by Stan Jones
Cave nodded, as if accepting an apology, before continuing. “You notice how McAllister’s always kind of grumbling to himself under his breath? That’s supposedly—”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what a wolverine does,” said Alan Long from behind them. Active turned. He had forgotten Long was present.
“Always whining and snarling as it goes along the trail,” Long said. “The old-timers think it’s talking to the devil. Some of them think the qavvik is the devil.”
“And he’s got a hell of a temper,” Cave added.
“McAllister?” Active said, thinking of the guide smashing the case of Solare on the tarmac at Chukchi.
“The qavvik,” Long said.
“Ah.” Active turned back to Cave. “You talk to McAllister again?”
“Yeah,” Cave said. “I paw through what Pingo and Tom have brought in, supposedly from Driftwood. Dog’s head with its eye shot out, no collar, no tags. Bunch of camping gear with no I.D. on it. I get that sinking feeling, you know? It’s a pretty big pile, but it doesn’t add up to much.”
Active nodded.
“But at the same time I got two guys sitting across the desk from me that obviously loved that woman to pieces, each in his own way, and they obviously believe every word of what they’re telling me. One of ’em’s a well-known wacko and the other one appears to be headed that way himself, he’s so unhinged by her death. For a minute there, I almost envy them.”
“Envy? Why?”
Cave shrugged. “Having something in their lives that gave them that kind of passion. That’s rare, you know?”
Active looked away, uncomfortable.
“But maybe you got that in your life. I sure as hell don’t, in Barrow.”
“A seven-count,” Active said.
“A what?”
“When she comes into a room of people who never saw her before, conversation stops. At first just close to her, then it spreads across the crowd. I finally started counting when it happens. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand. . . . Usually I get to about seven-one-thousand before they start talking again.” Active stopped, suddenly embarrassed. What had possessed him?
Long cleared his throat.
Cave cut his eyes back and forth between them, waiting for more. Finally he continued. “So I get Pingo and Tom to show us on the chart where McAllister’s camp is on the Upper Katonak, and me and a couple of my guys pay him a visit in the helicopter. We go thumping in, set down on this little strip he’s got on a gravel bar by his cabins, and he comes screaming up on a four-wheeler. He’s pissed, says we’re harassing him, we’ll scare off the game, spook his clients, destroy his livelihood, there’s no fucking way we’re coming into camp. So I tell him we might have to fly around the area in the Bell and check for game violations the next couple days, and then he calms down a little bit and we have a talk there on the runway.”
A defeated look came over Cave’s face.
“No go, huh?”
“Nah, he denies the dog was ever with them, says they left it in camp the day of the crash and it disappeared a few days later when Budzie didn’t come back.”
“But what about the dog Pingo and Tom found at Driftwood?”
“McAllister said he had no idea whose it was, but it wasn’t Dad-Dad. Maybe it got away from some of the floaters or hikers that get dropped off there, and then somebody else shot it later because they thought it was a wolf or it was scavenging food from their camp or something. Or maybe Pingo and Gage didn’t even find it at Driftwood and they’re trying to frame him.”
“And the camping gear?”
“Same type of deal. Denied it was his. Either somebody else left it there or Pingo and Gage are lying.” Cave shrugged. “About what I expected.”
“What did McAllister say about Budzie leaving him?”
“Same type of deal again. Claimed she never mentioned it.”
“So that was it? He walked?”
Cave shrugged again. “I worked the case for a while, then took it to the District Attorney. We checked for fingerprints on the camping gear, hired an expert to go over the wreckage of McAllister’s 185, crawled through the autopsy results again . . . and there was just nothing to support what Kivalina and Gage were saying. We finally dropped it.”
“You didn’t even take it to a grand jury.”
“Facts are facts. And we didn’t have many.”
“But what did you think?”
Cave’s face took on a thoughtful look. “I ended up believing McAllister. His argument was, ‘If I wanted to kill my wife, I wouldn’t have to wreck a hundred and eighty thousand dollar airplane to do it. I could just push her off a cliff and say she fell, all right.’”
“I can see what you mean.” Active paused, thinking back through the story. “And when was it you dropped the case?”
