Village of the Ghost Bears

by Stan Jones

  “An aviation mechanic or somebody who hung out with one!” Active said, almost shouting. “Damn it, the roommate! Jesus, hand me that phone book, will you?”

  Carnaby swiveled around and pulled the flimsy Chukchi Region directory from the shelf behind his desk. “The roommate? Do we know who it is? Who are we calling?” he asked as he swung back and pushed the directory across the desk.

  “The village clinic in Cape Goodwin. Remember the damned boat? Shit!” Active flipped the book open, found the Cape Goodwin listings, and ran a forefinger down to the line for the clinic. He dialed, praying the village phones would be up, the power wouldn’t be down, and the health aide wouldn’t be out moose-hunting or playing bingo. He switched the phone to speaker, breathed a line of thanks when he heard the first ring, and mouthed a fervent, if silent, “Amen” when a woman’s voice said, “Health clinic.”

  Active introduced himself, and she told him her name was Molly Booth. He gave her the date of the Rec Center fire, then asked if she could check her records to see if anyone had showed up with a burn the next morning.

  “I don’t need any records,” she said. “That was Pingo Kivalina. His left arm was kinda burned, all right, but not too bad. I put some medicine on it and give him some pills for the pain and tell him to go home and stay out of trouble.”

  “Pingo Kivalina?”

  “Ah-hah. His real name is Frederick, but they always call him Pingo for some kinda reason.”

  “Did he say how he got the burn?”

  “He tell me he fall on the fire while he’s moose-hunting, but I dunno. He’s pretty hung over, all right. I think maybe he fall asleep with a cigarette and catch himself on fire or something.”

  “Has he been back in?”

  The health aide was silent a moment. “No, I never see him since then. Seem like I hear he took off with Icy Cape that same day, maybe—or, no, next day I think.”

  Icy Cape Aviation in Barrow served the entire North Slope, from the Canadian border on the east to the North Slope Borough’s southwest tip at Cape Goodwin. Or at least it had, until the storm that damaged the Cape Goodwin airport.

  “Icy Cape is still getting in there, with your runway all torn up?”

  “Mmm,” Booth said. “They got a Cessna 206 on floats up at Point Hope, all right. They come down here with that, land on our lagoon, at least till it freeze up.”

  “Ah. And this Pingo went to Barrow?” Active asked.

  “Must be,” she said. “Don’t know why he’d stay in Point Hope or any of them other villages up there.”

  Active ended the call and looked at the other two, a bell tinkling faintly in his head. He read aloud the name he had scrawled on the desk blotter. “Pingo Kivalina.”

  “I remember him,” Long said in a tone of wonder. “That’s Budzie Kivalina’s twin brother.”

  Carnaby leaned his forehead on his palm and sighed heavily. “Where the hell does this end? We got Tom Gage visiting Jae Hyo Lee in prison, we got Gage killing Lee at One-Way Lake, and now we got Gage being burned alive by Pingo Kivalina, who just happens to possibly be Gage’s roommate, not to mention the twin brother of his dead girlfriend. Am I leaving anything out?”

  “Unless Pingo was really after Chief Silver all the while,” Long said. “Or somebody else in the Rec Center.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Carnaby said. “I just know we gotta find Pingo Kivalina. Alan, go tell Evelyn to put out a BOLO for him in Barrow—get hold of North Slope Public Safety and the Trooper detachment up there.”

  Long nodded and headed for the secretary’s desk as Active suppressed a chuckle at the ludicrous acronym that had replaced the old APB—All Points Bulletin—in copspeak. BOLO stood for “Be On the Lookout.” The Troopers in Southeast Alaska even had a drug-sniffing dog by that name. Active had read or heard the term a hundred times at least, but it still sounded too comical for the gravity of its purpose—bringing in people suspected of robbery, mayhem, and murder. In this case, multiple murder by arson.

  “And you, Nathan—log on to the system and see what you can find out about this guy.”

  Active paused for a moment, looking at the captain. “And you, boss?”

