Village of the Ghost Bears

by Stan Jones

  “He already heard you’re leaving,” Grace said as Active set three mugs of tea on the table. “He thought you wouldn’t say goodbye.”

  “Tell him I’ll come back to visit all the time.”

  Grace delivered the message, and Jacob responded in his reedy old-man’s voice, then chuckled.

  Grace smiled. “He says maybe you’ll bring him some new teeth from Anchorage. The ones they gave him here don’t fit.”

  Active grinned back and raised his eyebrows.

  Jacob spoke again, and Grace translated. “He says, when are you leaving?”

  “Tell him around Christmas, maybe right after.”

  Grace stared at him a moment, then turned back to the old man and spoke a few syllables.

  Jacob responded with another question. Active caught enough to understand that his grandfather was asking if Grace would move to Anchorage also.

  Grace’s back stiffened as she answered Jacob in a low voice, too low for Active to make out.

  Jacob looked at Active, back at Grace, then reached out and touched her hair. The old man spoke again.

  “What did he say?”

  Grace squinted a no and shook her head.

  “Come on. What kind of translator are you?”

  A little sigh escaped her. “He said he’d make me go if it was him.”

  “Tell him at his age he should have learned that no man can make a woman do anything, unless she wants him to.”

  She translated, and the mood lightened a little. They chatted for a few minutes, then Jacob abruptly closed his eyes and fell silent in the middle of a long, meandering story about seal hunting with his father in the old days, when snowmachines hadn’t come along and everybody still used dog teams.

  Active looked at Grace in alarm. “You think he’s all right?”

  The old man emitted a thunderous snore.

  “Arii, that Jacob,” said one of the aides at the next table. Her name tag identified her as Della. “He always do that when it’s nap time.” She stood, pushing back her chair. “Here, let me take him to his room.”

  Active and Grace watched her wheel him away, then walked through the Senior Center doors into the fog sweeping across Chukchi on the west wind. His cheeks felt wet, but he couldn’t tell if it was rain or just the fog condensing on everything it touched.

  Grace pulled up the hood of her anorak. “See you after work, huh?”

  He nodded and bent for a kiss, then watched as she yanked the starter cord on her Honda, swung into the seat, and headed for GeoNord.

  “Arii, you gonna make her sad too?”

  Active started, recognizing the voice. He turned to see the familiar stooped figure of Pauline Generous, grandmother of Lucy.

  “It’s good to see you again,” he parried.

  “Ah-hah. I came to play snerts with them old ladies.”

  Active sensed a potential distraction and was preparing to ask her to explain the rules of snerts, which was the favorite card game of elderly Inupiat females in Chukchi and the villages in its orbit but appeared to be played nowhere else. Pauline, however, was not to be diverted.

  “You gonna make her sad too, like with Lucy?”

  “I thought Lucy was happy, with the baby coming and all.”

  Pauline glared at him through the huge, thick glasses that gave her eyes an unnerving size and intensity. “Pretty happy. She love that Dan Brophy, all right. But no girl ever really get over the first man she love. I think she miss that other life she never gonna have with you now.”

  Active, as usual, was a little spooked by Pauline. She had put it almost exactly the same way he had.

  “Well, I’m with Grace.”

  Pauline looked at the four-wheeler disappearing down Fourth Street into the mist. “She’s pretty, ah?” She turned back to him.

  He raised his eyebrows, unable to think of words to describe the being that was Grace Palmer.

  “You think she kill her father?”

  “I don’t believe so. I hope not.”

  “Sound like he had it coming, all right.”

  “People say that.”

  “Hmmph. You still talk like a naluaqmiiyaaq. You’ll fit right in at Anchorage.”

  “Well, I—”

  “She’ll malik you to Anchorage?”

  “Yes, I hope she comes with me.”

  Pauline was silent, studying him with her eyes narrowed. “What if she don’t? You gonna leave her here by herself?”

  “I don’t know.”

  THE WORK number in Vancouver rang three times, then a female voice said “Harney Elementary.”

  Active identified himself and asked for Donna Gage.

