Village of the Ghost Bears (22 page)

“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 shook 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.”

“And does a pretty good job of it,” Long said.

“According to Pingo,” Cave said.

“You still think McAllister wasn’t involved?” Active asked.

Cave snorted. “I’ve been down the road with Pingo before. What he says makes sense as long as you don’t think about it. Then it falls apart. So I don’t know what to think, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Either way, you won’t get McAllister. He may not be all that smart, but he’s cunning. He’s cornered, he thinks of something.”

Active studied Kivalina, who was pacing the interrogation room again, and thought of how casually McAllister had pulled off ten homicides if Pingo was right. Budzie Kivalina, Jae Hyo Lee, and eight victims at the Rec Center. “Let’s go get him,” he said.

“McAllister?” Long said.

“You really believe that loon?” Cave asked.

Active nodded.

“Pick him up where?” Long said. “At his camp?”

Active nodded again. “If need be. If he’s in Chukchi, Carnaby can have him brought in.”

“But your only witness is a delusional half-wit who just confessed to cooking up two homicide attempts at the instigation of his dead sister,” Cave said. He turned and looked at Kivalina through the mirror. “One of which was a murder for hire. Not to mention the fact that he admits to being in the Rec Center the night of the fire and then running up to Cape Goodwin in a stolen boat.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” Active said. “You going to help or not?”

Cave stared at Kivalina and then at Active, who was drumming his fingers on the sill under the mirror. “Seriously. Other than the word of a nutcase, what have you got?”

Active ticked it off on his fingers: “A dog’s head and a wallet back at Gage’s place, plus the camping gear still in your evidence room, right?”

Cave shook his head thoughtfully. “Yeah, but your case against McAllister is like my Driftwood case. A lot of circumstantial evidence he can explain away, backed up by the sworn testimony of a
kinnaq
—is that what the Eskimos call him?”

Active waited, letting the silence build.

“I don’t know,” Cave said.

“Think long, think wrong, sergeant.”

Cave drew in a ragged breath. “No, I’m out. I think your guy is sitting right in there.” He pointed through the glass at Pingo Kivalina.

Active shrugged. “It’s your call.” He turned to Long. “Alan, let’s get on the phone to Carnaby. We need an arrest warrant for McAllister and a search warrant for his home and his camp on the Katonak. And we’ll need to get Dad-Dad’s head and Jae Hyo Lee’s wallet from Gage’s place. That covers it, right? I’m not missing anything?” He stopped when he noticed the look on Long’s face. “What?”