Village of the Ghost Bears

by Stan Jones

  “Could be,” Long said. “Those guys up there all use ’em to hunt.”

  “Cowboy spot anything like that when he went back in to get the body?” Carnaby asked.

  Active shook his head. “He said it was hard to read. Four-wheeler trails all over, like Alan says, but nothing special around the lake. No camp or anything.”

  “What about somebody flying him in? Any way to land a plane up in those hills above the lake, maybe haul him down to the edge of the cliff and let him go?”

  Active visualized the country around One-Way Lake and tried to imagine setting a plane down among the crags above it. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think even Cowboy could get in up there.”

  Something was nagging at him, though. He was trying to tease it out of his memory when Carnaby sighed again.

  “Look,” the captain said. “Could a guy want to go hunting that bad? So bad, it’s the first thing he does out of prison? Is it possible Jae just wanted to get away for a while, spend some time alone out in the country? He’s rusty and maybe out of shape from prison, and the terrain gets ahead of him? Could it be that simple?”

  The other two shrugged.

  “Whatever,” Long said. “But if Jae didn’t start the Rec Center fire, we don’t have anybody but Buck Eastlake.”

  “Yeah,” Carnaby said. “But let’s not let go of Jae quite yet. First let’s have another talk with Uncle Kyung.”

  “Sounds right,” Active said.

  “I could,” Long said. “He wasn’t much help the first time around, but—”

  “I’ll go,” Active said. He tried to think of something more to say, but decided there was no way to soften it: he didn’t want Alan Long questioning Kyung Kim or conducting any other important interview in the case.

  “What!” Long had stood to pull on his coat. Now he dropped back into his chair and laid his hands on Carnaby’s desk, palms up. “Captain, I already talked to him. I know how to read him and—”

  “You can go,” Carnaby said. “But let Nathan do the talking. You keep quiet and observe the subject’s demeanor, then report your findings to Nathan afterward.”

  Long clearly wasn’t happy, but all he said was “Yes, sir.” Carnaby’s shower of officialese had probably been too much for him. He rose again and left the office.

  Active stood and pulled on his own coat, looking at Carnaby. “Observe the subject’s demeanor?”

  Carnaby shrugged, appearing rather pleased with himself. “Worked, didn’t it?”

  ACTIVE PULLED up in front of the Arctic Dragon and shut off the Suburban. He looked over at Long, who held up a hand.

  “Don’t say it. You ask the questions. I listen.”

  Active nodded. “And Uncle Kyung answers, hopefully.”

  “Hopefully.” Long swung open his door and climbed down from the SUV.

  Kyung Kim was at the counter, a dozen or so receipts spread out before him, when they stepped into the restaurant. Kim was Korean, and so were the cook at work in the kitchen and the waitress watching CNN on a wall-mounted TV from a table near the counter. But the wall décor at the Arctic Dragon ran to medieval tapestries replete with knights, maidens, and unicorns. And the menu had become more American and less Chinese even in the relatively short time Active had been in Chukchi. Today, at any rate, the place smelled of frying fat, like any other diner in America. The Arctic Dragon, it appeared, was assimilating.

  Kim spotted them, nodded brusquely, and said something in Korean to the waitress. She hurried over and pointed to a booth by a window looking out on Beach Street. “Table for two?”

  “That’s okay,” Active said and slid around her to the counter.

  Kim didn’t look much like an uncle. He was too young, Active thought, then decided he probably didn’t know enough Koreans to judge the man’s age. Kim was short and slight, but, even so, his head looked too small for his body. And the back of his skull was flat, as if he’d slept on a board all his life.

  “Can I help you?” he said, snapping a rubber band around the receipts. “I already talked to this officer on the phone.” He cut his eyes over Active’s shoulder, toward Long.

  “Maybe we could go in your office.” Active jerked his head toward a tiny cubicle near the counter. It contained a desk with a calculator and computer on it and one chair that he could see.

  “My office is very small,” Kim said. “Maybe better over there.” He pointed at the same booth the waitress had indicated.

  “Your office will be fine.” Active put out his arm as though pointing. In reality, it was to leave Kim nowhere else to go.

