WHEN HE LET HIMSELF in, Nita was watching the Animal Channel, the big blue backpack she had taken to Martha’s on the floor at her feet. “Hi, Uncle Nathan,” she said when she spotted him.
“Hi, sweetie.” He bent and gave her a peck on top of the head. “Where’s your mom?”
“Upstairs,” she said, just as he’d feared.
He looked around for the remote to mute the TV. It was nowhere in sight, so he spoke over a story about the mystery of where ravens go at night. “I’ll go up and talk to her.”
Nita twisted to look up at him. “I think she’s sad again. Is it because of me?”
“Of course not, sweetheart,” he said. “You know how much she loves you.”
“Mm-mmm,” she said, sounding like an aana for a moment. “But why does she get so sad?”
Active thought about this for a long time before answering. “I don’t know. It’s just how she is sometimes.”
Nita was silent, watching the show about the ravens, but not watching.
“Could you put your backpack away?” he asked finally, to get them focused on something mundane and manageable.
“Can I wait till there’s a commercial?”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
Why does she get so sad? Telling Nita he didn’t know was only partly a lie, he decided as he made his way up the stairs. He did know the name of Grace Palmer’s demon, it was true. But the feel of it, what it was like to carry it around inside, always—of that he knew nothing, could know nothing.
He stopped at the door of the room he knew she’d be in—not the bedroom she used now, but her childhood bedroom, with the sports gear still piled in corners, the purple wallpaper, the posters of long-faded rock stars, the memories of the nighttime visits from her father.
He stepped insided. The blinds were drawn, and she lay on the bed in the dusk, still in her camp clothes, an arm thrown over her eyes. Her old Discman lay beside her, and she had earphones on. The case of an Enya CD was open on the nightstand, which was a good sign. Enya, bland as she might be, was at least optimistic, at times even uplifting.
Grace raised her arm, made eye contact, and pulled off the headphones. “Hi, Nathan,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I have a few minutes.” He smiled, bent, kissed her forehead, and put his hand on her arm. “You take something?”
“Some Tylenol PM,” she said. “It’ll kick in soon, and when I wake up . . . well, maybe it’ll be gone. Fingers crossed.”
He made Xs of the first and second fingers on each hand and held them up. “You want to talk about it at all?”
“He had my sister cremated, you know. Seeing the Rec Center like that, it kind of . . . and his birthday’s in two weeks. That always. . . .” She put her arm over her eyes again, and her shoulders shook.
He slid down beside her and worked his arm under her neck. She pushed the Discman aside, half-turned toward him, and put her head on his chest, eyes wet. “Your body is always so warm,” she said, her voice low and drowsy, and snuffly with tears. “Your thermostat must be set different. Do they know who started it?”
It took him a moment to shift gears. “We’re not even sure yet it was arson. Our fire expert from Fairbanks will go in as soon as it cools off enough. We’re supposed to meet him at five for the report.”
“Can you stay till then?”
“Ah, I have to go interview some of the families—” He stopped at the look on her face. “But I can lie here till you fall asleep.”
“Sorry for all the drama. You should find someone normal.”
“No, thanks,” he said.
“Thanks.” She slid a hand under his shirt and laid it on his chest. Her breathing slowed, and he was about to ease off the bed when she spoke again. “He must have had a boat.”
“Who did?”
“Or a four-wheeler. How else would he . . . ?” She gave a deep, slow sigh and fell silent.
It was a minute before he realized she had meant No-Way, and another minute before he realized she was right. As he eased her hand out of his shirt and worked his arm from under her neck, he felt a little stupid for not thinking of it himself. The nearest of the upper Isignaq villages, Walker, was at least twenty-five miles from One-Way Lake. Nobody hiked that far to hunt caribou.
