chuckled a little bit. It ended with a catch in his throat. His wife started to sniffle, and wiped her nose with a tissue from a pocket in a pilled and baggy pair of flannel pants.
“Did he go out by himself a lot?”
Sally Shaw raised her eyebrows. “He’s not like our other kids. He won’t sit on that couch and watch TV for nothing. If none of them other kids won’t go play out, he’ll drive us crazy till we let him go by himself.”
“He always pester me to caribou hunting already,” Urban said. “I was gonna take him, all right, but I tease him he’s not big enough yet and he sure get mad.”
“Did he ever get lost before or come home late?”
Both Shaws squinted in negation. “Not never ever,” Sally said.
HE CALLED PROCOPIO from his office and told her about the discovery on Beach Street.
“Was he injured before he went into the crevice?”
“No idea yet. We couldn’t get closer than a couple of feet. They’re having to cut the ice away with chainsaws before they can even get him out.”
“Poor kid,” Procopio said. “These Chukchi parents. You see little kids playing out by themselves all hours, it’s a wonder this doesn’t happen more.”
“You know the the official Chukchi motto, right?”
“Let ’em.”
“About pretty much everything,” he said. “Anyway, I called the hospital on the way back to the office and asked the doc there to look him over before they get him ready to ship down to the medical examiner and let me know what he finds. I’m guessing it’ll be nothing except whatever he got while he was down there.”
“My guess, too,” Procopio said. “I won’t even open a file on it unless something turns up.”
THE NEXT MORNING, Active’s outside line lit up while he was still unloading his briefcase. “Chief Active,” he said.
“You check your email yet?” asked the voice of Theresa Procopio.
“Sorry, I’m running a little late today. Wrote a major equipment violation on a broken tail light on the way in, just so the borough assembly will know we do something around here. Then I went by the hospital to ask about Jimmy Shaw.”
“Oh, yeah. They find anything?”
“Nothing to indicate he was hurt in any way before he went in. I doubt the M.E. Will find anything different. No need to start a file on it, I guess.”’
“I’m guessing that’s the only good news we’re gonna get today. The Mercers just got a two-week postponement on the Pete Wise hearing.”
“What? How?”
“Stein granted the motion without talking to me is how. I think he’s hoping it’ll all go away and we’ll come in with some kind of agreement on getting into Pete’s files.”
Active dropped into his chair and turned on his computer. “What grounds?”
He could hear the shrug in Procopio’s voice. “They need more time to prepare.”
“Two weeks? That’s—”
“I know, total bullshit.”
“Can we undo this?”
“I’ll go over the motion again and look for any chinks. But Stein is seeing things their way so far.”
They rang off and Active put away his briefcase as his computer booted up.
He was just launching his email program when his cell phone went off. He froze for a moment when he saw the caller ID. He took a deep breath and tapped the call online.
“Morning, Suka. How are things in Juneau?”
“I thought you were my friend.”
“I am. You know that.”
“I know you violated a court order and I will have your ass for it. You’re hanging out there now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re saying you didn’t do this?”
“Do what?”
“Check your email and call me. And don’t talk to Theresa Procopio about it. Or Grace.”
“OK.”
“And if I don’t answer, leave a voicemail. I’ll be on a plane.”
“A plane?” Now he recognized the noise behind her call. She was in an airport.
“I’m on the way up there. I’m in Anchorage and I’m booked on the next flight. In fact, don’t call me. Meet me at the house at, what time does it get in, hang on, eleven-thirty, supposedly, but it is Alaska Airlines. Meet me at the house at noon.”
“The house? Whose—”
“My house, Nathan. Be alone and don’t be late.”
“Will Brad be there or is—”
“He’s at the mine. It’s just me.”
She hung up, and he stared at his phone in disbelief for several seconds.
He turned to his email screen. At the top, the usual clutter of official stuff, fun stuff, and spam—the Division of Retirement and Benefits, the Alaska Peace Officers Association, Groupon, a “Private email” from one Y. Fang about a major opportunity, the usual “Good morning, Sweetie” from Martha and “Kasmooch” from Grace, the message from the Mercers’ lawyer about the hearing postponement.
And one from Pete Wise, with the subject line, “The files you wanted.”
CHAPTER TWENTY - NINE
Tuesday, April 22
ACTIVE AND THERESA Procopio bent their heads over his printout of the DNA results attached to Pete Wise’s email.
“You sure you don’t know how this happened?” Procopio asked. “You got a friend in the court system you never told me about?”
“Scout’s honor,” Active said. “I’m as dumbfounded as you.”
“Any guesses?”
“Why not? I’m in contempt of court just looking at this. At least I can plead ignorance about where it came from when I get busted.”
They resumed their scrutiny of the report. “One more time, OK? I need to make sure I got it.”
“All that matters is what it says at the top and bottom.”
“’DNA Paternity Inclusion,’ ” he read at the top. “’The alleged father is not excluded as the biological father of the child.’ ”
“And there you have it.”
“You sure? It says Pete can’t be excluded. Isn’t that theoretically true of every male on earth? And there’s no results from Brad here. It could still be him, right?”
“Read the fine print at the bottom again.”
Active bent over it. “’Based on the genetic testing results obtained by PCR analysis of STR loci, the probability of paternity is greater than nine-nine-point-nine-nine percent.’ Yeah, I’d take those odds in Vegas any time.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So that’s why Mercer was so worried? If Pete had gotten into court with this, it would have been game over?”
Procopio shook her head. “Not hardly. Pete ordered this thing off Amazon and took the samples himself and—”
“How would he get a swab from Pudu?”
“Fuck if I know. But he did, according to this. The point is, a DNA test is only admissible if the court orders it and the samples are taken by an independent third party and tested by an approved lab.”
“And so that means…Where does it leave us, actually?”
“Oh, Mercer would have fought it like hell in court, but there’s not much doubt about it for practical purposes. Pete Wise was Helen Mercer’s baby daddy, at least for Pudu.”
“Last thing she needed was having this dragged out into public view, I guess. You want a copy?”
She stood and headed for the door. “Absolutely not. I haven’t even seen it yet.” She paused on her way out. “I’m just glad I didn’t get that damned email, too.”
Minutes later, Active stopped his Chevy before the women’s center. There was no sign of Grace outside, so he called on his cell.
“Can you come out for a minute?” he asked when she answered. “And leave your phone inside.”