Village of the Ghost Bears (5 page)

Cowboy gave him a what-can-I-do? shrug. “One more day won’t hurt.”

“I don’t know,” Active said. “What about somebody else? Didn’t you say there were a couple guys that can get in there?”

“Usually there is, but right now there’s only me.”

“Why’s that?”

“You know Dood McAllister?”

The name sounded familiar. He must have heard it around town—maybe on the Mukluk Messenger service on KCHK. Sooner or later, everybody’s name appeared in one of Kay-Chuck’s Mukluk messages, anything from a birthday wish, to an arrival or departure time for a snowmachine trip between villages, to a request to pick up or send something at the airport, to a funeral or birth announcement. But Active couldn’t recall ever having met the man. He shook his head.

“He flies for us sometimes when he’s between clients in his guiding operation. Unfortunately, right now his Super Cub’s parked out on the Katonak Flats with busted floats. His engine quit on him a couple days ago, and he couldn’t make it to anything wet, so he had to put her down on the tundra.”

“He wasn’t hurt?” Active didn’t remember anything about a crash. Usually the Troopers were notified.

Cowboy shook his head. “Dood’s rolled up a plane or two, like anybody, but, well, like they say, you don’t fly a Super Cub: you wear it. He kept her right side up, but he did tear up one of his floats. Apparently he found the only pile of rocks in the Flats.”

Cowboy chewed his lip for a moment, then rambled on, almost to himself. “He’s got a Cessna 185 on wheels, and I guess maybe you could set down on that ridge above the lake, but then you’d have to horse the body all the way up there—nah, I think we’re out of luck till tomorrow.”

“Couldn’t he take your Super Cub?”

Cowboy’s face took on a pained and incredulous expression. Active raised his hands in supplication. Apparently he had proposed an unimaginable breach of the bush-pilot code. The Arctic had a way of making simple things complex, and this was another example. “Okay,” he said. “Tomorrow it is.”

“You coming?” Cowboy asked. “Kind of a job, dragging a corpse up the creek and then wrestling it onto a float by yourself.” He paused. “Creepy, too.”

“I doubt I can make it,” Active said. “We’re all on the Rec Center fire.”

“How’s that going? Your expert from Fairbanks come up with anything yet?”

Active shook his head. “He’s just getting started. The site is still pretty hot.”

“Sure.” Cowboy rubbed his chin absently. “How big is the guy at One-Way, anyhow?”

“Average size Inupiaq,” Active said. “About five-eight, five-nine. One-fifty, one-sixty, maybe.”

Cowboy grunted. “I guess I can handle him by myself.

But you owe me. This is when bush piloting gets to be un-fun.”

“Nothing around here’s going to be fun for a while, Cowboy.”

The pilot looked at his toes for a few seconds. “How’s Grace? She seemed a little—”

“Yeah, freaked out.”

Cowboy nodded. “In the van, yeah.”

“I don’t know what that’s about. It’s new to me.”

Cowboy nodded again, and Active sighed, then forced his mind back to business. They agreed that Active would arrange to have No-Way flown to Anchorage on Alaska Airlines’ evening jet the next day. That would give Cowboy time for the round trip to One-Way Lake, even if the Arctic threw him a curve or two before the trip was done, as was highly likely.

Active signed the paperwork for the charter, then set off for the house Grace Palmer had inherited from her murdered father. It was a relief to be able to forget about No-Way for a while. If the Anchorage crime lab was as backed up as usual, it would be at least a couple of weeks before they heard anything. And by then, someone from one of the villages up the Isignaq River might have reported a friend or relative missing. With a little luck, Active would be able to scratch the dead hunter off the Trooper to-do list with almost no work.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN HE LET HIMSELF in, Nita was watching the Animal Channel, the big blue backpack she had taken to Martha’s on the floor at her feet. “Hi, Uncle Nathan,” she said when she spotted him.

“Hi, sweetie.” He bent and gave her a peck on top of the head. “Where’s your mom?”

“Upstairs,” she said, just as he’d feared.

He looked around for the remote to mute the TV. It was nowhere in sight, so he spoke over a story about the mystery of where ravens go at night. “I’ll go up and talk to her.”

