Village of the Ghost Bears

by Stan Jones

  “How about we get going here?” Carnaby said. “Where’s Ronnie, anyway?”

  “Still finishing up at the Rec Center,” Nelson said. “He said he’ll see you by six at the latest.”

  “All right, so what have you three got?”

  “As I think everybody knows,” Long said, “all of the four-wheelers have been claimed except one.”

  “What do you make of that?” Carnaby asked.

  “I don’t know,” Long said. “Maybe—”

  Carnaby waved a big hand and said, “Never mind, let’s go over the interviews first.”

  “Well, as I said, four of the five ATVs have been claimed,” Long said. “And I think all the families have been interviewed.” He looked at Active and Nelson for confirmation. Both nodded.

  “Anything?” Carnaby asked.

  “A possible,” Active said as the other two shook their heads.

  “All right,” Carnaby said. “One at a time, then.”

  Each of the three reported on the interviews he had conducted over the course of the day, as more and more of the ATVs had been claimed and the paramedics had radioed the names of the claimants to Dispatch at the Chukchi Public Safety Building.

  In addition to Lena Sundown and the girl cousin of Buck Eastlake, Active had also talked to a superintendent for the construction company rehabilitating Chukchi’s decrepit elementary school. Two of the men on the job—a carpenter named Charles Hodge and an electrician named Roy Marks—had borrowed a company four-wheeler to go to the Rec Center for a sauna. Both had been in Chukchi less than a week, and the superintendent was pretty sure they hadn’t had enough contact with the locals to get anybody mad enough to want to kill them.

  Dickie Nelson had talked to the family of Rachel Akootchuk, who said she had gone to the Rec Center with Augie Sundown to watch him shoot hoops. Nobody at her house could imagine anyone wanting her dead. The name Buck Eastlake hadn’t come up.

  The owner of another of the four-wheelers found in front of the Rec Center had been identified as Lula Benson, who managed the bingo operation there. Her husband, a sixty-ish Inupiaq named Benjamin Benson, couldn’t think why anyone would want to kill her, either.

  Alan Long reported on his day’s work, including the fact that one of the four-wheelers had indeed belonged to Cammie Frankson.

  “So,” Carnaby said when the round-robin was over, “we’ve got seven fatalities so far, counting Cammie and Chief Silver.”

  “Plus whoever was on the unidentified four-wheeler,” Nelson said.

  “In all probability,” Carnaby agreed. “Plus maybe a walk-in or two. How does that square with what the paramedics took out of there?”

  “They didn’t yet,” Long said. “Barnes hasn’t released the bodies.”

  Carnaby frowned for a moment and finger-brushed his moustache. “What do we do about that last four-wheeler?”

  “I finished early,” Active said, “so I went by the Rec Center and checked it out. Like Alan said, there was no I.D. on it, but it is a fairly new Honda, so I towed it over to the dealer’s. They’re going to see what they can figure out. Check serial numbers and so on against whatever they’ve got in their records.”

  “Cop time or village time?” Carnaby asked, not sounding very hopeful.

  “They promised to have it done tomorrow,” Active said.

  “What else?” Carnaby said, looked around the three of them. “Dickie, what’s left on your list?”

  “Nothing, far as I know,” Nelson said. “I’m ready for the next phase, whatever it is.”

  “Go ahead and knock on doors around the Rec Center, then,” Carnaby said. “Maybe one of the neighbors saw something.”

  Nelson nodded and left.

  Active pulled at his lower lip. “Did Jim go to the Rec Center much? I don’t remember him ever mentioning it.” He visualized the Chief’s paunch-bellied middle-aged figure. “Or looking like it.”

  “Excellent point,” Carnaby said. “I don’t think he did hit the gym very often. What about it, Alan? You know if he ever went?”

  Long wrinkled his nose and squinted: an Inupiat no.

  “Maybe you should ask around the city force,” Active said. “See if anybody knows why he was over there last night.”

  “You bet.” Long scraped his chair back and stood up.

  “And weren’t you going to check on whether anybody who Jim had put away hit the streets recently?” Carnaby asked.

