• Tuesday, August 23 •
Home of Denise Sheldon, Chukchi
“Arii! It’s my fault!” Denise Sheldon clutched a pillow to her chest and toppled sideways onto the stained gray sofa. The toddler clutching her leg began to bawl.
“Sorry for your loss, Ms. Sheldon.” Active perched on an unsteady wooden chair and balanced his notebook on a knee.
Minutes earlier, he and Danny Kavik had reached the plywood-sided house with its faded blue paint off the north end of Beach Street, not far from the crisis center Grace managed, and informed Jesse Apok’s ex-girlfriend of his death. “Sometimes people always blame theirself when somebody die.” Active realized he was subconsciously matching Denise’s Village English and yanked himself back. “Danny and I could really use your help understanding what happened to Jesse. We can step outside if you need a little time.”
Denise glanced up and muffled her cries with the pillow.
“Ms. Sheldon, can I get you some water?” Kavik offered.
Denise shook her head and rubbed puffy eyes with the backs of chubby hands.
An older but thinner woman with the same button nose and dimpled cheeks came in and lifted the toddler. As they rubbed noses, Active realized he was the boy in the photo on Apok’s refrigerator.
“No more crying, kuukuung. You come with aana and let your aaka talk to these men.”
Denise pushed herself upright and snuffled as her mother carried the child out. His wails subsided and cartoon characters began to sing from a TV in a back room.
“I’m ready.” She brushed long, tangled black hair, streaked with crimson, away from her face.
Active passed her his handkerchief. She blew her nose loudly and balled the handkerchief in her fist. She straightened an over-sized flowered blouse, folded her hands in her lap, and pressed her thick, jean-clad thighs together.
“When was the last time you talked to him?” Active asked.
“This morning, right before he—arii, I should have let him see Corey like he wanted, he, he—”
“That’s a really cute boy you’ve got there,” Kavik said. “He’s, what, about three maybe?”
Denise nodded and dabbed her eyes with a dry corner of the handkerchief.
“Can you be more specific about the time?” Active continued after a couple of seconds.
“Lemme think,” Denise said. “It was about seven this morning he call me. I’m just getting home from my shift at the Arctic Inn.”
“What do you do there?”
“I’m the night clerk, I run the front desk and input the financial information for the day. The night shift pays two dollars an hour extra.”
“And Jesse called you about seven?”
“Yeah,” Denise said. “He was crying and really drunk already, even that early. He said he did something bad and he couldn’t live with it no more.”
“Did he say what it was?”
“No, I ask him, ‘Jesse, what did you do?’ But he never tell me.” She teared up and pinched the corners of her eyes. “He just beg me to let him see Corey, like he won’t be seeing him for a long time. I say, ‘Jesse, you’re really scare me now.’ He just keep asking to see Corey. So I say, ‘Okay, Jesse, but you don’t do nothing crazy.’”
Active scrawled in his notebook. “And you went to his apartment?”
Denise took two deep breaths, nodded, and wiped at her nose with the handkerchief. “I drove over with the baby.”
“What time was this?”
“Probably we got there fifteen minutes later. Around seven-thirty maybe.”
Active noted the time and put a question mark beside it. “What happened then?”
“I sit in my car for maybe twenty minutes and think about how that Jesse is always being bossy, always trying to get his way. I call him on my cell and he sounds too drunk, all right. I tell him, ‘I’m not letting you see Corey when you’re like this.’”
“What did he say?”
“He just cry and say it’s not right he can’t see his son and then he’s cursing and saying more stuff about how he can’t live with himself.”
“Did he mean suicide?”
“No . . . I don’t know. He always get drunk and say crazy things like ‘my gun is my one true friend, my gun never fuck me over like a woman.’ I ask him where his gun is and he say, ‘same place as always.’”
“Where was that?”
“In his bedroom closet.”
“And the shells?”
“Same place.” She nodded.
Active paused for a few moments. “When you were talking to him on the phone, did you hear anyone else in the background?”
Denise flicked her eyes upward in thought. “Yeah, the TV, sound like.”
“Male voice? Female voice?”
She tapped her knee. “Both, all right. But I know it was the TV. Jesse wouldn’t have no woman in there. He never want any girl but me, not even after we break up. I know lotta girls think that, but with Jesse it was true.” She twirled a strand of the crimson hair around a finger, then unwound it. “It had to be the TV. He always have that TV on.”
“He ever mention a girl named Monique?”
“Monique? Uh-uh.” Denise’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Who’s that?”