Nita twisted to look up at him. “I think she’s sad again. Is it because of me?”

“Of course not, sweetheart,” he said. “You know how much she loves you.”

“Mm-mmm,” she said, sounding like an
aana
for a moment. “But why does she get so sad?”

Active thought about this for a long time before answering. “I don’t know. It’s just how she is sometimes.”

Nita was silent, watching the show about the ravens, but not watching.

“Could you put your backpack away?” he asked finally, to get them focused on something mundane and manageable.

“Can I wait till there’s a commercial?”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

Why does she get so sad? Telling Nita he didn’t know was only partly a lie, he decided as he made his way up the stairs. He did know the name of Grace Palmer’s demon, it was true. But the feel of it, what it was like to carry it around inside, always—of that he knew nothing, could know nothing.

He stopped at the door of the room he knew she’d be in—not the bedroom she used now, but her childhood bedroom, with the sports gear still piled in corners, the purple wallpaper, the posters of long-faded rock stars, the memories of the nighttime visits from her father.

He stepped insided. The blinds were drawn, and she lay on the bed in the dusk, still in her camp clothes, an arm thrown over her eyes. Her old Discman lay beside her, and she had earphones on. The case of an Enya CD was open on the nightstand, which was a good sign. Enya, bland as she might be, was at least optimistic, at times even uplifting.

Grace raised her arm, made eye contact, and pulled off the headphones. “Hi, Nathan,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I have a few minutes.” He smiled, bent, kissed her forehead, and put his hand on her arm. “You take something?”

“Some Tylenol PM,” she said. “It’ll kick in soon, and when I wake up . . . well, maybe it’ll be gone. Fingers crossed.”

He made Xs of the first and second fingers on each hand and held them up. “You want to talk about it at all?”

“He had my sister cremated, you know. Seeing the Rec Center like that, it kind of . . . and his birthday’s in two weeks. That always. . . .” She put her arm over her eyes again, and her shoulders shook.

He slid down beside her and worked his arm under her neck. She pushed the Discman aside, half-turned toward him, and put her head on his chest, eyes wet. “Your body is always so warm,” she said, her voice low and drowsy, and snuffly with tears. “Your thermostat must be set different. Do they know who started it?”

It took him a moment to shift gears. “We’re not even sure yet it was arson. Our fire expert from Fairbanks will go in as soon as it cools off enough. We’re supposed to meet him at five for the report.”

“Can you stay till then?”

“Ah, I have to go interview some of the families—” He stopped at the look on her face. “But I can lie here till you fall asleep.”

“Sorry for all the drama. You should find someone normal.”

“No, thanks,” he said.

“Thanks.” She slid a hand under his shirt and laid it on his chest. Her breathing slowed, and he was about to ease off the bed when she spoke again. “He must have had a boat.”

“Who did?”

“Or a four-wheeler. How else would he . . . ?” She gave a deep, slow sigh and fell silent.

It was a minute before he realized she had meant No-Way, and another minute before he realized she was right. As he eased her hand out of his shirt and worked his arm from under her neck, he felt a little stupid for not thinking of it himself. The nearest of the upper Isignaq villages, Walker, was at least twenty-five miles from One-Way Lake. Nobody hiked that far to hunt caribou.

Active decided his money was on a boat
and
a four-wheeler. Load the ATV into the boat, take the boat to the right spot on the Isignaq, drive the ATV into the hills, and start shooting caribou. Then you’ve got a way to get the caribou to the boat without spending a week packing out meat. He made a mental note to catch Cowboy and tell him to scan the riverbank above and below the mouth of One-Way Creek for a boat and to search the area around the lake for a four-wheeler, or four-wheeler trails, or signs of a camp. Maybe there would be something to identify No-Way, or at least indicate which village he was from.

He would have thanked Grace and told her all this, but she had begun a series of tiny, delicate, endearing snores. He kissed her forehead, savored her lavender scent for a moment, and tiptoed out.

Active had no problem finding the green house on Second Avenue. The dead Cat in the yard was a dead giveaway. The problem was finding a place to park. A pickup and two four-wheeler ATVs filled the driveway, and three more ATVs lined the street out front. Active stopped the Trooper Suburban behind the ATVs on the street and walked up to the house.

