Village of the Ghost Bears (28 page)

“Fucking loon,” Cowboy said. “What the hell was he thinking?”

“I think he went to be with his sister,” Active said.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“WHAT A STORY,” GRACE said as Active finished his recap at the kitchen table in the Palmer house a day later.

The previous afternoon, Cowboy had had the Lienhofer mechanic install two big fiberglass skis on the Cessna. That morning, Cowboy and Active had flown back up the Isignaq and retrieved Pingo’s remains, discovering in the process how difficult it could be to get a naked, frozen corpse through an airplane door. Now Cowboy was on his way to the upper Katonak to retrieve the cook and clients at McAllister’s camp.

“So you’re sure it was Pingo who cut Dood’s throat at One-Way Lake,” Grace said. “Not Alan?”

“Has to be. It just doesn’t fit together otherwise.”

She tilted her head, foxlike eyes intent. “But wasn’t Pingo scared to death of McAllister? How would he get up the nerve to sneak into camp and do what he did?”

“He wasn’t too scared to put water in Dood’s gas,” Active said. “And he—” Active slapped himself lightly on the forehead. “Duh. Budzie told him to do it, of course.”

“What? How?”

“Pingo dreamed about her all the time. When I was questioning him in Barrow, he said she came to him in his cell and told him to give Dood a red smile. He thought maybe she wanted him to paint lipstick on Dood so he’d look
kinnaq
too. Pingo must have decided she meant something else.” Active drew a thumb across his throat in the curve of a smile.

Grace shuddered. “Maybe he had one last dream out on the tundra that night and she finally explained it to him.”

“That would fit.”

“So he came back and finished the job.”

Active raised his eyebrows yes.

“And then he killed himself on that ridge. But why? He sounds too crazy to have a guilty conscience.”

“You ever hear that legend about the village of the ghost bears?”

Grace thought it over for a few seconds. “Yes, I think so—the one about where all the polar bears go when they die?”

Active raised his eyebrows again. “That’s where Pingo thought Budzie went after Dood killed her at Driftwood. Their dog Dad-Dad too.”

“Pingo said that?”

“Yeah. While I was interviewing him in Barrow.”

“So he decided to kill Dood McAllister and join his sister and that dog of theirs in the village of dead bears?”

“To Pingo, it must have made perfect sense.”

“I suppose it would.” She shook her head and blinked, then frowned. “But if Dood was trying to run, why would he go back to One-Way Lake?”

“Seems pretty clear he planned to fly over and hide out with his relatives on the Russian side. He must have had something essential—the cash maybe—stashed at his spike camp so that woman he had cooking at his main camp wouldn’t find it while he was out with his hunters.”

“Ah,” Grace said. “A woman would certainly do that. And the ten thousand ties him to Jae Hyo Lee’s killing, right?”

“Right.”

She was silent for a few seconds. “But are you sure Alan wasn’t in on it somehow? You think he really let Pingo slip away, then fell asleep and let him sneak back in and kill McAllister? Sheer incompetence is the explanation for everything at One-Way Lake?”

“Apparently.”

“And Alan had nothing to do with the fire?”

“There was a couple minutes up there when I was convinced it was him,” Active admitted. “But there’s just no way to make it all fit with Alan as the doer. Plus, the lab in Anchorage confirmed that the safety-wire twister Carnaby found at McAllister’s place matched the tool marks on that wire Ronnie Barnes found on the locker-room door at the Rec Center.”

Grace nodded again.

“Plus Carnaby found Jae Hyo Lee’s wallet under the van, right where Pingo said it was. And it had Dood McAllister’s fingerprints on it.”

“So it was all Dood?”

Active nodded.

“Except,” Grace said.

“Except?”

“Except, if Dood was going to run, why wouldn’t he just do it right after the fire? Why hang around till you got on his trail?”

“There’s no way to know for sure,” Active said. “But he probably figured the best way not to get caught was to lie low and act normal. He had hunters in camp and more coming in. He couldn’t have bailed out and stranded them without stirring up so much trouble we would have gotten interested. And, remember, as far as he knew, Pingo had burned up with Tom Gage and there was nobody still alive that knew the story. Dood thought the slate was wiped clean and we’d never connect him to any of it.”

“And he was almost right,” Grace said after a moment.

Active raised his eyebrows.

“So nobody was after Jim Silver at all?”

“Apparently not. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“And none of it had anything to do with gallbladder poaching.”

“Nope, not directly.”

Grace nodded, and they were silent for a few moments, marveling.

“These people,” Grace said. “They were living in the same space at the same time as the rest of us, but they were in a different reality, fighting their own private war all around us, and we never knew. And now they’re all dead.”

“Along with a bunch of innocent bystanders at the Rec Center.”

Grace sighed, looking lost in thought. “This Budzie Kivalina,” she said at length. “I wish I could have known her. She must have been something.”

“She was like kissing a Hershey bar.”

“Mmm?”

“That was the last thing I heard Dood McAllister say.”

“A Hershey bar.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So that was the last thing he said in his life.”

“Most likely.” Active pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “I guess I’ve got some paperwork to take care of.”

“Lots of it, I should think.”

Active hesitated, fidgeting.

“What?”

“Are you really going to burn down this house?”

She shrugged. “I talked to the fire chief while you were gone.”

“My God. What did he say?”

“I’d describe him as a worried man. He asked me if I was crazy.”

“And what did you say?”

“I smiled nicely and explained it all to him in a calm voice, and pretty soon he was saying he could probably work something out. It might be good practice for the firefighters, he said.”

“Seriously? He’s going to let you do it?”

“Apparently.”

Active was silent, astonished anew at the effortless persuasion Grace Palmer seemed able to work on any adult male with a normal testosterone level. He was about to head out when the doorbell rang.

