Village of the Ghost Bears Read online

  Carnaby frowned. “The Feds can do that? Sounds like entrapment.”

  Long chewed his lip for a moment, lost in thought. “Let’s see, how did they get around that? If they can show a predisposition to do it, it’s not entrapment. So the Feds forced some of the Cape Goodwin guys to testify that Jae bought bladders from them too, and that seemed to cover it. I remember Jae lost an appeal on that point.”

  Carnaby raised his eyebrows and grunted. “But they couldn’t bring down Kyung and the rest of the pipeline to Korea?”

  Long squinted in negation. “That’s right. Jae never cracked. He took it all himself.”

  “I can understand why Jae would want to nail you,” Active said. “But why would he be after Jim? Was he involved in it somehow?”

  Long shook his head. “The chief didn’t know about it till it went down. The Feds didn’t tell the city cops any more than they told you Troopers. But Jae was convinced Jim had set him up because of, you know, the thing with Ruthie. And pretty soon the word’s trickling down from Cape Goodwin that Jae is going to get even with Jim and me. And now he’s had a couple years to sit in his cell in Oregon and stew about it. My guess is, the Rec Center is his payback.” Long was silent for a moment. “Maybe it’s my fault. If I’d have checked like Jim said—”

  “Don’t go down that road, Alan,” Carnaby said. “What’s done is done.”

  Long cleared his throat.

  “If it wasn’t through Jim, how did the Feds get onto the Cape Goodwin deal?” Active asked.

  “They never told me who tipped them off,” Long said. “They operate on a need-to-know basis.”

  “How about the bladders you sold to Jae? Where’d the Feds get them?”

  Long shook his head and shrugged.

  “Well, they have their ways,” Carnaby said. “But I guess Jae has to be somewhere near the top of our list for the Rec Center fire right now. You talk to Uncle Kyung?”

  “I called him after I talked to the prison people,” Long said. “I got basically nothing. Kyung was pretty much in ‘Jae who?’ mode. You know how those Koreans are.”

  “You check with our Village Public Safety Officer up in Cape Goodwin?” Active asked.

  “He’s moose-hunting up the Goodwin River,” Long said. “But I got hold of his wife at home. She hasn’t heard of Jae being in the village. And I would have heard if any of our city officers had seen him down here.”

  “You’ve been busy, Alan,” Carnaby said in a tone of somewhat grudging admiration. “Very thorough.”

  Long beamed and said thanks.

  “But how could Jae get into town without somebody spotting him?” Active asked. “He’d have to come through the airport, right?”

  Long shrugged. “Probably. Or he could have come along the coast from Nome or Barrow in a boat, maybe.”

  Carnaby looked at Long with a skeptical frown. “He’s that good in the country?”

  Long lifted his eyebrows. “From what I hear, yeah.”

  Active considered the possibilities and gave up. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but when had revenge and logic ever paddled the same kayak?

  “So the chief’s daughter is still up there?” Carnaby asked.

  Long lifted his eyebrows.

  Carnaby looked at Active. “Unless somebody’s got a better idea, I guess you better head up there tomorrow and have a talk with Ruthie, Nathan.” Then he looked at Long. “Sound right to you, Alan?”

  Long looked a little disappointed. “Jae is kind of my deal, so I’d like to go, but—”

  “But you helped put him away, so Ruthie’s not likely to talk to you.”

  “Yeah,” Long said.

  “All right, then, we’re—”

  “What about Buck Eastlake?” Active asked.

  Carnaby drummed his fingers on the desk blotter for a moment. “He’ll have to wait, I guess. Jae Hyo Lee seems to make more sense.”

  The other two nodded.

  “What else?” Carnaby asked. “Alan, did your guys check the ER like Ronnie Barnes said? In case somebody came in with a burn last night or this morning?”

  Long stood and gathered up the Jae Hyo Lee file. “I’m on it, Captain,” he said and headed for the door.

  “Hang on a minute,” Carnaby said.

  Long paused in the doorway and turned back.

  “Close the door.”

