Tundra Kill Read online

  MYSTERY/FICTION

  Stan Jones

  TUNDRA KILL

  When Helen Mercer, Alaska’s ambtious and charismatic governor, flies into the Eskimo village of Chukchi and drafts police chief Nathan Active as her bodyguard, she promptly becomes the number one suspect in a murder by snowmobile.

  Desperate to save her political career, she tries to seduce Active to throw him off the trail. When that doesn’t work, she claims he tried to rape her. Then she reopens an old murder case against Active’s beloved Grace Palmer. All of it, the governor hints, will go away if Active drops his investigation.

  A native of Chukchi, but adopted and raised by a white couple in Anchorage, Active is regarded as almost white by the Inupiat Eskimo residents of the village. Even after several years in town, he doesn’t feel entirely at home in this isolated northern outpost.

  But now Chukchi holds all that’s dear to him, and it’s all at stake. Active must win his battle of nerves with Helen Mercer or be fired, if not jailed himself, and see his loved ones destroyed.

  Also by the author

  White Sky, Black Ice

  Shaman Pass

  Frozen Sun

  Village of the Ghost Bears

  with Sharon Bushell

  The Spill: Personal Stories from the Exxon Valdez Disaster

  Copyright © 2016 by Stan Jones

  All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Bowhead Press LLC

  Box 240212

  Anchorage AK 99524

  All events and characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real events or to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Tundra Kill: a Nathan Active Mystery / Stan Jones

  EPUB ISBN 978-0-9799803-3-6

  MOBI ISBN 978-0-9799803-4-3

  PDF ISBN 978-0-9799803-5-0

  Paperback ISBN 978-0-9799803-6-7

  1. Police—Alaska—Fiction. 2. Inupiat—Fiction.

  3. Alaska—Fiction I. Title

  Library of Congress Control Number 2015907826

  THIS BOOK is dedicated to the late anthropologist Ernest Burch, whose work on the Inupiat of Northwest Alaska not only makes fascinating reading, but also has long been one of my chief aids in understanding the origins and traditions of the culture I write about.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE AUTHOR WISHES to express his heartfelt gratitude to the following people, whose support and assistance made this book possible:

  John Creed and Susan Andrews of Kotzebue, for sharing their expertise about life in the Alaska Bush and for their many other kindnesses in helping bring this book to life.

  The officers of the Kotzebue Police Department, for providing much useful information on how policing works in the Alaska Bush, and for letting me ride along on patrol on spring evenings in the Arctic.

  Chief Leon Boyea of of the North Slope Borough Police Department for information how things work when a rural borough takes on police powers.

  Keenan Powell of Anchorage, attorney par excellence and wise counselor on many a legal issue, especially the various sizes and flavors of murder and homicide in Alaska, and the workings of spousal privilege.

  Bill Cummings, my oldest friend and another attorney par excellence, for his helpful expertise on Child in Need of Aid cases in Alaska.

  Jimmy Evak of Kotzebue, for his help with the Inupiaq language.

  Michael Faubion, for allowing me to adapt and use the lyrics from his song, “Ice Road.” The adapted version appears in Chapter Nine.

  And, friends and fellow writers too numerous to name, including my wife, son, and daughter, who reviewed the manuscript along the way and recommended countless improvements.

  THE ICING STORY in Chapter Six is adapted from “Superheroes Only Live in Comic Books,” a story in CloudDancer’s Alaskan Chronicles Vol. III, The Tragedies. It is used with the author’s permission.

  A NOTE ON LANGUAGE

  “ESKIMO” IS THE BEST-KNOWN TERM for the Native Americans depicted in this book, but it did not originate with them. In their language, they call themselves “Inupiat,” meaning “the people.” “Eskimo,” a term brought into Alaska by white men, is what certain Indian tribes in eastern Canada called their neighbors to the north. It probably meant “eaters of raw flesh.”

  Nonetheless, “Eskimo” and “Inupiat” are used more or less interchangeably in northwest Alaska today, at least when English is spoken, and that is the usage followed in this book.

