Shaman Pass Read online

  SHAMAN

  PASS

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  White Sky, Black Ice

  SHAMAN

  PASS

  a Nathan Active mystery

  Stan Jones

  Copyright © 2003 by Stanley E. Jones

  All rights reserved

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jones, Stan, 1947–

  Shaman pass : a Nathan Active mystery / Stan Jones.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-56947-332-3 (alk. paper)

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

  3. Alaska—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3560.O539 S48 2003

  813'.54—dc21 2002042624

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To the people who define my life:

  Rufus, Etta, Susan, Paul, and Sydnie

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A NOTE ON LANGUAGE

  A NORTHWEST ALASKA GLOSSARY

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FOR THE DETAILS OF the search technique used in the closing chapters of this book, I am in debt to Bill Hess, a longtime friend, Arctic journalist, and photographer. He describes its use during an actual search on Alaska’s North Slope in his lovely and fascinating book, Gift of the Whale, and he generously added much useful information about it in a series of e-mail interviews.

  The description of the fate of Chukchi’s last “devil-doctor” is drawn from the diaries of Charles Brower, a Yankee whaler who settled in Barrow in the late 1800s and spent the rest of his life there. The entry I relied on is recounted in Sadie Brower Neakok: An Inupiaq Woman, by Margaret B. Blackman.

  Also, my thanks to Dr. D. P. Lyle, who provided advice on the causes, care, and feeding of dislocated shoulders.

  Finally, my deepest gratitude to my editor, Laura Hruska, for the skill, insight, and dedication she brought to the task of helping me tell this story.

  In the olden days, the Inuit slew those who killed their kinsmen. One vengeance followed another like links in a chain.

  —Nuligak, in I, Nuligak

  Beware the fury of the patient man.

  —John Dryden

  A NOTE ON LANGUAGE

  “ESKIMO” IS THE BEST-KNOWN term for the Native Americans described in this book, but it is not their term. In their own language, they call themselves “Inupiat,” meaning “the people.” “Eskimo,” which was 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.

  In formal or public speech—such as journalism—“Inuit” is probably the most widely accepted collective term for the Eskimo peoples (not all of whom are Inupiat) in Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. But it is not an Alaskan word and so is not much used by the Inupiat of the state’s northwest coast. Accordingly, it appears rarely 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. They are listed below, along with pronunciations and meanings. As the spellings vary among Inupiaq-English dictionaries, I have used spellings that seemed to me most likely to induce the proper pronunciation by non-Inupiaq readers.

  A NORTHWEST ALASKA GLOSSARY

  aaka (AH-kuh): mother

  aana (AH-nuh): grandmother; old lady

  akhio (AH-key-OH): a low fiberglass cargo sled that slides on its belly; unlike a dogsled, it has no runners

  amaguq (AH-ma-GUK): wolf

  anaq (AH-nuk): excrement; dirt

  angatquq (AHNG-ut-cook): shaman

  Aqaa (ah-CAH!): It stinks!

  arigaa (AH-de-gah): good!

  Arii (ah-DEE): I hurt!

  ataata (ah-TAH-tah): grandfather

  ee (E): yes

  inuksuk (in-UK-suck): a manlike figure made of stones; the Inupiat used them as trail markers and as bogeymen to frighten caribou into lakes or traps

  Inupiaq (IN-you-pack): the Eskimo language of northern Alaska; an individual Eskimo of northern Alaska

  Inupiat (IN-you-pat): more than one Inupiaq; the Eskimo people of northern Alaska

  kikituq (KICK-ee-took): a monster; the spirit familiar of an angatquq*

  kunnichuk (KUH-knee-chuck): storm shed

  kuspuk (KUSP-uk): light parka

  malik (MULL-uk): accompany or follow

  masru (MOSS-rue): Eskimo potato

  miluk (MILL-uk): breast

  muktuk (MUCK-tuck): whale skin with a thin layer of fat adhering; a great delicacy in Inupiat country

  naluaqmiiyaaq (nuh-LOCK-me-ock): almost white; an Inupiaq who tries to act white

  naluaqmiu (nuh-LOCK-me): a white person

  naluaqmiut (nuh-LOCK-me): more than one white person; white people

  nanuq (NA-NOOK): polar bear

  natchiq (NOTCH-ik): seal

  pukuk (PUCK-uck): pry, poke around, get into things

  quiyuk (KWEE-yuck): sex

  siksrik (SIX-rik): squirrel

  taggaqvik (ta-GOG-vik): place of shadows

  ugruk (OOG-rook): bearded seal

  ukpeagvik (OOK-pea-OG-vik): place of snowy owls

  ukpik (OOK-pik): snowy owl

  umiaq (OOM-ee-ak): whaling boat, made of a wooden frame and covered with the thick, tough hides of walrus or bearded seal

  Village English: a stripped-down form of English used by the Inupiat of Northwest Alaska, particularly older people and residents of small villages

  Yoi! (rhymes with “boy”): So lucky!

