Village of the Ghost Bears

by Stan Jones

  Cowboy crossed the water to the peninsula and swung northwest toward the village. Active spotted the smoldering Rec Center soon after they passed over Nimiuk Creek, which trickled into the inlet a few miles southeast of town. A tendril of white smoke spiraled up, then vanished on the west wind.

  Active heard Grace speaking to Cowboy but couldn’t make out what she was saying. Then she removed the intercom headset and passed it to Active. He slipped the big foam cups over his ears and heard the rasp of the pilot’s voice finishing a question: “. . . a look?”

  “Say again?” Active said, using the phrase Cowboy used when he couldn’t make out something coming over the radio.

  “I said, you want to make a pass over the Rec Center and take a look?”

  “Good idea,” Active said. Then he thought of another bit of pilot-ese he’d heard when Cowboy talked to the FAA, and added, “That’s affirmative.”

  They crossed the lagoon to the spit on which Chukchi lay and sailed above the village’s meandering streets and wooden houses, gleaming wetly in the gray light. Soon the ruins themselves passed under the wing. Cowboy rolled the plane into a tight circle, and Active studied what was left of the Rec Center.

  Two scorched walls still stood at the northwest corner of the debris field, swaying in the wind as a city fire crew with a yellow truck hosed down the remaining hot spots. The roof and the other walls had fallen in, leaving a rectangle of smoldering black debris where once had stood a gymnasium that doubled as a bingo parlor to help pay the bills, a couple of exercise rooms where Active had worked out three nights a week, a racquetball court, showers, lockers, saunas, and two small offices.

  Cowboy eased out of the turn, swung into the traffic pattern for the airport, and put the little floatplane down on the lagoon, just south of the big asphalt east– west runway that marked the southern limit of the village.

  After a brief discussion, it was decided that Cowboy would drop Active off at the scene, then take Grace to the home of Martha Active Johnson, Active’s birth mother, to check on her and her family, as well as on Grace’s adopted daughter Nita, who had been farmed out to Martha while Active and Grace went camping at One-Way Lake. There was always the infinitesimal possibility that one of them might, for some reason, have been at the Rec Center the previous night.

  A few minutes later, Active stepped out of Cowboy’s van and leaned back in to kiss Grace, whose hand had tightened into a clawlike clamp around his as they approached the site of the fire. Now her face was masklike, nearly frozen. “You all right?” he asked.

  “I will be,” she said. “Let’s just go, Cowboy.” The pilot shot a mystified glance at Active and slipped the van into gear. Active watched as they pulled out of sight in the drizzle that was slanting out of the silt-colored sky. He filed Grace’s reaction away at the top of his get-to-as-soon-as-possible list.

  Then he turned and surveyed the wreckage of the Chukchi Community Recreation Center. It had been a wooden structure with aluminum siding, and scraps of the stuff still clung to the two standing walls, flapping and rattling in the wind. The interior was a rubble of burnt, fallen timbers and exercise machines covered with a black paste of congealed ashes. Even with the wind hurrying the smoke away, the air smelled of wet ash and something like a barbecue. Active tried not to think about it.

  An ambulance manned by two paramedics was parked nearby, as was the blue, black, and white Trooper Suburban. A dozen or so people watched from the edge of the street, some of them crying and clinging to each other. Between the civilians and the ruins, yellow crime-scene tape surrounded a cluster of four-wheelers. Near the four-wheeler corral he saw his boss, Captain Patrick Carnaby, talking to two other men and studying the ruins.

  Active recognized one of the men as Alan Long, an officer with the Chukchi Police Department. The other, a stranger in a Trooper uniform, was leaning on a shovel.

  Carnaby turned, spotted Active, and waved him over. “Nathan, this is Fire Marshal Ronald Barnes from Fairbanks.”

  The name, Active did recognize. Barnes was famed as the best arson investigator the Troopers had, a man who lived fire, loved fire, ate, slept, and breathed fire, understood fire like Heisenberg understood uncertainty.

  Barnes undraped himself from the shovel, stuck out his hand, and said, in a Western drawl, “Pleasure, Nathan. Call me Ronnie.”

