“You need to go home and get some sleep,” she said.
Oliver stood in the small office, watching through the window. He didn’t look at Meghan when he talked. “I feel like we should do more.”
“The best thing right now is to let her begin the process. I’m glad Reeve had the jacket kept out of sight.”
“She identified it,” Lester said.
“I know. But I saw three people in town wearing the same jacket over the past two days.”
Lester looked at her.
“It’s common, and people are spend-thrifts when they need to be,” she said. “Can you go home, please? I don’t want you getting sick on me. We’ll handle it from here.”
Lester looked through the bay window again. “I heard what happened with Cadet Holmes.”
“That the kid who thought it was okay to touch my ass?” she asked.
“Yup, I heard you dislocated his thumb.”
Meghan scuffed. “I don’t care.”
“Yeah,” he said. Oliver looked at her. There was a hint of a smile. Despite the drama, he had the twinkle of mischief. “I wish I saw that.”
“Go home, get some sleep.”
“What about them?” he asked. “Can we do something for them?”
“I’ll talk to Calvin and Duane. We can see about bringing together the community all at once. We can use the gym. Everyone in town has to know by now, but we’ll face it head-on and grieve together.” Meghan sighed. “Do you know if anyone found Eugene Tuktu?”
“Why?”
“No one saw him since Saturday night. I’ve left voicemail for him. Lester and I went to his house. I know he’s not one of the people outside. I’d like to know where Chrissy’s uncle is when everyone else is here.”
Oliver nodded. She saw the realization morph his face. Meghan had multifaceted ideas about the missing uncle. The darkest idea came with the fact that maybe they had two missing, presumed dead people, and not one.
Oliver moved to the doorway.
“Do me a favor, get some sleep, keep it quiet about Eugene.”
“Is that because of the FBI or your friend?” he asked.
Meghan shook her head. “Neither, when have you ever seen me worried about what other people think about me? I’m concerned because you will see how people who are nice to each other when things are right as rain can turn ugly when they get a whiff of a rumor. I believe in following up with all parts of the investigations. One part might not have anything to do with the other. But right now, we have the niece of a missing man who possibly drowned. That is too close for a coincidence.”
Oliver’s face went through a series of emoting as the thoughts banged around inside his skull. He opened his mouth to speak, but Meghan held up her finger.
“Later, get some sleep now. That’s an order. If these guys need to get back to the airport, I’ll shuttle them. I filed a preliminary Missing Person report on Eugene. I will talk to Reeves and Wilcox about it. Right now, you don’t need to do anything. You’ve done enough. Get some sleep.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
Oliver slipped out of the office unnoticed. Meghan witnessed the hard truth of Christine Tuktu’s disappearance. Meghan also saw something else that others failed to miss. She saw the young man with bright eyes and adult patience. The boy started the whole situation with a few words to the right people.
Cecil Tuktu stood out of the way, passed by, and shuffled around. He wore a winter coat that was too small for his frame. He removed the blue ski cap and gripped it in his fists. The adults around him tended to his mother. Had Meghan not sat back out of the way, watching the reality show through the lens of the window that separated her office from the rest of the department, she would have missed Cecil too. He drew up into himself as they ignored him.
Meghan remembered the bedroom. The space distinctly divided between siblings. They made do with the area. They shared a room, and Meghan wondered if Cecil’s interaction with his sister was a positive influence.
She moved out of the office and slipped behind the grieving adults. Earl consoled Joane. Wilcox, Reeve, and Dana huddled together to discuss their next moves. Meghan went to the coffee station. She grabbed a mug, filled it with hot water, collected a packet of instant hot chocolate, a spoon, and got Cecil’s attention. Meghan ignored Dana, glaring at her. She moved back to the office and motioned for Cecil to follow.
Meghan kept a relatively clear desk. She placed the mug and packet on the counter. The invitation to a cup of cocoa proved too tempting for Cecil. Meghan moved the chair closer to the desk. He sat down tentatively. Cecil shrugged out of the tight winter coat, left it in the chair around him.