Active let the question go unanswered. “Did he ever say anything about anybody at the weather station?”
Denise bit her lower lip and gazed into an unseen distance for a moment. “One time he talk about them weather balloons, say he will take Corey sometime to watch them go up. Is Monique from the weather station?”
“Yeah, we think she and Jesse talked sometimes. She knew he hid a bottle of vodka behind her building and he’d slip down there for a drink while he was at work. Maybe they shared a sip now and then, maybe he told her something that would help us understand why he did this.”
Denise crossed her arms and glared. “Why don’t you ask her, then?”
“Good idea, Ms. Sheldon.” Active pretended to note it down. “So you asked Jesse about his gun. Did you keep talking after that?”
“No. The call dropped or he hung up. I try calling him back but it go right to voicemail. Corey start fussing, so I come home.”
Small feet pattered into the room. The toddler scrambled onto the couch, buried his face in his mother’s breast, then peeked out at Kavik with a tentative grin. Kavik smiled back.
Denise’s lower lip trembled. “Arii, it’s my fault. I should have done something. If I knock on his door to see if he’s okay . . .” She buried her face in her hands and snuffled.
“Then you and this little guy might not be with us this afternoon,” Kavik said.
Denise raised her tear-streaked face and shifted the child on her lap. “He wouldn’t ever hurt me or the baby.”
“You never know when someone’s been drinking,” Kavik said. “They can make bad decisions. Especially if there’s a gun around.”
“Did you ever feel like hurting him?” Active asked.
Denise dabbed at her eyes. “Arii, Jesse and I always fight, all right, but not like that. Sometimes he’ll give me hard time about the child support, but now he’s gone, I’ll have to get a second job. You know, I take care of my mom, too. I never want him dead.”
“When you couldn’t get Jesse on the phone, did you call anyone else?” Active asked.
“No. Oh, my god, I should have called Paul. He would have helped.”
“Paul?” Kavik asked.
“Paul Noyakuk. They’re friends since grade school. They always hang out, go hunting, go fishing, except when Paul was in the military and then not so much when he’s back, even after Jesse get him that job at Lienhofer’s.”
“Ah,” Kavik said. “He’s their janitor, right?”
Denise raised her eyebrows, yes.
Active wrote the name in his notebook. “You say they weren’t hanging out like before. Did they have a falling out?”
“No, nothing like that. Paul, he always get real moody, don’t want to be around nobody.” Denise clapped her palms to her cheeks. “Oh, my God. I don’t want him to find out about Jesse from someone at work. I have to call him.”
“Call Unca Paw,” the boy sang out.
“Yes, Corey, we’re going to call Akkaga Paw,” Denise kissed the top of the toddler’s head.
The boy grinned again at Kavik. “Go fishing with Daddy and Unca Paw.” His black eyes sparkled.
Denise stroked the dark, silky hair around her son’s ear as she thumbed the screen of her phone. She listened, shook her head, and left a voicemail asking Noyakuk to call her.
Suddenly, Active remembered the photo on Jesse Apok’s refrigerator. The blurry Inupiaq imitating a bird had to be Paul Noyakuk.
“I’ll bet you’re a good fisherman.” Kavik winked at the boy. “Catch a lotta fish, ah?”
Corey nodded. “Lotta fish. With Daddy and Unca Paw.”
Active put away his notebook. “I don’t think we have any more questions right now, Ms. Sheldon.” He handed her a business card. “Will you call me if you think of anything else that might help us understand what Jesse did?”
Denise took the card and held out his handkerchief.
He air-pushed it back to her. “It’s okay, you keep it. I’ve got lots.”
She squinted the Inupiat no. “I could wash it and call you, ah?”
“So,” Kavik said as they climbed into Active’s SUV. “Suicide after all?”
“Probably.” Active slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine. “Maybe.”
“You heard her. Jesse wanted to kill himself because he did something bad. Meaning he must have sabotaged the plane, right?”
Active shrugged. “Or he thought he screwed up and didn’t put in enough fuel that night. Or he was torn up over something we don’t even know about yet. And was he telling Denise he wanted to kill himself, or just venting to get whatever it was off his chest?”
Kavik shook his head. “Time to talk to his buddy, ah?”
Active nodded and turned south down Beach Street toward the airport. “And while we’re talking to Noyakuk, let’s ask him if Jesse mentioned Monique.”
“Yeah, funny how those balloons keep coming up every time we question somebody.”
