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· August 25 ·
CHUKCHI
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LUCY POKED HER HEAD into Active’s office. “Three more calls from Roger Kennelly at Kay-Chuck.”
Active ran his hand over his buzz cut. “Tell him we’re still not commenting?”
“I did. But I think he suspects it’s more than just a random unidentified body.”
“Thanks for running interference.”
Lucy smiled and shut the door.
Active turned to Kavik, who was pouring a cup of coffee. “It’s true. We’re still flying blind here. No missing persons reports, I gather?”
“No females of any age over the last four months. From Nome to the North Slope, nothing.”
“At least the way the body was dismembered isn’t out yet.”
“You think Oscar will keep quiet about it?” Kavik asked.
Active’s desk phone warbled and he glanced at the caller ID. “All right! Maybe our luck’s about to change.” He scooped up the receiver.
“Georgeanne! Don’t say we didn’t give you enough to work with this time—three bags of body parts, what can you tell us?”
“Well, Nathan, you definitely have a young female victim, maybe five-four, judging from the leg bones, and the skull tells us she’s probably at least part Native. Also, I found a couple nicks on another rib that show our young lady was likely killed by the thrust of a sharp blade like we thought. The markings on the rib indicate a non-serrated blade. Probably would have penetrated the heart and possibly the left lung. I’d estimate an eight-to-nine-inch blade. Sorry, she’s too decomposed to tell us if there was a sexual assault.”
“But nothing that says who she was?”
“Oh, please. You do know who you’re talking to, right?” Georgeanne said. “That finger you sent down earlier? That little digit tells us a lot.”
“Come on, Georgeanne, can you just - -” He caught himself. It was the strip tease again. You wanted to stay on Georgeanne’s good side, you had to let her explain it in her own time. “Sorry to interrupt. Go ahead, please.”
“That finger was the only one that survived intact. The rest were stripped by scavengers and maggots or carried off entirely. It’s also notable for being the only digit severed from the corpse and for how it was removed. It was surgically separated, the same way the larger body parts were cut cleanly, the shoulders, hips, and upper spine.”
“Why take the extra effort to cut off one finger?”
“Ah, well, the answer could be in which finger it was. The one that got the extra attention is the left ring finger.”
“So the finger could have been cut off to get a ring - -”
“Which means the ring meant something to the killer,” Georgeanne said.
“Now we’re making progress!”
“It gets better. That finger had an intact print.”
“Get out!”
“All I had to do was make a few incisions at the tip and lift off the skin to make myself a perfect little glove.”
“Glove? You mean you - -”
“Yep,” Georgeanne said, “I slid my finger inside it and fingerprinted our young lady.”
“Well, that’s above and beyond.”
“I live to give, Nathan. You know that. Anyway, I ran the print through the FBI database and voila!”
Active could hear the pride in her voice even over the phone. “You got a match?”
“Lucky for us she worked at Prudhoe Bay for a company that requires background checks, North Slope Environmental Services, to be specific. That’s a subsidiary of your Native regional corporation up there, right?”
“Yeah, they hire a lot of Chukchi folks.”
“Not this time,” Georgeanne said. “Your vic was from Nome, name of Shalene Harvey. She turned twenty-five on May eighteenth, probably right around the time she met her demise, judging by the body’s state of deterioration and local temperatures.”
Active looked at Kavik and spread his hands in question. “Shalene Harvey?”
Kavik shook his head.
“Nobody we know, apparently.” Active asked for the spelling and scrawled it in his notebook. “Any theories about where she was killed?”
“Probably not where you found her, unless the killer was really meticulous about keeping her out of the dirt. More likely indoors, given the absence of dirt and plant debris on the corpse. But that’s probably, not definitely. She didn’t have any carpet fibers on her either and of course we don’t have her clothes so...meh.”
“But the murder scene, aren’t we looking at blood everywhere? I mean, you kill an adult human, you’re gonna get - -”
“Possibly not much blood at all, actually,” Georgeanne said. “At least not immediately. You stop the heart, a dying body doesn’t pump out a lot of blood. Our girl was stabbed on the left side and probably died instantly, so, if she went down on her right side, meaning with the wound on top, you might not find any blood at all, unless you can turn up her clothes.”
“Huh. And what about when she got cut up?”
“It takes a few hours for the blood to congeal after death, plus or minus depending on temperature, so - -”
“If she was cut up within that period?”
“Then you could be talking a lot of blood. Not spraying out like if you cut into an artery on a living person, but definitely draining out while your butcher’s at work.”
“So - -”
“But I gotta say, I get the feeling this killer was a pretty cool hand, considering how expertly he dismembered her. So if he let the body cool down and then put a tarp or a sheet of Visqueen under her before he started - -”
“You mean we may have a crime scene with no blood evidence at all?”
“It’s possible, yeah,” she said. “I don’t know as I’d call it highly likely, but a definite possibility, yeah.”
“Well, shit.”
“Stop whining. I got you a name and my preliminary report should be splashing down in your Inbox about now.”