Active decided his money was on a boat and a four-wheeler. Load the ATV into the boat, take the boat to the right spot on the Isignaq, drive the ATV into the hills, and start shooting caribou. Then you’ve got a way to get the caribou to the boat without spending a week packing out meat. He made a mental note to catch Cowboy and tell him to scan the riverbank above and below the mouth of One-Way Creek for a boat and to search the area around the lake for a four-wheeler, or four-wheeler trails, or signs of a camp. Maybe there would be something to identify No-Way, or at least indicate which village he was from.
He would have thanked Grace and told her all this, but she had begun a series of tiny, delicate, endearing snores. He kissed her forehead, savored her lavender scent for a moment, and tiptoed out.
Active had no problem finding the green house on Second Avenue. The dead Cat in the yard was a dead giveaway. The problem was finding a place to park. A pickup and two four-wheeler ATVs filled the driveway, and three more ATVs lined the street out front. Active stopped the Trooper Suburban behind the ATVs on the street and walked up to the house.
The kunnichuk door was open, and the inner door swung open at his knock, disclosing a roomful of Inupiat women, most of grandmother age. “Arii, that Augie,” one of them was saying as Active took off his hat and waited to be noticed. “You remember when Barrow got that big tall naluaqmiu on their team and he try to stop Augie that time and when Augie go around him, that guy’s shorts are falling down on his ankles?”
This produced a shower of giggles from the aanas, another of whom picked up the story. “That naluaqmiu boy try say Augie pull his shorts down, but them referees never see nothing, so they couldn’t even call him foul. Arii, that Augie!”
There was more of the silvery laughter, fading as the women sensed his presence.
“I’m looking for Lena Sundown?”
The woman who had told the first part of the story pointed through a doorway into the kitchen. “Lena,” she shouted, “that Trooper is here.”
A red-eyed woman came to the door, smiled in a small way, and motioned him through. “You could sit down,” she said.
He took a chair at the table and watched as Lena Sundown worked at the stove, dropping batter into a pot. She had dark gray hair but was rather smooth-skinned and not fat. He doubted she could be much past fifty, which seemed a little young for the grandmother of a college kid. But, then, girls in Chukchi tended to become mothers at an early age. Suppose Lena gave birth to Augie’s father, the late Edgar, at seventeen, and Augie was born when Edgar was likewise seventeen. Augie had probably been about nineteen when he died, which would make Lena only about fifty-three.
Fifty-three and bereft of both a son and a grandson— and possibly widowed too: he didn’t recall hearing of Lena having a husband.
How to get into it? The Inupiat, particularly older Inupiat, were comfortable with long silences, but they gave him the fidgets, Anchorage-reared as he was. Suddenly he recognized the smell filling the room. And an opening.
“You making seal oil doughnuts?”
“Ah-ha,” she said. “Couple minutes they’ll be ready. You like ’em? Lotta people don’t, especially if they’re naluaqmiiyaaq.”
Was she grinning a little? At a time like this? It was possible. He had never met an aana yet who could resist the temptation to rib him about his Anchorage upbringing. “Sure I like ’em. Everybody likes seal oil, right?”
Her face turned sad again. “Augie always like ’em, all right, ever since he’s little. You want some coffee?”
He nodded, and she brought him a cup, black, which was how he liked it.
“Could I talk to you about your grandson?”
“Arii, I come back here to get away from those ladies because I don’t want to talk about it no more.” She turned back to the stove and dabbed at her eyes with the corner of a dish towel. “First my son Edgar, now it’s Augie.”
He drank some of the coffee before responding. She hadn’t quite refused to talk. “Did you hear we think somebody might have started the Rec Center fire on purpose?” he asked finally.
“Who was it? You catch ’em yet?” She stayed busy at the stove, keeping her back to him, deciding whether to open up.
“Not yet. That’s why we need to talk to people. To figure out who it was.”
She slid the doughnut pot off the burner, turned to face him, and sighed. “Arii, that Rachel.” She came to the table and sat across from him, her hands around her own coffee mug.
It took him a moment to make the connection. “Rachel Akootchuk?”
Lena lifted her eyebrows in the Eskimo yes. “Those miluks. I try tell Augie she’s trouble, but he won’t listen.”