  “Hold on,” the voice said. “I think it’s her prep time.”

  The phone clicked onto a feed of elevator music, then the voice came back. “Yes, I can put you through to her classroom now.”

  Active remembered that Tom Gage’s ex-wife probably hadn’t heard about the fire yet and was trying to figure how to get into it when a new and younger female voice broke into the elevator music.

  “Donna Gage,” it said around what sounded like a mouthful of food being chewed.

  Active identified himself and said he was calling from Chukchi.

  Donna Gage swallowed audibly. “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news about your ex-husband, Mrs. Gage.”

  “Good,” she said. “The worse the better. He finally crashed his plane and killed himself, I hope?”

  “No, actually—”

  “Broke through the ice on his snowmachine, then?”

  “No, we don’t have any ice yet. It’s still—”

  “Open water? He flipped his boat and drowned?”

  “Mrs. Gage, somebody burned down our Rec Center three nights ago. It looks like eight people were killed. We think Tom was one of them.”

  “You mean you can’t tell if he’s dead or alive? That’s Tom, all right.” She laughed unpleasantly. “He never could commit.”

  “Ms. Gage—”

  “I’m sorry, ah, Trooper Active, was it? You probably don’t want to hear all of this. Or need to. As you may have guessed, our marriage didn’t end well.”

  “So I understand. His boss here said he was drinking pretty hard.”

  “He was?”

  “According to Gilbert Cividanes.”

  “Really?”

  “That surprises you?”

  “Well, I don’t think it was because of me. He was happy as a clam when I told him I was clearing out. Maybe after I left, he realized . . . nah, the prick was glad to be rid of me.” She was silent for a few seconds, then spoke more softly. “I lost him to the Arctic, you know. He took to it like a duck to water, out in that damn plane hunting and fishing all the time, like he had come home to a place he’d never seen. He had this student from Cape Goodwin who invited him up there for whaling and . . . after that, the girls and I hardly ever saw him. He wanted to live like an Eskimo, think like an Eskimo, hunt like an Eskimo. If they had DNA transplants, he would have had himself turned into an Eskimo.”

  Active felt a slight chill between his shoulder blades. “Did you say Cape Goodwin?” All the roads in this case seemed to lead there, but they never quite intersected.

  “Mm-hmm. He eventually fell in love with a girl from up there but, really, it was the country that seduced him. When he looked at me, it was like he’d run into an old flame but couldn’t quite remember her name. Or what he ever saw in her. So I took my daughters and left.” She paused. “Shit, I’m going to have to tell them.”

  Active cleared his throat. “Your husband had a girlfriend in Cape Goodwin?”

  “Some little slut he met in whaling camp, I think.”

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “By that point, I was trying to ignore as many details as I could. I didn’t need them.”

  “Anything? A first name?”

  “Let me think.” She was silent again. Then, “Buddy . . . Booger . . . Buster . . . Buzz
y . . . Beanie, I don’t know. One of those cute little village nicknames.”

  “You don’t know her last name?”

  Another silence. “Apparently not. I must have heard it, but . . . well, she was killed in a plane crash just after I moved out. I never did like to think about her, and after that I didn’t have to. Although I do admit drinking a toast to the fates that arrange such things when I heard about it.”

  “Tom crashed his plane and killed his girlfriend?”

  “Actually, I don’t think I ever heard who was flying, just that it was way up on the North Slope somewhere. Don’t I wish it was him, though? Wouldn’t it be sweet if he crashed and killed her?”

  Now Active was silent, impressed anew by the damage one human being could do to another without really intending much harm. “Did he ever know a Jae Hyo Lee?”

  “Jay who?”

  “Jae Hyo Lee. A Korean who lived in Cape Goodwin.” Active described Lee’s arrest for gallbladder trafficking and Tom Gage’s visit to the prison in Oregon.

  “Did you say Sheridan?”

  “Right. Sheridan, Oregon.”

  “So that’s what that was about.”

  “What was?”

  “Tom came down early this summer to visit the girls,” she said. “He borrowed my car one day, wouldn’t say where he was going, but a few weeks later I started getting these notices about an unpaid parking ticket in Sheridan.”