  Kim gave a small shrug of resignation and walked into the cubicle. He took the chair and watched them squeeze in and close the door. His face was a mask now. It reminded Active of the look an Inupiaq got when crowded by anyone official, especially a naluaqmiut official. The Eskimo mask, Active called it.

  Long and Active loomed over Kim in his chair. With the three of them inside, the little office began to heat up.

  “We found your nephew,” Active said after a lengthy silence.

  Kim’s mask remained impassive.

  “That was him we pulled out of One-Way Lake a few days ago. You heard about it on Kay-Chuck?”

  “The radio said he was Eskimo.”

  “We thought he was, because the fish ate his face.” Still no flicker of expression from Kim. “But we got a fingerprint off his thumb, and we made a match in our computer. It’s Jae Hyo Lee.”

  “And you are sure?”

  Active nodded. He thought a small sigh escaped Kim.

  “How did he die?”

  “What was he doing up at that lake? Why didn’t he come here when he got out of prison? Or go up to Cape Goodwin to see his girlfriend?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. Can you tell me how he died?”

  “His neck was broken.”

  “Ah, yes, I think the radio said he fell from a cliff.”

  “When was the last time you heard from him?”

  Kim paused. Active sensed he was calculating whether the two officers were likely to know about the call from Jae Hyo Lee shortly before his release from prison.

  “He called from Oregon to tell me he was getting out,” he said finally. “He said he might see me here, or he might go on to Cape Goodwin if the plane schedule was right.”

  “And did he see you here?”

  “No. I didn’t hear from him.”

  “Nothing at all? Weren’t you worried?”

  “I thought he went to Cape Goodwin and he must have better things to do than call his uncle after being in prison so long.” Kim gave a small, experimental smile, then resumed the mask when neither Long nor Active returned it.

  “Did you know Tom Gage?”

  “Not much. I heard his name on the radio after the fire, though.”

  “Uh-huh. Did you know he visited your nephew in prison a few months ago?”

  Active thought he sensed Kim calculating again, but the expression, if it could be called that, flickered off his face before Active could be sure.

  “No, I don’t think Jae told me that.”

  “So you wouldn’t know what they talked about?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did you know Jim Silver?”

  “The police chief? Of course. He didn’t like Koreans much.”

  Long stirred behind Active, but held his tongue.

  Kim gave a slight, quick nod. “I should not have said that. I’m sure he was a very good police chief.”

  “Well, Jim Silver called the prison about your nephew a couple of weeks ago, and now they’re both dead,” Active said.

  Kim nodded again.

  “And Tom Gage went to see your nephew, and he’s dead too.”

  Another nod.

  “And you talked to your nephew a little before Jim Silver did, but you’re still alive.”

  Kim didn’t nod this time.

  “And I’m guessing you want to stay alive. Is that it?”
r />   No answer, but perhaps that flicker of calculation again.

  “Mr. Kim, is there any way we can help you with that? Staying alive, I mean?”

  “Leave me alone to run our family’s businesses. We have many properties in your city, and your fire department is somewhat inefficient.”

  This produced a sharp intake of breath from Long, but he didn’t speak. The office was beginning to smell, but Active couldn’t tell if it was Kim sweating or Long.

  “You think your properties might catch fire if you help us?” Active asked.

  Kim’s face was a mask again.

  “Mr. Kim?”

  The face didn’t flicker. Active fished out a business card and dropped it on the desk. “You can call me if you think of anything.”

  No response. Active pushed the office door open, admitting a wash of relatively fresh air. “You knew that was your nephew in One-Way Lake before we came in, didn’t you?”

  Kim remained silent.

  They walked to the door of the restaurant and Active took a look back. Kim was at the counter again, still watching from behind his mask.

  “He knew,” Long said as they climbed into the Suburban.

  “Yep.”

  “And he’s scared shitless.”

  “Yep.”

  “But who of?”

  “Exactly.”

  “SO YOU didn’t get much more out of Kim in person than Alan did on the phone.” Carnaby said this with a slight twinkle in his eye after hearing their report. “And did you observe anything significant in the subject’s demeanor, Alan?”