The
kunnichuk
door was open, and the inner door swung open at his knock, disclosing a roomful of Inupiat women, most of grandmother age. “
Arii,
that Augie,” one of them was saying as Active took off his hat and waited to be noticed. “You remember when Barrow got that big tall
naluaqmiu
on their team and he try to stop Augie that time and when Augie go around him, that guy’s shorts are falling down on his ankles?”

This produced a shower of giggles from the
aanas,
another of whom picked up the story. “That
naluaqmiu
boy try say Augie pull his shorts down, but them referees never see nothing, so they couldn’t even call him foul.
Arii,
that Augie!”

There was more of the silvery laughter, fading as the women sensed his presence.

“I’m looking for Lena Sundown?”

The woman who had told the first part of the story pointed through a doorway into the kitchen. “Lena,” she shouted, “that Trooper is here.”

A red-eyed woman came to the door, smiled in a small way, and motioned him through. “You could sit down,” she said.

He took a chair at the table and watched as Lena Sundown worked at the stove, dropping batter into a pot. She had dark gray hair but was rather smooth-skinned and not fat. He doubted she could be much past fifty, which seemed a little young for the grandmother of a college kid. But, then, girls in Chukchi tended to become mothers at an early age. Suppose Lena gave birth to Augie’s father, the late Edgar, at seventeen, and Augie was born when Edgar was likewise seventeen. Augie had probably been about nineteen when he died, which would make Lena only about fifty-three.

Fifty-three and bereft of both a son and a grandson— and possibly widowed too: he didn’t recall hearing of Lena having a husband.

How to get into it? The Inupiat, particularly older Inupiat, were comfortable with long silences, but they gave him the fidgets, Anchorage-reared as he was. Suddenly he recognized the smell filling the room. And an opening.

“You making seal oil doughnuts?”

“Ah-ha,” she said. “Couple minutes they’ll be ready. You like ’em? Lotta people don’t, especially if they’re
naluaqmiiyaaq.”

Was she grinning a little? At a time like this? It was possible. He had never met an
aana
yet who could resist the temptation to rib him about his Anchorage upbringing. “Sure I like ’em. Everybody likes seal oil, right?”

Her face turned sad again. “Augie always like ’em, all right, ever since he’s little. You want some coffee?”

He nodded, and she brought him a cup, black, which was how he liked it.

“Could I talk to you about your grandson?”

“
Arii,
I come back here to get away from those ladies because I don’t want to talk about it no more.” She turned back to the stove and dabbed at her eyes with the corner of a dish towel. “First my son Edgar, now it’s Augie.”

He drank some of the coffee before responding. She hadn’t quite refused to talk. “Did you hear we think somebody might have started the Rec Center fire on purpose?” he asked finally.

“Who was it? You catch ’em yet?” She stayed busy at the stove, keeping her back to him, deciding whether to open up.

“Not yet. That’s why we need to talk to people. To figure out who it was.”

She slid the doughnut pot off the burner, turned to face him, and sighed. “
Arii
, that Rachel.” She came to the table and sat across from him, her hands around her own coffee mug.

It took him a moment to make the connection. “Rachel Akootchuk?”

Lena lifted her eyebrows in the Eskimo yes. “Those
miluks
. I try tell Augie she’s trouble, but he won’t listen.”

It took him another moment to sift through his tiny vocabulary of Inupiaq for the meaning of
miluks.
Breasts. “She was Augie’s girlfriend? And she had—”

Lena lifted her eyebrows again and cupped her hands in front of her chest. Quite some distance in front. “They’re like magnets for you guys, ah?”

“Well, some guys—”

Lena snorted.

“All right, most of us, but. . . . Wait a minute, are you saying Rachel started the fire at the Rec Center? But she was killed, too.”

“Not her. That Buck Eastlake. You know him?”

Active struggled to place the name. “He was, wasn’t he on the Malamutes before—”

Lena raised her eyebrows. “He’s on the team, too, all right, pretty good player, but not like Augie. Try for team captain, but Augie get it.”