  * Here, I confess to taking creative license. In actual fact, an angatquq’s spirit familiar was called his angatquq. I thought this would be hopelessly confusing in fiction, and so substituted kikituq, a word of somewhat similar meaning, to serve as the angatquq’s spirit familiar.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “SHOULD I TAKE IT OUT?”

  The paramedic from the Chukchi Public Safety Department dropped to her knees beside the mortal remains of Victor Solomon, then looked up at Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active and repeated the question with her eyes.

  Active snapped the cap into place over the lens of his Nikon, tucked the camera inside his parka, closed the zipper, put his mittens on, and considered the paramedic’s question as he gazed around Victor Solomon’s sheefish camp on the ice of Chukchi Bay. Active hated moments like this even more than most moments at a death scene. Instinct told him the proceedings ought to be as solemn as the event itself, the questions as profound as the fact of a human soul moving on to the hereafter, if there was one.

  Instead, it always came down to this kind of niggling decision: Should the shaft protruding approximately four feet from Victor Solomon’s chest be left in place?
That way, the pathologist who would do the autopsy could remove it himself, noting whatever needed to be noted about its relationship to the wound and Victor’s death.

  Or should it be removed to facilitate the body’s transportation by snowmachine and akhio from Victor’s sheefishing camp across eight miles of sea ice to the village of Chukchi? Active turned and looked. The town was just discernible through the milky air as a line of dark rectangles on the horizon.

  Vera Jackson, the paramedic, pointed at the fiberglass akhio hitched to the back of her snowmachine, a blue-and-black Arctic Cat. “He’ll get a lot of bouncing around on that. It might make the wound bigger. Or the harpoon might fall out and get lost.” The wind whipped her hair, raven black with streaks of ice gray, into her bright, dark eyes. She blinked and tucked the hair into her parka hood.

  Active turned back to the corpse and studied the harpoon shaft. The upper section was of dark, weathered wood, very old from the look of it. The wind had dusted it with snow since Victor’s killing an undetermined number of hours earlier, but it was still obvious the wood had been worked to make the shaft round and smooth.

  The lower section was ivory, lashed to the wood above it with some kind of tough-looking handmade thong—rawhide or sinew, probably. The ivory section disappeared into Victor’s chest just below the breastbone.

  Active stamped his Sorels on the snow-covered ice, pounded his mittened hands together, and turned his back to the bone-saw wind rolling in from the west. Why would anyone kill an old man like Victor Solomon, and why with an old harpoon, if that’s what it was? Why not something quick and sure, like a gun?

  And why not on a warmer day?

  “Maybe we could take it apart right above the ivory piece there,” Active suggested. “Saw through those thongs holding it together?” That, he thought, would preserve the evidence and solve the transportation problem, too. “You bring a saw, Vera?”

  The paramedic rose from her kneeling position by Victor and wrinkled her nose in the Inupiat no. “When they said he was just lying by his sheefish hole, I didn’t bring anything like that. We only bring the saw if we have to cut them out of a car or airplane or something.”

  Active looked at the two civilians within earshot and lifted his eyebrows in question. “You guys got a saw?”

  One was an Inupiat teenager named Darvin Reed, the sheefisherman who had found Victor dead on the ice and reported it by cellular telephone to the dispatcher at the Chukchi Public Safety Building. Active couldn’t help considering the cell-phone aspect of the case mildly remarkable. Sure, there was no reason the Arctic or the Inupiat should be any less accessible to the reach of modern technology than anyone else. Or any less susceptible. But still.

  The other civilian was Darvin’s sheefishing partner, a white kid. His name was Willie Samuels. Active had asked the two to wait and they were watching the proceedings from the seats of their snowmachines. Both shook their heads no in answer to Active’s question about the saw.

  A half-dozen other civilians watched from about fifty yards away. Some had been on the scene when Active and Vera Jackson arrived. The rest had shown up since. Active had taken their names and phone numbers, or house numbers if they didn’t have phones, and chased them back once it was established that Darvin and Willie were the actual discoverers of the body.

  Active was considering whether to canvass the hangers-on for a saw when Willie pulled out a clasp knife and opened it. “I guess you could try this if you want.”

  Active looked at the knife. The blade was at least four inches long, much bigger than the Leatherman on his own belt. He looked at Vera.

  “I think cutting it with that knife might jostle it around as much as taking him to town like he is. Those thongs look like ugruk hide to me. Real tough.” She looked at Victor. “But I could try pulling it out. Real careful and slow. Maybe I could work it loose without messing up the wound too much.”

  “It’s not frozen in?” Active asked.

  Vera shook her head. “I don’t think so, except a little bit around the hole maybe. He didn’t freeze much yet, from having his warm clothes on. This must have happened last night, I guess.”

  Active considered the pros and cons for a few moments. “Try not to touch the shaft any more than you have to,” he said finally. “We still have to go over it for fingerprints.”

  He wasn’t too worried. Considering the temperature was barely above zero now and had been a few degrees lower during the night, it seemed highly unlikely the killer had wielded the harpoon bare-handed. Fingerprints were a long shot.