  “I didn’t get—” Alan Long shut up at Carnaby’s look, then rushed to fill the resulting vacuum. “I’m on it, Captain. Cop time.” He pulled on his coat and scooted out the door.

  “He’s on it,” Active said.

  “Silver used to call Alan his alpha pup,” Carnaby said. Then he ruminated in silence and Active wondered if he was being dismissed too. Finally the captain shook his head. “He asked me to recommend him for Jim’s job.”

  Active grinned. “Alpha pup, huh? You gonna do it?”

  Carnaby frowned. “He might grow into it. People do that, you know.”

  “Or not.”

  “Or not,” Carnaby agreed, with a burdened look. He was silent again. Finally he said, “Christ, I hope Barnes comes up with something.”

  Active raised his eyebrows in agreement. “Like maybe a short in the wiring at the Rec Center?”

  “Something like that. Accidental origin would be nice,” Carnaby said. “You think?”

  “I don’t think anything yet, but my gut says not.”

  “Mine, too,” Carnaby said. “Dammit. Seven, eight people, whatever we end up with. How much do you like this Buck Eastlake? Worth flying up there to talk to him?”

  “Probably, unless something better comes along,” Active said. “It is kind of shaky, though. Couple kids bump chests over a girl with big miluks for what, two, two and a half years, then all of a sudden it turns into mass murder by arson?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Carnaby said. “What else we got? I mean, who the hell would do such a thing? Whatever it was about, it can’t possibly make any sense.”

  Active shrugged. “Most arsons are never solved. Remember the Investor?”

  Carnaby winced at the name, as did most Troopers who had been in uniform at the time. Active had been only a kid then, but had heard plenty about the Investor fire when he hit the Trooper Academy several years later.

  The fishing vessel had been set ablaze near the hamlet of Craig in Southeast Alaska. Eight people had died, including a family of four. No one had ever been convicted of the crime.

  “God, I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a rerun of that one,” Carnaby said. “I didn’t work the Investor, but . . . the guys that did, they still obsess about it. It’s the kind of thing that stays with you your whole career. And after. All right, you get hold of Cowboy and see about getting up the river to Eastlake’s camp after he gets your guy out of One-Way Lake tomorrow.”

  Active nodded.

  Carnaby cleared his throat and looked at something scrawled on his desk blotter. “Listen, I had a call a couple hours ago from Harry Winthrop down in Anchorage. He was checking references.”

  Active’s eyes widened, but he held his tongue.

  Carnaby made him wait a good thirty seconds, then grinned. “I told him you weren’t a total screwup.”

  Somewhat to his own surprise, Active found himself whooshing out a breath. “I finally have a shot at getting out of here?”

  “More than, looks like,” Carnaby said. “I got the impression it’s just a matter of working the paper at this point. I imagine you’ll be in Anchorage by Christmas.”

  “Thanks, boss,” Active said.

  Carnaby waved it away. “Ah, I’d never stand in your way. Just wish I could buy a ticket out myself.”

  Carnaby, as they both knew, was likely to finish his career running the Chukchi Trooper post. A few years earlier, he had been unlucky enough to bust a prominent state senator from Anchorage on cocaine charges and had barely escaped with his job when the ju
ry let the senator off. It was unspoken but understood from the top of the Troopers to the bottom that the politicians would allow Carnaby to stay on long enough to get his pension if he did it quietly and at the maximum possible distance from Anchorage. Carnaby’s family—a wife and a nearly grown son and daughter—still lived there, and Carnaby commuted home a couple of weekends a month.

  “I don’t know about this outfit sometimes,” Active said.

  “Yeah, but what human organization isn’t at least twenty percent screwed up?” Carnaby said.

  Active shrugged and changed the subject. “You want me to hang around till Barnes shows?”

  They heard steps in the hall, and Carnaby sniffed. “I think I smell him now.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RONNIE BARNES PUSHED INTO Carnaby’s office without knocking, sagged into a chair, and took a long pull from a bottle of Diet Pepsi. Red-rimmed eyes peered from his soot-covered face like wolves in a cave.