  “Did Tom ever buy or sell polar bear gallbladders that you knew of?”

  “Why would he tell me if he did? Isn’t that illegal?”

  “So you have no idea why he’d visit Jae Hyo Lee in prison?”

  “Absolutely none. I never had much of an idea why Tom did anything, once we hit Chukchi. Any more questions, Trooper Active?”

  “Been up here lately?”

  She laughed without mirth. “Haven’t been, won’t be, no way, never. Why on earth would I—oh, you think I set your fire to kill my ex? Seriously?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “If only. But when you find whoever did, thank ’em for me, will you?” She was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry I said that, Trooper Active. Maybe if it was only Tom. But seven others? I was mad about the divorce, all right, but not that mad. I can’t imagine that much rage.”

  They hung up, and Active studied the five words at the bottom of his notes from the mystifying conversation: Buddy-Booger-Buster-Buzzy-Beanie.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AS ACTIVE WALKED ACROSS the reception area to Carnaby’s office, he saw that Alan Long was already there, a legal document laid before him.

  “Our search warrant?” Active asked as he took a chair beside Long.

  “Got it,” Long said. “Shall we?”

  “Hold on a minute,” Carnaby said. “Let’s hear what Nathan found out first.”

  Active frowned. “Very little, I’m afraid. Gage’s boss at the Tech Center said he took the divorce hard, seemed to be drinking. Ex-wife says good riddance, may he burn in hell, and would we please thank whoever did it when we catch him. She confirms he went to Sheridan this summer, has no idea why he’d visit Jae Hyo Lee or if he was trafficking in gallbladders.”

  The other two looked downcast, which was becoming the default expression at any meeting about this case.

  “There was one thing, though,” Active said. “Tom Gage used to go up to Cape Goodwin a lot. Even had a girlfriend up there, according to the ex.”

  The other two perked up. “Now, that’s interesting,” Carnaby said. “Let’s find her and—”

  Active held up a hand. “She was killed in a plane crash around the time Gage’s wife moved out, which would make it at least a year ago. Long before any of this got started.”

  “Plane crash?” Carnaby said. “You guys remember a crash up around Cape Goodwin a year ago?”

  Long shook his head.

  “No,” Active said. “It was somewhere on the North Slope.”

  “Ah,” Carnaby said. “That would explain it. If there was an investigation, it would have been the North Slope Borough cops. Gage was the pilot?”

  “Don’t know,” Active said. “The wife couldn’t remember hearing who was flying. I got the impression she’s trying to put Chukchi and everything about it out of her mind as fast as she can.”

  “Yeah, this isn’t really your average white woman’s country,” Carnaby said.

  “What was the girlfriend’s name?” Long asked. “Maybe I knew her.”

  “The ex pretty much drew a blank on that too,” Active said. “Couldn’t remember the last name, if she ever heard it, and wasn’t sure about the first name. Or nickname, actually. Buddy, Booger, Buster, Buzzy, Beanie, something like that.”

  Long got a faraway look for a moment, then shook his head. “Rings a bell, somehow, but I can’t quite pull it up. Want me to check around?”

  “Leave it,” Carnaby said. “We’re not quite to the point where a victim’s long-dead girlfriend is our best lead. Too bad about her, though. If she was still around, maybe she could tell us what the hell this is about.”

  He looked at the other two, as if hoping one of them would do so in the dead girlfriend’s absence. Finally he shrugged. “All right, I guess we can head over to Gage’s house. The place locked, Alan?”

  “Yep,” Long said. “Padlock on the door. I got bolt-cutters from the city shop already.”

  Carnaby raised his eyebrows.

  “And I got another lock to close it back up.”

  Carnaby nodded his approval, and they left the Public Safety Building and piled into the Trooper Suburban.

  The sky had cleared and the wind had swung around to the north, driving the temperature below freezing. The streets glittered under a pellicle of ice, and the lagoon was edged in crystal as they followed Long’s directions to Tom Gage’s place, a rust-colored cottage with T1–11 siding and a tarpaper roof, no shingles.

