ACTIVE PARKED THE SUBURBAN on Fifth Street in front of House 419, the number he had gotten from Dispatch and written in his notebook. The house was small and old, the paint on the T1-11 weathered to a pale rose that might have once been red. The structure roosted three feet in the air on wooden posts set into the ground. It was a common construction technique in Chukchi, employed to prevent buildings from thawing the permafrost below and being swallowed by it.
The posts seemed to have worked pretty well in the case of House 419, except at the northwest corner. There, the house had a pronounced sag.
Whyborn Sivula and his son, Franklin, the lookout from the whaling camp, were at work on the low corner as Active came up. They had a big jackscrew under a beam and Franklin was cranking as Whyborn sighted along the floor line to see if the corner was coming up to level. A few pieces of scrap lumber were stacked on a snowdrift nearby.
Active rolled down his window and watched for a couple of minutes as the corner lifted slowly off the post, the house timbers groaning. The two Sivulas ignored him, along with the wind ripping in from the west. He waited a couple minutes more.
“Mr. Sivula. Could you tell me about Natchiq?”
Active watched for Sivula’s reaction, but there was none. The whaler bent down, picked up a section of two-by-six from the scrap pile, and slid it into the gap between the corner and the post. There was still some space left, but not enough for another slab of wood. “Franklin, you could jack it up a little more, then put in one more piece, ah?”
Franklin looked to be in his late thirties. He was squat and muscular, with a square face, heavy features, and short, bristling black hair. He frowned at the corner, sighted down the floor line and turned to Whyborn. “It’s good now. Might be too high if I jack it up any more.”
“It’s OK if it’s a little high,” Whyborn said. “When summer come, that post will sink again and our house will be level. Then it’ll sink some more and we’ll jack it up some more next winter.”
“Arii, this permafrost.” Franklin grinned and resumed cranking the jack with a big monkey wrench.
Whyborn turned and finally acknowledged Active’s presence. “Only natchiq I know is seal, Trooper Active. Natchiq, that’s what us Eskimos call seal.”
Active realized now why the word had seemed familiar when he read it in Father Hanlon’s journal. “I know that, but this Natchiq is Uncle Frosty, Mr. Sivula.”
Sivula turned sharp black eyes on Active and studied him for a moment. “You know about Natchiq?”
“I know he was killed by Saganiq long ago and somehow that led to Victor Solomon’s death. And I think you know the connection.”
Sivula looked west into the wind and studied the snow-covered ice of Chukchi Bay. Finally, he said, “You come in, have some tea, maybe we’ll talk.”
Active climbed down from the Suburban and followed him into the house, to sit at a little table in the kitchen while Sivula heated water on an electric range. When the kettle whistled, Sivula brought two cups with teabags to the table and poured in steaming water. He dipped two spoons of sugar into his own cup and pushed the bowl toward Active, who shook his head and took a sip of tea.
“Victor Solomon is my friend since we’re boys,” Sivula began. “So I’m sorry he’s kill.”
Active nodded. “Can you tell me who did it?”
“Don’t know,” Sivula said.
“I thought Victor was your friend.”
“Maybe I know who took Uncle Frosty from the museum. But I never think that’s who kill Victor.”
“Doesn’t it have to be the same person?”
Sivula tilted his head and studied Active. The house was silent, except for a sudden groan from the timbers as Franklin jacked up the sagging corner. “I don’t think so. But like I tell you in my camp at Cape Goodwin, it’s old-time Eskimo business, done now anyway.”
Active shook his head. “Not till whoever killed Victor is caught and punished.”
“This man I know, he’s old like me, maybe not around too much longer. Maybe if I tell you story, then you’ll know you don’t need to put him in jail? You’re Eskimo too, ah?”
“I’ll listen,” Active said.
Sivula shrugged and looked into his teacup. “If I never tell his story, then maybe you don’t find him.”