It took him another moment to sift through his tiny vocabulary of Inupiaq for the meaning of miluks. Breasts. “She was Augie’s girlfriend? And she had—”
Lena lifted her eyebrows again and cupped her hands in front of her chest. Quite some distance in front. “They’re like magnets for you guys, ah?”
“Well, some guys—”
Lena snorted.
“All right, most of us, but. . . . Wait a minute, are you saying Rachel started the fire at the Rec Center? But she was killed, too.”
“Not her. That Buck Eastlake. You know him?”
Active struggled to place the name. “He was, wasn’t he on the Malamutes before—”
Lena raised her eyebrows. “He’s on the team, too, all right, pretty good player, but not like Augie. Try for team captain, but Augie get it.”
“And Rachel—”
“That Rachel, she’s with Buck till Augie gets team captain, then Augie get her too. Girls with big miluks, they sure like basketball players, ah?” She gave a little chuckle of what sounded like reluctant pride, then frowned again. “I tell ’im she’s trouble, but he don’t listen.”
“Guys that age usually don’t.”
“Guys any age if a girl got big miluks, is what I see from my life.”
Active couldn’t think of a response, so he just raised his eyebrows.
“Ah-hah,” Lena said with a nod. “That Buck, he’s real mad about it, especially when Augie get that scholarship to go to Fairbanks and Buck don’t get nothing. He blame Augie for everything, say he better look out. Buck try fight him couple times, but Augie don’t want to and he’s so fast Buck can’t hit him, so there’s no fight, what Augie told me.
“Anyway, Buck, he didn’t get no scholarships, so he have to stay around town, get that cargo job at the airport.”
“Ah,” Active said. “That’s where I’ve seen him.” A face suddenly clicked into focus. A tall kid, especially for an Inupiaq, much taller than Augie’s five-eight, yet it was Augie who’d gotten the limelight and the scholarship. And Rachel Akootchuk of the magnificent miluks.
Active pulled out his notebook and wrote down the name.
“Then Augie leaves for Fairbanks, and Rachel’s still here,” Lena continued. “She’s mad because Augie never take her with him, so she goes back with Buck and I think if she doesn’t turn up pregnant from Augie in couple months, everything will be good.”
“And she didn’t?”
Her face took on an expression of remembered relief. “Nope, no babies. She’s here; Buck’s here; Augie’s in Fairbanks, so seem like it’s all right. But then he come home this summer and, next thing I know, he’s right back with that Rachel. And now he’s talk about she might come back to Fairbanks with him!”
She gazed at him with a look of outrage and expectation.
“Imagine that.” He gave his head a shake with a frown he hoped would convey an acceptable degree of disapproval. “And Buck started threatening Augie again?”
“No, this time he never say nothing. He just have a look whenever I see him around town. Augie laugh when I try warn him, but I tell him, that Buck is a man that don’t care no more.”
Active stifled a sigh. “Where does Buck live?”
Lena put a finger to her chin, lost in thought. “Seem like him and Rachel have that little red cabin up by the radio towers. You know that place have all them old doghouses, that naluaqmiu musher used to live up there?”
Active thought he could picture a red cabin at the north end of town, surrounded by the oil drums cut in half that provided all the shelter a husky needed, even in an Arctic winter. He started to make a note of the information.
“And then she kick him out when Augie come home, and he’s . . . where he’s living?”
Active put down his pen and waited her out.
“His uncle’s place, I think.”
“Ah,” Active said. “Uncle . . . ?”
“Sayers.” She nodded in satisfaction.
He picked up his pen and wrote this in his notebook. Sayers didn’t sound like a Chukchi surname. The uncle must have been an outsider who’d married an Eastlake female. “And his first name?”
“Ah-hah.”
He looked at her, then at his notebook. “Mr. Sayers. Do you know his first name?”
She stared at him with a puzzled look. “S-A-Y-E-R-S, I guess.”
“No, I mean—” Then he got it. “Sayers Eastlake is the uncle’s name?”
Lena looked even more puzzled. “Didn’t I say that already?”
