• 6:00 p.m., Tuesday, September 6 •
Arctic Dragon Restaurant, Chukchi
A short, wiry, twenty-something Inupiaq in a white undershirt and baggy pants was slamming Lincoln Emmonak onto a table when Active and Kavik waded into the melee at the Arctic Dragon. A canister of sugar lay on the floor with its contents fanned out across the linoleum. Emmonak cursed and kicked, but gained no traction as his feet slipped on the white grit.
An Asian teenager in a waitress outfit pressed her back against the red- and gold-flecked wallpaper. Kyung Kim, an elderly Korean man with a stained apron and a liver-spotted bald head, sidestepped back and forth in the center of the restaurant, waving his arms and shouting. “You stop now! You make mess! You bust up my place!”
Active motioned him away from the action.
A half-dozen men ringed the table, egging on the combatants and knocking over water glasses and bowls of soy-sauce packets. A couple of chairs were overturned, and the shards of a broken dish were scattered across the floor between the tables. When the spectators spotted the uniforms and badges, they backed off and shut up.
“Perry Starkman! Get off him!” Active seized Salt-T P by the collar and yanked him backward.
Kavik helped the older man to a chair. “You all right, Mr. Emmonak?”
“Arii, you shouldn’t have stopped me,” Emmonak growled. “I was gonna beat his skinny ass.”
“You gonna beat my ass, old man?” Starkman lunged forward.
Active yanked him back. The blue bandanna tied around his head had slipped down over one eye, making him look more comical than otherwise. Active pushed him into a chair. Kavik eased up from behind and cuffed one of his wrists to the chair with what struck Active as admirable deftness.
“You and your low-life friends, too.” Emmonak motioned at the subdued cheering section, then lapsed into a coughing fit.
“I need a cigarette,” he wheezed.
“You can’t smoke in a public facility in Chukchi, and nobody’s beating anybody’s ass,” Active said. “Now, Mr. Starkman, what happened here?”
“It’s Salt-T P.”
“What happened, Mr. P?”
“He pulled a knife on me.” Starkman made another lunge.
Kavik jerked him back into the chair.
“Wasn’t no knife, was a screwdriver,” Emmonak said. “Don’t need no knife for this little piece of anaq.”
Another lunge from Starkman, another yank by Kavik, this time with enough force to bounce Salt-T P’s head off the back of the chair.
“Where’s the screwdriver?” Active asked.
The waitress pointed under one of the tables.
“What’s your name, miss?”
“Amy Lee.” She spoke softly with lowered eyes.
“Did you see what happened?”
She nodded. “Lots of shouting, these two.” She pointed at Starkman and Emmonak. “Then they push each other back and forth, back and forth.”
Amy mimed it out for them.
“Mr. Kim, he call 9-1-1. Then this one”—she nodded at Starkman—“he point at another man was in here and they yell at each other and then that other man run out. That’s when that one there”—she pointed at Emmonak—“pull out the screwdriver. The other one knock it out of his hand and push him on the table.”
Kavik picked up the screwdriver and dropped it into a baggie.
“That your screwdriver, Mr. Emmonak?” Active asked.
Emmonak nodded.
“You try to hurt Mr. Starkman with it?”
“Arii, that piece of anaq had it coming. Damn thief!”
“I didn’t take your fucking scooter!”
“Motorcycle!” Emmonak thundered. “I ask him what he tell that officer question all my neighbors. He don’t want to tell me. I think he’s the one take my bike!”
“I told him I never!”
“Yeah, he say somebody else take it,” Emmonak said. “That other guy sitting over by the door.”
Active glanced at the empty tables around the door. “What guy?”
“These jackasses scare him away.” Emmonak waved at the gaggle of fight fans.
“Native guy?”
“Yeah. That Esther Noyakuk’s boy. This one.” Emmonak jabbed his finger at Starkman. “I think he’s the one take it. This Stinky P here.”
“Salt-T P,” Starkman spat back.
“You mean Paul? Paul Noyakuk was here?” Active asked.
Emmonak nodded. “Yeah, that’s him.”
“Mr. Starkman, you recognized Paul Noyakuk?”
“Yeah. He’s that guy I seen taking the bike. Got on that same camo jacket with the star on the sleeve.”
“Mr. Starkman, you know Paul Noyakuk?”
“Kinda, yeah.” He shrugged. “This is Chukchi, ah?”
“When Officer Long questioned you about the motorcycle theft, you described the man who took it. Why didn’t you say it was Paul Noyakuk?”
“He never ask what his name was. Anyway, what I want to get him in trouble over some old man’s scooter?”
“Motorcycle!” Emmonak hissed.
“I know a fuckin’ scooter when I see one,” Starkman said.
Kavik put his hand on Emmonak’s shoulder to head off any renewal of hostilities.
Active turned to the waitress. “You said Mr. Starkman here was arguing with Paul Noyakuk, the guy by the door. What did Mr. Noyakuk say?”
“He say, ‘You make mistake. You were drunk or something.’ Then he run out. He come in here sometimes. Nice guy, gets fried rice for his mom.”
Active threw Kavik a satisfied look. “Danny, let’s wrap this up. We’ve got to get over to the hospital. You guys”—he pointed at the spectators—“you probably got this whole thing going in the first place. Get out of here, and don’t be starting trouble somewhere else. You do, you’ll all end up together in one of my cells and you can fight each other for the top bunk.”
The men threw him sullen looks and headed for the door.
“What about me?” Starkman stood halfway up, still cuffed to the chair.