“Some of the old people in town will know about Natchiq and Saganiq.” Active stood up and zipped his parka. “My grandfather Jacob Active told me some of it and there must be someone who knows the rest. I’ll—”
“You’ll find him, ah?” The black eyes measured Active from the depths of the mahogany face.
“Me or some other trooper. We’ll do whatever it takes.”
Sivula looked into himself for a long time. “Then maybe I could tell you something,” he said finally. “See what you think.”
He drank from his cup and looked at Active, who sat down and pulled out a notebook and pen.
“Maybe better if you never write. Just listen.”
Active nodded and put the notebook back in his pocket.
“Me and Victor Solomon, we’re both born here, same age. We play together as boys, pukuk so much them old aanas always yell at us, try hit us with their walking sticks.” Sivula’s cheeks creased and he chuckled at the memory. “We’re good boys, but you know we’re full of . . . ”
As Sivula groped for the word, Active realized he didn’t know it, either. “Full of life,” he suggested.
Sivula lifted his eyebrows and grinned. “Ah-hah, that right. Life. We’re good boys, but we’re full of life. When we get bigger, we hunt and fish together as young men, but not so much after Victor’s family is killed in that fire. Seem like he’s mad all the time, always want to be alone.”
Active noticed for the first time the quality of Sivula’s voice. It was low and rich, almost hypnotic.
“Anyways, there’s always stories around town, how Victor’s grandfather, Saganiq, was big-time shaman early days ago. But Victor will never talk about it. Couple times when I try ask him, he just tell me some things it’s better not to talk about.”
Sivula paused, as Active had learned was the custom with Inupiat storytellers, particularly old ones. It was also customary not to interrupt, to let the story unfold as it would, but he decided to take a chance. “Did you ever ask Victor’s father about it?”
Sivula shook his head. “He’s already almost old man when Victor’s born, die when Victor and me are still pretty little.”
Active nodded and sipped at his tea.
“So when I’m pretty grown up, I go in army, learn to be diesel mechanic. After that, I live in Nome long time, I’m traveling mechanic for Alaska Rural Power Co-op. You know about that?”
Active nodded.
“Ah-hah,” Sivula said. “This one time, they send me to Caribou Creek to help put in new generator at their power plant up there. You ever go to Caribou Creek, Trooper Active?”
Active shook his head. “But I’ve seen pictures. It’s east of here, in the Brooks Range?”
Sivula lifted his eyebrows. “Ah-hah. Funny place for Eskimos, all right, way up in the mountains like that. No seal, no muktuk, not so much fish.” He shook his head. “They get lots of caribou maybe. But me, I’m a saltwater Eskimo.”
“I guess it’s what they’re used to,” Active said.
“I guess.” Sivula shrugged. “Anyways, I’m up there at Caribou Creek couple weeks maybe. Caribou Creek have this power-plant operator that I work with on this new generator they’re getting. One day, somebody tell me he’s from Chukchi family so I ask him about it and he say, yes, his father’s from Chukchi, move up to Caribou Creek before he’s born, marry woman from there.”
Sivula paused again. Active ventured another interruption. “When was this?”
Sivula frowned in concentration. “He never say when his father move to Caribou Creek.” He shrugged. “Way back, I guess.”
“No, I meant you. When was it that you went to Caribou Creek and met this man?”
“Ah, when I go? Maybe twenty-five years ago, all right. Maybe thirty.”
“What was his name, anyway?”
Sivula stared into his teacup. “That was long time ago. I think I can’t remember his name anymore.”
Active let the silence ride for a while, hoping Sivula would rethink the lie, then decided to let it go. “Did he say why his father moved up there?”
Sivula pondered for a moment, then shook his head. “He never tell me, no.”
Active nodded and Sivula picked up the story again.
“When job’s over, generator’s all running OK, he ask me to go hunting with him, up in Shaman Pass.” Sivula raised his hands, as if to draw a map in the air, then paused and looked at Active. “Or maybe it was that other big pass up there, Howard Pass, where we went,” he said, looking away. “Hard to remember now that I’m old.”
Active sipped his tea and waited out this second lie.