He saw the box of pizza on the filing cabinet. Meghan left one in the office while she took the rest out to the worksite.
“It’s cold,” she said. “I can warm it up.”
Cecil shook his head. He tore open the packet and poured the brown powder into the mug. He used the spoon to stir carefully. Meghan tore off a few sheets of paper towels.
She got a slice of pizza out of the box. Cheese pizza filled people without complaint. It was cheap and easy, and Cecil didn’t have to pick off toppings before he took a bite.
Meghan sat in her chair, facing him. She glanced at Wilcox and Reeve watching her. Wilcox nodded lightly and went back to their close conversation.
“How are you doing?”
“I don’t, okay, I guess.”
Meghan didn’t judge Cecil’s indifference to the recent news that his sister presumably drowned. Children were resilient. Depending on his living condition and experience, Cecil had to deal with the information in his own way.
She watched him take small bites, chew with his mouth closed. He wiped his face and sipped at the hot chocolate. At thirteen, he was average height and a little less than the average weight for a child his age. He waited and watched, and as Meghan saw him take in the rest of the office, she realized there was a layer to Cecil that wasn’t open to scrutiny.
“So, you like to read.”
He nodded munching.
“You see your uncle at the Memorial Dance on Saturday night?”
Cecil stopped munching. He looked thoughtful for a second and shook his head.
“Do you spend a lot of time with your uncle?”
The headshake was short and pointed.
“I heard your sister likes to draw,” Meghan said. “I didn’t see pictures on her wall in the bedroom.”
Cecil shrugged.
Meghan removed a business card from the top center draw in the desk. She slid it across the surface. Cecil looked at it but didn’t pick up the card.
“I want you to call me, that’s my private number. It’s the same one your mother has,” she said. “I want to make sure you’re doing okay with all of this. It’s going to get harder before it gets better.”
“I know,” he said.
It wasn’t the kind of answer that had an attitude. Cecil seemed precocious without being derivative, like the know-it-all attitude of teenagers. Cecil was a little underdeveloped physically, but Meghan suspected he occupied himself with science fiction and fantasy novels. He had an active imagination. Speculative fiction helped foster creativity. It allowed children to develop problem-solving skills, and above everything else, it was a healthy way for Cecil to cope with the intense emotions brought on by the sudden death of a family member.
“Did you like to read to Christine?” she asked.
Cecil shook his head. “Chrissy doesn’t like most of the books I like. She likes the little kid stuff. I read all that stuff a long time ago. I don’t want to reread it all.”
Meghan nodded. She picked up on the present-tense of the answer. Cecil hadn’t put it all together; they were dealing with the loss of his sister.
“Hey, Cecil, come on, let’s go.” Earl Melton stood in the doorway to Meghan’s office. It wasn’t an order. Meghan saw Earl held back his grief.
She watched as Cecil struggled to put on the coat. It to
ok a little to fit his arms into the sleeves. He pulled on the ski cap again.
“Thank you for the cocoa and the pizza,” he said.
“You are very welcome, Cecil. I am sorry for your loss.” Meghan waited to see the response.
Cecil blinked at her as if not understanding how to answer. He kept his mouth tight as he turned around. Earl wrapped an arm around Cecil. At thirteen, kids weren’t interested in physical contact with adults. They had a relation, a bond that meant Earl played surrogate, and it looked positive. Meghan didn’t read into anything when it came to their family. They had a lot to work out and a whole town to face. Cecil was on the long road to adulthood, and the death of someone close took away the spirit of being a child.
Chapter Fifteen
Meghan managed to manipulate the conversation among the adults in the room after the Tuktus left. It came to using Duane as her mouthpiece. Reeve tolerated Wilcox inviting the mayor. When it came to conversation about how to talk to the rest of the town, he was a good contact. She’d suggested the gathering, and Duane ran with it.
