• Thursday, September 1 •
Home of Denise Sheldon, Chukchi
“I’m Superman!” the toddler in the blue parka squealed as the swing flew up. The toes of his red rubber boots pointed at the sky.
“Fly, Superman!” Paul Noyakuk shouted as he gave the swing another push. His deep laughter mixed with the peal of the child’s giggles.
Active and Kavik crossed the scattered patches of browning grass to the battered swing set in Denise Sheldon’s backyard. Noyakuk glanced at them and caught the swing in its backward arc.
The boy kicked his feet. “Don’t stop, Unca Paw! Don’t stop!”
Noyakuk lifted the boy over his head and set him on his shoulders. The boy stared at Active and Kavik with what might have been resentment for ruining his fun.
“Hey, Corey, I think your mama is making you a grilled cheese sandwich,” Kavik said.
“Gwilled che-e-e-se?” The boy’s eyes widened.
“Sounds good, ah?” Noyakuk said. “Let’s go see.” The pair took off at a gentle trot for the back door.
Active and Kavik took seats at a lopsided picnic table fashioned from scrap lumber. Noyakuk returned and straddled the bench on the opposite side. A twenty-four-hour stay at the hospital had calmed him down. His shoulders were loose, his eyes a little drowsy.
“You feeling better?” Kavik asked.
Noyakuk nodded. “Back on my meds.” He smiled weakly. “What happened at Ivisuk, I—Hey, Danny, thanks for bringing my meats and boat back. I filled up my mom’s freezer and Denise’s freezer, but I still got lots if you want some. You, too, Chief.”
Kavik looked at Active, then back to Noyakuk. “Police officers can’t—”
“Oh, yeah,” Noyakuk cut in. “Conflict of interest, I guess.” He rocked from side to side. The table flexed like it was about to collapse. He grinned and Active was reminded of the clowning figure in the photo from Jesse Apok’s refrigerator.
“Jesse built this sorry piece of shit.” Noyakuk ran his hand along the edge of the table, then looked toward the sky. “You wanna talk about him, ah?”
Active nodded and pulled out his notebook and pen.
“There’s talk around town, maybe it’s not a suicide.”
“We haven’t ruled anything out,” Active said. “We’re hoping you could help us fill in a few blanks.”
“I could try,” Noyakuk said, “but I wasn’t here.”
“Yeah, your mom said she dropped you off at the lagoon that morning early.”
“Right.”
Active waited for Noyakuk to volunteer more information. None came. “When was the last time you talked to Jesse?”
“Monday a week ago, before he went to work.” He frowned in thought for a moment. “I never tell you that up at Ivisuk?” He stretched a hand across the top of the table, found a protruding nail head and picked at it with his thumb.
“So what time was that?” Active asked.
“Must have been around six, like I said, right before he went to work that night.”
“Did he tell you if he talked to anyone else that day?”
“Nah. He was late so we didn’t talk much.”
“Do you know if he was expecting someone to come over the next morning?”
“Nah. But if someone was there, they would have stopped him, ah?”
Active again waited for Noyakuk to grow uncomfortable with the silence and pick up the story. Again, it didn’t work. He just stared up at the sky.
“From killing himself?” Active suggested.
Noyakuk brought his eyes level with Active. “Yeah.”
“Who else would come by his place besides you?”
“Just Denise whenever she bring Corey over.” He shrugged. “Jesse kind of kept to himself.”
“He didn’t have a girl?”
“He kinda like that Evie girl, the one got killed. But he think maybe she’s too good for him. She liked them naluaqmiut.”
“What do you think of that?”
“Shit, man, women do what they do. Sometimes the grass looks greener.” He shrugged again but quicker this time, more like a flinch. “I got no issues with that.”
“You get along all right with those naluaqmiut in the Air Force?”
“The enlisted guys were okay. Sometimes they ask me about igloos and polar bears.” He grinned wide and shook his head. “We joke around, you know, they call me Eskimo Joe sometimes, but when the computers don’t work, they don’t want nobody else, even if it’s not my job.”
“How about the white officers? The ones who made the life-and-death decisions?”
Noyakuk brought his fist down on the table so hard Active’s notebook bounced. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Sometimes it helps to talk it out, you know, with the nightmares—”
“How do you know—that’s got nothing to do with Jesse being shot. I thought that’s what you came here to talk about.”
Active nodded, flipped through his notes, scribbled “nightmares,” underlined it, tapped his pen against his chin.
Noyakuk shifted on his bench and the table rocked again. Finally he stood up and paced in a tight circle. “I heard you arrested that taaqsipak girl from the weather station. You think she had something to do with what happened to Jesse?”
There it was again, the gossip river. There was no way, ever, to stop its flow or change its direction. And now, Paul Noyakuk had tapped into it. More reason to regret he’d been too deep into “I am the caribou” to be questioned on the way back from Ivisuk.
