by Stan Jones
“Not exactly. She says, OK, but you and me are done after tonight, I never want to see you again or hear your name. He still agrees, so she walks over there after the mushers’ banquet, after we drop the kids off at her folks’ place, and I go to bed. The next thing I know she’s on the phone. Her story was, they spend the night together, then Pete tells her ‘thanks for the quiyuk,’ but he still isn’t going to drop the suit and she can go fuck herself. He takes off to run his dogs, she takes off to cool down and puts the snowgo through the ice and calls me. That’s what she said.”
Active made more notes on his pad to give himself thinking space. “So this nuliagatagiik relationship you two had with your wife. How did that get started?”
“She was the boys’ basketball coach at the time, so there was a lot of travel to the villages, regional tournaments in Nome and Barrow, the state tournament in Anchorage.”
“Wait. She coached the boys? Not the girls?”
Mercer raised his eyebrows. “Best coach we ever had. She was a helluva player in high school herself, better than a lot of the boys. One time, she even tried to go out for the boys’ team, but the coach said no and she called him a bed-wetting needle-dick.”
Active couldn’t help grinning. “To his face?”
Mercer grinned back. “Oh, yeah. If her parents hadn’t both been teachers, she probably would have been expelled. Anyway, Helen always said she didn’t have any interest in coaching girls because they weren’t good enough. Just boys. And there was always a lotta tepee-creeping on those trips. That’s when we’d get together with her.”
“At the same time?
“Never! What kind of people do you think we are? Anyway, she and I got married right after I graduated and then Pudu was born a few months later. That’s why I always wondered if Pete was the father, or even somebody else. That’s kinda when we started fighting over her.”
“And Pete was still in school when you graduated?”
“Yeah, he had another year to go at that point.”
Active paused once more and looked at his notes as he spooled back through the interview in his mind.
“Let me line it up here,” Active said. “They spend the night together, she takes off in a rage, Pete goes out to run his dogs and winds up dead, your snowgo ends up in Chukchi Bay banged up like it would be if it hit somebody, which we’re pretty sure it did.”
Mercer thought it over. “Yeah, that’s about it. If my snowgo hit Pete, she was driving it.”
“So she killed him and set it up so you’d take the blame.”
“Unless it was an accident, I guess. Maybe she followed him and his dogs out there to talk to him one last time?”
“Except she took your snowgo, not hers.”
“God damn her, yeah,” Mercer said. “She told me at the time she never saw him again after he told her to screw herself and she took off.”
“So when I called you both knew the snowgo wasn’t stolen and that story you told was—”
“Yeah, it was her idea and it was total bullshit. She acted like she came up with it on the spot, but I bet she planned it out all along. She told me what to say, and I said it. You know how it is when your woman looks at you that certain way.”
CHAPTER THIRTY - TWO
Tuesday, April 22
“THESE PEOPLE,” procopio said as Active clicked off the digital recorder with Brad Mercer’s interview.
“Indeed.”
The prosecutor rattled her nails on her desk and knit her brows as she studied her notes on the recording.
He took a hit of the coffee she’d served him on arrival. It was awful, scorched from too long in the pot. “So what do we have here, counselor?”
“The makings of a pretty good erotic romance, maybe. Let’s see, we got a love triangle and a love child, a gorgeous governor baring her all for a hunky young cop. Yep, you write it, I’ll be your agent, it’ll be the next 50 Shades of Grey.”
“That’s all? But they incriminated each other and one of them—”
“Yeah, one of them surely killed Pete Wise, by accident if not intentionally,” Procopio said. “You got a feel for who and how?”
“On the how, I’m guessing accident. Too stupid a way to commit murder, even for these people, starting with the problem of dumping the snowgo. As for who, I go back and forth. Helen hates being crossed, but she’s probably too calculating to expose herself like this. Which leaves Brad. He did admit fighting with Pete in the past, and he might be enough of a knuckle-head to screw up like this and panic.”
“But even if we could get around the spousal immunity problem, it could still go nowhere. If one testified, they both would, and they’d just cancel each other out.”
Active nodded. “It’s a hall of mirrors.”
“Any luck with the search warrant for the phone records?”
“Oh, majorly. I think Stein’s getting as sick of these people as we are. In fact, Chukchi Telephone is supposed to email them over any time now.” She looked at the clock on the wall behind Active. “Let me check.” She turned in her chair and clicked her email open. “Here we go, come look.”
Active moved around the desk and peered over her shoulder.
“Hmm,” they said together two minutes later.
“Lot of calls that morning,” Procopio said. “First one was to the Mercer landline at 5:43, a series of calls between the cells after that till, what, almost half past six.”
“Hmm.” Active pointed. “That call to the land line at 5:43? That’s her cell. I recognize the number.”
“So that had to be her calling from the ice.”
“Yup. Print that for me?”
“Think we can get a search warrant on Pete’s house now, see if she spent the night in his bed?”
“With the phone records and the recording from Brad, plus the other stuff I already filed? Puh-leeze. Maybe even by quitting time today, and your guys can tear through the place like wolverines in rut. I’ll get on it now.” She opened the word processor on her computer and began typing.