  That drawl. Montana? Was that where Barnes was from? Active shook the hand and nodded. Barnes certainly didn’t look like a legendary arson investigator. Active had imagined someone resembling Carnaby, chief of the Chukchi detachment. Carnaby was tall, broad-shouldered, and gray at the temples, and he wore a bristling salt-and-pepper moustache—the walking embodiment of duly constituted state authority. A Cop with a capital C.

  But Ronnie Barnes was wiry and sandy-haired, five-eight or five-nine, with pale blue eyes, a drooping handlebar moustache, and shoulders that seemed to droop a little too. He didn’t look like the embodiment of anything, unless it was white trash.

  That was it. Ronnie Barnes looked like somebody who’d be swearing at the camera on Cops as he was hauled out of a trailer park in the Montana pines, clad only in jeans, tattoos, and handcuffs while a pregnant girlfriend watched from the stoop and pressed a bloody Kleenex to her nose.

  Active and Alan Long, the city cop, exchanged nods. Long, an Inupiaq like Active, was round-faced and bucktoothed, a former Army MP. Normally, he was annoyingly enthusiastic, but not today. Today he was grimy and red-eyed, like Cowboy Decker, and smelled of smoke.

  “Sorry to hear about Jim,” Active said. “He was, he was. . . .”

  “Yeah,” Long said. “I know.”

  Nobody said anything for a while. Barnes jabbed the dirt with his shovel a couple of times. Carnaby turned away and cleared his throat. After a decent interval, Barnes said, “I was just telling Alan, we need to get the names of the people standing around here.”

  Long scanned the gaggle of spectators. “I know them all,” he said. “I’ll make a list.” He pulled out a notebook and began writing.

  Barnes nodded. “Your true pyromaniac has a sexual disorder. He’ll come watch the fire to get his rocks off. You see somebody in the crowd with his hands in his pockets, masturbating, that’s him.”

  Active, recognizing this as something he’d learned in a course on fire investigation at the Trooper Academy, ran his eyes quickly over the crowd. Most had their hands in their pockets, all right, men and women alike. But in the pockets of their coats, not their pants. And a few were bobbing up and down, but that was just what you did if you stood in the west wind in Chukchi for very long.

  Barnes followed Active’s gaze and shrugged. “I know, I don’t think he’s here either. But if it was arson, he was probably here last night, when it was really rolling.” He looked at Long. “Was anybody taking names then, Alan?”

  Long’s chipmunk cheeks sagged.

  Barnes patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Was there a cat?”

  “A cat?” Long said.

  “Or maybe a dog?”

  “A cat,” Active said. “But how did you know?”

  Barnes shrugged. “Just a hunch. Most big public facilities have one or the other. Did it get out?”

  Long shook his head. “Who cares? We’ve got more important things—”

  “If it did, whoever took care of it probably set your fire,” Barnes explained in a patient tone. “Usually, the arsonist will make sure his pets get out.”

  “I didn’t see any cat come out,” Long said.

  “I’ll look for it when I go through the building,” said Barnes.

  Active thought about the Rec Center cat. A light yellow calico. Who had he heard calling the cat? Who had he seen opening a can of tuna and setting it on the office floor?

  “Well, we ought to get to work,” Carnaby said.

  “Damn right,” Long said. “Jim Silver was the best boss I ever had. As chief, I can tell you that everything the city has is at your disposal.”

 
“Chief?” Active asked, eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “Acting chief,” Carnaby said. “Alan talked the mayor into appointing him this morning when we got the news about Jim. But it’s only until the new borough assumes public-safety powers and hires a real chief. Right, Alan?”

  Long gave a stiff little nod.

  “And the mayor asked us Troopers to take the lead in this investigation. Right, Alan?”

  Long looked even more crestfallen. “Absolutely, Captain.”

  “Okay,” Active said. Then he looked from Barnes to Carnaby. “So we think it was arson?”

  Barnes scraped at the gravel with his shovel. “Doesn’t do to start with a big load of preconceptions, but most structure fires are.”

  Active had heard this in his fire-investigation course too. “How long till you can get in?”