Active looked west over the Chukchi seawall. It had been put in a couple of years earlier to defend the village against the pack ice that rode in on the brutal fall storms that seemed to get worse every year. But there was no ice now, not in late August, just the blue-gray waves of the Chukchi Sea slapping against the stone face of the wall. A half mile out, two hunters headed up-country in an aluminum dory with a big white outboard on the back.
Kavik’s voice brought Active back to the business at hand.
“That text on the phone, though. It sure seems like a suicide note, ah?”
“Yeah,” Active said. “Assuming Jesse wrote it.”
“Afternoon,” Active called as he knocked on the half-open office door of the co-owner of Lienhofer Aviation.
Delilah Lienhofer looked up with a scowl that would stop a charging grizzly. “What’s so fucking good about it?”
Active was reminded of why Cowboy called her the Dragon Lady and decided against pointing out that he had actually not called the afternoon ‘good.’ Kavik, he noticed as they stepped into the office, kept some distance back. Was he really using Active as a shield against Delilah?
“At least we’re having a better afternoon than Jesse Apok,” Active said.
Delilah’s scowl deepened under a thick helmet of mouse-colored hair. “Jesse Apok. He’s the reason my day is in the shitter.”
She huffed out an exasperated breath. “No disrespect to the dead, but I have six flights still on the schedule today, and I’ve lost my ramper. I had to call Leon Fox in to work a double shift, so I’m on the hook for the overtime.”
She shook her head, and something between bewilderment and compassion crossed her face. “Life’s a bitch, I guess, but what makes a person give up on it like that?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. We need to talk to one of your employees.”
“Yeah? Who’s that?”
“Paul Noyakuk,” Active said. “He around?”
Delilah looked like she was about to spit across the room. “That little shit. He’s another one didn’t show up for work today. I had to find out from Pete Boskofsky. He talked to Pete last night, said he was going caribou hunting up the Katonak today.”
“How long?”
“Couple days, maybe. Who knows with these guys?”
“He didn’t put in for time off?”
“In Chukchi? When the caribou show up, off they go. No leave request, not even the courtesy of a decent lie about a sick aana or something. Apparently I’m running a fucking volunteer camp here. Should have hired the fucking Koreans to clean this place.”
“Paul’s your janitor, right?”
“Yeah. Too bad he didn’t work out as a ramper, I could sure as hell use him right now.”
“He was a ramper?”
“We tried him out for a month—you know, support the troops, hire a vet. But the mechanics and pilots couldn’t work with him. Too sullen and kinda fucked up in the head, like a lot of these village kids when they come home from whatever sand dune we’re bombing this week. So we gave him a job where he could make his own schedule, which he apparently takes to mean it’s optional to show up at all.”
She stopped and her face lost a little of its color. “Sorry,” she said after a few seconds. “It all just kinda piles up on you sometimes.”
“Understandable,” he said. “Perfectly understandable. So, Jesse and Paul—they were pretty tight?”
Delilah shrugged. “Supposedly. Wouldn’t know, other than Jesse vouched for him when he applied for the job.”
“Okay,” Active said, “we’ll try again when Noyakuk’s back in town. I hope your day gets better.”
The scowl from hell was back. “Fat fucking chance.”
As Active and Kavik walked toward the Tahoe, a voice yelled “Hang on!” and Cowboy Decker hurried over from across the parking lot.
“What the hell’s going on?” the pilot growled. “Jesse Apok shot himself?”
“I see the tundra telegraph is working overtime today,” Active said. “We’re investigating.”
“It’s a suicide, obviously?”
“Maybe. We’re investigating.”
“You were going to question him, right? Did he have something to do with Evie and Todd being killed?”
“Like I said, we’re investigating. And you know I can’t talk to you about it.”
Cowboy snorted. “There wouldn’t be any damn investigation if it wasn’t for me pushing on it.”
“I know. But now there is one, and I can’t talk about it.”
Cowboy jabbed a finger into Active’s chest. “Because I’m still a suspect?”
“Because it’s an investigation.”
“Jesse was the last one who had access to those tanks,” Cowboy said. “You think he put in those balloons and knew you were onto him, and that’s why he committed suicide?”
Active gave a noncommittal shrug.
Cowboy stared at the ground for a few seconds as the wind spun up a small dust devil. “Why would Jesse Apok want to kill Todd or Evie, assuming he even knew she was gonna be in the plane?”
“Unless it was you he was after.” Active said. “Last thing he knew, it was supposed to be you with Todd, right?”
Cowboy tossed the cigarette into the gravel and ground it out. “Makes no fucking sense,” he snarled. “Nothing does now.”