“You did, but I—”
“But you’re naluaqmiiyaaq. Everybody know that.”
He gave his head a little shake to clear it and asked if she knew where Sayers Eastlake lived.
She put her finger to her chin again. “I think he live somewhere up there, too, but I don’t know where. You could just go up there, ask around, ah? It’s E-A-S-T-L-AK-E.”
“Thanks,” he said.
As he made his way toward the door, the women in the living room were watching a video of a basketball game. He recognized Augie Sundown and the other Malamutes, but not the opposing team. The boys on it were all white and tall. Definitely not the Barrow team that had had only the one tall naluaqmiu. Probably from a Christian school in Anchorage or Fairbanks. Chukchi played in the small-schools class at state tournaments, and the Christian schools in Anchorage and Fairbanks were the only small schools in Alaska with white student bodies.
He watched for a few moments as Augie ran the team and the game, showing off the uncanny dribbling skills and the quick jump shot that seemed to come out of nowhere and had earned him the nickname Mr. Outside. Except he wasn’t really showing off. He looked like a creature at home in its environment, doing what came naturally without much conscious thought. Like a seal in an open lead or a polar bear loping across an ice pan.
Active felt a touch on his arm and turned to see Lena behind him. She motioned for him to follow and led him down a short hall and into a bedroom.
At least, it had once been a bedroom.
“I call it the Augie Sundown museum,” Lena said with a sad little chuckle. “He always tease me about it, but I think he like it.”
Active gazed around the little room. Trophies, medals, plaques, and photographs filled a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. A scrapbook stuffed with newspaper clippings lay open on a table near the door.
“He always like basketball, even when he’s little,” Lena said. “We used to watch that NBA together on Saturdays. And he make me put up a toy basket out there in the living room when he’s maybe seven years old. Every time he practice his jump shot, this old house shake and it turn on the furnace.” She chuckled again, not quite as sadly. “Sure used to get hot whenever he play.”
“I’m sorry for your trouble,” he said.
“Me and Augie, we take care of each other. After my son Edgar split up with Augie’s mom, Augie stay here because Edgar don’t have no woman around and Augie’s mom, she go to Nome.”
“That was where she was from?”
“No, they got bars in Nome. That’s why she go. She’s still down there, what I hear, but Augie never see her in a long time.” She paused. “I don’t know if she even heard about our Rec Center fire yet.”
“I’ll have the Troopers in Nome contact her,” Active said.
“I hope you catch that Buck Eastlake,” Lena said. “Augie, he was a real good boy. He make some of these other boys around here think an Eskimo can do something, all right. Everybody like him, everybody but that Buck.”
Active went out through the living room, where the aanas were still watching Augie on Lena Sundown’s TV, and to the Suburban. He drove north up Third Street in a fall rain, cold and steady and wind-driven, the kind of rain that seemed like it would go on until it turned to snow and winter set in.
For lack of a better idea, he started at Rachel Akootchuk’s red cabin, which was as vacant as the oil drums in the yard, then drove around the neighborhood looking for someone to ask where Buck Eastlake’s uncle might live. But that turned out to be unnecessary, as the second house he passed bore a sign with “Sayers Eastlake” cut into the wood with a router.
A teenage girl answered his knock, a cordless phone pressed to her chest. When she saw his uniform, she put the phone to her mouth. “I’ll call you back. There’s a State Trooper here. What? I don’t know what he wants. Arii, I said I’ll call you back!”
She clicked the phone off, and he introduced himself. She said “Hi,” but didn’t offer her own name, so he plunged ahead. “I’m looking for Buck Eastlake, or Sayers?”
“They both went caribou hunting,” she said. “At my dad’s camp up by Katonak village.”
“When did they leave?”
“Dad left three days ago, maybe. Buck, he only left last night. He had to work yesterday, so he couldn’t go before.”
“Buck left last night? What time?”
She chewed on the stubby antenna of the cordless. “Maybe about seven or eight?”
“By boat?”