“Like I said, we haven’t ruled anything out. If it’s a suicide, we just need to make sure. You said Jesse had been upset lately about not seeing his son?”
“Yeah. He had this idea Denise wasn’t going to let him see Corey no more.”
Active tapped his pen on the table, turned to Kavik and nodded toward the house. “Danny, let’s not forget to ask her about that when—”
“Wait,” Noyakuk cut in, “I didn’t say Jesse knew what he was talking about. Denise didn’t want him around Corey when he was drinking, but she wasn’t gonna cut him off completely. I tried to tell him he wasn’t making no sense, but he wouldn’t listen. He was mental about it.”
“Yeah?” Active asked. “Mental enough to commit suicide?”
“Yeah, I guess. Somebody killing Jesse, that doesn’t make no sense. Jesse never did nothing to nobody but himself.” Noyakuk looked toward the house. “He was messed up in a lot of ways, but he loved that kid. That’s why I gotta try to, you know, fill that void for him.” Noyakuk waved at the swing set.
“With Jesse gone, maybe you could have a family, a kid, a woman?”
Noyakuk sat down and leaned toward Active. “That’s not what I meant. Corey and I are tight. I’ll always be his Unca Paw. Denise doesn’t know how to tell him about Jesse. She thinks I should be the one to do that. But Denise? She never want anyone but Jesse. And Jesse never want anyone but her. They just drive each other crazy, is all.”
“We think Denise was the last person he talked to before—”
“Yeah, she told me he called her.” Noyakuk sat up straight, folded his hands on the table. “She said he was drinking, saying crazy shit.”
Active looked from Kavik to Noyakuk. “Yeah, that’s what she told us too.”
Noyakuk exhaled and slowly shook his head. “No one could talk sense into him when he’s like that, not even Denise. She blame herself. I told her there’s nothing she could have done.”
“Just like there was nothing you could have done, ah?” Kavik said.
“Yeah, I was fifty miles up the Katonak when he—”
Noyakuk stared at Kavik for a couple of seconds. “But that doesn’t make it any easier. I miss him so much, man.” A heavy tear spilled down his cheek.
“Unca Paw!” the toddler’s voice sang out from the back door. “Let’s play Power Rangers!”
Noyakuk swiped the tear away with the back of his hand and stood up. “Be right there, buddy!”
“You gonna tell him about his dad?” Kavik asked.
Noyakuk took a deep breath. “Maybe I’ll take him fishing, tell him then.”
Kavik nodded. “That’s hard, man.”
Noyakuk hung his head, kicked at a pale clump of withered grass.
“Unca Paw!” the boy’s voice was higher, more insistent.
Noyakuk smiled. “Gotta go.”
“Thanks, Paul,” Active called as Noyakuk trotted to the back door, scooped up the toddler, and carried him inside.
Active sat for a moment longer at the table, looking over his notes. “That man has the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
“You think he talked to Jesse about more than what he told us?”
“Absolutely. And we have to find out who else besides Denise talked to Jesse that morning.”
“Why?” Kavik asked. “There were no texts or calls during that time on his phone. Just that one last text to Evie.”
“But there should have been,” Active said with a satisfied half grin.
Kavik frowned and scratched behind his ear. “Oh, yeah. Jesse called Denise Sheldon and Denise called him back after he hung up.”
“Someone deleted those calls, either on purpose or accidentally,” Active said. “Maybe while they were deleting other calls on that phone.”
“Other calls? But if they’re deleted, they’re gone, right?”
“Not from the phone-company records.”
“On it, Chief.”
Active’s cell bleated and Cowboy’s agitated voice came through the Tahoe’s speaker.
“She’s stalking me. You’ve got to do something, Nathan. She—”
“Stalking you? Who?”
“Monique Rogers.”
“Monique? She didn’t leave town?”
“No. And she won’t leave me the hell alone. Wherever I go, there she is. I’m in the breakroom at Lienhofer, she’s outside the door. I’m in the E-Z Market, she’s rolling a cart down the next aisle. I’m in the drive-through at Lava Java, she pulls up behind me.”
“Come on, it’s Chukchi. Everybody’s always in each other’s business. Zero degrees of separation.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Okay, where are you now?”
“At the NAPA store getting a fan belt for my truck.”
“And I suppose she’s staring at you over the motor oil?”
“No, she’s sitting in her Jeep in the parking lot. I’m looking out the window at her right now.”
“Maybe she’s waiting for someone.”
“I’m telling you, man, she’s stalking me. If she’s still out there when I’m done, I’m gonna—”
“Hold on, Cowboy. Don’t go threatening anybody. We’ll take care of it. Danny will”—he looked at Kavik, who was already nodding—“Danny will go talk to her right now.”