IT WAS A FEW minutes before eight and a Sunday morning to boot, but the lights were on when Active arrived at the log cabin that served as the Chukchi outpost and living quarters of the Alaska Department of Environmental Protection. An Arctic Cat with a small dogsled hitched to the back stood at the kunnichuk door, which was propped open with the shell of an old Macintosh computer.
He shut off the Suburban and walked around the tail of the sled into the kunnichuk, then backed out as a big cardboard box barged toward him at chest level. The box was labeled "Childs, ADEP, Bethel." Two smallish hands were its only visible support.
"Do you mind?" said a woman's voice from behind the box. "I gotta get this shit to the fucking airport. You'd fucking think they'd fucking pay somebody to do this since it was their fucking idea, but, no, I gotta do it my own fucking self."
"Hey, let me get it." He took the box, dropped it into the basket of the sled, and turned to face Kathy Childs, the environmental department's only biologist in Chukchi. In fact, as far as he knew, she was the department's only employee north of Nome.
Childs had a lean, sinewy body, brown hair in a long thick braid, and blue eyes that blazed startlingly from a face tanned nut brown by near-constant exposure to wind and sky. This morning, she was outfitted in a pair of rust-colored Carhartt bib overalls with a set of thermal underwear beneath, and Sorel boots. Her foul mouth, he had concluded on the basis of a nodding acquaintance and a few quick conversations, was attached to a fine mind and a good heart.
"Oh, thanks, Nathan. Didn't recognize you from behind the box there." She plopped down on the sled.
"Day off to a bad start?"
"Yeah, you could say that. I'm being transferred to Bethel."
"Not Bethel! My God, why?"
"It's probably the only place they could find with more drunks and mosquitoes than fucking Chukchi."
"No, I mean why are you being transferred?"
"Beats the shit out of me. Ask Juneau."
"Yeah, like Juneau talks to me," he said. "When's your replacement coming? Who is it?"
"There isn't going to be one. This office is being mothballed indefinitely." She stood up and started back into the house. "They'll service Chukchi out of Nome. Like a bull services a cow, would be my guess."
"Hang on a minute. How much stuff you got?"
"Tons. Two sled loads, maybe three. And I gotta get it on the morning flight." She looked at her wristwatch. "Which, fuck, leaves in forty-eight minutes. Shit."
"Let's use the Suburban. We can get it in one trip and that'll give me a chance to pump you a little bit."
"In your dreams, Macho Man," she said. But she grinned and hoisted the box out of the sled. He opened the Suburban's rear doors and she slid it in.
"Shut that trash mouth a minute and listen," he said. "I need some information about the Gray Wolf."
"The Gray Wolf and Bethel in one day. Jesus fuck."
"Well, we don't have much time if you're leaving on the morning plane."
"My stuff is, but I'm not. I'm taking the dogs up the Isignaq for a few days and knocking down some caribou. At least my mutts will eat well in Bethel. We can come back here and talk after we're done at the airport."
He helped her load the other boxes from the office into the Suburban. Some were addressed to her in Bethel. Others were marked for the environmental protection district office in Nome. When the boxes were all loaded, she kicked the dead Macintosh out of the way and slammed the kunnichuk door. He closed the Suburban, drove the two blocks to the airport, and heaved the boxes up onto the Alaska Airlines freight dock as she signed papers for the agent.
The pressure off now, they drove back to what had been her office. He sat on the dead Macintosh and she slumped on a tattered brown couch held up by a can of Spam where a leg was missing. Unlike the boxes on the way to Bethel and Nome, she explained, the couch belonged to the landlord.
"I'd offer you some coffee but the machine's on its way to Bethel too. So what do you want to know about the Gray Wolf? It's a copper mine, it's big, and everybody loves it."
"I was just wondering about those fish kills on the Nuliakuk. Is the Gray Wolf causing them?"
"Of course not. Haven't you heard what GeoNord says? They're the result of natural mineral seeps in the area. Nothing whatever to do with by-products from the mine."
She leaned forward, unsnapped the shoulder straps of the Carhartts, and rolled the front and rear bibs down to her waist. Then she pulled the cuffs of the thermal undershirt up past her elbows. "Fucking hot in here."
The house's inner door and the kunnichuk door were both partly open and the temperature was about zero outside. He was feeling a little cold, despite his parka. Not for the first time, he marveled at the raw physical vigor Kathy Childs exuded and wondered what she would be like in bed.
Also not for the first time, he realized he didn't have the slightest desire to find out. Was she a lesbian? Or was he just intimidated by this woman who talked and seemed to think like a man? He looked away from her and tried to get back to business. "Is that what you think? The fish kills are natural?"
"Fuck, it could be. There's always been mineral seeps into Gray Wolf Creek. That's how they figured out there might be copper there in the first place." She picked at a rip in one of the couch cushions. A little clump of white stuffing squeezed out.
"But what does the Alaska Department of Environmental Protection say? Officially?"
