• Tuesday, August 23 •
Pamiuktuk Street Apartments, Chukchi
The first thing Active noticed about Jesse Apok’s apartment was the gunmetal smell of blood. It was so familiar now, so instantly recognizable, that it made him wonder again if it was time to find a new line of work.
He shook his head, covered his nose and mouth with his handkerchief, and stepped through the door.
The source of the smell lay on the kitchen floor, still in an overturned chair, empty eyes fixed on the blood-spattered ceiling. A pool of brown-red blood mixed with brain matter and bone fragments had congealed under his head on the stained, holed linoleum.
His arms loosely embraced the barrel of a hunting rifle propped between his bent legs. The muzzle pointed toward a hole under his chin where the bullet had begun its swift, deadly journey. Pale bare feet protruded from the frayed cuffs of his jeans.
Kavik moved around the room, taking photos, then moved in and circled the corpse for close-ups.
Active pocketed the handkerchief—his brain had processed the smell and no longer noticed it now—and leaned over the kitchen table. He searched for blood at the edge of the table closest to the fallen body but found none. He stood up and surveyed two empty Smirnoff bottles that lay on the table beside a sardine can filled with ashes and cigarettes smoked down to the filter.
“How do you think it played out?”
“First impression?” Kavik said. “He’s sitting at the table, drinking himself stupid. He’s got the gun between his knees. He puts the muzzle under his chin, pulls the trigger, and falls backward in the chair. Basic village suicide.”
Active circled the table. He eyeballed the distance between the upturned feet of the corpse and the edge of the table. “This chair was maybe two feet from the table. Who sits that far back when they’re trying to drink away their troubles?”
Kavik rubbed his jaw. “Okay, so maybe he pushed back to get the gun between his legs. What difference does it make?”
“Like the wise man said, everything should be made as simple as possible. But not more so.”
“Yeah, okay,” Kavik said. “Message received.”
Active pulled on latex gloves. As Kavik photographed the items on the table and the floor beneath, Active squatted near the body, studying its position and taking notes.
Then he worked the bolt on the rifle and extracted a single spent cartridge, which he put in a Ziploc bag from his pocket. The rifle went into a big plastic trash bag from Kavik’s pack, and the Smirnoff bottles into another trash bag.
“Give this stuff to Long,” he told Kavik. “I’m going to take a look around the place. You should talk to the neighbor who called it in.”
A heavyset, fifty-ish Inupiat woman with big glasses and an orange-and-pink-flowered atiqluk stood with Alan Long just outside the open door of Apok’s first-floor unit in the eight-plex. She pressed her palms to her cheeks and shook her head as Kavik approached. “Arii, that Jesse,” Active heard her say. “I always tell him he’ll end up like this. All the time too much drinking, that guy.”
Active surveyed the tiny kitchen. An unwashed coffee pot on the counter; a plate, knife, and fork, also unwashed, in the sink.
Clipped onto the refrigerator door with a magnet was a photo of a smiling Apok with a grinning toddler on his shoulders. Another picture, slightly blurry, showed him in a boat with the little boy between his legs. A man about Apok’s age, but heavier and vaguely familiar, stood behind him, mugging and stretching out his arms like a goofy bird.
The rest of the refrigerator door was decorated with spidery crayon drawings. Stick animals that looked a little like caribou, a small boy holding a man’s hand, the same boy holding a woman’s hand—but none of the boy standing between the man and woman, holding hands with both.
In the bedroom, Active found a double bed sans headboard and sheets, a green nylon-covered sleeping bag on top, and mismatched pillows without cases. A lamp with a tilted shade stood on the nightstand. In one corner, a big plastic tote held a toy dump truck, plastic blocks, a Spider-Man action figure, and a mixing bowl full of Legos.
In the bathroom, a dirty toilet with the seat up stood next to a slightly cleaner tub with a flimsy white plastic shower curtain. A yellow rubber duck perched in a corner of the tub next to a bottle of dandruff shampoo. On the rim of the sink, a Scooby-Doo toothbrush leaned against a larger one in a blue cup.
As Active left the bedroom, Kavik came in with the two paramedics who had been first on the scene, then stepped out when the officers arrived to investigate.