“I don’t know, three, four months ago, maybe?”
“And you told Pingo and Tom?”
“You kidding? One or the other of them was on the phone to me every couple days about it. Tom . . . no, Pingo called the day after we made the decision and I told him then.”
Active lined it up in his head. Cave and the Barrow DA had given up on the Budzie Kivalina case, and within a few weeks Tom Gage was visiting Jae Hyo Lee at the federal prison. A few weeks later, Jae was pike bait in One-Way Lake, and a couple of weeks after that, Tom Gage was dead in the Rec Center fire, with Pingo Kivalina a near miss.
He looked at Cave. “Either one of them mention a guy named Jae Hyo Lee? Korean, went to prison on a bear gallbladder case a couple years ago?”
Cave gave this some thought. “I don’t think so. But I believe I remember the case. A federal deal in Cape Goodwin, right?”
Active nodded.
“You think this Korean poacher’s connected to all this too?” Cave gave his head a skeptical shake.
“We don’t know. It’s just that he fell off a cliff and wound up dead in a lake down on the Isignaq not long ago. And Tom Gage visited him in prison pretty soon after you guys dropped the Budzie Kivalina case. And Pingo and Budzie used to sell him gallbladders. And you said Dood McAllister mentioned the possibility of pushing somebody off a cliff.”
Cave was silent for a time. “But why would Dood McAllister want to kill a Korean?” he asked finally.
Active shrugged, unable to think of an answer.
“Sometimes, if it looks like a coincidence, it is,” Cave said.
He and Active studied Pingo, beneath whose chin a puddle of drool was forming on the tabletop.
“Oh, yeah,” Active said. “So Alan told you we found what must be Dad-Dad’s head in Tom Gage’s freezer. They tell you what that was about?”
“Pingo wanted it back when we dropped the case,” Cave said. “He was going to have it mounted.”
“Guess I better wake him up,” Active said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ACTIVE SLAMMED THE DOOR loudly as he went in.
Kivalina’s head jerked up and his eyes swept the room, making sure, no doubt, that Dood McAllister hadn’t come in too.
Active pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to Kivalina, who stared at it with a puzzled expression. Active touched his chin to indicate where Kivalina’s own chin glistened with drool. Kivalina felt the spot, wiped it, and pocketed the handkerchief.
And then Active remembered where he had seen the long, heavy-jawed face before and knew why Kivalina might think he would be accompanied by McAllister today. “You saw me come to Cape Goodwin in the qavvik’s plane that day, ah? You looked at me through the window.”
Kivalina bared his teeth in a spasm of fear. “Arii, he’s here now?”
“No, no.” Active put a hand out, but Kivalina recoiled. “He’s not here. He can’t hurt you.”
“He’s tough, that qavvik. Kill Budzie, kill Jae Hyo Lee, burn up all those people in Chukchi.” Kivalina shuddered. “I guess he’ll kill me too, ah? That’s why I go to Barrow after he come to Cape Goodwin with you.”
Active sh
ook his head. “You’re safe here.”
Kivalina looked at the mirror. “He’s not in that other room watching me?”
Active shook his head again. “He’s at his camp on the Upper Katonak.”
Kivalina’s face relaxed. “His camp, ah-hah. That’s good. So you know about him, ah?”
Active raised his eyebrows yes. “Why did he kill Jae Hyo Lee? We know—”
“I tell her not to be with him. I tell her that qavvik is a man in rage, but that what she always like, a rough man. Budzie call it the great weather, that rage inside a rough man, say she want it inside herself. Some women are like that, ah, Mr. Nathan?”
Active resigned himself to another of Kivalina’s detours. “So I’ve heard.”
“Ah-hah, but this one, he’s too rough, and he kill her at Driftwood, ah?”
“That’s what we believe. Because she—”
“Because she find Tom Gage. He have that rage in him too, but it’s different, like he wrap it around her, take her inside it, so she don’t never have to be afraid of him. Ah?”
Active lifted his eyebrows again.
“Tom Gage, you know he pay Jae Hyo Lee to kill that qavvik, ah?”
Active stifled his surprise and merely said, “I forget how much.”