  Barnes shrugged and studied the ruins. “Couple hours, maybe. They’re going to keep the hoses on it a while, then I guess the state’s sending over a dozer from airport maintenance to take down these last two walls?” He looked at Carnaby.

  Carnaby nodded. “It’s on the way.”

  Active looked at Barnes. “What do we do till then?”

  Barnes looked at the gawkers again. “Not we. It’s you guys, mostly.”

  “But you’re the expert, right?” Long asked.

  “Arson investigation is twenty-five percent physical evidence and seventy-five percent interviews,” Barnes said. “And in a village . . . trust me, it’s better if you guys handle the interviews and I handle the shovel.” He jabbed it into the dirt for emphasis. “People don’t want to talk to a stranger at a time like this.”

  “You’re it?” Active asked. “I thought you guys traveled in teams.”

  “Hah,” Barnes said. “Do the words ‘Republican governor plus Republican legislature’ mean anything to you? You’re lucky there was enough travel budget to send me.”

  “What about the Feds? With this many fatalities, doesn’t the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms usually come in?”

  “Hah,” Barnes said again. “Maybe if we told ’em al Qaeda did it. These days, it’s no terrorism, no Feds, except for maybe a little consult over the phone if I need it. Basically, I’m it.”

  “Cowboy said we’ve got two survivors here and one at the burn unit in Anchorage?”

  Carnaby cleared his throat. “Two here and none in Anchorage, as of about forty-five minutes ago.”

  Active shook his head. “Can the two here—who are they, anyway?”

  Carnaby looked at his notebook. “Jack Stocker and Enos Rexford. Couple of teenagers.” Active recognized the surnames as belonging to Chukchi families, but he didn’t know either boy.

  “Can they talk?”

  “They can and did,” Carnaby said. “Alan interviewed them this morning.”

  “And?”

  “They weren’t much help,” Long said. “They were playing one-on-one in the gym when smoke started pouring in and they heard Cammie Frankson screaming for help.”

  Cammie Frankson was a senior at Chukchi High who worked nights at the Rec Center. Active remembered a plump face, bright eyes, optimism, and a red MP3 player dangling between her breasts like her heart had popped out. “So Cammie’s not one of the survivors?”

  Long shook his head. “They took her to Anchorage, but. . . .”

  “I think she wanted to be a nurse,” Active said. “She was going to the university next year.” The memory came to him now, and he grimaced. “And she took care of the cat. Its name was Pingilak. It means ‘ghost’ in Inupiaq.”

  “Uh-huh,” Barnes said in a tone that indicated he was being patient about the detour, but hoped it would end now.

  “The last Jack and Enos saw, she was running toward the locker rooms,” Long said. “They tried to go after her, but the fire was too much for them. They got out through the rear door of the gym. They’re not burned much, but they breathed in a lot of smoke.”

  “And Cammie?”

  Carnaby spoke. “The fire department found her on the front steps there”—he pointed at what was left of the wooden stairs—“about halfway out the door. Unconscious and pretty much burned all over. Hair gone, most of her clothes.”

  Barnes spoke up. “Anybody else come into the hospital with a burn last night?”

  The other three looked at him, then Long pointed at the ruins. “They’re all still in there, as far as we know.”

  Barnes gazed again at the little crowd of onlookers. “Starting a big fire is tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing. A lot of times, the arsonist will get burned himself if he uses gasoline or some other accelerant. So we always check the emergency rooms the morning after.”

  “Would you take care of that, Alan?” Carnaby asked.

  Long nodded, called Dispatch on the Bluetooth cell-phone headset he’d taken to wearing lately, and gave the instructions. He signed off and said, “Someone’s on the way.”

  “Any chance you’ve had a string of arsons or unexplained fires recently?” Barnes asked.

  The three cops thought for a moment, then shook their heads in unison.

  Barnes grimaced slightly and looked at Long. “Any of your firefighters get here before anybody else was on scene, maybe forgot his turnouts?”

  “Eh?” Long asked.

  “Firefighters love fire,” Barnes said. “Sometimes one of them will get to loving it a little too much and start one when things are slow.”

