WHEN THE FLATBED WITH its entourage of police, press and Malcolm Anirak reached the museum, Maiyumerak was already there. He was, Active saw, in the process of chaining his Ski-Doo to the hasp that held together the swinging doors of the museum’s shipping dock. The FREE UNCLE FROSTY sign was bungeed upright to a stanchion on Maiyumerak’s dogsled.
The museum was a brown two-story humpbacked wooden building designed, Active had heard, to resemble an inverted umiaq or whaleboat. Silver pulled up, parked the city Bronco, and, with an expression like an army private sentenced to latrine duty, hurried over to Maiyumerak. “Look, Calvin, fun’s fun but enough’s enough. Unlock that damned thing and get out of the way or I’ll arrest you right now.”
Kennelly rushed up with his camera and microphone, and Maiyumerak grinned in pleasure, exposing a black hole where one of his front teeth should have been.
“Go ahead if you want a political prisoner in your jail. Under the United Nations Charter on the Rights of Indigenous . . .” Maiyumerak trailed off to watch Silver’s back as he stalked over to his Bronco.
The police chief threw open the door, grabbed a microphone, and shouted at the dispatcher who answered his call. “Lucy, get somebody from the city shop over to the museum with a set of bolt-cutters, will you? And tell ’em to be at least reasonably quick about it! Cop time, not village time!”
He pulled a pair of handcuffs from the seat of the Bronco and walked toward Maiyumerak, who now had a look of alarm on his face. “You can’t cut that chain! It’s for Kobuk.”
“This is Kobuk’s chain?” Silver put his hand on it and his face lit up.
“That’s right, he’ll have to stay in the house without it,” Maiyumerak said. “That’s where I left him when I took off the chain but he’s not a house dog. My grandma can’t handle him, she’s too old.”
“I’ll say he’s not a house dog. He’s a fucking wolf, except about twice as big.” Silver glared at Maiyumerak. “But you should have thought of that before. Even if I don’t cut it, that chain is evidence now. You’re going to be sitting in my jail and Dolly’s going to be trapped in the house with that damned monster of yours. Now put out your wrists.”
Maiyumerak put his hands behind him and backed away. “Wait a minute, maybe I could unlock it.”
Silver dropped the handcuffs to his side. “All right. Do it.”
“In fifteen minutes I could.”
“Fifteen minutes?” Silver’s smile vanished. “Why not right now?”
“Fifteen minutes.” Maiyumerak’s lips took on a stubborn set. “That’s my protest. Fifteen minutes.”
Silver glanced at his watch, started to say something, checked himself, and looked at Malcolm Anirak.
Anirak, who had his window down and was watching from the warmth of his pickup, shrugged. “I guess I could go get a cup of coffee.”
“OK.” Silver turned to Maiyumerak. “You can have your fifteen minutes, but none of your bullshit when I get back. You take off that chain and clear out, or you’re going to jail. Just like when you put seal oil on the seats of the tour bus, remember?”
Maiyumerak showed them the gap in his teeth again. “Smell good.”
“Not to tourists,” Silver said. “To tourists, seal oil smells like dead fish.”
Maiyumerak grinned again, then looked stubborn once more. “But you have to pull your gun on me, too.”
Silver groaned. “I pull my gun when I’m going to shoot somebody. You want to get shot?”
“You have to make me stop with your gun. So I can put it in my petition to the United Nations.”
Silver swore and stuck out the handcuffs. “All right, damn it, the deal’s off. Gimme your wrists.”
Maiyumerak put his hands behind his back, looking more stubborn than ever.
“OK, how about this?” Silver made a pistol with his hand, pointed it at Maiyumerak, and jerked his thumb up in a cocking motion. “Symbolic gunpoint, will that work?”
Maiyumerak relaxed, grinned, and behind the mirror glasses lifted his eyebrows in the Eskimo yes.
Silver dropped his hands to his side, drew himself up to full height, and put on a stern expression. “Calvin Ray Maiyumerak, in the name of the Chukchi Public Safety Department—”
“And against the United Nations Charter on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” Maiyumerak said.
“— and in possible violation of the United Nations Charter on Whatever, if there is such a thing, I hereby order you, at symbolic gunpoint, to unlock your damned snowmachine and vacate these premises within fifteen minutes or you will be arrested and incarcerated in the jail of the Chukchi Public Safety Department for an indefinite period of time.”
Silver raised his right hand, turned it into a pistol again, cocked his thumb, and put his index finger to the middle of Maiyumerak’s forehead. “OK?”
Maiyumerak grinned and lifted his eyebrows again.
Silver pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, then turned and strode toward his Bronco. “Just another day in the annals of Chukchi law enforcement,” he said as he passed Active.
“I’m speechless with admiration,” Active said, straddling the purple Yamaha.
Silver turned for another look at Maiyumerak, who had unbungeed the FREE UNCLE FROSTY sign and was waving it while he marched in circles before the loading door as Kennelly snapped away with his camera.
Then Silver swung on Active with a suspicious frown. “Of whom?”
Active grinned and shrugged.
“Fucking Calvin,” Silver said. “You wanta get some lunch?”
ACTIVE WAS working at his desk shortly after noon two days later when Silver stepped into his office.
“Fucking Calvin,” the police chief said. “You hear?”
“Hear what?”
“The museum was burglarized last night, and guess what’s missing.”
“Wha—you mean Uncle Frosty?”
Silver nodded grimly.
“No kidding. And Calvin did it?”
“Who else?”
Active couldn’t help smiling a little. “And what does he have to say for himself? Just exercising his indigenous rights under the U.N. Charter on Whatever, was he?”
“He says he didn’t do it.”
“And what does the evidence say?”
Silver grimaced in disgust. “Very damn little. Almost nothing, in fact. Somebody broke the padlock on the loading-dock door, probably with a crowbar, went inside, and snapped the bands off the crate, pried it open, grabbed Uncle Frosty, and took off. Probably in a snowmachine and dogsled, but the snow around that door is so hard-packed he barely left a trace.”
“Calvin got an alibi?”
Silver scratched his scalp at the hairline, a habit of his. “His grandmother says they watched TV together last night and went to bed around eleven or twelve. He was still asleep when she brought him his morning coffee around nine.”
“Hmm. Kind of iffy.”
Silver nodded. “Dolly could be fudging to protect her grandbaby, like any self-respecting aana. Or Calvin could have gone out while she was asleep, stolen Uncle Frosty, hid him on the tundra somewhere, and snuck back into the house without her knowing. She’s pretty deaf when she takes out her hearing aid.”
“So what now?”
“So nothing, unless somebody turns up who saw him do it. Or Calvin has an attack of conscience and confesses.”
Active grinned in sympathy. “Uh-huh.”
Silver sighed heavily. “Fucking Calvin.”