  He set his drink on the floor, pulled a tube of Rolaids from a coat pocket, broke it in half, and chewed about four of the tablets. “One in the women’s sauna,” he said. “Looks like the fire came up so fast, she couldn’t even get out of the sauna. Just curled up in a corner like a kitten.”

  “That must be Rachel Akootchuk,” Active said.

  Carnaby nodded.

  “Couple in the hallway outside the locker rooms too, stretched out like they were crawling for the exit when it got them,” Barnes continued. “But the men’s locker room. The guys in there were all stacked up at the doorway. Maybe the crime lab will be able to figure out how many, but I sure as hell can’t. Three, four, maybe.” He rubbed the grime on his face and drained the bottle of soda. “All burned and melted together like they were fighting each other to get out but the door wouldn’t open. Now, why would that be, do you suppose?”

  Carnaby opened his window, then his door, letting a little breeze circulate through the office. The smell of smoke thinned out somewhat.

  “It was locked?” Carnaby said.

  Barnes shook his head. “Not when I got there. The mechanism still worked fine.” He reached into his coat again and came out with a plastic bag, sealed with evidence tape and tagged. “I think maybe this is why.”

  Carnaby took the bag and examined the contents: a twisted loop of blackened wire. “This? How?” He passed it to Active.

  Barnes sighed. “Either one of you guys go there to work out?”

  “I do,” Active said. “Or did.” It was hard to think of the Rec Center in the past tense. “Three or four times a week. Especially when the weather was bad and I couldn’t run.” He paused and counted back. “I was there three nights ago, I think.”

  “Lucky it wasn’t last night,” Barnes said.

  Active cleared his throat and said nothing.

  “See anybody weird hanging around, like they were casing the place?”

  Active reflected, then shook his head.

  “How about this wire here? Ever see anything like that around the door to the men’s locker room?”

  Active studied the contents of the plastic bag, trying to visualize the locker room entrance. It was down a hall, near the back of the building, opening to the right. “Don’t think so,” he said.

  “Well, when I found those guys piled up there, I shoveled through the debris around the doorway and found that wrapped around what I think was the inside doorknob. The door was some kind of heavy-duty wood, so it was eventually consumed, just the doorknobs left and the lock and the hinges. And that.” He pointed at the plastic bag with the wire in it.

  “On the inside doorknob,” Carnaby said.

  Barnes nodded. “Which way’d that door open?”

  Active closed his eyes for moment and remembered turning into the locker room. Pull the door toward him, or push on it? “It opened in,” he said. “Hinged on the left as you entered.”

  “Thought so, but it’s hard to be sure of anything in there now,” Barnes said. He paused. “You’ll see what I mean in the pictures.” Then he shook his head as if to clear it. “Suppose you wrapped a loop of wire around the inside doorknob, then shut the door on the wire so it came out on the other side, right by the outside doorknob?”

  Active and Carnaby nodded. “And then?” Active asked.

  “Exactly,” Barnes said. “And then what? Was there some kind of hook or something outside the door he could have anchored the wire to so nobody inside could get the door open and, after everything burned up, all we’d have is this little piece of wire?”

  Active thought for a moment and shook his head. “I don’t remember anything like that. But I might not have noticed.” He shrugged. “You know how it is. You don’t see things after four or five times. You didn’t find anything like a hook in the debris?”

  Barnes shook his head. “Nope. Just the wire.”

  “Didn’t that place used to be the Air Guard Armory before they built the new one?” Carnaby asked.

  “I think I did hear that,” Active said.

  Carnaby looked at Barnes. “The wire might not mean anything, Ronnie. It could have been lying around ever since the Guard was in there. Maybe the door jammed by itself. From the heat. Or maybe those guys panicked and jammed it trying to get out.”

  Barnes gave his head a slow wag, reflecting. “Anything’s possible. But I don’t think so.”

  “Is there any other sign of arson?” Active asked. “Other than the wire?”

  “I can’t say it’s unambiguous,” Barnes said. “The fire appears to have started in the southeast corner of the building. That’s where the furnace and the water heater were, right?”