  Carnaby extracted a section of the Anchorage Daily News from the clutter on his desk. It was open to a crossword puzzle, half-finished. He brandished it at Active. “I’m gonna take this down the hall and try to spend ten minutes thinking about something other than is this Pingo Kivalina real, is he still in Barrow, and, if he’s not toes-up in a snowbank, does he have anything whatever to do with this goddamn case?”

  ACTIVE AND Long returned to Carnaby’s office within a minute of each other and with the same information. The crossword, Active saw, was finished.

  “They’ve got him,” Long said.

  “Who does?” Carnaby said.

  “North Slope Public Safety,” Active said.

  “He’s in the Barrow jail,” Long said. “They busted him yesterday for—”

  “He was trying to sell three bottles of Monarch vodka to some teenagers up there,” Active said. “He told the cops he needed the money to get to Anchorage.”

  “Wait a minute,” Carnaby said. “Didn’t you find a bottle in that boat at—”

  “Right, at Cape Goodwin,” Active said. “That was Monarch too. It’s in a bag in my desk. You want to—”

  “Yeah, we’ll send it down to the crime lab for prints,” Carnaby said.

  Active slapped his forehead. “And wasn’t that another Monarch bottle—”

  “—at Gage’s place,” Carnaby finished. “I’ll send Dickie Nelson over to get it and we’ll send it down too. But first things first. How long is Pingo in for?”

  “He’s being arraigned later today,” Long said. “He might bail out. Or sometimes they just let ’em out on their own recognizance in these minor bootlegging cases.”

  “No good, no good,” Carnaby said. “Look, I’ll talk to Charlie Hughes and see if we can get an arrest warrant for Pingo on what we know so far. At least Charlie ought to be able to call his opposite number in the prosecutor’s office up there and get them to stall things a few hours while we get this figured out.”

  He looked at Active and Long, drumming his fingers on the desk. “How are the connections to Barrow on Alaska Airlines these days?”

  “They suck,” Active said. “When I took that prisoner up there last spring—”

  “Oh, yeah,” Carnaby said. “You had to go through Anchorage, right?”

  Active nodded. “Or Fairbanks, sometimes. And if you don’t hit it right, you may have to overnight along the way. We should charter with Cowboy Decker. It’s only about three hundred miles if you go straight over the mountains. Less than two hours in the Lienhofer twin. A little longer in the 185.”

  “Go ahead,” Carnaby said. “By the time you get up there, maybe we’ll have our arrest warrant. At least you ought to be able to interview the guy before he gets out.”

  “What about me?” Long asked.

  “Yes?” Carnaby lifted his eyebrows in inquiry.

  “I mean, I know Pingo a little from Cape Goodwin. Plus if we bring him back, it’s a prisoner transport. Wouldn’t hurt to have a second officer along.”

  “He’s got a point,” Active said.

  “Sure, you go too, Alan.” Carnaby waved his hand expansively. “What cop wouldn’t want to be in on the bust in a case like this? But it’s Nathan’s interview.”

  “I’ll get my stuff.” Long bustled out, his chipmunk face split in a huge grin.

  Carnaby leaned to one side and yelled past Active into the reception area. “Evelyn, get on the horn to Lienhofer’s and see if Cowboy can do a charter to Barrow today, ideally within the next hour. Two going, three returning.”

  “Prisoner transport?” the secretary asked.

  “Yeah, but don’t mention it unless they ask,” Carnaby said. “Maybe they won’t tack on the surcharge.”

  “Fat chance, if Delilah’s on duty,” O’Brien sai
d as she picked up her phone.

  Carnaby turned to Active. “Pack a toothbrush,” he said. “Looks like you guys’ll be there overnight, at least.”

  Active was silent, pulling at his lip.

  “What?”

  “Budzie Kivalina. Her name has come up again.”

  “Yeah, so? Look, the gene pool’s only about an inch deep in Cape Goodwin. You get involved with one of ’em up there, you’re involved with all of ’em.” Carnaby paused. “You’ve heard the joke, right?”

  “Do I want to?”

  “About why you can’t solve a rape case in Cape Goodwin?”

