“Split your teams into four groups. Start them at each end of the city and work their way back here. You’ll find more people will join in the search as they see the agents.
“If we don’t locate Christine in the first sweep, put a team in the Chena Hotel and another in Mountain Manor. Gerald Worsley is the hotel manager. He will provide you with information for anyone registered from outside Alaska. You may not get names without a warrant for guests. But if Gerald feels it is good publicity for the hotel, he will accommodate you.
“Contact the local radio station. Have someone address the listeners. DJs, Dave and Wayne, have PSA messages broadcast to all listeners. If you write up a statement, we might get more people interested.
“Take advantage of the local reporter, Calvin Everett. He dedicated a full night to posting on the news media page about Christine. He knows everyone. Everyone reads his online paper and follows his social media posts. If it looks like you’re including the press instead of hiding things, people will respond favorably.
“All we have now is a missing girl and no suspects. Any number of people saw her at the school gym last night. My lieutenant and I are following up on any promising leads we’ve received since the alert went out. You don’t need us underfoot. Please use my sergeant, Oliver Henry, as your point man. He is eager to find the girl as much as the rest of us. Oliver knows everything and everyone.” Meghan’s brain wound down, and she had a few more ideas. With Wilcox still listening without interrupting, she continued.
“You might want to move your operations to the hotel if this goes longer than today. They have conference rooms available. I know the hotel is overbooked, but Gerald has several cots available and can set up everyone in one of the first-floor rooms. It will be more comfortable there than anywhere else in town.”
The look on Wilcox’s face was impossible for Meghan to read. He was a man of the bureau and understood ‘poker face’ better than most. He didn’t emote. Details inside Wilcox’s head didn’t register on his face.
“Thank you for your time, Chief Sheppard.”
Wilcox left Meghan’s office. She dropped into the chair behind the desk. Meghan ignored the stink-eye she got from Dana from the other side of the situation room. Meghan heard Wilcox begin addressing the troopers and cadets.
“We’re going to use the help of anyone willing to lend a hand. Let’s get a list of volunteers. Start with the people outside right now. Someone get in touch with Duane Warren. He’s the mayor. We need people to know this is a community effort, and we’re not here to take over. Get someone to contact the radio station and the local reporter. I believe his name is Calvin Everett…
Meghan looked through the latest early morning social media posts. She listened to Wilcox’s orders. It included dividing the groups into four teams for the door to door search for Christine. It included the additional searches for the hotel and apartment complex. Meghan didn’t put too much into what Wilcox told everyone, even if it sounded like her plan. He was a seasoned and experienced supervisor, and common sense put everything out in the open. The game wasn’t new, and most law enforcement officers knew how to play it.
Chapter Ten
Meghan and Lester left the office shortly after noon. She rode on the back of Lester’s four-wheeler. The bright clear day started at 29°F with weather updates anticipating the upper 40s before sunset.
Morning brought Joane the reality check about Christine. Panic set in, and Meghan did her best through text messaging to ease the mother’s tension if such a thing happened.
Meghan had constant contact with Joane through texting on her private smartphone. Under normal circumstances, Meghan didn’t give out her personal number. She was a parent. A missing child meant more than privacy at that point. Meghan knew Joane having direct contact with the police chief kept her out from underfoot, and in one place. Meghan wanted Joane, Cecil, and Earl to stay at the apartment.
Meghan gripped the rear rack on the four-wheeler. She kept her face behind Lester’s shoulders to keep the wind from biting her cheeks. The heavily treaded tires thrummed under Meghan as she felt dread creeping into her belly. She missed her oversized parka and had to contend with the winter gear and lots of layers. At least, she had her bunny boots. The cold made Meghan anxious because a ten-year-old girl in the cold wasn’t an image she wanted to see.
Lester drove along Shore Avenue north and turned right on Rurik Way. He pulled up to a wide rectangular house with plywood exterior paneling. It needed a paint job, but the front porch had refurbishing with replacement steps leading up to the landing in front of the door. Meghan noticed the divots where an ATV often parked in front of the house. She looked around to the neighbors’ houses. The nearest residence had a view of the left corner of the house where Lester parked.
“Where are we?” Meghan asked.
“This is where Eugene Tuktu lives,” Lester said. He regarded the new steps before making his way up to the door.
Meghan kicked at the hole in the frozen mud. “I don’t think he’s home.”
Lester pounded on the door. Meghan stared at the four evenly spaced holes where Eugene managed to park every day. He wasn’t home. Lester had an insight that Meghan caught up when she put it together. She felt the jolt of realization, putting two random things together to make a parallel. Lester got ahead of her.
She ran up the three steps.
“Do you know if anyone saw him at the gym last night?” she asked.
Meghan banged on the door with her fist.
“No one I know who was there saw him. Silva didn’t see him or Joane at the school last night.” Silva Graves, Lester’s wife, sometimes worked dispatch for the police department when they were short-handed. “I left a voicemail on his phone last night and again this morning. He’s still out of range or something.” It was easier to drop the assumption than make speculations.
“So, we’ve got a missing girl and her uncle missing.” There was a moment when Meghan felt a little better about the situation. “Is there a chance he took her to Selawick or somewhere for the weekend?”