“Sorry, yes, of course, you’re the greatest ME on planet Earth and the entire Chukchi Public Safety Department stands deeply in your debt once more. Thanks yet again.”
“That’s better.”
Active hung up, found the contact for the Nome Police Department on his phone and tapped it. He spent five minutes on hold before the Nome chief came on the line.
“How’s the weather down there?” Active asked after he and Gregory Kalamarides exchanged introductions.
“Clear as a bell. The Cohoes are in at Unalakleet and I’m headin’ down there in my Super Cub as soon as we’re done here. So, talk fast, Chief.”
“I don’t want to hold you up, but it seems that one of your citizens came to a bad end up here.”
“Homicide?”
“Looks like. The corpse was dismembered, stuffed into trash bags, and hidden in a shack at an old fish camp. Probably about three months ago, right before breakup.”
“You have an ID?”
“According to our superhero forensic expert in Anchorage, she’s Shalene Harvey, twenty-five, most recently working at Deadhorse for North Slope Environmental Services. Last known address, Nome. Ever had any contact with her?”
“Oh, yeah, we know the Harveys. Not so much Shalene, but the family, definitely. We’ve been getting called out to their place at least a couple times a year for as long as I’ve been with the department, even when Shalene and her brother Donald were still teen-agers. Up until the dad left town about five years ago.”
“DV?”
“Big time. Sometimes we were pulling Tony off of Janie, sometimes the other way around. Overall, I think Tony got the worst of it. He’s a big, burly, white guy, and she’s a little Native woman, not more than five-two, but Janie is one mean lady.”
“Did they beat on the kids?”
“Not so far as we could tell. It was Shalene who usually made the 9-1-1 call, and, more often than not, when the officers arrived, she would stick up for dad.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Shalene? Lessee, it’s been a while. She waited tables at the Polaris, must have been not long after she finished high school. Pretty girl, had eyes somewhere between green and brown. Hazel, I guess they call it.”
“Do you know who she hung out with while she was in Nome, maybe a boyfriend?”
“No, but my guess would be nobody. The whole family kind of kept to themselves. Donnie still lives in town with his mom. We’ve had a few run-ins with him for drunk and disorderly, resisting, nothing major. Shalene was the smart one. She got a job and moved out, it must have been around the time Tony took off.”
“Can you think of any reason she’d end up dead and in pieces in Chukchi?”
“I got nothing for you there, sorry. Tony came up from Ohio, Illinois, someplace like that, and word is he went back there. Janie’s a local, from King Island. I don’t know of Shalene having any ties to Chukchi or why anyone would want to harm her except that she and Janie didn’t get along so well.”
“How do you mean?”
“I went on the call when they got into a shouting match in the parking lot at Shalene’s job. Janie said something like she wished Shalene would have died at birth. What mother says that to her own daughter?”
“Yeah, the things families do to each other.”
“Anyway,” Kalamarides said, “I don’t know of them ever coming to actual blows. Wonder how Janie will take the news of her daughter’s death.”
“I’m about to find out. I’m on the next plane to Nome.”
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SIX HOURS LATER, ACTIVE was climbing the half dozen wood steps to the Harvey place. It was at the southeast end of Nome, a block in from the Bering Sea beach and next door to a rusty Quonset hut with a pickup on blocks out front and a sign that read “Big Don’s Auto.”
The house was small and green, set on blocks and skirted with unpainted plywood. The railing that ran across the little deck in front was also unpainted but the wood looked new. A big window was open a few inches, letting out the sounds of a TV and the dinnertime smell of frying fish.
Active did a civilian knock on the door—a polite rap-rap-rap with his knuckles—and waited a few seconds. Nothing. He escalated to his cop knock—seven hard, sharp hammer blows with the meaty side of his fist.
The TV went silent, the door cracked open a few inches. A thin, short Native woman peered out and scowled at the sight of his uniform.
“Janie Harvey?”
She half-nodded.
“I’m Chief Active, Chukchi Public Safety.”
“Chukchi? Why you down here at Nome?”
“It’s about your daughter.”
She stepped aside to let him in. The living room was small, dimly lit, and sparsely furnished with a gray sofa, two wooden-armed chairs, an unpainted wooden cable spool for a coffee table, and an old-style picture-tube television. The only art on the wall was a print of a fair-haired, blue-eyed Jesus. The kitchen adjoined the living room, separated from it by a counter with chipped Formica. A grove of mismatched silverware sprouted from a rusty Hills Brothers can on the counter.
“Ma’am, can we sit?” Active asked. Janie stared blankly at him and stayed anchored beside the door. Active waited a few seconds, but there was no response.
“Mrs. Harvey, I’m afraid I have some bad news. We found your daughter Shalene’s body in Chukchi earlier this week. It appears she may have been murdered, probably about three months ago.”
Active had notified parents and spouses and children of the death of loved ones before. The reactions varied from hysteria to stunned shock, sometimes relief at finally knowing.
Not Janie Harvey. She plopped down on the sofa, lit a cigarette, took a drag, and clicked the TV back on, to a show about brides going ballistic. He might as well have said her pizza order would be ten minutes late.