  Long closed it.

  “Let’s go back to something that came up just now.” Carnaby rubbed his chin and looked at Long. “Jae Hyo Lee said he was going to get you too?”

  Long swallowed. “Well, yeah, but—”

  “We obviously can’t assume it was just talk,” Carnaby said. “I mean, look at what happened to. . . .”

  Long nodded, his face losing some of its eagerness. “Chief Silver.”

  “Uh-huh. You still living with your mom?”

  Long nodded again. “But he wouldn’t—”

  “If he’d do the Rec Center fire, he would,” Active said.

  “You guys back to twenty-four-hour patrols now?” Carnaby asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Long said. “Chief Silver got a grant from somewhere. Homeland Security, I think.”

  “Yeah, well, wherever,” Carnaby said. “Have your guys patrol your mom’s house a couple times an hour, eh?” patrol your mom’s house a couple “I guess I better,” Long said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE PALMER HOUSE ON Beach Street was silent when Active let himself in for the second time that day. No TV, no radio, no kitchen sounds. It was a little after seven. He tried to remember if this was one of Nita’s basketball nights and finally decided it was.

  He tiptoed up the stairs. The door was open to Grace’s childhood bedroom, and it was empty now. Active relaxed a little. She must be doing better, he thought.

  Then he saw light under the door of her parents’ old bedroom and heard muffled TV sounds coming from inside. He relaxed some more. She was herself, or as close as she got, when she slept in her father’s bed. She had taken to sleeping there after his murder, seeming to regard the bed as conquered territory.

  He knocked and poked his head in.

  She was watching a home-remodeling show on cable, the volume lowered to near-inaudibility. He couldn’t re -member the name of the show, but it involved people redoing rooms in each others’ houses with camera crews recording it all. And it was, as far as he could determine, irresistible to any female who tuned in to it. His mother was also addicted.

  “Hi,” he said as she muted the TV. “How you feeling?”

  “Better,” she said. “Did you find out who he was?”

  He sat on the bed. She was rubbing on lip balm.

  “The arsonist? No, and we’re still not sure it was arson in the first place.”

  She shook her head with a sympathetic smile. “Bad day, huh?”

  Active let out a long breath and rubbed his eyes, noticing now how tired he was. “Alan Long thinks maybe it was a Korean if it was arson. You ever know a guy named Jae Hyo Lee?”

  She thought for a moment, then replied, “Don’t think so. They tend to keep to themselves, you know.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Why does Alan think he did it?”

  Active laid out what they had learned that day, and waited for her take on it.

  “Wouldn’t somebody have seen him around if he was back in town?” she asked.

  “You’d think, and we’ll probably do some more checking. But I don’t know. Maybe he was just here long enough to set the fire. Alan Long’s hot on him, and I guess I’m starting to come around myself. Oh, and by the way—”

  “This is all secret Trooper stuff, and we never had this conversation, ah?” She was smiling.

  He smiled back and lifted his eyebrows in affirmation.

  “So Carnaby wants you to go up to Cape Goodwin tomorrow?”

  “Uh-huh. Know anybody up there?”

  “Not really. Everybody says people from Cape Goodwin are a little different.”

 
; “I’ve heard that too,” he said. He was silent, thinking of how to break the news about Anchorage.

  “How about No-Way?” she said before he could speak. “Did you find out who he was?”

  “Well, no. Cowboy’s not going up to get him till tomorrow, then we have to send him to the crime lab in Anchorage. It’ll be a few days before we know anything.”

  “Anybody reported missing from the villages upriver?”

  “Nope.”

  “Mmm-mm.”

  He shifted his position to look at her more directly, studying her quicksilver eyes for a moment. “Carnaby talked to me about something else just now too.”

  She looked up at him, her face tightening. “You got the transfer.”

  “Apparently.”

  “When?”

  “By Christmas, probably.”

  Her gaze shifted to the remodeling show, still muted. “I don’t know how I’d do in Anchorage. Too many memories.”

  “How are you doing here?”

