Village of the Ghost Bears (17 page)

“No, I don’t think Jae told me that.”

“So you wouldn’t know what they talked about?”

“Of course not.”

“Did you know Jim Silver?”

“The police chief? Of course. He didn’t like Koreans much.”

Long stirred behind Active, but held his tongue.

Kim gave a slight, quick nod. “I should not have said that. I’m sure he was a very good police chief.”

“Well, Jim Silver called the prison about your nephew a couple of weeks ago, and now they’re both dead,” Active said.

Kim nodded again.

“And Tom Gage went to see your nephew, and he’s dead too.”

Another nod.

“And you talked to your nephew a little before Jim Silver did, but you’re still alive.”

Kim didn’t nod this time.

“And I’m guessing you want to stay alive. Is that it?”

No answer, but perhaps that flicker of calculation again.

“Mr. Kim, is there any way we can help you with that? Staying alive, I mean?”

“Leave me alone to run our family’s businesses. We have many properties in your city, and your fire department is somewhat inefficient.”

This produced a sharp intake of breath from Long, but he didn’t speak. The office was beginning to smell, but Active couldn’t tell if it was Kim sweating or Long.

“You think your properties might catch fire if you help us?” Active asked.

Kim’s face was a mask again.

“Mr. Kim?”

The face didn’t flicker. Active fished out a business card and dropped it on the desk. “You can call me if you think of anything.”

No response. Active pushed the office door open, admitting a wash of relatively fresh air. “You knew that was your nephew in One-Way Lake before we came in, didn’t you?”

Kim remained silent.

They walked to the door of the restaurant and Active took a look back. Kim was at the counter again, still watching from behind his mask.

“He knew,” Long said as they climbed into the Suburban.

“Yep.”

“And he’s scared shitless.”

“Yep.”

“But who of?”

“Exactly.”

“SO YOU didn’t get much more out of Kim in person than Alan did on the phone.” Carnaby said this with a slight twinkle in his eye after hearing their report. “And did you observe anything significant in the subject’s demeanor, Alan?”

Long suppressed a chuckle and Active tried to think of a comeback. Failing, he just said, “Maybe we should call Ronnie Barnes now.”

Long stared at him.

“What?” Carnaby said.

“We were about to get on the phone to Barnes when the guy from the crime lab called. Go over the case with him, pick his brain a little?”

“Oh, yeah,” Carnaby growled. “Right. Go ahead, Nathan. Smile and dial.”

While the phone was ringing, Active switched it to speaker mode. In a few moments, they heard the familiar drawl. “Ronnie Barnes.”

Active identified himself and informed Barnes of the presence of Carnaby and Long. “We were just wondering if you came up with anything else on our fire,” Active said.

“Not much,” Barnes said. “Just one little thing I was going to e-mail you with later today.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Turns out you were right about that wire, Nathan. There was something funny about it.”

Active remembered the wire loop that had possibly secured the locker room door in place and doomed the men inside. He even remembered noticing something odd about it, but not exactly what. “Go ahead,” he said, covering. He could catch up as Barnes went on.

“You were thinking the way it was twisted looked like a machine did it?”

Now it came back to Active. “Right, it looked too neat for a guy to do with pliers.”

“Uh-huh,” Barnes said. “You know what a safety-wire twister is?”

Active looked around the desk. Carnaby and Long shook their heads. “No idea,” Active said.

“Me too,” Barnes said. “Until I showed the wire around the office and one of the guys here’s a pilot. He recognized it. It’s aviation safety wire. Airplane mechanics use it to tie down the heads of bolts so they won’t vibrate off in the air, everything from Super Cubs to 747s, which would explain why it wasn’t affected by the fire; it’s made to withstand high temperatures. Now, I guess you could put it on with regular pliers, but airplane mechanics use something called a safety-wire twister. It’s kind of like a vise grip where you lock the jaws onto the wire and then it has this shaft that you pull to make it spin and twist the—Ah, hell, I’ll e-mail you a picture of one, all right?”

They all grunted their assent, impatient for Barnes to finish.

“The point is, it’s a really fast way to wire something down tight, and you get the kind of neat and tidy twist that that wire from the Rec Center had on it. I got some safety wire and a twister from the guy here and tried it myself, and it came out exactly like what I pulled from the ashes out there.”

Nobody said anything for so long that it was Barnes who broke the silence.

“You guys still there? Hello?”

“Yeah, we’re here,” Carnaby said. “So an aviation mechanic started our fire?”

“Or somebody who stole his wire twister,” Barnes said. “Unless that piece of safety wire was still lying around from when that building used to be, what was it, your Air Guard Armory?”