  The Inupiat call their language Inupiaq. A few words in it—those commonly mixed with English in northwest Alaska—appear in the book, along with some local colloquialisms in English. They are defined below. As spelling varies among Inupiaq-English dictionaries, I have used when possible the most phonetic spellings for the benefit of non-Inupiaq readers.

  A NORTHWEST ALASKA GLOSSARY

  aaka (AH-): mother

  aana (AH-nuh): old lady, grandmother

  aanaga (UH-nah-gah): auntie

  aaqaa! (ah-CAH): you stink!

  agnauraq (ug-NOR-uq): little woman, slang for gay man

  angatquq (AHNG-ut-cook): shaman

  aqpattuq (UQ-put-tuq): runs

  arigaa! (AH-de-gah): it’s good!

  arii! (ah-DEE): ouch! it hurts!

  atiqluk (ah-TEEK-luk): woman’s flowered parka

  bunnik (BUN-nuk): affectionate term for daughter. The actual Inupiaq word is paniq.

  inuksuk (IN-uk-suk): a stone trail marker erected by Eskimo peoples all around the circumpolar world. By tradition, an inuksuk meant, “You are on the right path.”

  Inupiaq (in-OO-pyock): one Eskimo; the Eskimo language

  Inupiat (IN-you-pyat): more than one Inupiaq; the Inupiat people

  ivu (EE-voo): ice override, ice pushed onshore by storm winds

  kunnichuk (KUH-nee-chuck): Arctic entry, or vestibule

  muktuk (MUCK-tuck): whale hide with a layer of fat attached

  naluaqmiiyaaq (nuh-LOCK-me-ock): someone who acts almost white

  naluaqmiu, naluaqmiut (nuh-LOCK-me): white person, white race

  nuliagatigiik (NU-lee-AG-ah-teek): co-husbands; two men who have sex with the same woman

  pibloktoq (pib-LOCK-tock): Arctic hysteria

  pukuk (PUH-kuk): get into things

  qaaq (cock): marijuana

  qiviktuq (KIV-ick-tuck): suicide

  quaq (kwok): frozen fish

  quiyuk (KWEE-yuck): sex

  quyaana (kwee-YAH-nuh): thank you

  sheefish: a delicious freshwater whitefish that can reach 60 pounds in size

  snerts: a rambunctious multi-player variant of solitaire

  Suka (SOO-ka): derived from sukattuk, Inupiaq for fast

  tuuq (tuke): long-handled ice chisel for making sheefishing holes

  ulu (oo-loo): traditional Eskimo woman’s knife, shaped like a slice of pizza with the cutting edge at the rim

  yoi! (yoy): so lucky

  He came in unto me to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice.

  — Genesis 39:14

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tuesday, April 15

  “YOU SEE, CHIEF?” Alan Long pointed at the corpse on the snow. “What I said on the radio? He was lying right there when he got hit. He must have been passed out, all right.”

  Nathan Active continued his study of the dead man without comment. The wind blasted snow past them and a Cessna 207 labored past on climb-out from the Chukchi airport a half-mile west.

  The victim sprawled face-down on the snow a couple of yards off the trail that ran east from Chukchi to the villages up the Isignaq River. He was bundled in well used but serviceable winter gear, right down to the stained legs of his black snowgo suit—probably from kneeling in blood and guts to cut up game—and a patch of duct t
ape on the right shoulder of his parka. From a rip in the collar, a tuft of goose down was working its way out. He was tall for an Inupiaq—taller than Long, about the same height as Active. What little of his hair could be seen was jet black, no trace of gray.

  Active crouched beside the victim’s head, which had rolled to one side. Judging from his injuries, a snowmobile had hit him from behind and to the left. The cleated drive track had evidently run up his legs and back, then torn through the neoprene face mask he had worn against the wind. The cleats had peeled the skin off the left side of his head from crown to jaw, leaving exposed flesh like raw hamburger. Bone glinted white in spots. A patch of scalp was gone above the left ear. Through the gap bulged a fold of reddish-gray pulp that Active took to be brain matter. The rest of his head was still covered by the mask.