  Active nodded. “I think so. I know there was some kind of utility room at the back of the building, right behind the men’s locker room. You could hear equipment running in there a lot of the time. Especially when all the showers were on and using hot water.”

  “And that was a forced-air heating system?”

  “And that was a forced-Active nodded again.

  “Mm-hmm,” Barnes said. “That explains why the fire seems to have broken out in several other places in the building as well. As the fire built up in that utility room, the ductwork would have carried superheated air all over the building until the fan overheated and quit. That old wood was probably bone-dry, and that was that.”

  “But you think the utility room was the original source?” Carnaby asked.

  Barnes rubbed his face again, moving some grime from his moustache to his cheekbones. “There was a big heat trail in there. It ran—”

  “A heat trail,” Carnaby echoed. “You mean—”

  “The floor was saturated with an accelerant,” Barnes said. “Something set it off and the scorch mark still shows on what’s left of the floor. It probably only took two or three minutes before the situation was out of control.” He made an erupting gesture with his fingers. “Whoosh!”

  Carnaby was taking notes now.

  “Anyway,” Barnes continued, “this heat trail ran from under a fuel pipe on an exterior wall, across the floor, and to the base of the wall between the furnace room and the men’s locker room. Seems like the floor kind of sagged there along that wall?”

  “A lot of the old buildings around here are like that,” Carnaby said. “They heat up the permafrost, it melts, and they start to settle. The middle’s the warmest, so it settles fastest.”

  “Mm-hmm, we get that in Fairbanks too,” Barnes said. “So if you pour something on the floor at an outside wall, it’s naturally gonna run to the middle. My guess would be, the base of that common wall was pretty well saturated with stove oil. That locker room probably became an inferno almost instantly.”

  “So they all headed for the door,” Active said.

  “Only to find it wired shut,” Barnes said.

  “Maybe,” Carnaby said. “Let’s hear about the fuel pipe.”

  “There’s your ambiguity,” Barnes said. “That pipe brought in stove oil from those tanks back of the building. Just inside the wa
ll was a ‘T’ fitting, with one pipe going to the furnace and another one to the water heater.”

  The other two men nodded.

  “Well, one of the couplings in that fitting was loose, and there was still oil dripping out of it when I got there.”

  “Shit,” Carnaby said. “You stop it?”

  “Uh-huh. I closed the valve outside at the tank.”

  Carnaby was silent for a time, then shook his head. “I’ll say it’s ambiguous.”

  “Yup,” Barnes said. “Guy uses an accelerant that’s available at the scene, it’s a bitch to prove anything. I pulled up some of the floorboards to test, but I’m figuring it’s about a hundred to one I’ll find stove oil.”

  “The way maintenance is around here, that fitting could have been like that for months,” Carnaby said.

  “Uh-huh,” Barnes said. “Until finally conditions reached the point where the furnace or the water heater set it off, and here we are.”

  “But you don’t think so,” Active prodded.

  “Nope. I don’t like the wire.” Barnes frowned. “I think our guy comes in the back door to the furnace room, opens that fitting till it’s gushing, makes himself a trail over to the locker room wall, and then tightens the fitting back down till it’s just dripping a little, like when I found it. And then—Nathan, was there a door to the furnace room at the end of that hall?”

  Active visualized the layout again. He imagined himself moving down the hall, stopping at the locker room door, turning in. But if he kept going, would he hit a wall, or a door?

  “Yes,” he said finally, with a nod. “There was a door at the end of the hall. I never tried it, but I think it would have had to go into the furnace room.”

  “Right,” Barnes said. “So our guy sets up the furnace room, then comes into the hall through that door, and there’s the door to the men’s locker room just a few feet away. He opens it a little bit, wraps his wire around the inside knob, and—” Barnes shook his head and looked out of his cave again. “—and somehow wires the damned thing shut.”

  Suddenly Active snapped his fingers. “Hang on,” he said, and left Carnaby’s office. He walked to the supply cabinets behind Evelyn O’Brien’s desk and rummaged for a moment, then returned, hands behind him to conceal what he had found in the cabinet. “Turn your backs,” he told the two men in the office.