by Ed Ifkovic
A heartbeat.
Finally Clint said, “Chief, I guess you took in the lad?”
Chief Rawlins looked ready to leave, fidgeting with a shirtsleeve cuff. He ignored Clint. “I just wanted to give you information about your room, Miss Ferber, so you won’t think there’s a murderer afoot, randomly…”
I interrupted him. “Sir, I assure you I don’t think anyone was aiming for me. There are a half-dozen people who’d love to slaughter me, but all of them live in Manhattan, and at least one of them shares my blood. But not one of them, I assure you, has the courage to do the deed.”
“I only meant…” He faltered. “I mean, someone was in your room.”
“Yes. Waiting for Sonia. Someone who planned to kill her. Premeditated. Orchestrated. Someone who knew I was out for the evening. Someone who knew Sonia planned to meet me that night at nine. Someone who changed the time. A well-oiled scheme, carefully executed. Someone who chose Noah. The only question I have—actually I have more than one, but one pressing me at the moment—is why choose that time, why choose my room? There is a message being sent to me, I’m afraid.” I paused. “Someone was afraid that she was going to tell me something.”
“What?” asked Clint.
“The name of Jack and Sam’s murderer. She had to be stopped from telling me.”
Officer Rawlins looked uncomfortable. He tapped the pack of cigarettes, then looked to the doorway. He didn’t want this conversation.
I looked at Chief Rawlins, my tone demanding. “But tell me, did you talk to Noah West?”
He clicked his tongue. “He wasn’t home last night, as you know.” A thin sliver of a smile as he turned to Clint. “We saw you slinking away, sir.” Clint saluted him. “But this morning we found him at his home, rousing him from his bed, and took him in for questioning. Of course, he denies it all, and that’s where it stands. Told him to stay put, we’d be getting back to him.”
“You didn’t arrest him?”
He deliberated. “No.” He clicked his tongue. “Don’t want to be—hasty. These are well-known folks.”
“Sensible of you, sir. It would be a miscarriage of justice.”
“That remains to be seen.” He stood up. “This investigation is just beginning.”
I reached out and touched his sleeve. “But your heart is set on arresting Noah West. Based on that witness’s description.” I rushed to add, “That very convenient description. Too pat, it seems to me. In your heart…”
“Not my heart, ma’am,” he broke in. “But my instincts say he’s dirty.”
Clint and I walked to Noah West’s office in Indian Village where we found him sitting alone in his anteroom, his swivel chair pulled up to a side window. He was simply sitting there, idle, staring out the window into an alleyway. He didn’t face us when we entered, though I detected a slight turn of his head, the flicker of a response.
“Noah.”
He didn’t move.
Clint walked up to him and put his hand on Noah’s shoulder, letting his fingers linger there, a fatherly gesture. Noah turned slightly, looked up. “I’m all right.” A hint of a smile, but he didn’t look happy.
“I don’t think you are,” I told him.
He started to say something, but his voice cracked as he attempted to get control of his emotions. An actual smile, all those brilliant white teeth. “We’re supposed to be stoic people, we Dené.”
He swiveled the chair around, facing us, his eyes moist, and he motioned for us to sit.
“You don’t look all right to me,” Clint said.
“What did the police say?” I asked. “Chief Rawlins.”
Noah closed his eyes for a moment. “They wake me at six this morning, pounding on my door, so loud that even Maxine Caln, next door, ninety if a day, comes running out in her nightgown and mismatched mukluks on her feet. And the first thing I learn is that Sonia is dead.” He gulped, dipped his head. “I still cannot believe that. I never will.”
“You hadn’t heard about it?”
“How could I? I’d been playing cards with Tommy Hatch and his buddies, outside of town, a bunch of old school buddies from Fort Yukon and Arctic Village. We all got to talking, the way we always do. It got late, past three or so, so Tommy dropped me off in his pickup, sputtering all the way in the cold, and I topple into bed. I’m woken up a couple hours later with the awful news. I tell you—I couldn’t breathe for a second. I stood there in the open doorway, half-dressed, groggy, the icy air flowing in, and I’m thinking that Sonia is dead. Is that what they’re telling me? What are you saying to me? It just didn’t come together for me.” His lips trembled.