“Eugene does a lot of hunting, but if he didn’t check with Joane about taking Christine with him, I think wherever he now wasn’t broadcast to the rest of the family.”
“So, he lived here with Clifford?”
Meghan cupped her hands and stared through the front window standing on the tiny porch. Her boot kicked the coffee can overflowing with cigarette butts. She saw a disheveled front room with the large flat screen television taking up the lower half of the living room window.
The house had the same generic, prefabricated layout as the other houses around town.
“This is a three-bedroom house, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It looks like it,” Lester said. “I think Eugene probably built it with Clifford. That was before Alaskalytical Construction closed.”
Meghan winced at the topic. “Clifford worked for them too?”
Lester nodded. He stepped off the porch and scanned the roadway. Nine houses lined the street. To the left was the split where buildings sat on either side of Rurik Way facing Shore Avenue. Beyond the frontage road and the embankment, the Kinguyakkii Bay had chunks and large flat slabs of fast-flowing ice breaks near shore. Several meters from the ice blocks, the rest of the waterway looked clear. Winter ice made water travel deceptive. People using flatboat boats fared better than the round bottom or displaced hulls. Ice crept underwater a few inches or a few feet before it bobbed to the surface and punched holes in boats.
Meghan turned the doorknob, and the front door swung open. It was warmer in the house, but not stifling hot. It meant Eugene had a fixed budget, and heating oil wasn’t cheap.
“Eugene Tuktu, city police,” Meghan called.
It was a single-level house on stilts like the majority of the residences and businesses. She saw down the hallway to the kitchen in the back of the house. To the right, the open living room with another entry to the kitchen from the right side. The
bathroom parked between the front door and the hallway, with two of the three bedrooms to the left. One on the right of the hall before the wet wall separated the kitchen and bathroom.
She saw some dirty clothes on the worn-out chair in the living room. She saw a collection of footwear in the hallway. The boots were all adult size, all men, as far as Meghan noticed. She closed the door and sat on the porch, facing Lester leaning against the Polaris. Across the city, volunteers, the FBI, and state troopers went door to door searching for the missing child. The search didn’t include Meghan. She felt like an outcast. Unlike Lester, who happily got out of the duty listening to people who all thought their ideas were better than anyone else.
“Do you think I did everything I should?” Meghan asked. She closed the door again.
“Do you feel like you should do more?”
“Listen, Dr. Graves, if I wanted a psychologist, I’d hang out with Oliver. I’m asking you as my friend. Look at this situation and tell me if we’re doing everything right.” She sat on the steps.
Meghan pulled off her ski cap and squinted in the sunlight. They had a few more hours before the sun slipped below the mountains on the other side of Kinguyakkii Sound. Snow clung to areas around the houses that saw mostly shadows throughout the day. The rest of the ground had that after winter, ugly look, made up of dead grass and black mud.
“I think your friend caused a lot of problems for us to do a proper investigation. We’re playing catch up, and if something happened to Christine because of someone else, we’re way behind now.”
“I know I have no excuse for her. She sees me as a failure. She and I go way back, and now that she’s here, I wish she’d go way back to New York. I am sorry for her taking over like she did.”
“We can use all the help we can get. You remember it isn’t about how many chiefs we have. It’s about finding a child.”
Meghan looked up at the porch roof and then took in the rest of the portico. Eugene had reinforced the columns with new beams. New joists under the porch flooring stood on the newer elevated concrete footing with level piers. It was a professional job with the right materials, on an adequate house.
“Why don’t Joane and Earl live here with the kids?” Meghan asked.
“Maybe she doesn’t get along with Eugene.”
“Maybe,” Meghan said.
Living with the brother of a dead husband might get a little sticky. Then again, they lived in a cramped apartment with two kids. If she knew anything about family in Alaska, they usually stuck together through the worst of times. Finances were incredibly tight for many people in rural Alaskan communities.
She watched as a group of volunteers and one FBI cadet walked up the street with them. Meghan made eye contact with the cadet. He had a look of disappointment on his face but held back saying anything to her. Meghan didn’t want to think he saw her as lazy. She sat on a random porch of a vacant house.
“You have a radio?” she asked.
The cadet gave away the location of the radio with a shift of his right hand. He closed the distance between them. Meghan stood and eyed the eight villagers who walked with the cadet. It was a group of elders and two adolescents. She recognized four of them.
“Special Agent in Charge Wilcox, this is Chief Sheppard.”
“Go head, Sheppard.”
“Call my cell, please.”
“10-4,” Wilcox’s voice had a faraway and authoritative edge.
“Thank you,” she said. Meghan handed the two-way radio back to the cadet. She watched the civilians mumbling to each other behind them. As Meghan pulled the smartphone from the inner coat pocket, it buzzed.
The cadet moved off with the rest of the volunteers.
“You might want to put Eugene Tuktu as a person of interest.”
“We attempted contact with Mr. Tuktu this morning about forty minutes ago.”