“We’ll address the news delicately,” Duane said.
At that point, it wasn’t about what Wilcox wanted, or how Reeve reacted to the spread of information. It was up to the family; Meghan wanted Duane to understand the logistics.
“You might want to talk to Earl about arranging a vigil,” she said. “We can manage a donation point here to keep an eye on the funds.”
The idea took Duane by surprise. “Yes, we can do that, in the name of the town to help with coping.”
Meghan held back from saying anything. She liked that someone else noticed the mayor’s position.
“Don’t make this about you,” Wilcox said. “It’s not a platform to run a reelection campaign. This is about everyone. I will follow up with Christine’s school counselor to make sure they have the right plan for talking to her classmates.”
Children in Alaska dealt with the death of friends more often than the rest of the United States. Despite its geography size, Alaska was a small community. With the least people per square mile in the US, most everyone knew each other. Statistically, people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four were among the highest affected by depression and suicide in Alaska. Teenagers had a myriad of problems. Kids in Alaska had the same social issues as the rest of the lower forty-eight states. Then they sometimes had to compound the isolation factors and the cultural impacts.
Meghan didn’t want to think that a ten-year-old child decided to take a walk on the ice alone while the rest of the town had their backs turned. Yet, there was no better time to get away than a holiday event. It was impactful and caught the whole region by surprise. If Christine Tuktu wanted to leave the world with everyone remembering her, there was no better time than a federal holiday honoring people who died. Military personnel aside, many families used the holiday as a reminder of their loved ones.
“You have a minute?” Reeve asked. He didn’t wait for Meghan to respond. Instead, he wandered through the group and went to Meghan’s office.
She closed the door behind her. It wasn’t before she saw Dana standing with Wilcox. She faced Reeve.
He had a large stature. Reeve took up a lot of space in the office without trying. He didn’t sit down and had shed his winter gear when they returned from the shoreline. Meghan refused to allow the man to intimidate her. The uniform worked on civilians. A semiautomatic pistol, taser, bulletproof vest with the AST sergeant badge on the front with the trooper logo across his back, he was a force of one. Reeve was also Meghan’s immediate supervisor.
“I wanted to let you know I’m filing a report the Borough regarding your current behavior. I talked with Special Agent Wilcox and Agent Wyatt already. Effective immediately, I am relieving you of your position as police chief.”
“Fine,” she said.
Meghan moved around the desk. She closed down the laptop. She began collecting the few items around the office that belonged to her.
Reeve appeared genuinely shocked by Meghan’s lack of retort. “Don’t you want to know why?” he asked.
Meghan removed the keyring from her pocket. She found the keys that belonged to the city and removed them from the ring. Meghan tossed them on the desk.
“I imagine you’ll give me some lame ass excuse about how I handled a delicate situation regarding the missing child. Or maybe you’re pissed about my incident with a sexual bully while interviewing a potential witness. Is there anything else?”
Reeve looked a little outside himself for a moment. He quickly recovered. Their conversation happened behind a closed door, but it was pointless. If both people in the station knew about it, the only other person who saw her interaction with the commanding officer was another potential boss. As mayor of the city, Duane was a direct conduit to the people who mattered. Besides the Alaska State Troopers, the North Slope Borough held Meghan’s contract with the city. Her actions reflected on their decision to protect her as their village police chief.
“It has a lot to do with your behavior, Sheppard. You think you’re too good for this job. You think you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, and don’t have to answer for anything. You’re accountable for these people. They look to you as someone who upholds the law and enforces it justly, instead of someone who shoots from the hip and makes up stuff as you go along.”
Meghan shook her head. “That’s funny coming from a guy who had a known extortionist and bootlegger in this exact spot not too long ago.”