She lifted her eyebrows, yes, then frowned in uncertainty. “How else would he go up there? Why you asking about my cousin?”
“He took a boat up there at night?” The Katonak River drained hundreds of thousands of square miles of prime caribou country in the Brooks Range north and east of Chukchi. Katonak village lay about fifty miles upstream from the river’s mouth on Chukchi Bay. “That’s a long trip in the dark.”
The girl lifted her eyebrows again. “That Buck is always on the river if he’s not working or playing basketball. He could do it at night, especially if the weather’s good and there’s a moon.”
Active tried to remember. The weather had been clear in Chukchi the previous afternoon when he and Grace had crammed themselves into Cowboy’s Super Cub for the trip to One-Way Lake. But had there been a moon last night? He tried to visualize the scene at One-Way Lake as evening came on. Yes, he was sure of it, a full moon gliding up from the southeast as the sun dropped behind the ridge and draped their camp in shadow.
So Buck Eastlake could have left Chukchi and navigated up the river by moonlight. He could have been fifteen or twenty miles away when the Rec Center went up in flames a little after ten. Or he could have parked the boat somewhere past the last houses at the north end of Chukchi spit and hiked back to the Rec Center to get even with Augie Sundown and Rachel Akootchuk before setting off for caribou country.
“Where’s your father’s camp? Upstream or downstream from Katonak village? And which side of the river?”
The girl shrank a little at this barrage of questions. “Why you want my cousin?”
“We have to tell him Rachel Akootchuk was killed in the fire last night.” It wasn’t a complete lie, Active told himself. Just a half-truth.
The girl put her hand over her mouth. “Rachel’s dead?”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“That’s sad, even if she was a tramp with that chest of hers. I always told my cousin she’s no good and he should just let that Augie Sundown have her. But it’s still sad she burned up.”
Active felt an extra pang of sympathy for Rachel Akootchuk. Not only was she dead, but it appeared that, when she was alive, her miluks had earned her the undying enmity of every female she ever met.
“Very sad,” he said in his gentlest voice. “Now can you tell me how to get to your father’s camp?”
The girl closed her eyes for a moment, and he wondered if she was about to realize her cousin was a suspect and shut down on him. But, no, she opened her eyes and explained that her father’s camp was on the north bank of the river, second or third bend above Katonak village. It was easy to spot, she said, because the cabin was up on a bluff and painted yellow, like their house, and there was a dead snowmachine in the yard. And there should be two boats pulled up to the riverbank.
Active thanked her, returned to the Suburban, and radioed Dispatch for the name and address of his next interview.
HE GOT to the five o’clock meeting a little early so he could report on the plan to retrieve No-Way the following morning. He dropped into an orange plastic chair in front of the boss’s desk.
“It’ll have to do, I guess,” Carnaby said distractedly after Active had outlined the arrangements. “I just hope Cowboy gets to the guy before something else does. A family will never quite get to closure on a deal like this unless the remains are recovered and they can give him a proper burial.”
“Anybody upriver been reported late from a hunting trip yet?”
Carnaby shook his head. “Not a peep. Kinda odd, huh?”
Active shrugged. “It’s the Arctic. Everything takes two weeks longer.”
“Tell me about it,” Carnaby said. “What’s he look like, anyway?”
Active was momentarily speechless. “Like I said, the pike—”
Carnaby waved him off. “I mean otherwise.”
Active recited the same statistics he’d given Cowboy Decker, then filled in details about No-Way’s clothing and rifle. “He seemed kind of light-skinned for a full-blooded Inupiaq,” Active added as an afterthought. “Lighter than me, certainly. Maybe a half-breed or a quarter white?” As he spoke, he heard people in the outer office and Dickie Nelson asking Evelyn O’Brien, the Trooper secretary, for Carnaby.
Carnaby grunted. “Hard to guess, if he was in the water with the pike for a while. Anybody’d look like a ghost, probably.” He rose to wave Nelson and Alan Long into the office.