“Uh-huh,” Carnaby said. “You got anything else for us?”

“Nope, that’s it,” Barnes said. “Look for an e-mail, all right? And I’ll send the wire down to the lab in Anchorage, see if they can find any tool marks. You guys find a wire twister, maybe they’ll match. Anything else I can do for you?”

Carnaby cleared his throat and looked at Active. “You remember Buck Eastlake, the—”

“Right, the jealous boyfriend,” Barnes said. “You guys talk to him yet?”

“Not yet, but he’s starting to look pretty good. Turns out he’s a cargo handler for Alaska Airlines.”

“So he might have had access to a wire twister,” Barnes said. “But—”

“Yeah,” Carnaby sighed. “If you were plotting a major arson, where would it enter your head to steal a wire twister from your employer for the project?”

“Exactly,” Barnes said. “I’d say he’s not a real hot prospect, but if you got nothing else, you might as well go on up to that camp so you can check him off your list.”

Active was about to push the Release button on the speaker phone when Barnes spoke again. “Just going down my own list here. You guys checked for burn cases the night of the fire, right?”

“I did,” Long said. “No burn cases of any kind that night or the next morning, aside from the two survivors.”

“Okay,” Barnes said. “I guess that’s one I can cross off.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ACTIVE STOOD. “I SUPPOSE I ought to get hold of Cowboy about a ride up the Katonak.”

“An aviation mechanic,” Carnaby said.

Active sighed and sat down again. “All right. An aviation mechanic.”

“Tom Gage,” Long said.

Carnaby’s eyes lit up, and his brows rose. “He could have flown his Super Cub up to One-Way Lake and dropped Jae off that cliff, all right.”

“Not if he was on floats,” Active said. “Nobody could haul a hundred-and-sixty-pound corpse up that cliff, trust me.”

“What if he was on wheels? You sure there’s no place to land up there?” Carnaby asked.

Active tried to picture the terrain again, started to shake his head, then remembered what had been nagging at him before. “Wait a minute. There’s a ridge alongside the lake where you might be able to get in on wheels. And from that ridge, yeah, you could pack a body along the caribou trail to the top of the cliff and drop it into the lake. If you were reasonably determined and reasonably strong.”

“So it is doable.” Carnaby brightened slightly as he said this, then sobered again as the next thought came to him. “But why would he haul a body all the way out there to get rid of it? There’s gotta be a hundred easier ways.”

Active pulled at his chin. “They had to be up there to start with,” he said at length. “Maybe Gage never planned to kill him, but something went wrong, and he did, and throwing Jae in the lake was the best thing he could think of.”

“Maybe,” Carnaby said.

“It makes a certain amount of sense. Hardly anybody goes up there, so the chance of someone finding the body any time soon was pretty low. It was pure luck that Grace and I stumbled across it. And with the broken neck, it did look exactly like an accident.”

“Which maybe it was.” Carnaby looked gloomier than ever. “Maybe Gage and Jae were just pals, it’s as simple as that. They plan a hunting trip to celebrate Jae’s release, Jae puts his foot down wrong on the caribou trail, and there you are, right down the cliff. It happens.”

“And then Tom flies back to town and never tells anybody his hunting partner died?” Long said.

“And then a couple weeks later he starts the Rec Center fire to kill himself out of grief and remorse?” Active said.

“All right, all right,” Carnaby said. “I admit it doesn’t totally add up, but it ties together more of our loose ends than any other theory I’ve heard.” He looked from Active to Long and back. “Am I right?”

The other two raised their eyebrows in acknowledgement.

“So,” Carnaby continued. “Jae dies in the mountains, and a couple weeks later Tom Gage dies in the Rec Center fire. But what if Tom didn’t start it after all? What if he didn’t get caught in his own arson?”

“Eh?” Long said.

“Maybe it was revenge. Maybe Tom really did kill Jae, and somebody figured it out and killed Tom to even the score.”

Active had to admit it made as much sense as anything else in the case. “And took out all those other people—”

“To leave us exactly where we are right now,” Carnaby said. “Absolutely nowhere.”

“It has to be Kyung Kim,” Long said.

The other two stared blankly for a second.

“He had to be Jae’s partner in the gallbladder business,” Carnaby said thoughtfully.

“And he wouldn’t talk to us either time,” Long said.

“It could add up,” Carnaby said. “Nathan?”

“And where would Uncle Kyung get an aviation safety-wire twister to seal up the locker room at the Rec Center? Raise your hand if you think he even knows what a wire twister is.”

“Argh,” Carnaby said. “You’re right. We’re looking for an aviation mechanic.”

“Maybe Kyung hired one,” Long said.