“Ten thousand dollars, I think he say. Lotta money, all right. I guess he really love my sister, like me.”
“That’s why he visited Jae in prison? To hire him to kill Dood McAllister?”
Kivalina lifted his eyebrows. “But that Jae never want to do it till Tom tell him what I say.”
“What you said?”
“Ah-hah, about that qavvik is the one get Jae arrested for gallbladders.”
Active was silent for a moment. “McAllister told the naluaqmiut police about Jae buying gallbladders?”
“Ah-hah. For long time, that qavvik buy all our gallbladders in Cape Goodwin. Then when Jae start buying, nearly everybody is selling to him, even Budzie and me, because he pay more. That qavvik is real mad, tell us he’ll take care of Jae. Then, next thing, Jae is arrested. After that, everybody is selling to qavvik again.”
Active shook his head. “But what would McAllister do with the bladders? The Koreans control that whole market.”
Kivalina frowned. “Not in Russia, all right.”
“He sold the bladders to Russians? But how . . . where . . . did they—”
“All winter he’ll keep them bladders in his freezer,” Kivalina said. “Then in springtime, when the ice goes out and there’s no more bears around, he’ll take those bladders over to Russia in his Super Cub and sell ’em over there. His great-grandmother was one of them Anqallyt Eskimos from Russian side, and he still know some of them people, all right. He can even talk Anqallyt, little bit, from what I heard. And he got some kind of Russian papers he buy over there, a passport maybe.”
The Russian coast lay a couple of hundred miles west of Chukchi, easily within Super Cub range. And it was true that people had trafficked back and forth across the Chukchi Sea until the Communists clamped down. Supposedly, the traffic, even though still illegal, was coming back with the old Soviet Union gone and the new Russia not paying much attention to Siberia. And Active seemed to remember news stories about bear-poaching on the Russian side. Maybe what Kivalina said was true.
“One time he take Budzie with him,” Kivalina continued. “She buy one of their reindeer hats while she’s over there. Sure don’t look like a normal hat, all right.”
“But how did Jae Hyo Lee end up dead in One-Way Lake?”
“Tom Gage take him in there, all right. Fly over to Fairbanks in his Super Cub with some gear, meet Jae there after he get out of prison, fly him over to One-Way Lake to wait for qavvik, then kill him. But I guess—”
“Wait a minute. Why would Tom Gage think that McAllister would go to One-Way Lake? His camp is on the Upper Katonak, and that lake is way down on the Isignaq.”
“Ah-hah,” Kivalina said. “His main camp is on the Katonak, all right. But he have a spike camp there by One-Way Lake for sheep hunting back in them mountains along the Isignaq. Me and Budzie used to assistant-guide for him, and we been up in there a lot with him and his hunters. So I tell Tom, if Jae go up to One-Way Lake and hide out in them hills little bit before sheep season, qavvik will go in there pretty soon to set up his spike camp, and then Jae could shoot him.”
Active studied Kivalina with new appreciation. “Sending Jae after the qavvik was your idea?”
“Not me.” Kivalina squinted in negation. “I’m too much kinnaq for smart idea like that. Budzie tell me we should do it, all right.”
“Another dream?”
Kivalina lifted his eyebrows. “I hear Dad-Dad barking, and there’s my sister again. She say we could catch him at One-Way Lake if we’re there right time. So we send Jae. But few days after Tom comes back from Fairbanks, me and him are waiting to hear if qavvik will turn up missing, then Tom will pick up Jae and take him back to Fairbanks, then Jae will go back to Anchorage and fly home like anybody, and no one will know he’s been at One-Way Lake. But that qavvik show up at Tom’s house in Chukchi. He’s got Jae’s wallet and Tom’s ten thousand dollars he get off of Jae’s body.”
Kivalina’s face stretched out in the terrified grin again. “He say he find it up at One-Way Lake, and he think we would want to have it, since Jae was working for us. So he give us the wallet, but he keep the money. Then he say, whatever happen to somebody working for us, it might happen to us too, and he leave. Arii! That’s when we know he’ll kill us like Budzie and Jae because we try to kill him.”