“Anyway,” Sivula said finally, “this guy have a Native allotment on a little creek up there. He got an old sod hut and a wall tent he leave up all the time, like any camp before everybody start making cabins. Except I see there’s inuksuk on little hill behind the camp. You know about inuksuk?”
“A little bit. They were trail markers, scarecrows?”
Sivula lifted his eyebrows. “Ah-hah. Them old-time Eskimos always build them, but nobody do it today. Sometimes they build whole line of inuksuks for when they catch caribous. Them caribous think they’re real men, get scared and run into lake or wherever them Eskimos chase ’em. Or sometimes, they build ’em on the trail, show which way to go. Have hole in the head, you look through, that’s way to go. Or sometimes, they got nothing to do in camp, they just build them for fun. You see, Trooper Active?”
Active nodded.
“Ah-hah,” Sivula said. “Well, this guy got an inuksuk at his camp, all right. I never see inuksuk since I’m little, so I jokes. I ask him, does it send him a telegram when it see caribous in the pass? He just grin little bit, say his father—”
Sivula paused, listening. Active heard the outer door to the kunnichuk slam, then the inner door open to admit Franklin. “I think that corner is good now, Dad. It’s couple inches high, like you say.”
Sivula’s son went out again, and the old man pointed across the room to the corner in question. “Our house never sag till two, maybe three years ago. Then that one post start sinking, after all this time. You think that global warming they talk about is melting our permafrost?”
Active shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Sivula picked up his cup, noticed it was empty except for the tea bag, and poured in some more water. “What I’m saying before?”
Active backtracked to before Franklin had come in. “About the man’s father and the inuksuk.”
“Ah-hah, that right,” Sivula said. “He say his family put it in when they first make their camp, and then we don’t talk about it anymore. Next day, we hunt along one of them rivers that run into the pass from the side. He seem kinda slow to me, always look at the country real careful, but I think that’s just his way. Anyway, the hunting is pretty good, we get seven caribous. He keep four, I bring three back to Chukchi with me on the plane.”
Sivula smiled at the thought and stopped talking. Active wondered if that was the story, in its entirety. He often failed to get the point of Inupiat stories, he had discovered. Sometimes, he thought this was because he was dense, or because the cultural gap opened by his years in Anchorage was too wide to be closed. Other times, he thought maybe Inupiat stories just had no point in the white sense of the word. Maybe they were just stories and this one was over. But Sivula shook his head and looked serious again and picked up the thread.
“So we load the caribous on our sleds and tie ’em down and we’re ready to go back to his camp, but then I notice he’s walk back to a cliff along the river. This is springtime, pretty warm, long days, and this cliff get lots of sun, so it’s mostly thawed out. He start pulling rocks out and pretty soon I see he’s making another inuksuk, right there in that little valley.”
Active sipped at his tea, wishing there were some polite way to say to Whyborn Sivula, “Cut to the chase.” But he knew it was impossible. Old men told their stories at their own pace everywhere, he supposed. Certainly, old Inupiat men did so.
“So I ask him about it. He look at me real serious, and then he tell me, he think his grandfather’s body is up there in the pass somewhere and he always try to find it when he’s hunting or trapping there. After he go up and down one of the side creeks, he always build inuksuk, so he’ll know he already searched it. I guess that’s why he look that little valley over so good when we’re in it.”
Sivula paused and sipped some tea. He noticed that Active’s cup was empty, and picked up the kettle with a questioning look. Active covered the cup with a hand. Sivula set the kettle down again.
“Anyway, I ask him what he mean about his grandfather, he just say it don’t matter and I know he don’t want to tell me.”
