• Monday, August 22 •
Lienhofer Aviation, Chukchi
Active was looking over his notes, waiting for his ears to stop ringing, when a curvy twenty-something with caramel skin and a lush crown of loose black curls entered the breakroom and strode to the soda machine near the door. Half black and half Inupiat, he guessed. He didn’t recall ever having seen her around town.
He slapped his notebook shut, caught Cowboy’s eye, and jerked his head at the map. Cowboy processed for a moment, then went over and erased his work.
The newcomer put a couple of bills into the machine as she swayed in her purple anorak to whatever was coming through her headphones. After several seconds with no soda, she hammered the front of the pop machine with her fists.
“You have to kick it down there at the bottom right corner,” Cowboy called across the room. “See where the dents are? Then push your foot against it and rock it back.”
Headphone Girl continued to batter the machine. “Oh, you gonna snatch my money, bitch? Is that how it is? You gonna take my last dollar?”
Cowboy cupped his hands over his ears and pointed at Headphone Girl. “I’ll be right back.” He crossed the room and delivered a kick that coaxed a Diet Pepsi from the machine. Headphone Girl flashed him a bright smile, retrieved her soda from its compartment, and strode out of the room. Cowboy returned to his seat.
“Who was that?” Active asked.
“That’s Monique.”
“She wasn’t on your list. Does she work here?”
“Close by. She’s Dora’s cousin. I met her this morning when they were hanging out at the ticket counter. She’s with the Weather Service.”
Active added “Monique” to the list of suspects, then flipped to a new page in his notebook. “Okay, so, anybody have a beef with Evie or Todd?”
Cowboy frowned in thought as he drew the Marlboro pack out again. He fished inside with an index finger, snagged a lone, broken cigarette, then crumpled it and the pack and tossed them on the table. “Not at Lienhofer’s. Everybody liked Evie. And Todd? Shoot, I think even Delilah was sweet on him.” His lip curled into a half smile. “Never saw the dragon lady act that human with anybody else.”
“What about around Chukchi? Naluaqmiu doctor rides into town, sweeps a cute little village girl off her feet. That get anybody bent out of shape?”
“Sure, Todd was all that, but he never played the great white father or anything. He’d set a kid’s broken arm or diagnose an old lady’s bladder infection, then be shooting hoops with the guys at the gym a half hour later.”
“He ever talk about getting crossways with anyone?”
“Not up here. But he was engaged to this girl from a family of one-percenters back in Houston. She was Miss Texas, her mother’s old oil money, her dad’s a world-famous plastic surgeon known as the King of Cleavage. The fiancée’s plan was, Todd would join Dad’s practice and they’d be the town’s golden couple.”
“And instead he runs off to be a bush doctor in Alaska.”
“Oh, yeah. Their engagement was apparently the talk of Texas. It was a capital-E Event when he called it off. She sent him some nasty emails, said he’d regret it someday.”
“Like death threats? Was she serious?”
Cowboy shrugged. “Who knows? How do you tell with a woman?”
“I’m not sure they’re ever not serious.”
“Seems like it,” Cowboy said. “Hell hath no fury and all that. But a Texas beauty queen sneaking up here and sabotaging a bush plane?”
“She has money. She could have hired someone.”
Cowboy shot him a skeptical look.
“Yeah,” Active said. “It is pretty far-fetched. What about Evie’s family, they like him?”
“Her brothers weren’t too wild about him at first. Their attitude was, what does a guy like him see in a village girl? Is it for real, or is she just there to pass time till he gets back on the jet one day?”
Active nodded. “Those Kavoonah boys are a pretty rough bunch, all right. I think I’ve hauled ’em all in at one time or another. Standard knucklehead stuff—assault, disorderly conduct.”
“Yeah, but only with each other. I never knew one of ’em to hurt anybody else.”
Active took a minute to scroll back through his encounters with the Kavoonah brothers. “You’re right about that.”
“Five boys, three fathers, none still involved,” Cowboy said. “You can see where they might some have issues with life. They had different last names, but the kids all used Kavoonah, their mom’s second husband’s name. Anyway, Todd won ’em over pretty quick. He was like that. Impossible to hate.”
“What about Evie’s father?”
“She and the youngest brother shared him. He died when his snowgo went through the ice back on the lagoon. She was around five at the time, shy little girl. She needed a father figure, and somehow that turned out to be me. I was happy to do it, since Linda and I can’t have any of our own.” He seemed to vanish inside himself for a moment, then grunted. “Anyway, Evie was looking for a way to get out of her own family, was how I saw it. That’s why she became a pilot, and I was glad to help her with that, too. Our plan was, she was gonna be the first Eskimo girl in the captain’s seat of an Alaska Airlines jet.”
“How did she meet Todd?”
“A couple of the brothers got in a fight. One ended up with a dislocated jaw, the other one had a cracked rib. Evie drove them to the emergency room.”
“Wait a minute,” Active said. “Why don’t I remember that?”
“Probably kept it in the family,” Cowboy said. “Why wouldn’t they, if they had records already?”
Active nodded.
“So anyway,” Cowboy went on, “Dr. Todd Brenner just happens to be on duty when this cute little honey with blazing black eyes and an orange ball cap drags in these two busted-up morons.”
“Love at first sight, was it?”
“First fight, more like. They’re still throwing punches while she’s trying to keep them apart and, by golly, she’s holding her own. Todd comes in, calms ’em down, patches ’em up, then takes her out for coffee and the hospital cafeteria’s world-famous lemon meringue pie. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“What about you and him? You two ever get into it, maybe him not treating her right?”
