Shaman Pass Read online

  It was a little after seven, the haze gone, the west wind gone, the new day coming on clear and sharp as broken ice. The sun was just above the eastern horizon and throwing shafts of yellow and blue over the village as he drove to Dolly Maiyumerak’s cottage. Silver was there in his Bronco, stopped driver-to-driver beside a green-and-white Chukchi Police Department pickup.

  Both men had their windows down and were talking as Active pulled the Suburban over and parked on the side of the street. He walked to Silver’s Bronco, opened the passenger door, and leaned in. “I see the lights are on now. Any other sign of life?”

  Silver nodded and looked at his watch. “Dolly looked out the front window beside the kunnichuk there and waved at us four minutes ago. That’s it so far.”

  “You been up to the door?”

  Silver shook his head.

  Active studied the scene. Maiyumerak’s snowmachine was parked to the right of the kunnichuk, just outside the circle marking the radius of Kobuk’s chain. The sled, Active saw, was empty, with no sign of blood or hair in the basket. “Look at that,” he said. “No caribou.”

  “Nope,” Silver said. “Guess the hunting wasn’t so hot.”

  “Guess not,” Active said.

  Kobuk sat on top of his oil-drum house, watching the three visitors without much interest. Active surmised that Silver and his officer had been there so long without doing anything that Kobuk had become bored.

  “I guess we should go in,” Silver said.

  “We could,” Active said.

  “Or?”

  “Or we could call Dispatch on the radio, and get them to call Dolly on the telephone, and ask if Calvin would like to come out and talk to us.”

  Silver grimaced and said nothing.

  “Seeing as how Dolly already knows we’re here and all,” Active said, twisting the knife a little because of the ladies’ model thing.

  Silver said, “Good idea,” keyed the microphone in the Bronco, and gave the instructions to the dispatcher. A couple of minutes later, the radio crackled back to life. “Dolly says Calvin is having his morning coffee and you guys can come in and have some with him. She’ll come to the door.”

  Active looked at Silver, who rolled his eyes and picked up the mike. “Roger.”

  Silver nodded toward the cop in the pickup. “Nathan, you know Alan Long here?”

  Long was Inupiat, about the same age as Active, round faced and bucktoothed with a little too much enthusiasm. He was, Active recalled vaguely, an army veteran who had served with the military police and was mildly obnoxious. Active nodded and said, “Hey, Alan.”

  “Active,” Alan said with a nod of his own.

  Now Active remembered what it was that made Alan Long obnoxious. In a town where everyone who knew him even slightly called him “Nathan,” Long called him “Active.”

  Active pulled his head and shoulders out of the Bronco and Silver drove it ahead far enough to park behind Long’s pickup. The chief stepped out onto the late-winter hardpack, as did Long, and they gathered by the tailgate of the pickup.

  Active saw curtain movement in a window and then Dolly Maiyumerak’s eyes on them as he unsnapped the hammer strap of his holster and tucked it out of the way of the Smith & Wesson. Silver eased his own pistol up an inch, then reseated it in the holster.

  “Alan, you got your shotgun in the truck there?” Silver asked.

  Long nodded, went to the passenger door of the pickup, and returned with a short-barreled pump.

  “Buckshot?” Silver asked.

  Long raised his eyebrows and said, “Double-aught.” He worked the pump and a load snicked into the firing chamber. “I got your back, Chief.”

  Silver glanced furtively at Active with a grimace.

  “Maybe he could go watch the rear door,” Active said. “In that kunnichuk, three of us won’t be any better than two.”

  “Good point,” Silver said.

  Long said, “Roger that, Chief,” in a disappointed tone and trotted to a rear corner of the cottage, where he could see the back door and still have a little cover.

  Silver looked at Active and grimaced again. “I gotta find that kid a woman. He watches too many videos.”

  Active grinned, said, “Roger that,” and pointed at the sled hitched to Maiyumerak’s snowmachine. The butt of a rifle stuck out of a scabbard lashed to a rail. “You think we’re overengineering this?”

  “Doesn’t hurt to be careful,” Silver said. His parka was unzipped and Active noticed for the first time the bulk of body armor under the police chief’s shirt.