“I’m so sorry, Noah,” I said.
His voice was scratchy. “Stupidly, I thought, God, how kind the police are. Everybody in Fairbanks knows Sonia and I are lovers, but how sweet, really.” His eyes got moist. “Like notifying the next of kin. I felt touched. They didn’t want me to hear it in the street. That’s what I thought. But then, in seconds, I felt betrayed—stunned. ‘You have to come with us,’ Chief Rawlins said. And I’m thinking: What? To identify the body? What about Hank and Irina? All the odd, wrong things kept flying through my brain. I’m shaking from the cold. I’m groggy. I’m reeling from the news. And then I realize that I’m a suspect—this right after I realize Sonia has been murdered. Murdered, for God’s sake. Jack—and Sam. Sonia fought me about Sam but…Sam. Murdered.” He stopped, turned away, choked up. “They think I murdered Sonia.” Said, the line seemed preposterous. “Murdered,” he whispered. “That just seems… impossible.”
“They took you to the station?”
“Yes.” He smiled thinly. “Thankfully not in handcuffs. I kept thinking of Jack Webb and Dragnet on TV. But everyone was out in the street, Indians going off to their jobs in the restaurants, the garages, the warehouses, watching me get into the backseat of the squad car. The street just stopped, like a picture snapped, frozen in time. It was humiliating.”
“But they didn’t keep you.”
His eyes locked with mine. “They kept after me. For the longest time. The grilling. Over and over the same questions, and I gave the same answers. The only answers I have, but not the ones they want. They gave me coffee so cold I had to spit it out. Bitter. And I’m thinking—they did this on purpose. Maybe. But Chief Rawlins…I know him. A decent guy in the past. Always. And I kept thinking that I had to get to Hank and Irina. I needed to be there with them. To grieve with them. With family. With Paul.” A note of utter bitterness entered his voice now. “That’s a laugh, really. That’s when Chief Rawlins told me about the witness. The evidence—my famous flaming red parka with the colorful Athabascan trim, my cane, my limp. The whole picture. And I’m thinking—I’m not the only man in Fairbanks who limps, who uses a cane. Even such solid oak ones. There are a dozen souls around town like me—victims of frostbite, mining accidents, wilderness ordeals, plane crashes, even war injuries like mine. Lots of them. But you know what he said? ‘You’re the only Indian we know like that.’” He laughed. “Poster boy, again. War hero from Fort Yukon. Gwich’in lad now transformed into post-office mug shot.”
“It’s just questioning,” Clint said.
His voice rose, hot. “It’s accusation.”
“But they let you go,” I stressed.
“For now. What evidence do they have? An eyewitness, I suppose, who never saw the face. Rawlins acknowledged that—skimpy proof, no? He’s not stupid.”
“You been set up.” From Clint.
Noah stood up. “I need coffee, some food. Something. I haven’t eaten.”
We walked a block over to Mimi’s. At midday, inside the dim room, the few tables were filled with Indians chattering away or eating bowls of beaver stew or plates of caribou and onions—I just assumed that because the chalkboard listed those as specials of the day.
Unhappy with the specials of the day�
�beaver?—I had vegetable soup while Noah and Clint chose the caribou. But I noted something else as we ordered. Noah, sitting back, seemed to relax, settling in, some of the bitterness dissipating, the tight, angry lines around his eyes vanishing, and in the shadowy light he looked boyish again. We didn’t speak for a while, and I decided I would follow his lead. His silences, I sensed, were important to him. Clint, too, seemed to understand this, watching the young man with a gritty, fatherly possessiveness, seemingly anxious to talk but holding back. Noah gulped mugs of steaming black coffee, one after the other. He chain-smoked his Camels. He picked at his food. He relaxed.
He pointed his cigarette at both of us. “It was good to see the two of you walking into my office.”
I said loudly, “I know you, Noah. I know what you are capable of…and, obviously, what you would never do.”
“But you scarcely know me,” he insisted.
I shook my head. “No matter. I know you.”