Carnaby massaged the bridge of his nose. “Alan, if you’re looking to hire an arsonist, why on earth would you want him to be an aviation mechanic too?”

Long looked somewhat chastened but stubborn. “I’m just saying, is all.”

Carnaby’s face softened slightly. “Either way, all that matters is, we’re looking for an aviation mechanic. Soon as we check out Buck Eastlake, we’re twenty-four/seven on the aviation mechanic angle. Hit Lienhofer, the other charter services, Alaska Airlines, the Tech Center. Ask if anybody’s missing a wire twister, see if the FAA has a list of everybody in town who is or ever was an airplane mechanic, canvass the outfits that sell these things to see if they have customers in Chukchi—the whole sushi roll, right?”

“An aviation mechanic or somebody who hung out with one!” Active said, almost shouting. “Damn it, the roommate! Jesus, hand me that phone book, will you?”

Carnaby swiveled around and pulled the flimsy Chukchi Region directory from the shelf behind his desk. “The roommate? Do we know who it is? Who are we calling?” he asked as he swung back and pushed the directory across the desk.

“The village clinic in Cape Goodwin. Remember the damned boat? Shit!” Active flipped the book open, found the Cape Goodwin listings, and ran a forefinger down to the line for the clinic. He dialed, praying the village phones would be up, the power wouldn’t be down, and the health aide wouldn’t be out moose-hunting or playing bingo. He switched the phone to speaker, breathed a line of thanks when he heard the first ring, and mouthed a fervent, if silent, “Amen” when a woman’s voice said, “Health clinic.”

Active introduced himself, and she told him her name was Molly Booth. He gave her the date of the Rec Center fire, then asked if she could check her records to see if anyone had showed up with a burn the next morning.

“I don’t need any records,” she said. “That was Pingo Kivalina. His left arm was kinda burned, all right, but not too bad. I put some medicine on it and give him some pills for the pain and tell him to go home and stay out of trouble.”

“Pingo Kivalina?”

“Ah-hah. His real name is Frederick, but they always call him Pingo for some kinda reason.”

“Did he say how he got the burn?”

“He tell me he fall on the fire while he’s moose-hunting, but I dunno. He’s pretty hung over, all right. I think maybe he fall asleep with a cigarette and catch himself on fire or something.”

“Has he been back in?”

The health aide was silent a moment. “No, I never see him since then. Seem like I hear he took off with Icy Cape that same day, maybe—or, no, next day I think.”

Icy Cape Aviation in Barrow served the entire North Slope, from the Canadian border on the east to the North Slope Borough’s southwest tip at Cape Goodwin. Or at least it had, until the storm that damaged the Cape Goodwin airport.

“Icy Cape is still getting in there, with your runway all torn up?”

“Mmm,” Booth said. “They got a Cessna 206 on floats up at Point Hope, all right. They come down here with that, land on our lagoon, at least till it freeze up.”

“Ah. And this Pingo went to Barrow?” Active asked.

“Must be,” she said. “Don’t know why he’d stay in Point Hope or any of them other villages up there.”

Active ended the call and looked at the other two, a bell tinkling faintly in his head. He read aloud the name he had scrawled on the desk blotter. “Pingo Kivalina.”

“I remember him,” Long said in a tone of wonder. “That’s Budzie Kivalina’s twin brother.”

Carnaby leaned his forehead on his palm and sighed heavily. “Where the hell does this end? We got Tom Gage visiting Jae Hyo Lee in prison, we got Gage killing Lee at One-Way Lake, and now we got Gage being burned alive by Pingo Kivalina, who just happens to possibly be Gage’s roommate, not to mention the twin brother of his dead girlfriend. Am I leaving anything out?”

“Unless Pingo was really after Chief Silver all the while,” Long said. “Or somebody else in the Rec Center.”

“I don’t want to think about it,” Carnaby said. “I just know we gotta find Pingo Kivalina. Alan, go tell Evelyn to put out a BOLO for him in Barrow—get hold of North Slope Public Safety and the Trooper detachment up there.”

Long nodded and headed for the secretary’s desk as Active suppressed a chuckle at the ludicrous acronym that had replaced the old APB—All Points Bulletin—in copspeak. BOLO stood for “Be On the Lookout.” The Troopers in Southeast Alaska even had a drug-sniffing dog by that name. Active had read or heard the term a hundred times at least, but it still sounded too comical for the gravity of its purpose—bringing in people suspected of robbery, mayhem, and murder. In this case, multiple murder by arson.

“And you, Nathan—log on to the system and see what you can find out about this guy.”

Active paused for a moment, looking at the captain. “And you, boss?”