“And Rachel—”

“That Rachel, she’s with Buck till Augie gets team captain, then Augie get her too. Girls with big
miluks
, they sure like basketball players, ah?” She gave a little chuckle of what sounded like reluctant pride, then frowned again. “I tell ’im she’s trouble, but he don’t listen.”

“Guys that age usually don’t.”

“Guys any age if a girl got big
miluks
, is what I see from my life.”

Active couldn’t think of a response, so he just raised his eyebrows.

“Ah-hah,” Lena said with a nod. “That Buck, he’s real mad about it, especially when Augie get that scholarship to go to Fairbanks and Buck don’t get nothing. He blame Augie for everything, say he better look out. Buck try fight him couple times, but Augie don’t want to and he’s so fast Buck can’t hit him, so there’s no fight, what Augie told me.

“Anyway, Buck, he didn’t get no scholarships, so he have to stay around town, get that cargo job at the airport.”

“Ah,” Active said. “That’s where I’ve seen him.” A face suddenly clicked into focus. A tall kid, especially for an Inupiaq, much taller than Augie’s five-eight, yet it was Augie who’d gotten the limelight and the scholarship. And Rachel Akootchuk of the magnificent
miluks
.

Active pulled out his notebook and wrote down the name.

“Then Augie leaves for Fairbanks, and Rachel’s still here,” Lena continued. “She’s mad because Augie never take her with him, so she goes back with Buck and I think if she doesn’t turn up pregnant from Augie in couple months, everything will be good.”

“And she didn’t?”

Her face took on an expression of remembered relief. “Nope, no babies. She’s here; Buck’s here; Augie’s in Fairbanks, so seem like it’s all right. But then he come home this summer and, next thing I know, he’s right back with that Rachel. And now he’s talk about she might come back to Fairbanks with him!”

She gazed at him with a look of outrage and expectation.

“Imagine that.” He gave his head a shake with a frown he hoped would convey an acceptable degree of disapproval. “And Buck started threatening Augie again?”

“No, this time he never say nothing. He just have a look whenever I see him around town. Augie laugh when I try warn him, but I tell him, that Buck is a man that don’t care no more.”

Active stifled a sigh. “Where does Buck live?”

Lena put a finger to her chin, lost in thought. “Seem like him and Rachel have that little red cabin up by the radio towers. You know that place have all them old doghouses, that
naluaqmiu
musher used to live up there?”

Active thought he could picture a red cabin at the north end of town, surrounded by the oil drums cut in half that provided all the shelter a husky needed, even in an Arctic winter. He started to make a note of the information.

“And then she kick him out when Augie come home, and he’s . . . where he’s living?”

Active put down his pen and waited her out.

“His uncle’s place, I think.”

“Ah,” Active said. “Uncle . . . ?”

“Sayers.” She nodded in satisfaction.

He picked up his pen and wrote this in his notebook. Sayers didn’t sound like a Chukchi surname. The uncle must have been an outsider who’d married an Eastlake female. “And his first name?”

“Ah-hah.”

He looked at her, then at his notebook. “Mr. Sayers. Do you know his first name?”

She stared at him with a puzzled look. “S-A-Y-E-R-S, I guess.”

“No, I mean—” Then he got it. “Sayers Eastlake is the uncle’s name?”

Lena looked even more puzzled. “Didn’t I say that already?”

“You did, but I—”

“But you’re
naluaqmiiyaaq.
Everybody know that.”

He gave his head a little shake to clear it and asked if she knew where Sayers Eastlake lived.

She put her finger to her chin again. “I think he live somewhere up there, too, but I don’t know where. You could just go up there, ask around, ah? It’s E-A-S-T-L-AK-E.”

“Thanks,” he said.

As he made his way toward the door, the women in the living room were watching a video of a basketball game. He recognized Augie Sundown and the other Malamutes, but not the opposing team. The boys on it were all white and tall. Definitely not the Barrow team that had had only the one tall
naluaqmiu
. Probably from a Christian school in Anchorage or Fairbanks. Chukchi played in the small-schools class at state tournaments, and the Christian schools in Anchorage and Fairbanks were the only small schools in Alaska with white student bodies.