“Ready, Chief?” one asked as they brought in a gurney.
“All yours,” Active said.
“Crime lab, right?” The paramedic dropped the gurney’s wheels.
“Absolutely.”
Active joined Kavik in the kitchen as the paramedics loaded Apok’s body onto the gurney, covered him with a sheet, and rolled him out the front door.
“Long talked to the upstairs neighbor, Dolly Swanson,” Kavik said. “I went over it again with her just now. She heard loud voices coming from downstairs early this morning. Maybe men’s voices, or they could have been male and female.”
“Someone else was here?”
“Or it could have been the TV. Apparently Apok kept it blasting whenever he was here and they had words about it a couple times. She didn’t see anyone go in or out and no other cars other than the usual. Things quieted down after a while and she stretched out on the couch for a nap about nine—she says she was up late babysitting the grandkids. She thinks she had just dozed off when she heard a loud bang from Jesse’s unit. She thought it was a dream or maybe his TV again, so she let it go. But she kept thinking about it and finally around noon decided maybe it was a gunshot. She knocked on his door, then called 911 when he didn’t answer.”
“So Jesse was dead for maybe three hours when the body was found,” Active said. “We have a pretty good idea of how he died and when. But nothing that tells us why. Or who.”
“Who? Not a suicide, then?”
Active ran a hand through his hair. “That’s what it looks like, but—”
“But someone could have helped Jesse with the gun.”
“Exactly. It fits with our theory of Monique as the brains and Jesse as the brawn.”
Kavik nodded. “Monique uses Jesse to bring down the plane. Maybe he tells her we questioned him, and she decides he’s gonna fold and she has to take care of it. But we just talked to her. You’re thinking she could have been here earlier this morning?”
“It’s possible. She said she was having computer problems all morning, but she was still wearing her anorak when we came in.”
“Right. She said she was cold.”
“And yet she’s got a cold soda sitting on her desk ready to drink?”
“Yeah, that is weird,” Kavik said. “Maybe she is our killer.”
“In which case we now have three homicides,” Active said. “Evie, Todd, and Jesse, all killed by Monique. Or, maybe Jesse Apok killed Jesse Apok. Let’s take another look.”
They stepped back in and Active surveyed the living room. A big widescreen TV, the only thing that looked new, balanced on a plastic stand against a curtainless window. Across from the TV, a worn brown sofa slumped against a wall under a wood-and-ivory crucifix and a seven-foot frond of blue-gray baleen feathered along the lower edge. On a spindly table next to the couch sat a well-thumbed Bible, open to a page marked with a faded red ribbon.
“Not much here,” Kavik said.
“Not of a life. You a religious man?”
Kavik shrugged. “I take Mom to church sometimes, say ‘amen’ at the right time.”
Active pointed at the Bible. “See if anything jumps out that could put us inside Mr. Apok’s head. I’m going to take another swing through the kitchen.”
Active stepped around the bloodstains on the floor and opened the back door. To his right, a wheel-less bicycle frame and a small, banged-up motorcycle leaned against the wall, almost hidden in tall weeds.
An older apartment building stood back to back with the Pamiuktuk. A couple of pickups were parked in the space between, one collapsed onto its tires. Three teenagers traded shots at a bare basketball hoop. Active walked over, asked a few questions, and learned they had only arrived a half hour earlier and hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.
He returned to the apartment and stared again at the refrigerator with its photo of Jesse Apok and his son. They had the same grin.
He moved up for a closer look and noticed a smudge on the boy’s face. A stroke from a thumb? Or maybe a print from a kiss? As he removed the photo and slid it into a baggie, the toe of his shoe nudged something on the floor just under the refrigerator door. He knelt and pulled out a silver flip phone.
Kavik came into the kitchen with the Bible in his hand, still open to the page marked with the ribbon. “I may have something here, Chief. James, chapter five, verse sixteen: ‘Confess your faults one to another and pray one for another that ye may be healed.’”
“Maybe Jesse was in a confessional state of mind.” Active opened the phone, checked the screen, and handed it to Kavik.
The screen showed a text marked undeliverable and sent at 9:12 a.m. to “Evie.”
Kavik read it out loud: “Sorry.”