Long took the other plastic chair near Carnaby’s desk, turned it around, and sat with his arms draped over the backrest. Dickie Nelson was left with the choice of standing or taking the ancient green leather couch. He opted for standing—or leaning, actually—against a four-drawer file cabinet. They all knew the perils of the green couch: it tended to swallow its occupants, effectively excluding them from any conversation.
“How about we get going here?” Carnaby said. “Where’s Ronnie, anyway?”
“Still finishing up at the Rec Center,” Nelson said. “He said he’ll see you by six at the latest.”
“All right, so what have you three got?”
“As I think everybody knows,” Long said, “all of the four-wheelers have been claimed except one.”
“What do you make of that?” Carnaby asked.
“I don’t know,” Long said. “Maybe—”
Carnaby waved a big hand and said, “Never mind, let’s go over the interviews first.”
“Well, as I said, four of the five ATVs have been claimed,” Long said. “And I think all the families have been interviewed.” He looked at Active and Nelson for confirmation. Both nodded.
“Anything?” Carnaby asked.
“A possible,” Active said as the other two shook their heads.
“All right,” Carnaby said. “One at a time, then.”
Each of the three reported on the interviews he had conducted over the course of the day, as more and more of the ATVs had been claimed and the paramedics had radioed the names of the claimants to Dispatch at the Chukchi Public Safety Building.
In addition to Lena Sundown and the girl cousin of Buck Eastlake, Active had also talked to a superintendent for the construction company rehabilitating Chukchi’s decrepit elementary school. Two of the men on the job—a carpenter named Charles Hodge and an electrician named Roy Marks—had borrowed a company four-wheeler to go to the Rec Center for a sauna. Both had been in Chukchi less than a week, and the superintendent was pretty sure they hadn’t had enough contact with the locals to get anybody mad enough to want to kill them.
Dickie Nelson had talked to the family of Rachel Akootchuk, who said she had gone to the Rec Center with Augie Sundown to watch him shoot hoops. Nobody at her house could imagine anyone wanting her dead. The name Buck Eastlake hadn’t come up.
The owner of another of the four-wheelers found in front of the Rec Center had been identified as Lula Benson, who managed the bingo operation there. Her husband, a sixty-ish Inupiaq named Benjamin Benson, couldn’t think why anyone would want to kill her, either.
Alan Long reported on his day’s work, including the fact that one of the four-wheelers had indeed belonged to Cammie Frankson.
“So,” Carnaby said when the round-robin was over, “we’ve got seven fatalities so far, counting Cammie and Chief Silver.”
“Plus whoever was on the unidentified four-wheeler,” Nelson said.
“In all probability,” Carnaby agreed. “Plus maybe a walk-in or two. How does that square with what the paramedics took out of there?”
“They didn’t yet,” Long said. “Barnes hasn’t released the bodies.”
Carnaby frowned for a moment and finger-brushed his moustache. “What do we do about that last four-wheeler?”
“I finished early,” Active said, “so I went by the Rec Center and checked it out. Like Alan said, there was no I.D. on it, but it is a fairly new Honda, so I towed it over to the dealer’s. They’re going to see what they can figure out. Check serial numbers and so on against whatever they’ve got in their records.”
“Cop time or village time?” Carnaby asked, not sounding very hopeful.
“They promised to have it done tomorrow,” Active said.
“What else?” Carnaby said, looked around the three of them. “Dickie, what’s left on your list?”
“Nothing, far as I know,” Nelson said. “I’m ready for the next phase, whatever it is.”
“Go ahead and knock on doors around the Rec Center, then,” Carnaby said. “Maybe one of the neighbors saw something.”
Nelson nodded and left.
Active pulled at his lower lip. “Did Jim go to the Rec Center much? I don’t remember him ever mentioning it.” He visualized the Chief’s paunch-bellied middle-aged figure. “Or looking like it.”
“Excellent point,” Carnaby said. “I don’t think he did hit the gym very often. What about it, Alan? You know if he ever went?”
Long wrinkled his nose and squinted: an Inupiat no.
