• 9:45 p.m., Tuesday, September 6 •
Arctic Inn, Chukchi
Active banged his forearm on the dark-red door of Room 112. Kavik stood to the side, hand on the butt of his Glock. “Paul Noyakuk, open up! It’s Chief Active!”
His pulse picked up. Maroon-carpeted hallway stretched off on either side, deserted and quiet. No sound came from the other side of the door.
He banged again.
“Paul! We don’t want you or anyone else to get hurt. Open the door.”
The soda machine down the hall hummed and rattled. A light flickered overhead.
Still nothing from the room. Not the scuff of a shoe, not a grunt or a mutter.
He had sent Long outside to watch the window of Room 112 from behind his department Tahoe.
Active pulled a key card out of his pocket and slipped it into the lock. The tiny light turned green and the lock clicked. He flipped the handle and pushed. The door opened a couple of inches and banged against the security bar.
He stepped back and shouted through the crevice. “Paul, open the door. We need to talk.”
Nothing.
He pulled the door toward him till it was just shy of latching. Then he stepped back and nodded at Kavik.
Kavik cocked his leg, and slammed his heel into the door. There was a slight crack, but the security bar held.
On his third kick, it didn’t. The door banged open.
Active drew his Glock and peered in. He could see the green and burgundy pattern of the cover on a corner of the bed. The smell of cigarette smoke lingered in the air. The hair rose on the back of his neck. Was Noyakuk hiding somewhere, rifle trained on the doorway?
He took a step inside, Kavik a step behind, both of their guns drawn. The bathroom was to their right, its door open to the inside, flush against the wall. The shower curtain was pulled back, the bath mat neatly hung over the rim of the tub. No one hiding there.
Active moved along the right wall. Kavik moved to his left where the mirrored doors of a closet reflected the rest of the room. It was empty.
Active trained his pistol on the closet and Kavik slid the doors back one at a time. The closet was empty, except for an ironing board and a row of wooden hangers.
Suddenly, he caught a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye and spun around, Glock pointed, finger on the trigger. But it was only the room’s gray, insulated drapes billowing in at the window. Active holstered his gun and drew them back. He leaned out into the cooling air of the dying twilight.
“Clear!” he called. “He’s gone.”
Long emerged from behind the Tahoe and walked toward the hotel.
Denise Sheldon sat on one of the light green chairs in the lobby, wringing her hands and sniffling back tears. Active faced her with his notebook balanced on one knee.
Kavik and Long were questioning housekeepers and bell boys in offices behind the front desk. The guests who’d been cleared from the rooms near 112 waited in a little conference room off the lobby.
“Ms. Sheldon,” Active said. “We need to find out how Paul Noyakuk got into that room. If you helped him in any way, you need to tell me now.”
Denise shook her head and gasped out her answer between sobs. “Paul? I don’t know anything about that. I just came on shift at eight o’clock right before you walked in.”
“We can check that. If you’re lying, you’ll be in serious trouble.”
“Arii, what he do?” she wailed.
“It’s possible he had something to do with Jesse’s death—”
“Paul? But he couldn’t have. They were best friends.”
Before Active could continue, a woman in a housekeeper’s uniform ran from the office area, across the lobby, and out the front door. Kavik followed and stopped at Active’s chair.
“We know how Noyakuk got in. That housekeeper that just ran out left the window open when she cleaned that room around three this afternoon. She snuck a smoke on duty and forgot to close it when she left.”
The manager, a middle-aged Inupiaq with a thin mustache and a lavender shirt, came up. “Chief, how much longer before we can let our guests back into their rooms and get our people back to work?”
“A few more minutes,” Active said.
Denise turned to the manager. “I don’t think I can work tonight, Mr. Timmons,” she sobbed.
“Denise, I need you here,” the manager said. “Otherwise I’m the one who has to—”
“I—I can’t do it, Mr. Timmons.”
A phone rang at the front desk. Timmons shook his head and stalked off to get it.
“Can I go, Chief?” Denise sniffled.
“Yeah.” Active put away his notebook. “Do you have someone you can stay with tonight? I don’t think you should stay by yourself.”