“You stay where you are.”
Starkman plopped down again.
“Are you two pressing assault charges against each other?”
Emmonak stamped his foot and looked ready to spit. “Arii, I could let it go this time, all right. But he stole my bike and wrecked it all up and now he gotta pay for it.”
“Mr. Emmonak, he didn’t steal your motorcycle. Now, Mr. Starkman, Mr. Emmonak here is willing to forgive and forget. How about you?”
“But this was assault with a deadly weap—”
“Mr. Starkman.”
Another shrug. “Nah, I ain’t pressing no charges.”
“Danny, call Alan to take Mr. Emmonak home. I want as much space as possible between him and Mr. Starkman before I let him go.”
“You mean I gotta stay chained up like this?” Starkman protested.
“Danny can uncuff you, but you stand by the door and don’t go out until Mr. Emmonak is out of sight.”
Kavik uncuffed Starkman. He rubbed his wrist and flexed his fingers.
Kim rushed up to Active. “What about my place? Who gonna pay for all this?”
Active surveyed the destruction.
“Mr. Kim, you give me an estimate of the damages and Mr. Starkman and Mr. Emmonak will split the bill.” He said it loud enough that there could be no lack of clarity for the two troublemakers. “If they don’t pay up within two weeks, you let me know and I’ll arrest them.”
He glared at the two combatants. “You hear me?”
“Arii,” Emmonak began. “But I—”
“I said I’ll arrest you.”
Emmonak shut his mouth and both men raised their eyebrows in the Inupiat yes. Emmonak marched out.
As Active and Kavik left the restaurant, Alan Long pulled in and parked next to the Tahoe.
“Hey, look,” Kavik said.
A white carton lay a few inches from Long’s front bumper. Fried rice and garlic chicken spilled out across the gravel.
Kavik squatted for a closer look. “Looks like somebody ditched his takeout.” He touched the carton. “Still warm.”
“Noyakuk knows his story is falling apart,” Active said. “We have to find him.”
Kavik nudged the spilled takeout with his toe. “Probably won’t be at the hospital.”
“Nope.”
Long jumped out of his Tahoe and escorted a sour-faced Lincoln Emmonak to the passenger door.
“But just in case,” Active told Kavik, “have Alan take you to the hospital before he takes Mr. Emmonak home. If Paul’s not there, maybe his mother will know where he is. I’ll check his boat.”
Active pulled up to the spot at the north end of the seawall where Esther Noyakuk had described dropping her son off on the beach for his hunting trip to Ivisuk.
Half a dozen boats were tied up along the shore, including the aluminum drop front with the red Evinrude that he and Kavik had loaded with Noyakuk’s gear and four-wheeler and caribou meat at Ivisuk.
He pulled his rig into the parking lot of an apartment building across from the bay and waited.
Twenty minutes passed with no sign of Noyakuk. Kavik called to say Noyakuk hadn’t come by the hospital, either.
“Check Esther’s house,” Active told Kavik. “If he’s going back to Ivisuk, he may want to pick up some gear. Take Long with you. If Noyakuk’s there, call me immediately.”
Active’s phone sounded again a few minutes later and Grace’s picture came up.
“Nathan,” she said. “Nita’s gone.”
“Gone? Maybe she just took Lucky for a walk.”
“No.” Active could hear her rapid breathing. “I was late getting off work. I called home and asked her to order a pizza and we were gonna watch The Hunger Games again. That’s when she told me.”
“Told you what?”
Grace’s voice broke. “That little bi—that little Mindy put something about me shooting Jason on Facebook, and now it’s all over the school, and Nita’s—well, you can imagine how she’s feeling. I tried to calm her down, I told her we’d talk about it when you and I got home, but she said she didn’t want to talk, that she—”
She drew in a sharp breath that was half sob. “—that she, ah, doesn’t want me to be her mom anymore.”
“That’s what kids say when they get upset. She didn’t mean—“
“Then where is she? She took her backpack, her iPad, and Lucky. And she’s not answering her phone.”
“At least we know she left of her own accord.”
“Is that supposed to make me less terrified?”
“Have you called her friends?”
“Of course.” A touch of exasperation was in her voice now. “None of them saw her after school.”
“None of her girlfriends. But what about—”
“Stacy! I’m going over there right now.” Keys jangled in the background. “We’ve got to talk to her, Nathan. When are you coming home?”
A couple of seconds ticked past before he spoke. “Baby, we’re kind of in the thick of it with this murder case. I may not make it back at all tonight.”
“But I can’t do this by myself. You have to—”
“How about you see if she’s at Stacy’s and ask his foster mom if she can stay overnight, assuming appropriate sleeping arrangements, of course. She’ll have time to cool off, you’ll have time to think this out, and we can talk to her when I do get home. Meantime, I’ll call Ms. Savok and get her to make Mindy take down that Facebook post and—”
“But I can’t—not—how are we—”
“We’ll figure it out. Call me when you find her, okay? Or if you can’t.”
Two four-wheelers roared past, the only perceptible movement other than passing seagulls he had seen since beginning the stakeout.
He started the Tahoe. His phone bleated again.
This time it was Kavik. “He’s not at home.”
“Nothing out here, either.”
“But we might have something. Esther’s cousin is staying at the house to take care of the old man while Esther’s in the hospital. She showed me where Paul keeps his stuff. It doesn’t look like he packed up for any kind of trip.”
“And where’s he going to go without his boat?”
“Exactly. But it looks like he did take one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“His gun.”