Carnaby extracted a section of the
Anchorage Daily
News
from the clutter on his desk. It was open to a crossword puzzle, half-finished. He brandished it at Active. “I’m gonna take this down the hall and try to spend ten minutes thinking about something other than is this Pingo Kivalina real, is he still in Barrow, and, if he’s not toes-up in a snowbank, does he have anything whatever to do with this goddamn case?”

ACTIVE AND Long returned to Carnaby’s office within a minute of each other and with the same information. The crossword, Active saw, was finished.

“They’ve got him,” Long said.

“Who does?” Carnaby said.

“North Slope Public Safety,” Active said.

“He’s in the Barrow jail,” Long said. “They busted him yesterday for—”

“He was trying to sell three bottles of Monarch vodka to some teenagers up there,” Active said. “He told the cops he needed the money to get to Anchorage.”

“Wait a minute,” Carnaby said. “Didn’t you find a bottle in that boat at—”

“Right, at Cape Goodwin,” Active said. “That was Monarch too. It’s in a bag in my desk. You want to—”

“Yeah, we’ll send it down to the crime lab for prints,” Carnaby said.

Active slapped his forehead. “And wasn’t that another Monarch bottle—”

“—at Gage’s place,” Carnaby finished. “I’ll send Dickie Nelson over to get it and we’ll send it down too. But first things first. How long is Pingo in for?”

“He’s being arraigned later today,” Long said. “He might bail out. Or sometimes they just let ’em out on their own recognizance in these minor bootlegging cases.”

“No good, no good,” Carnaby said. “Look, I’ll talk to Charlie Hughes and see if we can get an arrest warrant for Pingo on what we know so far. At least Charlie ought to be able to call his opposite number in the prosecutor’s office up there and get them to stall things a few hours while we get this figured out.”

He looked at Active and Long, drumming his fingers on the desk. “How are the connections to Barrow on Alaska Airlines these days?”

“They suck,” Active said. “When I took that prisoner up there last spring—”

“Oh, yeah,” Carnaby said. “You had to go through Anchorage, right?”

Active nodded. “Or Fairbanks, sometimes. And if you don’t hit it right, you may have to overnight along the way. We should charter with Cowboy Decker. It’s only about three hundred miles if you go straight over the mountains. Less than two hours in the Lienhofer twin. A little longer in the 185.”

“Go ahead,” Carnaby said. “By the time you get up there, maybe we’ll have our arrest warrant. At least you ought to be able to interview the guy before he gets out.”

“What about me?” Long asked.

“Yes?” Carnaby lifted his eyebrows in inquiry.

“I mean, I know Pingo a little from Cape Goodwin. Plus if we bring him back, it’s a prisoner transport. Wouldn’t hurt to have a second officer along.”

“He’s got a point,” Active said.

“Sure, you go too, Alan.” Carnaby waved his hand expansively. “What cop wouldn’t want to be in on the bust in a case like this? But it’s Nathan’s interview.”

“I’ll get my stuff.” Long bustled out, his chipmunk face split in a huge grin.

Carnaby leaned to one side and yelled past Active into the reception area. “Evelyn, get on the horn to Lienhofer’s and see if Cowboy can do a charter to Barrow today, ideally within the next hour. Two going, three returning.”

“Prisoner transport?” the secretary asked.

“Yeah, but don’t mention it unless they ask,” Carnaby said. “Maybe they won’t tack on the surcharge.”

“Fat chance, if Delilah’s on duty,” O’Brien said as she picked up her phone.

Carnaby turned to Active. “Pack a toothbrush,” he said. “Looks like you guys’ll be there overnight, at least.”

Active was silent, pulling at his lip.

“What?”

“Budzie Kivalina. Her name has come up again.”

“Yeah, so? Look, the gene pool’s only about an inch deep in Cape Goodwin. You get involved with one of ’em up there, you’re involved with all of ’em.” Carnaby paused. “You’ve heard the joke, right?”

“Do I want to?”

“About why you can’t solve a rape case in Cape Goodwin?”

“Now I’m sure I don’t want to.”

“All the DNA’s the same.”

“Very funny.”

“You’re not smiling.” Carnaby paused again. “All right, what are you thinking?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that she keeps coming up.”

“I know what you mean, but—” Carnaby paused, thinking. “Okay, Pingo doesn’t pan out, she’s next on our to-do list, after Buck Eastlake. Okay?”

Active left the Public Safety Building, went by the Trooper bachelor cabin where he technically still lived to collect his things for the trip to Barrow, and realized that most of what he needed was still at Grace’s house. He climbed back into the Suburban and headed for Beach Street.