He looked at Grace, eyebrows raised in question. She looked puzzled and went to answer it.

“It’s the mayor,” she said as she returned. “I forgot to tell you, he’s been trying to find you.”

Everett Williams, looking as hybrid as ever with his dark skin, curly hair, and Mongol features, followed her into the kitchen. They shook hands, Grace waved him into a chair, and Active sat down again.

After the good-to-see-yous, there was that awkward silence that means the person with something to say doesn’t know how to start. Grace excused herself to make tea. Finally Williams cleared his throat.

“I talked to that Cowboy Decker last night. He’s a good guy, ah?”

Active lifted his eyebrows. What could be said about Cowboy Decker?

Williams nodded in satisfaction. “After that I talked to Captain Carnaby. And just now I talked to Alan Long.” Williams stopped and shook his head. “Sometimes it’s pretty hard to talk to that fella, all right. I heard they call him alpha pup sometimes. What is that?”

Active masked a smile. “A little dog that wants to be the big dog.”

There was another silence. The mayor seemed to be pondering something. Then, “He really let that
kinnaq
Pingo Kivalina get away, then come back and kill Dood McAllister?”

Active lifted his eyebrows. “Apparently so.”

“And it was Dood that set our Rec Center on fire, kill all of those people?”

“That’s right,” Active said. “One of his airplane tools was used to wire the locker-room door shut. It can’t have been anybody else.”

“Then maybe it’s good he’s dead, but now we won’t ever have a trial, ah?”

Active shook his head.

“Lotta people won’t ever believe he did it if there’s no trial. Some of them still think it was the Koreans. Or maybe that
kinnaq
Pingo.”

“I’ll be going on Kay-Chuck tomorrow to talk about it,” Active said.

“That might help, all right,” Williams said as Grace brought the tea and joined them at the table. “You heard we’re having a new public safety department in our Aurora Borough?”

Active nodded.

“Chief Silver was going to run it, but now he’s dead. That Alan Long, he want the job, but—” Williams rolled his eyes and let it hang in the air.

Active looked at Grace, eyes narrowed. Grace looked into her tea.

“Well, our council had a meeting about what to do little bit ago, just before I came over here. And we voted to offer you the job of setting up our public safety department and then running it for us.”

Active swung his eyes from Grace to Williams, his throat suddenly dry. “Me? But I’m transferring to Anchorage.”

“We need an Inupiaq to run our department, all right, if it can’t be Chief Silver,” Williams said. “But we need somebody good, so we sure don’t want that Alan Long, even if he’s Inupiaq. That Alan, what he’s good at is drinking coffee and riding around in Chief Silver’s Bronco with that gun on his belt. That’s what I think.”

Grace snickered behind her teacup, and Active coughed, delicately covering his mouth with his hand.

“And that headset he wear all the time,” Williams continued. “Blueshoe, what they call it?”

Active nodded, suppressing another smile.

“What is that, anyway?”

“Something for his cell phone, I think,” Active said.

“And I bet the city’s paying for it too.” Williams shook his head. “Anyway, everybody tell me how hard you hunted that Dood McAllister. Alan, even Cowboy Decker maybe, they’re a little bit scared of you, I think. That’s good if you’re going to be the top guy, ah?”

“Me be Alan Long’s boss?” Active raised his hands. “Sorry, I’m going back to Anchorage. We are.” He tilted his head at Grace.

The other two just stared at him.

“We’ll see,” Grace said.

“Ah-hah,” the mayor said.

ACTIVE WAS still in a fog as he left the house and unlocked the Suburban. There was too much too think about, so he resolved to think about none of it till he was knocking on Nelda Qivits’s door. The paperwork could wait.

He started the engine and was slipping the transmission into reverse when a four-wheeler pulling a little trailer puttered to a stop behind him. He put the Suburban back in park and stepped out to ask the driver to unblock him, but the driver spoke first, extending his hand.

“You’re Trooper Active, ah?”

Active shook the hand and studied the man, a young Inupiaq with a vaguely familiar face wearing Sorels, a fur hat with the flaps folded up, and Carhartt overalls crusted with what looked like camp dirt and animal blood. He smelled like camp too, that combination of wood smoke and sweat.

“I’m Buck Eastlake,” the driver said. “My sister said you came by to tell me about Rachel. I wanted to thank you for that.”

Active nodded, embarrassed to have his lie turned around like this. “It’s okay. Part of the job.”

Eastlake went to the trailer and removed the bungee cords holding a blue tarp in place over the load. “I brought you some meat.” He peeled back the tarp to expose two fresh caribou hindquarters, the gray-brown fur still at tached. “We just brought it down from my uncle’s camp up on the Katonak.”

“I don’t know if I can take it,” Active said. “I—”

“Don’t worry. It’s from a female. They don’t taste rutty like them bulls this time of year.”

“That’s not it. It’s just that we’re not supposed to—”

“You could.” Eastlake said. He made eye contact and held it, unusual for someone from Chukchi.

Active shrugged and raised his eyebrows in assent. He could take one in to Grace and the other to Nelda. He leaned into the Suburban and pressed the button to unlock the tailgate.

Buck tossed in one of the hindquarters, and Active hoisted the other onto the tailgate. The boy rolled up the blue tarp and bungeed it into place, then mounted the four-wheeler. “It’s good you caught Dood McAllister for burning up Augie and Rachel and them other people. She was a good person, even if some people around here didn’t know it. She just wanted to be with the top guy, that’s all.” Eastlake was silent for a moment. “Lotta women are like that, ah?”

Active lifted his eyebrows.

The boy pulled the starter cord, and the four-wheeler sputtered to life. He made a wide semicircle and headed back the way he had come, the loadless trailer bouncing along behind.