  Active lifted his eyebrows in the universal expression for “I’m impressed.” Silver shrugged, looking a little sheepish.

  They walked into the kunnichuk, Active wondering if he should have worn a vest, too. Then he noticed a long-barreled shotgun leaning against a shadowed corner of the kunnichuk and relaxed slightly, though he said nothing to Silver.

  A large chest-type freezer filled most of Dolly Maiyumerak’s kunnichuk. The inner door to her house was left of the freezer, and there was room for only one person to stand between the freezer and the end wall of the kunnichuk to knock on the door.

  “I could knock,” Silver said. “I’ve got the vest.”

  Active shook his head, thinking of the shotgun in the corner and the rifle outside on the sled. “It’s a trooper case,” he said. “And Kevlar probably wouldn’t stop a harpoon, anyway.”

  He stepped up, knocked, and stepped back, Silver standing behind and to his right in front of the freezer. Active didn’t quite put his hand on the Smith & Wesson, but he did flip back his parka and hook both thumbs on his belt so that his right hand was near the pistol.

  He heard Dolly’s voice saying, “Look like they finally got up their nerves,” then something unintelligible in a male voice, then steps coming toward them and then he couldn’t help it, his fingers crept down over the grip of the Smith & Wesson as Dolly opened the door and glared out at them.

  She took in the scene, shook her head, and swung the door wide open, disclosing Calvin in his underwear at a small and battered folding table, a coffee cup and cigarette before him. He took a puff and flashed his gap-toothed grin. “I’m just having a last smoke before you shoot me.”

  Trying not to be obvious, Active removed his hands from his belt and let his parka swing back into place over the Smith & Wesson. He heard a little stir from behind him as Silver did something similar.

  “You could sit down,” Dolly said.

  They sat on folding chairs at the card table and she brought them coffee while Calvin smoked away and said nothing. He looked almost as if he were enjoying himself. “What about that other guy?” he said finally.

  “What other guy?” Active said.

  “The one that go around behind.”

  Silver shook his head. “Shit. Alan. I’ll send him back.” He stood up and headed for the door. Dolly hobbled to the single bed against the wall, sat down with her legs sticking straight out, and pulled a red thigh-length down parka across her lap. A wolf ruff was partly attached to the hood, and Dolly took up sewing it where she had presumably left off when they knocked.

  Active, wondering if the ruff was really wolf, pulled out a notebook and looked at Calvin. “Your grandmother told you why we’re here?”

  “She say you think I kill Victor Solomon.”

  “Do you want a lawyer?”

  “I never kill nobody and I never need no lawyer.”

  Silver returned from the kunnichuk and took his seat again as Active was asking Calvin what he had been doing the night Victor was killed. Calvin’s sketch matched the accounts they had had from Dolly and Queenie. It matched right down to the two hours of quiyuk with Queenie of the headlights and bumper, which brought a smile to the lips of Dolly Maiyumerak, who was watching them from the bed.

  “Your sled’s empty,” Active said.

  Maiyumerak shrugged.

  “Some people tell me you’re a good hunter. But you didn’t get any caribou.�
��

  “I never find the herd. That doesn’t mean I’m bad hunter. Or that I kill anybody.”

  Active cocked his head at Maiyumerak. “Who else could it be? Someone got thrown out of Victor’s meeting. Victor called someone anaq and threatened to throw him in a honey bucket. Who else would want to rob the museum and kill Victor?”

  This brought a loud grunt of disgust from the bed, but only another gap-toothed grin from Calvin. “You want to know who do it?”

  Nobody said anything, but Active lifted his eyebrows. Dolly Maiyumerak growled from the bed and rattled off something in machine-gun Inupiaq that went completely past Active. She was looking at Calvin, but Active thought she was watching him and Silver, too.

  Calvin looked at her and said something soft in Inupiaq. The only word Active caught was aana. Dolly growled another unintelligible snatch of Inupiaq, and resumed work on the parka.