  Vera nodded and knelt again by the corpse. She opened a case she had brought to Victor’s side earlier, slipped off her gloves, and took out a pair of scissors. Victor’s heavy parka had evidently been unzipped when he was impaled by the thrust up into his chest cavity, but Vera had to cut through a down vest, a plaid wool shirt, and an undershirt, all soaked with frozen blood, to expose the entry wound.

  She laid the scissors aside, put her gloves on, and gripped the shaft with both hands, rocking it gently. “Feels like the head is stuck,” she said. “Must have gone through him and got in his rib cage in the back. Or his spine.”

  She rocked the shaft again, then applied a little twisting motion and that was enough. The shaft popped out of Victor’s chest with a wet slurp. Vera rocked back and caught herself, and suddenly they were looking at ten or twelve inches of bloody ivory.

  Vera pointed with a surprised expression at the tip, which was not a head at all, but a nicely tapered cylinder, squared off at the end as if to fit in a socket. “I guess the head came off inside him.”

  Active heard the buzz of an approaching snowmachine and turned, prepared to shoo away another curious civilian. But no. He recognized the red parka and wide middle-aged shape of Jim Silver, the city police chief of Chukchi.

  The chief pulled up, shut off his snowmachine, and stepped over to Victor Solomon’s corpse. He motioned to the harpoon in Vera’s hands. “OK if I take a look?”

  Active studied the chief’s pockmarked face for a moment. “Sure. But we are outside the city limits.”

  Silver grinned. “Easy, Nathan, I know it’s trooper jurisdiction, but I got a feeling when I heard about the harpoon.”

  “Harpoon? How—”

  “There was one taken in the museum burglary,” Silver said. “You knew that, right?”

  Active stared at the police chief, then at the shaft. “No, I didn’t know. I thought all they got was Uncle Frosty.”

  “Nah, there were some other odds and ends, too, according to the paperwork from the Smithsonian,” Silver said. “A mammoth ivory amulet with an owl’s face on it, and a harpoon.”

  “This harpoon?”

  Silver shrugged. “It sure looks like the picture the Smithsonian sent. There aren’t a lot of harpoons around nowadays, especially with ivory at the business end. Like I said, I got a feeling.”

  Active nodded to Vera, and she handed Silver the shaft. He brushed away the snow and frost at the joint where the ivory and wooden sections were lashed together, and squinted at a little collection of scratch marks thus exposed. He grunted, and shook his head. “Shit, I was afraid of this. It’s Uncle Frosty’s harpoon, all right. Fucking Calvin.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  UNCLE FROSTY HAD ARRIVED by air on another windy, milk-skied morning three days earlier, while Nathan Active was being teased in timeless Eskimo fashion about his new snowmachine.

  “So you decided on the Yamaha.” Jim Silver strolled around the machine in question and stopped at the handlebars. His parka was open as usual, his paunch bulging out between the flaps. Unlike Active, Silver never seemed to feel the cold. He rolled back the gauntlets covering the Yamaha’s handlebars and whistled in mock admiration. “Heated grips, ah? Yoi! You’ll be so warm on the trail.”

  It was Silver’s lapse into Village English, the “yoi!” in particular, that warned Active he was in trouble. “Yoi!” meant “So lucky!” or “So nice!” but carried an under
tone of the sly Inupiat ridicule of which Silver, though white, had become a master during his long years in Chukchi.

  Active wriggled his toes in the cold and tried to work out a defense. “The heated grips were included. I didn’t order them,” he said at last.

  “Uh-huh.” Silver took another turn around the Yamaha, then stepped back a pace, his face split by a huge, malicious grin. “But why the ladies’ model?”

  Active said a silent “Fuck!” and an audible “Yeah, right.” He huddled a little deeper into his parka against the wind scraping across the Chukchi airport, and against whatever it was that Silver was about to spring on him.

  Silver touched the Yamaha’s cowling with a gloved hand. “I’m not saying it’s not a lovely shade of purple, because it is.”

  Active waited in misery, his breath coming in visible puffs. The wind lashed the long guard hairs on the wolf fur of his parka ruff into his mouth. He huffed them out.

  “It’s just that around here . . .” Silver paused, as if pondering how to administer the kill shot as humanely as possible. “Well, around here, purple is a ladies’ color and anything purple is known as a ladies’ model. Purple four-wheeler, purple pickup, purple boat, purple airplane, purple snowgo, that’s a ladies’ machine in Chukchi. I thought you’d know that.”

  Silver left his orbit around the Yamaha and sat down on it, facing the rear. “Nice soft seat, too.” He leaned back, rested his head on the handlebars, and sighed, then looked at Active. “Usually, the dealers have to mark down the purple ones before they can move ’em. Hector didn’t by any chance give you a special deal on it, did he?”

  Active gave Silver the finger—a gloved finger.

  Silver smiled and wagged his head. “Thought so. But I take this as a good sign. Even with a discount, a new snowmachine is a major financial commitment for you, Nathan, cheap as you are. You’ve decided to stay in Chukchi after all, I take it?”