“Eugene’s not at his residence. His four-wheeler isn’t here. He may be out hunting. Might want to find out if anyone saw Eugene at the gym last night,” she said. Meghan considered her capacity in the investigation. Dana minimized her authority. Telling the senior agent in charge of how to handle his business wasn’t a wise way to keep her badge when the case closed.
“Will do, Chief, thank you.”
“We’re going to run over to Tent City and see if anyone saw Eugene. A lot of the hunters from the outlining communities stay there when the hotel is overbooked.”
“Is that location marked on the survey maps we used?”
“No, but it’s northeast of town. You take the road as far as it goes. You’ll see two oil drums mark the trailhead that leads to the inlet.”
“Thank you again, Chief Sheppard.”
“We’ll take a run along Cape Blossom Road,” Meghan said. “It’s the nature—”
“That’s fine, Chief. Keep me posted.” Wilcox ended the call.
Meghan felt a pang of guilt or embarrassment. It was the kind of feeling she got as a child when adults scolded her for something trivial. Wilcox had multi-facets of a job with several people looking to him. She was out of the loop.
Meghan looked at the house again as Lester climbed on the four-wheeler and started it.
“Can you call the title companies on Tuesday to find out who owns the house,” Meghan said.
“Doesn’t Eugene own it?” Lester said over the chugging engine.
“The bank doesn’t care as long as the mortgage gets paid.”
“You think the place belongs to Joane and Clifford?” Lester looked doubtful.
“I am curious, that’s all.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s head out to Cape Blossom. We can take the bypass on the other side of the airport and come up along the shore.”
“I wasn’t avoiding that,” Meghan said. She knew it was the right decision. “We have to do that.”
Meghan climbed on the back of the Polaris. Lester revved the machine and pulled away from the pale house on Rurik Way.
The last thing Meghan wanted to think was something awful happened to Christine. So far, over the previous twelve hours, they had a girl who went missing. Sometimes to get a little attention, kids will act out, hide, ‘cry wolf.’ The longer it went on, the more it looked like their worries became legitimate.
Heading to the coastline to check the ice blocks that hampered the shoreline seemed like the first place to look for some people. Meghan wanted to keep an optimistic approach. She was a realist. If Christine Tuktu decided to hop on the ice, then racing along the shoreline was the act of a desperate person who thought the worst.
Kids in the north faced the same problems as anyone else in the world. The opportunity came once a year when winter lost is clutches on the land and water. Jumping on pans of freed ice presented too tempting a curiosity for many of the younger residents of the city. Meghan and her officers warned children throughout the weeks’ long break up the season when open water wasn’t an option immediately, and ice roads turned risky. The sheets of floating ice weren’t stable. They were impossible to predict and never a good idea to play on. The trouble with teenagers and adolescents, the more someone said ‘no,’ the more they wanted to do it.
Since Meghan’s tenure as police chief, they had a few close calls, one set of teens who needed rescuing when their ice panning—jumping on ice floes—took them too far away from shore to get back without taking a dip. They returned to shore safely, and Meghan had their parents billed for the cost of boat fuel for the rescue. The problem with falling in icy water wasn’t necessarily hypothermia as much as getting crushed or trapped under the ice sheets. It was a popular and dangerous sport. The older people got, the more they realized how foolish they were as kids. Sometimes it was about a reality check and the death of a child that woke up a community to traditionalism that needed a modern approach. Meghan knew kids did dangerous things sometimes and survived to look back and reflect on the near-death fun they had once they grew to adulthood. Sometimes it was to lament the few youngsters who ne
ver grew up.
Chapter Eleven
The call came from Oliver while they were halfway along the elevated tundra trail way. It was an expansive project road set up by the state and city for the community to have a way to experience the tundra and wildlife outside town. Cape Blossom Road started as a contractor project years before Meghan arrived. She appreciated the scenic view and isolation occasionally. Mostly she drove it at night or during the summer when school let out and kids had nothing to do around town. The nature trail became a place to get away from adults. It was a place for parties, and sometimes, when people thought they got away with smuggling booze into the neighborhood.
That Sunday afternoon it was sunny and cold, a little windy away from town. Lester drove at a steady speed, looping back toward the airport.
“Hey Chief,” Oliver said. Meghan tapped Lester’s shoulder for him to slow to a stop. Oliver sounded far away and tired. “You need to get to the south side of town. “The Air Force patrol spotted something on the ice.”
It was enough for the cold air that surrounded Meghan to crawl inside her. She felt her blood run cold. It was the worst feeling next to the reality that what they fear and never expressed openly finally happened.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m with Duane and Ulva.”
“Do they know yet?”
“Yep,” he said.
“Okay. Do your best to keep anyone who isn’t law enforcement away from the area. We’re about twenty-five minutes from there. We’ll take the east road to the fence and ride down. How far out is it?” Meghan avoided personifying whatever the military police saw. She kept it vague because it gave her a little hope.
“I got all this third-party,” Oliver said. “I think it’s around the hump heading southward along the coastline. You know how the ice gets away from shore and drifts into the Sound? It’s probably along the peninsula arm.”
“Okay, thanks Oliver. Stay with the mayor. Have Duane help keep people back. The last thing anyone needs this weekend is more bad news.”
Lost in the Wild Page 6