“When did you last see her?” He had to shout over the noise of the television. Janie shrugged and kept her eyes glued to the ballistic brides. She turned up the volume.
He grabbed the remote from the sofa and hit the Power button. “Mrs. Harvey, it looks like your daughter was murdered.”
Janie turned her face to him, took another drag, and squinted. “You said that, all right.”
“I need to ask you some questions.”
Janie waved him to a chair and slid the remote back onto her lap.
“Have you seen her in the last few months?”
She stubbed her cigarette out on the lid of a Coke can and dropped the butt through the slot. “She take that security job on the Slope couple years ago, we never see her after that. Never see no money from her, neither.”
“She didn’t call? E-mail?”
“Nah, I never hear from her.”
“Did that worry you at all?” Active pulled out his notebook.
“No. Just like Tony. That bastard, leave me with two kids to feed all by myself.”
“Mrs. Harvey, I understand your kids have been grown for some time.”
Janie cut her eyes at him, then back to the TV.
“Is Donald here?”
“Donnie!” Janie shouted toward the kitchen.
A chubby, barefoot, half-Inupiat of about twenty in jeans and a white T-shirt came to the kitchen doorway. One hand clutched a paper plate of greasy-looking French fries and a piece of fried fish. His cheek bulged with part of his dinner. He glanced in surprise at Active, then at his mother.
“What’s up, Ma?”
“This cop says Shalene’s dead. Seem like she got killed up at Chukchi.”
The color drained from Donnie’s face. He sank onto the couch next to his mother and Active smelled marijuana.
“Shay’s dead? How?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Active said. “Were you in touch with her?”
“Now and then. She called me on my birthday.”
“When was that?”
“My birthday? March ninth.”
Active scribbled it down.
“Did you talk to her after that?”
“No. I tried calling her on her birthday in May but the call wouldn’t go through.”
“That was almost three months ago. Did you think anything might be wrong? Like maybe you guys should report her missing?”
Donnie looked surprised again. “She wasn’t missing. Shay can - - she could take care of herself. She’s the one always worried about me, you know? I figured she was just busy doing her thing.”
“And what was her thing?”
“I don’t know. She said she was making good money on the Slope, she had some new friends.”
“Did she like to drink, party, do drugs, any of that?”
Donnie’s forehead sheened with perspiration. “No, not Shay. I never even saw her have a beer.”
“Do you know where she spent her time off?”
“She worked four weeks on, two off, and she didn’t really want to come back to Nome when she wasn’t at work. I don’t know where she stayed when she came off the Slope. Maybe at Anchorage?”
“She ever mention going to Chukchi?”
“Oh, yeah.” Donnie’s eyes took on a sudden gleam, which Active figured meant he was happy to get a question he could answer. If Shalene had found any love in this family, it was from her brother. “I remember, she said she had friends there, all right.”
Active scratched more notes on his pad. “Did she say who they were? Was she particularly close to any of them?”
“No, she never tell me.”
Janie switched the TV back on with the sound muted and changed the channel to “Wheel of Fortune.”
Donnie burst into tears. “Why would anybody kill Shay?” he cried. Janie scowled at him and turned back to her show.
“We’re working on that,” Active said. “In the meantime, if you think of anything else your sister said the last time you talked, give me a call.” Active passed him a business card. “The smallest bit of information could be a big help.”
Donnie wiped his face with the back of his hand and choked back another sob. Active stood.
“Just like Tony,” Janie muttered to no one in particular. “Just disappear, never say nothing.”
“Where is your husband, Mrs. Harvey?”
“Indiana, last I know.”
“So you’ve heard from him?”
“Not me. The postmark on the birthday cards he sends to Shalene say Gary, Indiana. Every year since the son of a bitch left.” She sniffed.
“Do you still have those cards?”
“I throw them all away.”
Active glanced around the room. Not a single family picture adorned the walls, only the Aryan Jesus. “Do you have a recent photo of Shalene?”
Janie shook her head. “Why would I?”
He turned to Donnie. “Did your sister send you any selfies?”
The young man smiled. “Yeah.” He looked at his phone. “But my phone’s dead. Sorry.”
“Can you tell me her number?” Active poised his pen over his note pad.
“Uh, three, eight, uh, I know it starts with three, eight. No, it was in my contacts. Sorry.”
“Was her phone with the company here in Nome?”
“Seems like it,” Donnie said. “I think.”
Active shook his head and put away his pen and pad. The curse of the digital age. No need to remember anything, it’s all in the phone. Until it dies.
Well, it didn’t matter much. The girl’s employer would have a photo and a phone number.
He walked to the door. “Thank you for your time, Donnie, Mrs. Harvey. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It’s the eyes. They get you with those green-brown eyes,” Janie said. “You look in those eyes, you marry them, raise their kids, then they run off. We fight sometimes, but why he have to leave?”
She turned back to the TV and ratcheted up the volume. Donnie hung his head and sobbed again. The fish and French fries slid off the paper plate and onto the floor.