Cowboy glared. “We got along great. He treated her like a queen. And, remember, that was supposed to be me in the plane with him, not Evie. If I wanted to take him out, what fucking sense does it make that I would go along for the ride?”
“Who knew it was supposed to be you?”
“It was on the schedule, so, pretty much everyone at Lienhofer’s. Plus the guys at the shop in Fairbanks where I was going to pick up the radios. And I was going to get a crown redone while I was over there, so my dentist, his office people. Oh, and Linda ordered some quilting supplies from one of the shops and wanted me to pick those up to save on the shipping costs. She gave them a heads-up, so the quilt lady knew—and Linda, of course, and whoever she told, they all knew I was coming. Also whoever Todd might have told?”
“That’s a lot of folks. Anyone have a beef with you?”
Cowboy buried his face in his hands for a few seconds. “I guess I rub people the wrong way once in a while, but nothing to make anybody want to kill me.” He shook his head. “That I know of, anyway.”
“How exactly did Evie end up in that plane instead of you?”
Cowboy sank lower in his chair.
“Like I said before, I was taking it to Fairbanks for the new radios. Todd asked if he could ride along and get in some cross-country time for his pilot’s license. He was thinking maybe they’d get their own plane someday.”
“But instead of you, Evie went.”
“She called me the night before, about ten o’clock.”
“At Lienhofer’s?”
“No, I was at the E-Z Market getting some smokes and onion rings.”
“And all of a sudden she wants to take your plane?”
“Yeah,” the pilot said. “She and Todd were talking about the baby, and I guess things started getting all gushy and he popped the question. Out of the blue. Now, she said, Todd wanted them to fly to Fairbanks to buy an engagement ring. And she had that doctor’s appointment out there the day after. How could I say no? She was so excited, she could barely talk. You know how kids are.”
“So let’s see. The tanks were a quarter full when you pulled it into the hangar that afternoon, right? And somebody filled them up for you?”
“Would have been Jesse Apok, the night ramper I told you about. I put it on the schedule and Two-Five-Mike was out on the tarmac the next morning with full tanks, just like I asked.” Cowboy paused and shook his head. “They looked full, anyway.”
“What time does Jesse get off?”
“Whenever the last flight of the day gets in and he puts the plane to bed. In the summer, maybe ten o’clock, midnight.”
Cowboy’s cell rang, and he held up a forefinger to Active as he barked “yeah” twice into the phone and hung up. “Looks like I gotta go to Tanana.” He looked at his watch. “Can we wrap this up?”
“Yeah, almost done. You didn’t go back that night at all?”
“No, dammit. What’s with the third degree? If I was your killer, would I twist your arm to go up there and investigate the fucking crash?”
Active chewed his lip for a moment. “Look, if you were here that night, you might have seen the killer without knowing it.”
The pilot shook his head. “But I didn’t, because I wasn’t here.”
Active kept his voice level. “It’s important to establish a timeline, so let’s just gut this out, okay? What time did you see them that morning?”
“I met them here around six. No one else was around yet. When I walked up on them, they were in a pretty serious lip lock.”
“And then?”
“Like I told you before, I checked the tanks. They were full. Evie did a walk-around and she checked them, too. She gave me a big hug and climbed in and off they went.”
Cowboy turned away and gazed out the window overlooking the tarmac. Active waited in silence until the pilot cleared his throat and turned back.
“What about them? Any problems in the relationship? The baby, maybe?”
Cowboy rubbed his jaw and shifted in his chair. “Well, it wasn’t actually planned. Evie wasn’t even sure she wanted kids. She was too freaked out about her own family, you know?”
The overhead speaker sputtered again, and Neil Diamond serenaded them with “Sweet Caroline” for a half minute before going silent. Cowboy rolled his eyes. “That’s so fucking annoy—”
A female voice begged “Help Me Make it Through the Night” for twenty seconds, then faded out.
Neither man spoke for a moment as they awaited another ambush from the rogue speaker.
“Delilah could at least update her playlist,” Active said.
“Reliving her youth,” Cowboy said.
“All right. So the brothers didn’t quite trust Todd, at least for a while. Here she had found someone who made her happy, and they were being the same old knuckleheads. That must’ve been hard on her.”
“Yeah, but the Kavoonah boys came around eventually. Evie and Todd were really in love. It was like the sun came out whenever they walked into a room. Kind of swept you up when you saw it.”
“But she had a lot on her mind, right? Like her brothers might still find some way to screw things up, or she might miscarry? Was there any real hint something was about to happen that morning? I mean, that hug she gave you?”
“Like she killed herself and Todd because she was scared about the pregnancy or because of a little family friction? Come on, Nathan.”
“I hear you. But you have to start a thing like this by not ruling anything out, not even the crazy stuff. Tunnel vision has been the ruin of many an investigation.”
“I guess,” Cowboy said. “But this is one possibility I am personally ruling out. And not discussing anymore. Evie did not put those balloons in the fuel tanks.”
“Got it.” Active pushed back his chair and stood up. “I think it’s time for a talk with Jesse Apok.” He dropped the notebook into his case and glanced across Chukchi’s main east-west runway as he walked past the window. A flicker of motion near a cluster of buildings at the near end of the graveled north-south strip caught his eye. He moved closer to the glass for a better look. “Hey, Cowboy. Come over here.”
The pilot walked up beside him. “What?”
“That,” Active pointed. “What is that?”
Cowboy’s gaze followed Active’s extended finger. His eyes widened and he pushed his hat back.
“Son of a bitch.”