“Maybe you should ask around the city force,” Active said. “See if anybody knows why he was over there last night.”
“You bet.” Long scraped his chair back and stood up.
“And weren’t you going to check on whether anybody who Jim had put away hit the streets recently?” Carnaby asked.
“I didn’t get—” Alan Long shut up at Carnaby’s look, then rushed to fill the resulting vacuum. “I’m on it, Captain. Cop time.” He pulled on his coat and scooted out the door.
“He’s on it,” Active said.
“Silver used to call Alan his alpha pup,” Carnaby said. Then he ruminated in silence and Active wondered if he was being dismissed too. Finally the captain shook his head. “He asked me to recommend him for Jim’s job.”
Active grinned. “Alpha pup, huh? You gonna do it?”
Carnaby frowned. “He might grow into it. People do that, you know.”
“Or not.”
“Or not,” Carnaby agreed, with a burdened look. He was silent again. Finally he said, “Christ, I hope Barnes comes up with something.”
Active raised his eyebrows in agreement. “Like maybe a short in the wiring at the Rec Center?”
“Something like that. Accidental origin would be nice,” Carnaby said. “You think?”
“I don’t think anything yet, but my gut says not.”
“Mine, too,” Carnaby said. “Dammit. Seven, eight people, whatever we end up with. How much do you like this Buck Eastlake? Worth flying up there to talk to him?”
“Probably, unless something better comes along,” Active said. “It is kind of shaky, though. Couple kids bump chests over a girl with big miluks for what, two, two and a half years, then all of a sudden it turns into mass murder by arson?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Carnaby said. “What else we got? I mean, who the hell would do such a thing? Whatever it was about, it can’t possibly make any sense.”
Active shrugged. “Most arsons are never solved. Remember the Investor?”
Carnaby winced at the name, as did most Troopers who had been in uniform at the time. Active had been only a kid then, but had heard plenty about the Investor fire when he hit the Trooper Academy several years later.
The fishing vessel had been set ablaze near the hamlet of Craig in Southeast Alaska. Eight people had died, including a family of four. No one had ever been convicted of the crime.
“God, I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a rerun of that one,” Carnaby said. “I didn’t work the Investor, but . . . the guys that did, they still obsess about it. It’s the kind of thing that stays with you your whole career. And after. All right, you get hold of Cowboy and see about getting up the river to Eastlake’s camp after he gets your guy out of One-Way Lake tomorrow.”
Active nodded.
Carnaby cleared his throat and looked at something scrawled on his desk blotter. “Listen, I had a call a couple hours ago from Harry Winthrop down in Anchorage. He was checking references.”
Active’s eyes widened, but he held his tongue.
Carnaby made him wait a good thirty seconds, then grinned. “I told him you weren’t a total screwup.”
Somewhat to his own surprise, Active found himself whooshing out a breath. “I finally have a shot at getting out of here?”
“More than, looks like,” Carnaby said. “I got the impression it’s just a matter of working the paper at this point. I imagine you’ll be in Anchorage by Christmas.”
“Thanks, boss,” Active said.
Carnaby waved it away. “Ah, I’d never stand in your way. Just wish I could buy a ticket out myself.”
Carnaby, as they both knew, was likely to finish his career running the Chukchi Trooper post. A few years earlier, he had been unlucky enough to bust a prominent state senator from Anchorage on cocaine charges and had barely escaped with his job when the jury let the senator off. It was unspoken but understood from the top of the Troopers to the bottom that the politicians would allow Carnaby to stay on long enough to get his pension if he did it quietly and at the maximum possible distance from Anchorage. Carnaby’s family—a wife and a nearly grown son and daughter—still lived there, and Carnaby commuted home a couple of weekends a month.
“I don’t know about this outfit sometimes,” Active said.
“Yeah, but what human organization isn’t at least twenty percent screwed up?” Carnaby said.
Active shrugged and changed the subject. “You want me to hang around till Barnes shows?”
They heard steps in the hall, and Carnaby sniffed. “I think I smell him now.”