Noah surprised me, putting his cigarette in an ashtray and reaching over and touching my wrist. His touch was so electric that I jumped. His smooth, warm palm held my hand, and my heart beat. Not good, I told myself. Not good, this. A fluttering of the heart. Nature’s madness, exaggerated. An old woman, trembling.
For a second he closed his eyes. “You know what really got to me at the station, what really stunned me, was when they told me about Hank. What he said.”
I looked at Clint. “Just what did Chief Rawlins say?”
Noah sighed. “You know, I understand his grief, his anger. But I guess, at least from the chief’s summary, that Hank immediately believed the worst of me, wanted me arrested then and there.” Noah breathed in, the deep hurt back in his voice. “I’ve known him since I was a small boy in Fort Yukon. He’s known me. He’s been like a father to me. My own father died when I was seven. This is my family—Irina, Paul, Sonia. They welcomed me into their lives, their world. I could have been blood kin—the way I was treated. I was never made to feel like a poor Indian boy, some charity case shuffled off to school by do-gooders. Every step of the way—each achievement in school—they applauded me, swelled with pride. God, they sent me to prep school. When I dated Sonia, they were supportive, though that surprised them.” He smiled. “And me, too, frankly. But Hank said I was the best thing for her. They worried about her…such a free spirit, a little wild.” He spoke loudly. “She needed me…I…I gave her balance, I…”
Clint spoke up, his words rushed. “Hank is just feeling his hurt, Noah.”
“No,” Noah spoke harshly. “I can never look at him the same ever again.”
Clint grunted, “That’s a little harsh, Noah.” He sighed. “The damn red parka.”
“Tell me about your red parka, Noah.”
A wistful smile. “Old Maxine next door made me that embroidery and beading that she herself sewed onto my red parka—a bunch of good-luck symbols, bits of wolf fur. How ironic that it identifies me as Sonia’s murderer. Sitting in the back of that squad car made me feel…real Indian. I’m not a Petrievich, of course—never was. Now I’m the smart young Indian allowed to sit at the table who slaughtered the beautiful daughter.”
“No,” I said, my voice too loud.
Clint, angry. “Hank’s a good man.”
“Who isn’t so good all of a sudden. Maybe he never realized that he saw me as other.” He tapped the table nervously. His eyes scanned the crowded room. “I can’t get over the bitterness growing in me, and don’t like it.” He banged his fist on the table. “You know, I loved Sonia—I still do. It came out of nowhere, that love, and so it still sits inside me, like a part of me I was born with. And I wouldn’t touch her. The Dené believe our spirits are one, you know. People, animals, trees. Interconnected. Like the caribou we hunt. There’s a respect there. We shoot them but we thank the beast for serving us, for sustaining us. It’s part of a grand scheme of life, you know. So I value that idea—it makes me think of my grandfather back at home, a man who taught me to respect life. Not just Qwich’in life, but all life. And,” he sucked in his breath, “we certainly don’t waste a loved one’s life by taking that life away.” He sipped coffee. “End of lecture.”
Clint, quietly, “You ain’t no murderer, Noah.”
He smiled. “No, I’m not.”
I tried to be logical. “You have to answer the chief, point by point. Like the business with the cane. I notice you don’t use one today. And I noticed you didn’t use one the other day. Last summer when I was here, yes.”
He nodded. “I decided to stop using the cane months ago. I can walk, haltingly, it’s true, but I wanted to rely on my own body. Yes, there are days when the pain is back, so I drag out the cane. But I try not to. I’m not toppling over.”
“Someone purposely planted it in the movie house alley. It was easy to find.”
“It’s not mine. You know, I have two or three in my cabin. Ironically, all given me at Walter Reed where the doctors patched me up.”
“There’s no way of identifying it…” Clint began.
“And,” Noah continued, “Chief Rawlins talked about me being at the Nordale around seven, which of course I was. Most nights I stop in to say hello to folks.” He nodded at Clint. “Like you, Clint. I check in. Lots of people know that. Everyone saw me talking—‘animatedly,’ according to Chief Rawlins—with folks there.”
“You talked with Paul the night she died,” I said.