  She didn’t answer, but her face got a little tighter.

  “You need to get out of this house. This room.”

  “I know. But not yet. Don’t crowd me.”

  “I don’t mean to.”

  “I don’t know what you see in me.”

  He was silent for a long time, trying to explain it to himself so he could explain it to her. Finally, he said, “I’m not so lonely now.”

  “Oh, baby, neither am I. Come here.” She opened her arms, and he leaned in for a hug that became a kiss, then a hug again. She un-muted the remodeling show. “Let’s finish this, then I’ll go down and make us something to eat. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds fine.” He shifted around to face the TV, counting the remodeling show a small price to pay for her company.

  THE NEXT morning, Active was not surprised to learn that getting to Cape Goodwin to see Ruthie Silver would not be easy. Chukchi had two small airlines that ran commuter flights to the outlying villages. Neither, he discovered, could get into Cape Goodwin just then. The ticket agent at one said that half the Cape Goodwin runway had been eaten away by a fall storm two weeks earlier, and what was left of it was too short and rough for a standard nose-gear airplane. Until the runway was fixed, you needed an old-fashioned taildragger, a Super Cub or maybe a Cessna 185, to get into Cape Goodwin. Unless you wanted to take a floatplane and land in the lagoon behind the village. “Cowboy Decker goes up there in the Lienhofer Super Cub,” the agent concluded.

  Active sighed and hung up, resigning himself to another run-in with Delilah. Maybe her disposition would be better today.

  It wasn’t.

  “First you want Cowboy to go up to One-Way Lake and fly out a dead man,” she said from behind the Lienhofer counter, “and now you want him to go up to Cape Goodwin instead? The fuck for? Somebody dead up there too?”

  Active shook his head. “There’s been a change of plans. It’s Trooper business. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Doesn’t matter anyway. Cowboy already left for One-Way.”

  “Already?” Active looked at his watch. “It’s not even nine o’clock yet.”

  Delilah shrugged. “I guess he’s not running on village time today. Anyway, he probably won’t be back till around noon, or a little after.”

  “That long, just to One-Way Lake and back?”

  “Don’t forget, he’s got to tie a dead man on a float. And didn’t you ask him to look for a boat or something?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Active drummed his fingers on the counter until Delilah shot him one of her glances. Something was tugging at his memory. “So, is there any other way to get up to Cape Goodwin?”

  The phone rang, and she booked a charter to Ebrulik before answering him. “There is no other way to get to Cape Goodwin that I know of,” she said after she hung up. “And I am kind of busy right now?”

  “Wait a minute,” Active said. “What about Doug McAllister? Didn’t Cowboy say he’s got a Cessna 185?”

  Delilah shrugged. “It’s Dood, not Doug, and yes, he has a 185. But I don’t think he wants any charters today. He gassed up at our pumps a few minutes ago and said he was gonna be hauling supplies out to his hunting camp on the Upper Katonak. See?”

  She pointed at a line of planes tied down between the Lienhofer hangar and the runway.

  Active saw a squat, potbellied man loading boxes from a pickup into the back of a shiny blue-and-white taildragger with a cargo pod under the belly. It was noticeably larger than a Super Cub.

  “Maybe he could drop me on the way,” Active said.

  “I doubt it,” Delilah said.

  “Well, if I can talk him into

  “Well, if I can talk him into it, will you send Cowboy to pick me up when he gets back from One-Way?”

  Delilah glared at him for a moment, then walked to the flight board on the wall at the end of the counter and made a note with a black marker. “I see you leave with McAllister, I’ll book it,” she said. “Will that be all, officer?”

  The phone rang again, and he turned to leave, but stopped when she said, “Hold on, he’s right here.” She waved the phone at him. “It’s for you, and don’t tie up my line, all right?”

  “You want to look for a stolen boat as you head up the coast?” said the voice of Alan Long.

  “What boat?”

  “Somebody stole a boat off the beach two nights ago.”

  “The same night as the Rec Center fire?”

  “Yep.”

  “And it just got reported now?”