  Calvin turned back to Silver and Active. “Uncle Frosty do it, that’s what I think. I think Uncle Frosty’s made cold by the universe and he break out of the museum, then he hang around and kill Victor Solomon because Victor want to put him in that display case for the naluaqmiut tourists to see.” He nodded as if that explained everything.

  Silver snorted. “Let’s quit wasting time, Calvin. What would you say if I said we have a witness who saw your snowmachine at Victor’s sheefish camp the night he was killed?”

  “That’s not—” Maiyumerak stopped talking and a slow grin dawned on his face. “You got that witness?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Silver said. “I asked what you would say if I did say it.”

  Maiyumerak looked into his coffee cup. “If you said that to me, I would say somebody is full of anaq.”

  Silver, his hoary policeman’s bluff called, flushed but said nothing.

  “What was that about Uncle Frosty being cold?” Active said. “Is that—”

  “It’s just more of his bullshit,” Silver said. “Superstition from the old days.”

  Calvin balanced his cigarette on the rim of his coffee cup. “You naluaqmiut are pretty smart. Invent snowmachines, rifles, outboard motor, cigarettes. Even naluaqmiiyaaqs like Nathan here, I guess. But maybe you don’t know everything.” He looked straight at Active.

  Superstition or bullshit, it was the first piece of information, or misinformation, Calvin had volunteered. “I’d like to hear about it,” Active said. “We naluaqmiiyaaqs have to learn all we can.”

  There was a loud growl now from Dolly on the bed and Calvin grinned again. It was impossible to tell if it signalled approval of Active’s interest, or satisfaction at the bite from this fish, this gullible naluaqmiiyaaq.

  “Sometimes if somebody die and they’re not treated right, they don’t go on to the next world,” Calvin said. “They’re made cold by the universe, that’s what them old Eskimos call it. Their ears get so good, they can hear rabbits and foxes running in the brush. They can’t feel the cold and their bodies get so light they can walk on top of the trees and jump across a river without getting wet.”

  Active watched Dolly as Calvin talked. Her eyes were on the ruff in her hands, but the hands weren’t doing anything and her body language said she was listening closely to their conversation.

  Calvin’s hands floated up to illustrate the treetop walking and river jumping, and he uttered a long Inupiaq phrase, then nodded to himself. “Made cold by the universe is what they call it.”

  “And that’s what happened to Uncle Frosty?”

  Calvin nodded again.

  “And now that he’s killed Victor Solomon, now what?”

  “Now maybe he’ll lie down on tundra, die regular way, never bother anybody no more.”

  Active thought it over, watching as Dolly seemed to relax. Her polished old fingers pushed the awl through the ruff and she bent to study her seam.

  Active stood up. “Chief Silver and I have to go talk in the kunnichuk,” he said. He waved Silver toward the door as Dolly and Calvin exchanged puzzled looks.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “THIS FEEL RIGHT TO you?” Active asked when they were in the storm shed, with the door into the house closed.

  Silver shrugged. “Pretty much, I guess. He and Dolly and Queenie all tell the same story about what he was doing Thursday night and Friday morning.”

  Active nodded. “Yeah, that part of it feels right. But— remember when Calvin started to talk about Uncle Frosty being made cold by the universe? Dolly yelled at him in Inupiaq, then he said something back and she calmed down, then he told us about Uncle Frosty walking on the treetops and killing Victor Solomon.”

  Silver nodded.

  “You catch any of that? Their Inupiaq was too fast for me.”

  Silver squinted, thinking. “Not much of it. They were too fast for me, too. I think she was telling him not to play around, and he said not to worry, let us pukuk all we want, he can handle us.”

  “Pukuk?”

  “Yeah, it means to poke around, get into everything. Like a little kid or a mouse or a weasel.”

  Active pursed his lips. “Let’s split them up. You read Calvin his Miranda rights and haul him out. I’ll stay here and talk to Dolly.”

  “We don’t have enough to arrest him. The public defenders’ll have him out in thirty minutes.”

  “You’re not arresting him. You’re just taking him out to your truck while I talk to Dolly.”

  Silver looked doubtful, then grinned and nodded. “It’s your case, pal. Should I ask him what she said to him in there?”