“I’ll admit that Haynes wasn’t the right fit for the community. He’s paying his penalties—”
“Penalties?” Meghan said. “This isn’t some sports game, Emanuel. The guy ran a bootlegging business right out of this office. He had people on the payroll that turned the other direction. He was a police chief for twenty-three years. What else did Herbert Haynes get away with in all that time?”
“You’re trying to fill big shoes. But you seem to take a lot of liberties around here and manage to stay inside the lines.”
“I have—excuse me— had a whole town to watch over, plus how many communities to deal with, all the while shorthanded and without a gun. I think I did okay considering the circumstances.”
Meghan pulled her coat from the rack beside the door. She put it on and put her modest collection of personal items inside the backpack.
“You never liked me doing this job,” Meghan said. She pulled open the door. “You hate that I’ve left you out of how many big busts around here? The thing is, Reeve, if you came to me, if you said, ‘hey, can you include me before you start talking to investigators,’ I would have done that. Instead, I have to hear from others, like Detective Anderson, that you felt dejected because I didn’t follow the proper chain of command.
“I do my job very well. I keep a whole community together, and I’m not at all complaining about what I don’t have because I have the right people working with me. What’s going to happen with Lester and Oliver?”
“They’re fine. They listen to orders. It’s you that has the problem,” Reeve said. “Cadet Holmes is looking to file criminal assault charges against you. Don’t go too far in case we need to find you.”
It was the training kicking in, and Meghan didn’t want to fall into that trap. Police officer training meant they had to use their negotiation skills to make arrests. It was counterintuitive to dealing with suspects. Meghan’s training with the FBI meant she had to listen first, and then react. Cops wanted to arrest people. It was what made them cops.
“Why not take a minute,” Reeve said. He’d lost one cadet to Meghan in the heat of a debate. The man was ill-prepared and mouthy. Reeve had a gun and set his feet firm on dismissing Meghan.
“I’m leaving. I’ll get out of Alaska as soon as I can.” She looked at Duane. “You make sure you take care of that family.” Meghan looked at Dana. She wanted to say something. She wanted to start somewhere. The trouble with Dana was that Meghan had so much to tell her, it was impossibl
e to find a place to start. Instead, Meghan shook her head at her former friend.
She managed to close the front door without slamming it. With the backpack slung over her shoulder, Meghan ignored the rest of the people milling around outside. She slipped by Calvin as he tried to talk to her. He watched her leave, and Meghan hoped the man didn’t see the tears that froze on her cheek as she tried to hide her face from the world.
Chapter Sixteen
Meghan wasn’t someone to wallow in self-defeat for too long. It wasn’t in her nature. When she bounced back from a close quarter gunshot wound to the chest, her trauma surgeon suggested Meghan’s body refused to give up on life. The surgeon suggested Meghan had a lot left to do on earth before she left, and it didn’t matter how many times her heart stopped during the procedure. Getting away from the department put her life into perspective. She took a few shortcuts; it was true. Meghan never gave up on her oath. She believed in the model. She believed in integrity. Unfortunately, sometimes people had more seniority than her, and no matter what she did in life, she still had to take orders from a supervisor.
Meghan wondered if missing the vigil for Christine was a selfish move, or the right one considering the whole town probably knew already that Trooper Sergeant Reeve relieved her of duties as Police Chief. Meghan saw he had the trooper IT department deactivate her access to the state email and access to the criminal database. She managed to upload Vincent Atkinson’s interview following her incident with Cadet Holmes. She had a copy of the audio transcript on her laptop, which she promptly deleted.
By Wednesday, the realization that life changed hit Meghan like a bucket of icy water in the face. She had packed Dana’s luggage and left it on the porch. It disappeared between Tuesday and Wednesday, and Meghan didn’t care if someone stole it. Dana carried her passport and federal credentials with her everywhere.
For the first time since Meghan lived in town, she drew the curtains throughout the house. Meghan ignored the phone calls from anyone associated with the City of Kinguyakkii. She deleted text messages from the same group of people without taking the time to respond or read the texts.
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