“Why didn’t you—”
“Dad-Dad and Budzie come back one more time. She say to put water in the gas of his airplane, then he’ll crash and be dead like her and Dad-Dad. I tell her, no, I’m too scare; nothing can kill that qavvik. But she say I got the great weather in me; I should be in rage from what he did, so I put in the water, all right. But that qavvik, he land his plane even with the engine quit and never get hurt, just like I thought he would. Arii, he’ll kill me even if there’s cops around.”
“We won’t let him kill you. We’ll arrest him.”
“Arii! He’ll be in jail with me?”
“No, you won’t be in jail together.”
Kivalina relaxed slightly, his face taking on a distant look. “My sister come here with Dad-Dad while I’m in jail here too. She tell me I should make that qavvik look like a clown, so people will think he’s kinnaq like me.”
“Like a clown?”
Kivalina lifted his eyebrows. “She say I should give him a red smile, all right.”
“Like with lipstick?”
“Must be, ah?” Kivalina grinned. “He would sure look funny, ah?”
Active shook his head, trying to brush away the cobwebs of this latest detour. “Look, why didn’t you talk to the police about this?”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Active realized the answer was obvious: Gage and Kivalina had tried with Cave and struck out. And Kivalina had seen Active arrive in the qavvik’s Cessna. Why would they risk the police again? But Kivalina surprised him.
“We did, all right.”
“What?”
“You know that Jim Silver, burn up in the fire?”
Active lifted his eyebrows. “Yes, I knew him.”
“Pretty good guy for naluaqmiu, ah?”
Active lifted his eyebrows again.
“Somehow he find out about Tom went to see Jae in prison, and he come around asking us about it. At first, Tom won’t tell him nothing. But when that water in the qavvik’s gas never kill him, then we know he will get us if we don’t get him some kind of way. That’s when we decide to talk to Jim Silver, all right, see if we could get him to arrest the qavvik for killing Jae without getting arrest ourself. So Tom tells Jim maybe we could talk at the Rec Center at night, because we always go there to take shower or use the sauna.”
“Why not at Tom’s house? Or Jim’s office?”
“We�
��re afraid it might be too easy to arrest us if we’re at his office. And Tom don’t want him in the house because we still got Dad-Dad there in the freezer and Jae’s wallet and we don’t know if Jim will search the place.”
“Jae’s wallet is in Tom Gage’s house?”
Kivalina squinted. “No, outside. Under that van by the house in a trash bag.”
Active swore silently to himself. They had searched in Gage’s storage van, but not under it. “So you met Chief Silver at the Rec Center?” It wasn’t the first diplomatic conference held on neutral ground.
“Ah-hah. Jim and Tom are talking in the sauna, and I go out for a while to talk to that Cammie girl so they can be by theirself, but when I come back, that qavvik is going out the back door, and there’s this board over the door to the locker room, and I can’t go in. I try pull it off, and pretty soon I hear them guys screaming inside. Then the back door blows open, and fire comes in, and that’s when I run. I can’t help myself; I just run away, and I take that boat up to Cape Goodwin.”
“Why didn’t you—”
But Kivalina was lost in his terror of the qavvik.
“I think maybe I’ll be all right if that qavvik don’t know I got away, but then you come into the village with him, and I decide to run down to Anchorage and live on Four Street. Maybe he’ll never find me there. But then I’m arrest trying to get ticket money to go to Anchorage.”
Kivalina paused, and Active mentally picked his way backward through the story. “But how would the qavvik even know you were in the Rec Center? Was he hanging around outside when you went in?”
“His house is right behind the Rec Center. He can see if somebody comes or goes from back side of town, like Tom and me, but we never thought about it that night we’re seeing Jim Silver. That qavvik, he probably sneak in the Rec Center from the back, figure out how to put a board on the door, and start that fire, all right.”
Active swore under his breath. McAllister had almost certainly been questioned when Dickie Nelson had canvassed the neighbors the day after the fire. Another if-only.
Active left the interrogation room and joined Cave and Long behind the one-way mirror.
“It’s like McAllister never plans more than a step or two ahead,” Active said. “He just acts and then cleans up afterward.”