“I was leaving, and we bumped into each other outside. Quick chat, friendly. That was it.”
I sat back, nodding. “Noah, you know someone framed you—for a reason.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“This is hard to believe. Someone carefully orchestrated that murder and planned it so that you’d be suspected. You, in particular. That killer probably waited until there was someone else in the hallway, heard a door opening, heard movement, someone wanting to be spotted—otherwise why leave then? In any other scenario the killer would hope no one would spot him.” I raised my voice. “You—they wanted it to be you.”
“But why?” Clint asked.
“Because Noah is an easy target,” I insisted. “Maybe your public spat with Sonia in the lounge the other day. Talked about. Gossiped. You know how Fairbanks is. A small world.”
“The red parka,” Noah added.
“Which you’re not wearing, I notice.”
“They took it from my home this morning.”
“Of course,” I said. “Evidence.”
“Well, they are wrong about me,” Noah said. He stood up. “I need to get back. Harlin Spence got drunk again last night and clobbered his wife. I gotta get him out of jail and back to work.”
Noah dropped a few silver dollars on the table, held out his arm for me to grasp, and we moved away from the table.
But we stopped, stunned. The rhythm of the room shifted. The dark space, with a half-dozen tables occupied, had seemed quiet, subdued, as we ate our lunch. A tinny song on the jukebox, a country-western ditty, a scratchy record, low volume. Nobody paid attention to the three of us. But now as Noah stood, the room suddenly came alive, like a movie frame unfrozen. As we moved slowly between the scattered tables, something was set in motion. A few men stood, young and old; a married couple, huddled together; even an old woman, toothless and shaking; some garage-mechanic boys, late teens, in dungarees; a cook in a filthy apron stepping out of the kitchen. They stood, these Indians, and as Noah walked by they tapped him on the shoulder, they patted his back, they mumbled in his ear. They nodded from the kitchen doorway, inclining their bodies toward him, acknowledging. I heard the strange Qwich’in dialect, a Babel of soft-spoken and overlapped words, and I realized that they were showing, quietly and gracefully and certainly, a genuine regard and heartfelt support for the beleaguered young Athabascan.
Outside, in the cold, a red-faced Noah said to us, “Fairbanks is a small town. Eve
ryone knows what has happened. The Dené”—he pointed back to the restaurant but also to the street where teenage boys leaned on pickups, cigarettes bobbing from sullen mouths—“they are telling me something.”
I glanced at faces passing by. Everyone obviously knew what had happened to Noah—word of mouth about the murder of Sonia, his early-morning detainment, his questioning at the station. Everyone knew. And everyone wanted to nod at him, to mumble swallowed words, to communicate something. These were folks who understood that he was in danger, that he was one of their own, and a good, good man—not a rowdy troublemaking drunk, perhaps, or a wife beater, or a petty thief. This was Noah West, and he had been wrongly accused.
Watching, I was overwhelmingly touched. Tears came to my eyes.
But as we started back to his office, we also passed white folks, Fairbanks’ other citizens, and everyone watched him closely, or made believe they were not watching him at all. No one touched his shoulders, tapped his arm, hummed in his ear.
Until, that is, we encountered Preston Strange and Jeremy Nunne leaving Stoffer’s Bakery, Jeremy swinging a bag of pastries and munching on an enormous sugar doughnut. We almost collided, all of us, and Jeremy seemed particularly startled. We stood there, no one speaking in the awful moment.
Noah stopped walking. “Preston. Jeremy.”
Jeremy seemed at a loss for words. But not so Preston. He sucked in his breath, looked around, narrowed his eyes, his nostrils flaring. He strode up to Noah and got close to his face. “I warned Sonia about you.”
Jeremy reached out, touched his sleeve. “Preston, for God’s sake. Do we need this? In public?”
“I don’t care,” Preston bellowed. “He should be hauled off to jail.”
Noah’s face reddened. He puffed out his cheeks. In a fierce, steely voice, he said, “Always the little brat, Preston.”
His words startled Preston, who took a step forward. “Killer.”
Noah arched his neck, glared into his face. “Maybe you’re the killer.”