“So, then—a warrant also for hair samples from her?”
Procopio paused at the keyboard. “Of course. One follows the other.”
“Head and pubic?”
“Of course pubic. Unless she’s got a Brazilian.”
“She, ah, does not. At least not as of this morning.”
“We’ll also go for a DNA sample,” Procopio said.
“DNA?”
“Yeah, it’s in saliva.”
“Right, sure. Her saliva might be—”
Procopio nodded. “Almost anywhere on Pete’s body, depending on how lucky he got. Plus, her DNA might be on the sheets if she’s a squirter.”
“What?”
“It’s in female ejaculate.”
“Seriously? That’s a real thing?”
“You don’t know about that?” Procopio said. “Poor Grace.”
“Shut up. But it’s real and it contains DNA?”
“Yep. CSI 101.”
“So now I know.”
“She can probably drag the search of her person out in court for a while, by the way. She’ll have to be served with a warrant, go to a lab or maybe the hospital here or in Juneau, or you’ll have to get a crime technician in to see her. So, brace yourself for another fight.”
“First step is to get the warrant, right?”
Procopio nodded.
“What about interviewing Pudu?”
“They’ll fight that like hell, too,” Procopio said. “Probably drag it out even more. I’ll set the wheels in motion if you like, but maybe the search warrants first?”
“Yeah, let’s at least see what the search at Pete’s house turns up. Ditto for questioning Helen’s parents, I suppose. The kids spent the night in question with them, so they aren’t likely to know where Helen slept. And even if they did, why would they tell us? They can go to the bottom of the list, too.”
Procopio resumed typing as Active pocketed the phone-record printout
, pulled on his parka and tapped a contact on his cell. “And you?”
“I’m off to atone for my sins.”
“You pissed Grace off again, huh?”
SHE ANSWERED as he reached the stairs.
“Suka? Look, I’m sorry for the way I behaved today. I, er, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I saw… since you…and, ah, well, I was wondering if your offer is still open. I’d like to come over and apologize properly.”
There was a long silence at the other end. He crossed mental fingers, hoping her husband hadn’t called about the interview at the mine. Maybe he was still on shift. Maybe he was too furious. Maybe he was getting his own lawyer.
“After what you did? I’m not sure I ever want to see you again.”
He relaxed a little. The feline throatiness was back in her voice. “I don’t blame you, but—”
“Oh, all right. But it’s going to take a lot of apologizing. Do I need to cancel my flight? Will you be staying the night?”
“Only part of it. I don’t want Grace to know.”
A few minutes later, he parked in front of the Mercer house on Beach Street, just south of the start of the seawall. Like everything about the governor, it made a statement and a loud one. Not only was it two stories, it was also cedar-fronted with a glass wall by the door and had an unequal-pitch roof, the only one he had seen on a Chukchi house.
He parked the Chevy in front and walked through the kunnichuk. The inner door was unlatched and swung open a crack at his knock. He took a deep breath and stepped in. “Suka?”
She came to the door and took his hand. “Nathan, good to see you again. I hope.”
This time, she was at least dressed—painted-on jeans, a scarlet satin top, a necklace with a tiny jade seal pendant. Except not fully dressed. She was braless once more, it appeared, and her feet were bare again. “Likewise,” he said. “And, I do apologize for before.”
She stepped back a little, studied the red stripes on his face, then touched his cheek. “Wow, I did that? I should apologize to you. ”
“No, I had it coming. Really. I cleaned up at the office. It’s good now.”
“Well, let me get something for it. And I’m having some chardonnay—join me?” She waved at the jade coffee table, set with a bottle of white wine and two glasses, one empty, one half full.
“You do recall we’re a dry village, right?”
“Wanna bust me?” She grinned, filled the other glass, and disappeared down a hall. In a moment she was back with band-aids and ointment. She squirted some on her fingertips and massaged it into his cheek.
“You have nice hands,” he said. “And a soft touch.”
“Just wait.”
She finished and eyed her work, then the band-aids. “Well, these are pointless. You’d look like a chainsaw accident if I put on enough to cover the damage.”
He shrugged. “No complaints. But don’t you need a uniform to practice nursing?”
She giggled. “Don’t have one or I’d model it for you. Just let me put this away and then we can discuss why you’re here.” She padded off to the bathroom and returned to perch on the sofa. She tucked her feet under her, threw an arm along the backrest behind him, and gazed into his eyes. Hers were wolfish again, but this time like she was circling a caribou carcass and trying to sniff out the trap. “So,” she said. “That apology.”
He touched her knee, put on his flustered face, and pulled back his hand. “Well, um, I, ah…”
“Oh, Nathan, you’re adorable. No wonder Grace likes you so much. Look, you haven’t touched your wine.” She handed him the glass. “Relax, I won’t bite. Unless you want me to.”
“Maybe some music to set the mood?” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I think you’ll like the playlist I put together. It starts with ‘At Last.’ ” He winked.
“How romantic! I love that in a man.”
“Will this plug into your sound system?”
She nodded at an expensive-looking setup on smoked glass shelves under a huge wide-screen TV. “Oh, posilutely. It plays everything. Music, radio, TV, DVDs, flash drives, those little memory cards, I don’t know what-all. Brad set it up. A guy thing, you know?”