  “Now I’m sure I don’t want to.”

  “All the DNA’s the same.”

  “Very funny.”

  “You’re not smiling.” Carnaby paused again. “All right, what are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that she keeps coming up.”

  “I know what you mean, but—” Carnaby paused, thinking. “Okay, Pingo doesn’t pan out, she’s next on our to-do list, after Buck Eastlake. Okay?”

  Active left the Public Safety Building, went by the Trooper bachelor cabin where he technically still lived to collect his things for the trip to Barrow, and realized that most of what he needed was still at Grace’s house. He climbed back into the Suburban and headed for Beach Street.

  It was not until he spotted Grace’s four-wheeler in front of the house that he realized it was lunchtime and then some, and they were supposed to be having it together at home that day.

  He found Grace at the kitchen table, holding a half-eaten tomato-and-cheese sandwich and frowning in concentration at her laptop. A Microsoft Word document was open on the screen. She closed it as he came in.

  “That your journal?”

  The journal had been Nelda’s idea. Even with the old tribal doctor, Grace had trouble talking about Jason Palmer and the circumstances of his death. So, Nelda had said, “You could write it, ah?” Nowadays, that meant on a computer, not in a spiral notebook. Grace took the laptop to her sessions with Nelda, but never showed Active the entries.

  She nodded. “I’m sorry. I—it’s the Anchorage thing, you know.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t need to read it. You’ll tell me what you want me to know.”

  “And that’s really okay?”

  He was seated beside her now, in front of the tuna sandwich and iced tea she’d set out for him. He nodded and leaned in for a kiss. “You talk to Nita? How’s she doing with it?”

  Before she could answer, the door of the kunnichuk slammed, then the inner door creaked open and banged shut.

  “Uncle Nathan! Are we moving to Anchorage?”

  Active turned and opened his arms. Nita raced down the hallway, shrugged off her backpack, and dived into them, then took her usual seat on his left knee.

  “Probably maybe,” he said. “Whattaya think?”

  “You and Mom will both be there, right?”

  Active lifted his eyebrows yes.

  “Of course,” Grace said.

  “Arigaa. But nobody else from Chukchi?”

  “Sometimes Chukchi people might visit us when they come down,” Grace said.

  Nita wrinkled her nose in rejection and dismay, then looked at Grace. “I don’t like them. Sometimes they always tease me a lot. They say mean things about you and my Aunt Ida, how she kill Uncle Jason.”

  Grace’s face took on the stricken expression that appeared whenever this subject came up. “But you don’t believe them, right? You remember what I told you about what really happened?”

  Nita raised her eyebrows. “He was showing her how to clean the gun, and he dropped it, and it went off and shot him, right?”

  Grace relaxed slightly and nodded. “Well, if you don’t want to see any Chukchi people, we won’t.”

  “Nobody will know us down there?”

  “Nobody except Nathan’s naluaqmiut mom and dad. You like them, ah?”

  Nita beamed. “Remember when we went to Chuck E. Cheese? Can we go there again?”

  “Every Saturday,” Active said. “We’ll all go together.”

  Grace rolled her eyes at this but smiled. “You hungry, sweetheart?”

  Nita glanced at the third place set at the table, and her eyes lit up. “Macaroni and cheese!”

  “Yes-a-roni,” Grace said. Nita giggled as she shoved in the first bite.

  Over Nita’s head, Grace grimaced in mock embarrassment. The stuff was Nita’s favorite dish, one she’d eat three times a day if Grace would allow it. In fact, it was Grace’s favorite too, though she wouldn’t have admitted it to most people. “Comfort food for the soul,” she called it.

  Active smiled and applied himself to the tuna sandwich. He still had a third of it left when Nita swallowed the final spoonful of her macaroni and cheese and downed the last of her apple juice.

  She jumped out of her chair and raced for the stairs. “I’m going to play Nancy Drew till it’s time to go back.”

  “Yeah, okay, fifteen minutes, then it’s off the computer and out the door, young lady!” Grace yelled as the girl clumped up to her room.