  Active thought it over. “No, let me question them both. Easier to compare stories that way.”

  Silver nodded and they went back into the house. Calvin was dressed now, in brown corduroy trousers and a faded green sweatshirt with a hood, zipper, and Nike swoosh. Dolly was still on the bed with her parka and ruff. Silver told Calvin to stand up and that he was being taken into custody in connection with the murder of Victor Solomon.

  Dolly scooted off the bed and shuffled over to put a protective hand on Calvin’s elbow. “He never kill nobody. You leave ’im alone.”

  “You need to back away from Calvin, Mrs. Maiyumerak,” Active said. He stepped between them and suddenly Calvin was surrounded by the two officers.

  “I tell you I never stick nobody with no harpoon,” Calvin said as Silver reeled off the Miranda warning. “This is another violation of the Charter on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

  Silver rolled his eyes and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. “Am I going to need these?”

  Calvin looked defiant for a moment, then frightened, then shook his head rapidly as he squinted no.

  “Let’s go then.” Silver put his hand in the middle of Calvin’s back and headed him toward the door. They passed into the kunnichuk and a moment later Active heard the outer door slam. He turned to Dolly Maiyumerak.

  She had gone back to her bed, but she wasn’t working on the parka. She sat on the edge, back rigid and straight, hands in her lap.

  Active walked over and stood before her. “Your grandson could be in serious trouble, Mrs. Maiyumerak.”

  She pushed her lips out in a stubborn set but there was fright in her eyes. “He’s good boy, just little bit crazy from dreaming about old days when there’s no naluaqmiut around. He never kill nobody. He just take care of me, that’s all he do. “

  Active, feeling thoroughly ashamed now, sat down beside her. “You may have to go back to Ebrulik and stay with your son and his wife.”

  Dolly flinched. “I tell Calvin not to fool around with you guys. But he always think he’s so smart. Now you’re gonna put him in your jail and a-huh, a-huh . . .”

  Active waited for the sobs to subside, then patted the old lady’s shoulder. “Unless there’s something that you could tell us that would help us find the real killer. If it’s not your grandson.”

  Dolly put on the Eskimo mask again and Active let the inscrutability ride for a while. Then he made a show of standing up and zipping his parka. “W
ill you be all right here by yourself if your grandson is gone for a while? Could I take you someplace?”

  The mask vanished and Dolly became a fearful old woman glaring at him out of red-rimmed black eyes. “Calvin tell me, ‘Never say nothing, Aana.’ ”

  Active sat beside her again. “Does Calvin want you to move back to Ebrulik?”

  Dolly sighed, wiped her eyes on the hem of the red parka, and shot Active another fearful glance. “Somebody come to see Calvin, talk about somebody stealing Uncle Frosty from museum.”

  “You mean Jim Silver’s men? The city police?”

  “No, not them.”

  “Well, who?”

  “You could ask Calvin.”

  “Maybe he won’t tell us.”

  “Whyborn Sivula.”

  “Who?”

  “Whyborn Sivula.”

  It was the oddest name Active had ever heard. He was sure it was the first time it had been uttered in his presence. “Whyborn Sivula came to see your grandson?”

  Dolly lifted her eyebrows.

  “Who’s Whyborn Sivula?”

  “Old man.”

  “From here?”

  She lifted her eyebrows again.

  “When was this?”

  She was silent, thinking. “Wednesday afternoon, maybe.”

  Active counted back to Uncle Frosty’s arrival and was about to say the burglary hadn’t happened yet on Wednesday, when Dolly said, “No, Thursday. Whyborn come on Thursday. Thursday afternoon.”

  That fit. Uncle Frosty had disappeared from the museum Wednesday night or in the early hours of Thursday morning. The story was on Kay-Chuck by noon Thursday. “What did Whyborn say about the burglary?”

  Dolly shrugged. “He go in kunnichuk with Calvin, like that Jim Silver now. I never hear what they say.”

  “Did Calvin tell you about it afterward?”

  “He say Whyborn want to ask him did he take Uncle Frosty? He tell Whyborn he never do it, then Whyborn leave.”