He walked to the system and set his phone in a dock under a corner of the TV. He squatted in front and found a remote with a vast array of buttons. But one did say “On” and another said “Aux. He pressed them in order and the system lit up. Then he started the playback and turned to watch as Mercer heard not Etta James but “I just got out of the shower.”
At first she looked puzzled, then she figured it out and her cheeks blazed. “Goddammit, you recorded me? Turn that thing off!”
He paused the playback.
“That’s illegal, I’m calling the attorney general right—”
“It is legal, trust me. Cops do it all the time.”
“Well, get the hell out. Fuck you and fuck your recording. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Really? I thought maybe you’d like to refresh your recollection before you hear Brad’s version of events?”
“You recorded Brad, too?”
“I did.”
“Are you recording me now?”
He shook his head. “Nope. This is just us. My phone’s hooked up to the system and this”—he pulled out the digital recorder—“is turned off. He showed her and she reached for it. “Sorry, I can’t let you touch it, it’s got Brad’s interview on it. But you can see the display is dark.”
“How do I know you’re not wearing a wire? Is that what they call it?”
“They do, and you don’t know, but I’m not. Care to frisk me?” He grinned, like they were still in the opening round of this match.
“Fuck you.”
“Then you’ll have to take my word for it.”
“I suppose cops can lie, too?”
“We can. But, again, I’m not. Let’s play the recordings, then have a talk.”
She folded into herself on the sofa, arms around her shoulders. She she looked half the size she had before. She drained her wine glass, then his, and waved at the entertainment center. “Go on.”
He watched alarm and fury play across her face as she listened. “Pretty good sound quality, don’t you think?” he said when it was done.
“I said all that?”
“You did. And it’s all in evidence now. Would you like to hear what your husband had to say?”
She gave an exhausted nod and poured more wine. She missed the glass at first, and chardonnay spread across the jade table top. She sipped as he found a cable for his digital recorder, plugged in, and started Brad’s interview.
Once again fury and alarm fought for control of her face. She was silent for a long time after the interview finished and he pocketed the recorder.
“You can’t possibly believe all that,” she said at last. “He’s lying. I never had sex with Pete, I certainly wasn’t sleeping with both of them, and now Brad is trying to frame me for what he did. The lying sonofabitch.”
“Well, there is this.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from his pocket and handed her the phone records. “You’ll notice the first call the morning Pete died was from your cell to the landline here at the house. That would be you calling from out on the ice after you dumped the snowgo, I presume?”
She studied the printout in silence.
“Forget something when you came back from Pete’s place and borrowed Brad’s snowgo for your little morning drive?”
“This doesn’t prove anything. Brad obviously took my phone with him so it would look like me calling.”
“So you didn’t spend the night in Pete’s bed to get him to call off the custody suit?”
“Of course not! What kind of woman do you think I am?”
“More interesting all the time, actually. But never mind that. Let’s talk about this.” He handed her the custody petition.
“So? We’ve both seen this before.”
“Right. But what I didn’t notice was the birt
h dates, not till Brad told me you were having sex with Pete while he was still in high school. Pete was seventeen years old when Pudu was born and you were a teacher, and the coach of his team. Ever hear of our Satch Carlson Law?”
This time, he thought, she paled. But she did keep her game face on.
“I think so, yeah.”
“From your lawyer, perhaps?”
She didn’t speak, but clenched her teeth. A jaw muscle twitched.
“Maybe a refresher won’t hurt. If a teacher sleeps with a student, the age of consent in Alaska rises from sixteen to eighteen. If you do the math here, Pete was only sixteen when he fathered Pudu. And that makes you a child rapist. Welcome to some jail time and the sex offender registry. And goodbye to your political career.”
“This is just more of your bullshit. I told you Pete faked these results. He was not Pudu’s father!”
“With these birth dates, there’s absolutely no doubt the court will order a DNA test for Pudu, and we’ve already got Pete’s at the crime lab.”
“You still won’t have a case. We did have sex, but Pete raped me.”
“And you didn’t report it because…”
“I felt so stupid for letting him into my room that night—he said he needed advice on his jump shot—and I didn’t want to put him in jail and land him on the registry for the rest of his life.”
“Well, your husband’s testimony about your ongoing relationship with Pete might undermine that claim—”
“More bullshit! He can’t testify against me because of spousal privilege.”
“Sure he can, if he wants to. The privilege only protects him from being forced to testify. Your lawyer didn’t tell you that?” He waited. “I can’t wait till a jury hears this. Talk about a paragon of family values.”
She still didn’t speak.
“There’s one more thing,” he said. “We’re in the process of—actually, let me make a call.” He tapped the contact on his phone and in a few moments Theresa Procopio was on the line. “Madam Prosecutor. Did we get those warrants—already? well, damned fine work!”
He clicked off and tapped another contact. “Alan? Nathan. We got a warrant on Pete Wise’s place. Head over and secure it till I get there, OK? Dust for fingerprints on anything we can’t ship to the crime lab, otherwise wait for me.”