  Active stood and looked down the trail toward the village in the morning light. “I don’t think so.”

  “Think what?”

  “I don’t think he was passed out when he got hit.”

  “Ah?” Long came closer.

  “Smell any booze on him? See any bottles around?” Active pointed at the snow nearby. “Or snowgo tracks leading up to him? I think he was on the trail when he was hit and the impact knocked him over here. That means he was on his feet.”

  Long sniffed the air, put his head closer to the victim and sniffed again, then squinted the Inupiaq no. “What difference is it? He’s walking along the trail sober and a snowgo knocks him over here. Maybe the guy on the snowgo was drunk, then.”

  Active nodded. “Probably. What do you make of those?” He pointed at a set of snowgo tracks that passed within a few feet of the victim.

  Long took a look. “Maybe there was two of them?”

  “Yeah, or only one and he came back to check.”

  “And didn’t even help him. Arii, some people.” Long squinted again, this time in dismay.

  Active studied the tundra around them. This close to town, snowgo tracks laced and crisscrossed the main trail in a tangle of loops and whorls and side trails. “Just get pictures of the body and those tracks and everything around here, OK?”

  Long lifted his eyebrows in the Eskimo ‘yes,’ pulled a Nikon from the folds of his parka and went to work.

  “You recognize him?” Active asked.

  Long squinted the no. “His face is too chewed up, the part you can see, anyway.”

  The near-total absence of blood said the victim hadn’t lived long after he was hit, but Active had checked for a pulse anyway. As Long had reported by radio, there was no sign of life.

  From the airport came a muted roar as a Boeing 737 taxied out from the Alaska Airlines terminal. Active wondered if the crew or passengers would spot the two cops and the corpse on the tundra.

  “He’s cooled off some and there’s a little snow blown over him,” Active said. “But not much snow and he’s not frozen yet, so—”

  “So he probably wasn’t here all night?”

  “Probably not,” Active said. “You check for ID?”

  “You said not to touch him if he was already dead.”

  Active grunted approval. He thought of going through the corpse’s pockets but decided against it. Best to disturb nothing until Long finished shooting. He stepped back a few paces to think.

  The dead man had been discovered by a family from the village of Ebrulik on their way to Chukchi on snowgos, dog sleds hitched behind for passengers and cargo. Trimble Sundown, the patriarch of the clan, had pulled off the trail to relieve himself on the tundra, only to stumble upon the corpse.

  Trimble had checked for signs of life, found none, and then, having neither cell phone nor radio in his gear, had cranked up his Arctic Cat, resumed the journey with his family, and reported the find via a call from his mother’s house in Chukchi.

  Exactly what had happened next was a puzzle to be sorted out later. The report that had reached Active was of a drunk passed out on the Isignaq trail east of the airport. He had dispatched Long by snowgo with an EMT kit and a couple of sleeping bags in a tub-like ahkio cargo sled to retrieve the sleeper. Active conjectured that the dispatcher at public safety—white, like most of the force—had misunderstood Trimble’s village English. In any event, Long had reached the scene, radioed back to say they in fact had what looked like a fatal hit-and-run, and Active had mounted his own department Yamaha and headed out.

  Long finished shooting, came to Active’s side, and handed him the Nikon. Active surfed through the pictures on the display, nodded, and passed the camera back. The roar from the airport built as the Alaska 737 started its takeoff roll at the west end of Chukchi’s main runway.

  “What was he doing out here?” Active said. “No snowgo, nobody with him. Who walks this far by himself that early in the morning? Especially sober.”

  “Good question, Chief.”

  “You don’t have to call me ‘Chief.’ It’s understood.”

  “Sure, Chief.”

  Active grimaced.

  “Sorry, uh…boss?”

  “‘Nathan’ would be better.”

  Long squinted another ‘no.’ “Arii, I dunno.”

  “All right, call me ‘boss.’ Unless we’re arresting somebody or questioning them. Then you can call me ‘Chief.’ How’s that?”

  Long raised his eyebrows.

  “You talk to Trimble yet?”

  Long nodded. “I called him at his mom’s house.”