Denise nodded. “I could call my auntie.”
“Danny, would you walk Ms. Sheldon to her vehicle? I’m going to take another look at that room.”
Paul Noyakuk’s temporary hideout looked like any other hotel room. In the bathroom, the towels were neatly folded and untouched. A half-smoked cigarette floated in the toilet, though there was no knowing if it had belonged to Noyakuk or to the housekeeper. A TV remote lay on the floor next to the nightstand. The pillow on that side of the bed was dented, like someone had just started to lean back and get comfortable before being interrupted, maybe by the knock of an irritated guest from next door.
Active lifted the spread and spied an object on the floor between the nightstand and the bed. An empty rifle cartridge box.
His phone warbled with a call from Kavik.
“Chief, Denise’s Jeep is gone.”
“Was it locked?”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t broken into. She locked herself out with her kid in the car about a week ago. So Paul Noyakuk put an extra key on a magnet in the front wheel well for her.”
Active poured a cup of coffee from the second pot he had made in the last couple of hours and stretched his arms over his head. He could hear the soft trill of Kavik’s snores on the beaten-up leather couch in the reception area outside his office.
They had driven every street in the village, probed with headlights and flashlights behind every building and dumpster, for three hours of the moonless night, all with no sign of a dark blue Jeep Wrangler. How did somebody hide a Jeep in Chukchi? Finally, with a dense autumn fog starting to roll in on the west wind, Active decided to wait for daylight, still a couple of hours off.
It was 5 a.m. on his desk clock when Kavik shuffled in like a mummy come to life. The smell of the coffee must have roused him.
“I have to take a leak,” he said, “then I’ll spell you so you can catch a few z’s.”
Active’s eyelids kept falling shut as he waited for Kavik. Then he was behind the wheel of his Tahoe with Grace beside him. Her abdomen was huge. She was crying out in pain every time a contraction hit.
“We’ve got to get to the hospital for the appointment,” he heard himself say.
“Turn left,” Grace said. “No, turn right, turn left, turn right.” He was speeding through Chukchi, corner after corner, but getting nowhere. Where had the hospital gone?
His chest was pounding. Was this a heart attack? How would he take care of Grace? And the baby? But, no, the appointment—
“Chief, Chief.”
Kavik’s voice brought him out of it. He lifted his head off his folded arms on the blotter and willed his eyes open. Outside his office window, dawn was lightening the fog in the street. Kavik stood in front of his desk with a young white couple.
“These are the Franklins, Melissa and Joe. They have some information.”
Active sat up straight, rubbed his face until he could feel it again, took a gulp of cold, stale coffee, and shook himself to a semblance of alertness.
“Have a seat, please. What’s going on?”
“It was about fifteen minutes ago, we were driving out the Loop Road to pick blueberries before work,” Joe said, hands and voice shaking. “When we got to the other end of the bridge, there was this vehicle stopped in the middle of the road, facing us, blocking the whole way. I waited a minute or two, honked my horn, but nothing. He didn’t move.”
“So I told Joe, maybe there’s something wrong with the driver,” Melissa chimed in. “Like he had a stroke or an engine problem.”
Her husband nodded. “So I open my door and I get out and I yell, ‘Hey, buddy, you okay?’ That’s when—”
“I told you not to get out.” Melissa put a hand on Joe’s thigh. “I told him not to get out, but of course he didn’t listen. He never listens.”
“So the guy opens his door, points a rifle at us. Blam! Blam! Two shots right over our heads.”
“You weren’t hit?”
Joe shook his head. “No, but we were scared shitless.”
“I screamed out loud,” Melissa said. “Right out loud. And I spilled our coffee. The whole thermos.”
“I dropped my phone on the road,” Joe said. “I didn’t even stop to pick it up. I told Melissa to get down. I threw the car in reverse and we got the hell out of there.”
Active was on his feet, punching buttons on his phone. “What kind of vehicle?”
“Jeep.”
“Dark blue,” Melissa added.
“One occupant?”
“Just the driver,” Joe said. “Native guy in a camo jacket.”