  “No, it was reported yesterday, but everybody was too busy to pay attention. The report just hit my desk this morning, and I’m thinking maybe Jae took it to make his getaway.”

  “But if Jae came in by boat, why would he need to steal one to get out?”

  Long was silent for a moment. “Good point.”

  Active sighed. “All right, what’s it look like? I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Blue wooden dory, eighteen-footer, white Johnson outboard on the back. Owner’s a guy named Roland Miller. Went out yesterday to load up for a caribou hunt, and it was gone.”

  Active left the office still writing the description in his notebook and headed for the blue-and-white Cessna. McAllister turned to watch as he walked up. “Help you?” the guide said.

  Active introduced himself. “I need to get up to Cape Goodwin. Delilah says you’re heading up to your camp, and I thought you might be able to drop me off.”

  Up close, McAllister didn’t seem so much short and potbellied as tough and compact. He smelled tough too, like gas, sweat, wood smoke, and something else—animal blood, maybe? Camouflage anorak, rust-colored Carhartt jeans, hip waders folded down to the knee, the hilt of a hunting knife sticking out of a sheath on his belt. Dark, fleshy, leathery face, maybe a quarter Inupiaq, maybe half, careful eyes in what looked like a permanent squint, no sunglasses.

  “Sorry. I’ve about got a load here, all right.” McAllister gestured at the groceries in the pickup and the plane.

  “Relax. I’m not doing any Fish and Game enforcement today.”

  McAllister shrugged. “I’m not doing any violations today. Or any other day.”

  Besides groceries, the pickup held four jerry jugs of gas, Active saw, and what looked to be a case of wine labeled “Solare.” Active had never heard of Solare, but he guessed it was expensive. It was well known that sportsmen willing to pay fifteen or twenty thousand dollars for the Arctic Quadruple—moose, caribou, grizzly, and Dall sheep—liked their comforts, even in the wilderness. For the most part, Chukchi law enforcement looked the other way and let the local guides fly in their clients’ liquor unmolested, as long as none of it hit the black market in Chukchi or the surrounding villages.

  McAllister finished loading the groceries and heaved two of the jerry jugs into the back of the plane.

  Active leaned on a fender of the pickup and dangled a hand over the Solare. “And the city cops are in charge of enforcing the liquor ban. But
this probably isn’t wine anyway, right? Probably just an old case you’re using to haul groceries, right?”

  McAllister muttered something Active didn’t catch, lifted the case out of the pickup, and held it against his chest. He looked at Active with a little smile. “This case?” he said, and then he dropped it.

  Active jumped sideways to save his feet. There was a crash of breaking glass, then a clear, red liquid began trickling out. The tang of wine reached Active’s nose.

  “Whoops,” McAllister said, still wearing the little smile.

  “That was no accident.”

  “That uniform doesn’t mean you can fuck with people, naluaqmiiyaaq.”

  “I could bust you for the wine.”

  McAllister shook his head with a disgusted look. “I didn’t know it was wine. The client said it was camera gear.”

  “I could bust your client. How would that be for—”

  “Client’s not here yet. And he won’t be if I tell him there’s a Trooper hanging around with a hard-on.”

  Active rubbed his forehead. “All right, I was out of line. Sorry.”

  McAllister hefted the last two jerry jugs into the plane. “Somebody dead up there?”

  Active shook his head. “Nobody dead, but that’s all I can tell you. It’s Trooper business.”

  McAllister muttered under his breath again, then looked at Active, head tilted. “Wait a minute. From what I hear on Kay-Chuck, all you Troopers must be working on that Rec Center fire. Somebody up there set it?”

  “I told you, it’s Trooper business.”

  “All right, I’ll take you if that’s what it’s about. And if you’ll stay out of my face.”

  Active was tempted to ask why McAllister wasn’t worried about overloading the plane any more, but decided he needed the ride more than the information. “No problem.”

  “Is anybody going to be shooting at us when we land?”

  Active stared at McAllister, who appeared to be serious about the question. “What for?”