"The DEP doesn't say shit. All we know is what GeoNord tells us and their data don't show any impact from the mine."
"You don't do your own monitoring?"
"Fuck, no. Why would we want to do that? You think GeoNord can't be trusted to monitor itself?"
"Well..."
"Don't look at me like that, fuckhead." She balled up the stuffing and threw it at him. "Of course I know we should be doing our own tests. But every time I push for a monitoring program the district director in Nome says we don't have the money, so we go with what GeoNord gives us."
He shook his head and stretched out his legs. The Macintosh was too low to make a good seat. "Sweet deal for GeoNord."
"That's what I thought too. So I snuck up to the Nuliakuk on my trusty Arctic Cat and collected a few of those dead fish and sent them to a friend at the DEP lab down in Juneau." She unlaced her Sorels and pulled them off, then propped her stockinged feet up on the boots and sighed. "That's better. Jesus, I knew I was dressing too warm today."
"And what did your friend find out?"
"Not shit. Somehow Shotwell—that's the district director in Nome—heard about it and called and told me to lay off. Said he didn't want any half-assed measures when it came to the Gray Wolf. Either we'd do full-scale monitoring or we wouldn't do any. And since we couldn't afford a real monitoring program..."
"... you're not doing any monitoring at all."
"You got that right. Then he told me the money had run out for the Chukchi office and he was moving me to Bethel."
"You think the office here is closing because of your dead fish?"
"Fuck, who knows what goes on up there in the ionosphere? Guys at Shotwell's level don't even breathe oxygen like you and me. All I know is, the Gray Wolf is somebody else's baby now." She drew back her right foot and kicked a Sorel across the floor at him. "And I start looking for a federal job the minute I get to Bethel. I'm tired of this chicken-shit outfit."
He caught the boot with his foot and slid it back to the couch. "What kind of by-products do they get at the Gray Wolf anyway?"
"Well, copper ore has a bunch of minerals in it. Some of them are fairly nasty."
"Such as?"
"Antimony, arsenic, sulfur. Actually, the antimony's not much of a problem. But arsenic and sulfur you have to..."
"Sulfur as in sulfuric acid? And arsenic as in... arsenic?"
"Sure, bad stuff. But the pollution controls up there should take care of it." She started pulling the Sorels on again. "GeoNord takes it out during processing and ships it south. I guess they sell it on the West Coast and get back some of the cost of handling it."
"Couldn't they just put it back in the ground where it came from? Like with some kind of leach field or something?" He watched carefully as he said it, but she gave no sign she had ever heard of a leach field at the Gray Wolf. The state of perpetual fury in which she seemed to exist made it hard to be sure, though.
"Fuck, no. That mountain's like a giant sponge. You put that stuff back in the ground after it's separated from the copper, it'll flush right through. No telling where it's gonna end up." She pulled up the bibs of the Carhartts, flipped the straps back over her shoulders, and snapped them.
"Why you interested, Nathan?" She said it casually, but the amazing blue eyes were like searchlights in her dark face. "You thinking there's some kind offish and game violation?"
"Not really," he said, avoiding the beams of the blue search-lights. "My stepfather likes to go up there for trout and he was complaining about the fish kills the other night. I just thought I'd check around a little."
"I didn't think a state agency would get serious about the Gray Wolf," she said. "Anyway, I don't think even GeoNord would try something as stupid as a leach field. They'd be looking at a fine the size of the national debt. From the Feds if not us."
She pulled on the Sorels and walked to the door, then turned and looked back at him. Her hands were inside her front bib and she was rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. "So, you wanna go get some caribou with me, Macho Man? I hear they're crossing at Jade Portage now. It'll be like swatting mosquitoes."
He tried not to let his mouth fall open at the invitation. What was she proposing?
It could be several nights of nonstop gymnastics in a double sleeping bag, or it could be a simple caribou hunt. She had a hungry dog team to feed for the winter and the bag limit for the western Arctic herd was five animals a day. With two people hunting, that was ten animals a day. They could slaughter caribou until they were crusted in blood up to their elbows.
Whichever it was, he doubted he could keep up with her. Besides, whenever he tried to picture her without the Carhartts, Lucy Generous's face came into his mind. Wearing that look she got when she was hurt and trying not to show it.
"Nah, I don't hunt much," he said finally.
"Didn't think so," she said. She walked out into the kunnichuk, then stuck her head back inside the cabin proper.
"Close the door when you leave," she said. "Or not, your choice. Fuck 'em." Her head disappeared and, a moment later, he heard the snowmachine cough to life and pull away.
BACK IN the Sunday hush of the deserted trooper office, he laid his notebook on the desk and flipped through his Rolodex, then his file drawers. He locked his fingers behind his head and frowned at the ceiling. Where was it? Suddenly he remembered, took a slip of paper from his wallet, and dialed the Anchorage number on it.
"It's Nathan," he said after a few seconds. "Did you find her?"
"Nope," Patrick Camaby said. "Not a trace."
"I heard something."