  “And he didn’t see any snowgos around when he made his relief stop? Didn’t meet any back up the trail?”

  Long squinted no.

  The Alaska jet was close now, almost overhead. At first they couldn’t see it, because of the blowing snow picked up from the surface. But the layer was shallow and the sky above was a blue bowl with a white rim Thunder rumbled in Active’s chest. Long looked up as the 737 became visible above them. The rumble started to fade as the jet passed over the crosses of the village’s ridge-top cemetery and vanished into the haze.

  “That’s her plane, ah?”

  Active looked up, too. “Yes, and thank God for it. Imagine having that woman in our hair while we try to sort this out.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Friday, April 11

  Four Days Earlier

  “ME GUARD THAT woman?” Active looked across his desk at Patrick Carnaby, commander of the Alaska State Trooper post in Chukchi. “Let me explain it this way: No. That’s a Trooper job. It’s not a job for borough public safety.”

  “Nathan, Nathan.” Carnaby’s face took on an expression of charitable piety. He tapped the green folder he had just dropped on the desk. “This is a marvelous opportunity, guaranteed to put you and your fledgling department on the map right out of the gate.”

  Carnaby waved his coffee cup at the move-in clutter around them in what, a few weeks earlier, had been the office of the chief of police for the city of Chukchi.

  Now it was the office of Nathan Active, newly appointed chief of public safety for the newly created Chukchi Regional Borough. The borough had absorbed the police functions of the city of Chukchi and acquired jurisdiction over the surrounding eleven villages in the patch of Arctic coastline, tundra, mountains, rivers, and lakes known as the Chukchi region. The borough was bigger than fifteen of the United States, and now one-time Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active was responsible for the public’s safety on every square foot of it.

  “Not to mention on the evening news,” Carnaby went on. “And cable news, talk radio, the New York Times, Flitter, and—what do they call those Internet things, globs?”

  “The word is blogs. And it’s Facebook or Twitter, not Flitter.”

  “That’s it,” Carnaby said with a twinkle in his eye. “Twitface. Anyway, you spend a couple of days bouncing around the countryside with our gorgeous governor in Cowboy’s Cessna and you’ll be an international celebrity. Your face will be on the cover of People Magazine right beside hers.”

  “Not so much,” Active said. “The media don’t follow her arou
nd like they used to. She only makes national news when she does something ridiculous and the papers here find out and it blows up. Remember when her limo hit the cat and the Juneau paper reported it and PETA got all over her?”

  Carnaby chuckled. “Admittedly, her last try at national office was unfortunate. How many countries did she want to invade?”

  Active shrugged. “I lost count.”

  “So did she, I suspect,” Carnaby said. “The point is, she’s determined to fight her way back into the headlines. Helen Mercer does not know the meaning of the word ‘quit.’”

  “Or ‘mercy,’ either, from what I hear,” Active said.

  Carnaby nodded. “When she played high-school ball here—well, that’s when they started calling her Helen Wheels. Which takes us back to you, young man. You really want to stand in her way?”

  “I just wanna dodge this bullet.”

  “Coming home to Chukchi to watch her husband win the Isignaq 400 is part of her master comeback strategy.” Carnaby patted the green folder again. “You help the governor show herself heroically braving the Arctic skies in a tiny Bush plane while playing the loyal spouse and you get yourself not only her undying gratitude but, what, at least ninety seconds on Fox News? “

  “Coming home? Ha. How long since she really lived here?”

  Carnaby waved a hand in dismissal. “Granted, it’s been some years since she graduated from mayor to the state legislature and then to the governor’s mansion. But there’s no place like home and now she’s back and she wants you to watch her body.”

  “All right, let me explain it a different way,” Active said. “No chance, no hope, and no thanks. It’s a suicide mission and we both know it. My plan is to avoid her presence, cross my fingers, and hope she gets out of town safely. I’ve got all I can do right here in Chukchi trying to keep the lid on till the race is over, anyway. Plus, I need to go up to Katonak on the honeybucket murder—”

  “Honeybucket murder? Do I know about this one?”