  “Full speed as usual,” Active said.

  “Absolutaroni.”

  He smiled.

  Grace was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Nita’s all right with the Anchorage thing, obviously. I guess I’m seriously outnumbered.”

  “Two to one, looks like.” He paused, thinking about how to get into it.

  She turned her amazing quicksilver eyes full on him. “What?”

  “I talked to Nelda.”

  “About the Anchorage thing?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “And?”

  “She seems to think that, at some level, this house represents your father to you,” Active said. “When you’re here, running this place, you feel like you’re in control, you’re getting love and comfort from him the way you never did when he was alive.”

  “We’ve talked about that,” Grace said. “Makes sense at an intellectual level, I know, but I can’t say that I actually feel it. It’s just an idea to me.”

  “She said if I make you leave this house, it might be good for you. It might help you finally make that break with . . . with everything here.”

  “But it might not?”

  “If it’s too soon, you might leave me and come back to the house. Or even go back to Four Street.”

  Grace fidgeted, picking at the latch on the front of the laptop. “I think about that sometimes.”

  “Going back to Four Street?”

  She nodded, more to herself than to him. “It’s comfortable there, in a way. You don’t have to try to do or be anything. Nobody expects anything. They don’t judge you. They just want to drink with you.”

  She saw the look on his face and said hurriedly, “Not that I ever would, of course. With you and Nita in my life, I never would, not now.”

  She paused, lost in thought again, her fingers busy with the latch.

  “I’ll go if you make me,” she said at length.

  “But if I have to make you, will it really—how will you—”

  “I think that would be the way to do it, is all.” She was smiling, tears glistening at the corners of her quicksilver eyes.

  When she spoke again, her tone was reflective, inward. “You know, I think I might be able to have sex in Anchorage. Maybe Nelda’s right. If I get out of here, maybe I’ll have a shot at being normal.”

  “That’s how I interpret that lovely experience at One-Way Lake.”

  She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “I think I could have done it that night I tried to seduce you in Dutch Harbor, but I was your murder suspect at the time, and you turned me down. Remember that?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Maybe you’ll get a second chance if I’m not in Chukchi.”

  “We could all use a second chance.”

  She raised her eyebrows in assent, then looked around the kitchen and down the hall. “Ma
ybe I should burn it.”

  “Burn what?”

  She shrugged.

  “You mean this place? You want to burn your own house?”

  “Sure. To complete my recovery.”

  “But . . . it’s probably against the law.”

  “Why? I own it outright. There’s no mortgage. I could cancel the insurance first. Maybe it’s the only way I’ll ever be free of it all. Burn it, like he did my sister.”

  “It might endanger the neighbors.” He pointed out the kitchen window at the house next door. It was rented by a couple who taught at the elementary school. “Like the Olsons there.”

  She shrugged again. “Maybe I’ll talk to the fire department. They could set it on fire and put it out for practice. This is a pretty big lot and they could do it in the winter, when everything’s covered with snow. That should be safe for the neighbors, eh?”

  He was still groping for a response when she spoke again. “Speaking of fires, you guys getting anywhere on the Rec Center case?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, almost shouting from relief at the change of subject. “I’m going to Barrow. We actually have a lead.”

  Her eyes widened in interest, and he sketched the latest developments for her, the prospects seeming dimmer the farther he went. A village drunk from Cape Goodwin in the Barrow jail for bootlegging—that was their best lead, with second place going to a caribou hunter in camp on the Katonak River. “Pretty depressing, huh?” he said at the end.

  She pondered for a few moments, shrugged, and smiled in sympathy. “Finish your lunch. You won’t solve anything on an empty stomach. I’m going to go up and kick Nita off the computer and pack you a bag for Barrow.”

  She headed for the stairs, and he downed the rest of tuna sandwich without tasting it. She had just proposed setting her own house on fire. Was that her way of telling him that she—no, of course not. She had been in the sleeping bag with him at One-Way Lake when the Rec Center went up in flames. She couldn’t have been involved. Her father’s house was the only thing she wanted to burn down.