  Long reflected for a moment, then shook his head. “When I got here, there were four guys on it. All in turnouts. But I’ll ask the fire chief if he noticed anything.”

  Barnes nodded. “Probably nothing there. But you gotta touch the bases.”

  The west wind subsided for a moment, and the smell of barbecue and wet ash got stronger. Active turned away from the ruins. “Cowboy said we have eight dead here, not counting Cammie. If they’re all still in there, how do we know?”

  Carnaby pointed at the ATVs in their circle of yellow tape. “It’s an estimate. We initially had five four-wheelers, meaning at least five people right there, plus Chief Silver is six, plus Cammie is seven at least. But some of the four-wheelers might have had two people on them. And there could have been some walk-ins.”

  “We may never know for sure,” Barnes said. “Sometimes in a fire this hot they’re so burned up or melted together, you can’t get an exact body count.”

  “Wait a minute,” Active said. “Jim Silver never drove a four-wheeler. How do we know he was inside?”

  “His city Bronco was parked out front, but we moved it already,” Long said. “We checked with his wife, and. . . .” He shook his head.

  “How’s Jenny taking it?”

  “I heard she’s going up to Cape Goodwin.” Long shrugged. “Her mother and sister live up there, one of her and Chief Silver’s daughters too. I think their son is coming up from Anchorage.”

  Active waved at the four-wheelers. “Maybe a couple of these belong to Jack and Enos.”

  Carnaby shook his head. “Nope, they were on Jack’s Honda, and they drove it to the emergency room. That’s how we got the alarm. The ER called 9–1–1.”

  “How about Cammie? Did one of these belong to her?”

  “No telling till we talk to her family,” Carnaby said.

  Active studied the ATVs. “So how do we find out who owns these? They don’t have plates.”

  The captain grimaced. “Nobody registers an ATV around here. We’ll just have to wait for people, family members, to realize somebody never got home last night and come check. We put out the word on Kay-Chuck.”

  Active glanced at the ATVs in the circle. “There’s only three machines now. The other two have already been claimed?”

  Long nodded, flipped open his notebook and showed Active a page with six names on it. Cammie Frankson, Jim Silver, and the two survivors in the hospital were at the top. Below them were Augie Sundown and Rachel Akootchuk, who, Long reported, had been identified when their four-wheelers
were claimed.

  “Augie Sundown?” Active said. “Ouch.”

  Long nodded again. “That family.”

  “First Edgar and now Augie,” Active murmured.

  Augie Sundown was—had been, Active corrected himself—the hottest thing ever to come out of high-school basketball in bush Alaska, where the game was a religion, played under street lights or moonlight or the northern lights on iron-hard frozen snow with gloves for protection when it couldn’t be played inside.

  Augie, known as “Mr. Outside” for his ability to score from beyond the three-point line, had played four incendiary seasons for the Chukchi Malamutes, then gone off to the University of Alaska Fairbanks to play for the Nanooks. There he was a starting point guard by the end of his first season, despite the fact that he stood just under five feet, eight inches. He had come home for the summer to teach at a basketball camp sponsored by the city and apparently had ended up at the Rec Center at exactly the wrong moment.

  “Edgar?” Barnes said. “Who’s Edgar?”

  “Augie’s father,” Active said.

  Edgar Sundown had vanished with his brother-in-law Cecil Harris during a seal hunt on the spring sea ice the previous year. The official search had gone on for thirteen days, nonstop, before the Troopers called it off, though volunteers had continued to patrol the ice in skiffs and bush planes till the last floe had melted and the Chukchi Sea rolled unencumbered from Point Hope in the north to the Bering Strait in the south.

  “Wow,” Barnes said after hearing the story from Long and Active. “Living in Fairbanks, I sure as hell knew who Augie Sundown was, but I never heard about his father and the uncle. You never found anything?”

  “Not a trace.” Active said. “They had two snow machines with dogsleds, a kayak—but we never so much as picked up a jerry jug off the beach.”

  “Two older guys, out in the country all their lives, the right gear—everybody kept thinking they could handle anything; they must be camped on the ice somewhere out there, waiting for the weather to lift or somebody to come by, but. . . .” Long fell silent and shook his head.