"You heard something?"
"I heard she's at the Lo..."
"Don't touch this," Carnaby interrupted. "You've still got a career left."
"I came by this information accidentally."
"In other words, you didn't hear it from whoever you heard it from, that kind of thing ?"
"Something like that."
Carnaby was quiet for several seconds. Active heard a radio in the background. Pots and pans rattled. A teenage boy called, "Dad, breakfast is ready."
"Just a minute," Dad yelled back. Life as usual at the Carnaby household in Anchorage, except Dad's career was shot and his office was now six hundred miles away in Chukchi.
"All right," Camaby said into the phone finally. "What is it?"
"She's dancing at the Lodestar Lounge in Las Vegas." Active opened his notebook and read the telephone number.
"What name is she using?"
"Helen Ready."
"Helen Reddy?" Carnaby said. "You mean like the singer Helen Reddy? Won't she get sued?"
"No, Helen R-E-A-D-Y. As in ready for action, I think. But you didn't hear any of this from me."
"I feel like I'm in one of those conversations my undercover guys used to tape."
"Let's hope not," Active said.
"I'll say. Anyway, thanks. If this works out and I... well, if you ever need anything ..."
"Some things don't need saying."
"Then I won't say it," Carnaby said. "So how are things in Chukchi?" He didn't sound very interested.
"Oh, the same," Active said. "Couple more apparent suicides, not much else." He held his breath. The old Super Trooper from the academy would catch the "apparent" in a second.
"Maybe Tom Werner's liquor ban will help, if he gets it," Carnaby said. Active relaxed. Evidently the new Carnaby was too preoccupied with Helen Ready to analyze sentence structure. He didn't even ask who had died. "How's the vote looking?"
"It's anybody's guess," Active said. "I think it'll be close."
They hung up. Active went to the window and frowned across the lagoon for several minutes. What was going on at the Gray Wolf? George Clinton thought he had found out something about a leach field. Was it possible that GeoNord would have been that stupid? At any rate, George had decided it was somehow causing the fish kills and had gone to the GeoNord offices, then turned up dead across from the Dreamland. Then Active and Cowboy Decker had found Aaron Stone in the spruce grove at Loon Lake. What was the connection? Was there one? Who had the know-how and the means to kill two men under such different conditions? Jermain was the only name that came to mind.
It wasn't much of a hand, but it was all he had. He walked back to his desk and dialed GeoNord's number, hoping the engineer was still in Chukchi.
"It's Nathan Active," he said, feeling relieved, when Jermain answered on the fourth ring. "I'd like to talk to you again about the murders of Aaron Stone and George Clinton."
"The what?"
"The murders of Aaron Stone and George Clinton."
"Jesus," Jermain said. "Hang on."
The engineer put him on hold and he listened to a syrupy instrumental. Why did it seem familiar? Suddenly he smiled. "I Am Woman," Helen Reddy's greatest hit. Maybe her only hit. If there was a God, he was obviously in the mood for jokes today. Or maybe God was she, considering the song. Either way, God was a better comic than music programmer.
Helen Reddy stopped with a click. "Alex Fortune," a voice said. Why did it sound familiar? "How can I help you?"
"I was holding for Michael Jermain," Active said. "Can you put him back on?"
"I'm Mr. Jermain's attorney," Fortune said. "How can I help you?"
Of course. It was the voice Active had heard when he listened in on Jermain's conversation at GeoNord headquarters— the voice whose owner had said he would be in Chukchi by Sunday.
"His attorney?" Active wrote the name in his notebook and stared at it. It was familiar too, but why?
"What is it you wanted with my client?"
Active hesitated. Interviewing Jermain alone was one thing. He had been jumpy the first time and now Active had more information. With a little luck, this time the engineer might crack. But with his attorney present?
On the other hand, Active reminded himself, what was there to lose? Even if Jermain didn't crack, perhaps he would disclose something that would pump life back into this moribund investigation.
He swallowed, took a deep breath, and said it fast, his voice half an octave higher than usual. "I want to interview your client about the murders of George Clinton and Aaron Stone."
Fortune was silent. Then there was a click and the hold music came back on. Active waited through two songs, neither of which he recognized. With another click Fortune returned.
"Murders? That's absurd. Everyone knows they were suicides. What basis do you have for your allegation?"
"I've located a witness to one of the homicides," Active said.
"What witness?"
"A witness who might be safer if his or her name doesn't get around," Active said.
"You won't even disclose the gender of this alleged witness? Isn't that a little melodramatic, Trooper Active?"
Active pictured Tillie Miller with a hole in her leathery, hairy old throat. "Not necessarily."
"And this witness identified the killer?"
"Partially." So Tillie hadn't exactly said a chief engineer killed George Clinton. She had said a qauqlik, a head man, a chief, killed a boy. Close enough.
Fortune clicked off again and Active listened to the end of one instrumental and the start of another. Then the lawyer came back on. "Can you come to Mr. Jermain's office? About three?"