  As Long had said, a pickup was on blocks in the driveway, rear wheels off and the brake drums missing. A padlocked shipping van stood beside the north wall of the house. A canvas-covered snowmachine squatted next to the van, secured to it by a heavy chain and padlock through the undercarriage. Behind the house, a big dory with an outboard was pulled up on the shore of the lagoon.

  Nearby were several other driveways leading to gravel pads, but none had houses on them yet. Gage’s place was pretty much isolated. Active tried to remember if he had heard anything about the little subdivision on the lagoon. Hector Martinez owned it, he thought. But was it a new venture with as yet few takers, or an old one that had fizzled out with Tom Gage the only buyer?

  Probably the latter, Active decided. The ground here was pure tundra, a mosquito swamp in summer. Anyone local would know the gravel roads and driveways and house pads, together with anything on them, would sink into the muck at a fairly rapid pace. Gage obviously hadn’t put much money into the place. Perhaps its chief appeal for him was its location on the lagoon. He could pull his boat up to the back door in summer and park his Super Cub on skis there in winter.

  Long applied his bolt-cutters to the padlock on the front door, and they went in through the kunnichuk. Carnaby flipped on the lights, and they peered around the little dwelling. One big room in front served as a combined kitchen and living area, with an oil heater at the back near a second exit sealed shut with yellow spray-on insulating foam. The furniture consisted of a dining table with three chairs, a sofa with a sleeping bag and pillow on it, and a desk littered with mail and other papers. Four dirty plates and a miniature Stonehenge of empty Budweiser cans littered the dining table. Three more Budweiser empties stood on the floor beside the sofa, as did a bottle of vodka, a quarter full.

  Two doorways led to other rooms. Both were open, one showing a bed with another sleeping bag on it, the other a tiny bathroom with a toilet and shower but no sink. “I guess he brushed his teeth in the kitchen,” Carnaby said, pointing.

  “Doesn’t look like he even lived here,” Long said. “More
like he dropped in once in a while when he needed a room for the night.”

  “The ex-wife said he was out in the country or up at Cape Goodwin most of the time,” Active said.

  “What are we looking for, anyway?” Long asked.

  Carnaby took off his hat and swept his eyes over the place. “Anything that would connect Tom Gage and Jae Hyo Lee, or Tom Gage and bear gallbladders, or Tom Gage and anybody who might want to kill him—or who he might want to kill.” He looked at Long, who lifted his eyebrows. “Or anything else interesting.”

  “I’ll take the bedroom,” Long said.

  Active took the desk, while Carnaby roamed the rest of the main room. The clutter on the desk was unremarkable. Bills from Visa, Chukchi Electric, Chevron; a birthday card from Gage’s daughters; a letter from the state about twelve hundred dollars in overdue child support.

  A couple of dozen snapshots were tacked to the wall over the desk. One was of a white man with two little girls; they had to be Gage and his daughters. Another showed him dropping a packload of caribou meat and antlers beside a Super Cub on a gravel bar, with a river, tundra, and mountains in the background, all splashed in fall colors. Still others showed Gage in whaling camp helping to cut up a bowhead and then push the huge mandible into the sea in the ancient Inupiat ritual of respect for the spirit of the animal. The final shot in what appeared to be a series showed Gage posing with a group of Inupiat beside a stack of muktuk slabs. Probably whalers, Active surmised, except some of the Inupiat in the picture were women. He had the impression women were taboo on whaling crews.

  Another photo showed Gage on a polar bear kill far out on the sea ice, grinning at the camera and holding up the long snakelike neck and head so the bear looked at the camera too. The same Super Cub, this time on skis, was visible in the background. Active called Carnaby over and showed him the shot.

  “Illegal as hell,” the captain said.

  “Uh-huh,” Active said. “He’s lucky the Feds didn’t bust him along with Jae.” Federal law barred anyone but the Inupiat from hunting polar bears.

  Carnaby grunted his assent. “Think we should believe the Feds when they say he’s not the one turned Jae in?”

  “Beats me. You know anything about this Tony Ehrlich, the Fed Alan was dealing with?”