  Long suppressed a chuckle and Active tried to think of a comeback. Failing, he just said, “Maybe we should call Ronnie Barnes now.”

  Long stared at him.

  “What?” Carnaby said.

  “We were about to get on the phone to Barnes when the guy from the crime lab called. Go over the case with him, pick his brain a little?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Carnaby growled. “Right. Go ahead, Nathan. Smile and dial.”

  While the phone was ringing, Active switched it to speaker mode. In a few moments, they heard the familiar drawl. “Ronnie Barnes.”

  Active identified himself and informed Barnes of the presence of Carnaby and Long. “We were just wondering if you came up with anything else on our fire,” Active said.

  “Not much,” Barnes said. “Just one little thing I was going to e-mail you with later today.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Turns out you were right about that wire, Nathan. There was something funny about it.”

  Active remembered the wire loop that had possibly secured the locker room door in place and doomed the men inside. He even remembered noticing something odd about it, but not exactly what. “Go ahead,” he said, covering. He could catch up as Barnes went on.

  “You were thinking the way it was twisted looked like a machine did it?”

  Now it came back to Active. “Right, it looked too neat for a guy to do with pliers.”

  “Uh-huh,” Barnes said. “You know what a safety-wire twister is?”

  Active looked around the desk. Carnaby and Long shook their heads. “No idea,” Active said.

  “Me too,” Barnes said. “Until I showed the wire around the office and one of the guys here’s a pilot. He recognized it. It’s aviation safety wire. Airplane mechanics use it to tie down the heads of bolts so they won’t vibrate off in the air, everything from Super Cubs to 747s, which would explain why it wasn’t affected by the fire; it’s made to withstand high temperatures. Now, I guess you could put it on with regular pliers, but airplane mechanics use something called a safety-wire twister. It’s kind of like a vise grip where you lock the jaws onto the wire and then it has this shaft that you pull to make it spin and twist the—Ah, hell, I’ll e-mail you a picture of one, all right?”

  They all grunted their assent, impatient for Barnes to finish.

  “The point is, it’s a really fast way to wire something down tight, and you get the kind of neat and tidy twist that that wire from the Rec Center had on it. I got some safety wire and a twister from the guy here and tried it myself, and it came out exactly like what I pulled from the ashes out there.”

  Nobody said anything for so long that it was Barnes who broke the silence.

  “You guys still there? Hello?”

  “Yeah, we’re here,” Carnaby said. “So an aviation mechanic started our fire?”

  “Or somebody who stole his wire twister,” Barnes said. “Unless that piece of safety wire was still lying around from when that building used to be, what was it, your Air Guard Armory?”

  “Uh-huh,” Carnaby said. “You got anything else for us?”

  “Nope, that’s it,” Barnes said. “Look for an e-mail, all right? And I’ll send the wire down to the lab in Anchorage, see if they can find any tool marks. You guys find a wire twister, maybe they’ll match. Anything else I can do for you?”

  Carnaby cleared his throat and looked at Active. “You remember Buck Eastlake, the—”

  “Right, the jealous boyfriend,” Barnes said. “You guys talk to him yet?”

  “Not yet, but he’s starting to look pretty good. Turns out he’s a cargo handler for Alaska Airlines.”

  “So he might have had access to a wire twister,” Barnes said. “But—”

  “Yeah,” Carnaby sighed. “If you were plotting a major arson, where would it enter your head to steal a wire twister from your employer for the project?”

  “Exactly,” Barnes said. “I’d say he’s not a real hot prospect, but if you got nothing else, you might as well go on up to that camp so you can check him off your list.”

  Active was about to push the Release button on the speaker phone when Barnes spoke again. “Just going down my own list here. You guys checked for burn cases the night of the fire, right?”

  “I did,” Long said. “No burn cases of any kind that night or the next morning, aside from the two survivors.”

  “Okay,” Barnes said. “I guess that’s one I can cross off.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ACTIVE STOOD. “I SUPPOSE I ought to get hold of Cowboy about a ride up the Katonak.”

  “An aviation mechanic,” Carnaby said.

  Active sighed and sat down again. “All right. An aviation mechanic.”

  “Tom Gage,” Long said.

  Carnaby’s eyes lit up, and his brows rose. “He could have flown his Super Cub up to One-Way Lake and dropped Jae off that cliff, all right.”

  “Not if he was on floats,” Active said. “Nobody could haul a hundred-and-sixty-pound corpse up that cliff, trust me.”

  “What if he was on wheels? You sure there’s no place to land up there?” Carnaby asked.

  Active tried to picture the terrain again, started to shake his head, then remembered what had been nagging at him before. “Wait a minute. There’s a ridge alongside the lake where you might be able to get in on wheels. And from that ridge, yeah, you could pack a body along the caribou trail to the top of the cliff and drop it into the lake. If you were reasonably determined and reasonably strong.”

  “So it is doable.” Carnaby brightened slightly as he said this, then sobered again as the next thought came to him. “But why would he haul a body all the way out there to get rid of it? There’s gotta be a hundred easier ways.”

  Active pulled at his chin. “They had to be up there to start with,” he said at length. “Maybe Gage never planned to kill him, but something went wrong, and he did, and throwing Jae in the lake was the best thing he could think of.”

  “Maybe,” Carnaby said.

  “It makes a certain amount of sense. Hardly anybody goes up there, so the chance of someone finding the body any time soon was pretty low. It was pure luck that Grace and I stumbled across it. And with the broken neck, it did look exactly like an accident.”

  “Which maybe it was.” Carnaby looked gloomier than ever. “Maybe Gage and Jae were just pals, it’s as simple as that. They plan a hunting trip to ce
lebrate Jae’s release, Jae puts his foot down wrong on the caribou trail, and there you are, right down the cliff. It happens.”

  “And then Tom flies back to town and never tells anybody his hunting partner died?” Long said.

  “And then a couple weeks later he starts the Rec Center fire to kill himself out of grief and remorse?” Active said.

  “All right, all right,” Carnaby said. “I admit it doesn’t totally add up, but it ties together more of our loose ends than any other theory I’ve heard.” He looked from Active to Long and back. “Am I right?”

  The other two raised their eyebrows in acknowledgement.

  “So,” Carnaby continued. “Jae dies in the mountains, and a couple weeks later Tom Gage dies in the Rec Center fire. But what if Tom didn’t start it after all? What if he didn’t get caught in his own arson?”

  “Eh?” Long said.

  “Maybe it was revenge. Maybe Tom really did kill Jae, and somebody figured it out and killed Tom to even the score.”

  Active had to admit it made as much sense as anything else in the case. “And took out all those other people—”

  “To leave us exactly where we are right now,” Carnaby said. “Absolutely nowhere.”

  “It has to be Kyung Kim,” Long said.

  The other two stared blankly for a second.

  “He had to be Jae’s partner in the gallbladder business,” Carnaby said thoughtfully.

  “And he wouldn’t talk to us either time,” Long said.

  “It could add up,” Carnaby said. “Nathan?”

  “And where would Uncle Kyung get an aviation safety-wire twister to seal up the locker room at the Rec Center? Raise your hand if you think he even knows what a wire twister is.”

  “Argh,” Carnaby said. “You’re right. We’re looking for an aviation mechanic.”

  “Maybe Kyung hired one,” Long said.

  Carnaby massaged the bridge of his nose. “Alan, if you’re looking to hire an arsonist, why on earth would you want him to be an aviation mechanic too?”

  Long looked somewhat chastened but stubborn. “I’m just saying, is all.”

  Carnaby’s face softened slightly. “Either way, all that matters is, we’re looking for an aviation mechanic. Soon as we check out Buck Eastlake, we’re twenty-four/seven on the aviation mechanic angle. Hit Lienhofer, the other charter services, Alaska Airlines, the Tech Center. Ask if anybody’s missing a wire twister, see if the FAA has a list of everybody in town who is or ever was an airplane mechanic, canvass the outfits that sell these things to see if they have customers in Chukchi—the whole sushi roll, right?”