Sivula paused again and Active, interested to the point of impatience now, even rudeness, said, “And you think—”
Sivula held up his hand. “After that he’s real quiet, all the time we’re back at the camp, cut up them caribous, eat dinner. After dinner, he smoke his pipe for a while, then he just start talking without me saying anything. He say his grandfather is old-time Eskimo prophet name Natchiq. Natchiq try to fight the angatquqs, so this big-time angatquq name Saganiq kill him up there and hide his body somewhere, that’s what this guy’s father tell him. So his father and him, they always look for Natchiq’s body when they’re up in the pass. That’s why his family build that camp up there. They think they’ll find old Natchiq somewhere around there, maybe see if he’s really kill by Saganiq, then they’ll put his body out on the tundra the old-time way.”
Sivula looked at Active. “You ever can’t decide what to say next, Trooper Active?”
“Sure, sometimes,” Active said, puzzled. “I think it happens to everybody.”
“Ah-hah,” Sivula said. “Well, that’s what happen to me when this man say he think Saganiq kill his grandfather. He stop to smoke his pipe and I try think if I should tell him that Saganiq’s grandson is my friend Victor Solomon in Chukchi.”
“Ah,” Active said. “I see the problem.”
“But then he start talking again before I can say anything. He ask me if I think he’s crazy, to look for his grandfather up there in the pass. I don’t want to say nothing, so I just tell him, maybe them foxes and ravens already get Natchiq’s body long time ago. He tell me that would be good, because it’s old Inupiat way, but his father always say he think Saga-niq hide Natchiq somehow, so it’s like he’ll be in cage or something.”
Sivula paused, then started to speak, then shook his head. “After that, he say he don’t want to talk about his grandfather anymore. He ask me if I want to play a little cribbage. He turn on Kay-Chuck on this battery radio he have up there and pull out this caribou horn that he’s drill holes in and we play cribbage all night with some old nails for pegs.”
Sivula paused again, so Active dropped in a question. “Did you tell your friend Victor about it when you got back to Chukchi?”
Sivula nodded. “Little bit. I say I run into this guy in Caribou Creek who say his grandfather was some old guy named Natchiq, then I watch what Victor will do. Victor never say nothing. He just look at me and raise his eyebrows. Then he grin.”
“And did you see the man again?”
“Couple times, all right. Once at Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage, and once at class for power-plant mechanics in Nome.” Sivula shrugged. “But he never tell me any more about his grandfather, and I never tell him I know Saganiq’s grandson. I never forget what he tell me that night in his sod hut, though.”
Another pause, possibly terminal. “So that’s why you went to see Calvin?”
“Ah-hah,” Sivula said. “When I hear Uncle Frosty is found in Shaman Pass, I always think maybe he’s Natchiq. Then, when he’s robbed from museum, I think probably Calvin do it, because of how he always make trouble. But Calvin say he never take Uncle Frosty, so I start to think maybe this guy hear about it on Kay-Chuck like me, come down to get his grandfather from museum, take him away and put his body out on tundra old-time way.”
Active was silent for a time, thinking over the story.
“That day when I came to your camp at Cape Goodwin?”
Sivula lifted his eyebrows. “When we have to get off the ice. Probably we’re out there too early, but for a saltwater Eskimo it’s hard to stay in town when them bowheads start coming up the leads. When this storm is over, maybe they will open up again.”
Active nodded. “You looked at the harpoon and the amulet and you knew they were Saganiq’s. Was it from the property marks?”
Sivula sighed, almost inaudibly. “That man in the pass, he tell me snowy owl is Saganiq’s kikituq spirit.”
“So when you saw the owl carved on the harpoon and amulet—”
“That is when I know for sure those things belong to Saganiq and that Uncle Frosty must be Natchiq, just like that man tell me,” Sivula said.
“And that’s when you knew he killed Victor Solomon?”
Sivula dropped his eyes. “I never think he kill anybody. I think he steal Natchiq from the museum all right, but he never kill Victor Solomon.”
Active said nothing, until Sivula continued.
“Because if he got away with Natchiq from the museum, why did he come back next day and kill Victor Solomon? He got what he wanted already.”
Active stared at the cover of his notebook for several seconds. Sivula had a point, the same point Gail Boxrud had made trying to get Johnny Bass off the hook. “But only the killer would have the harpoon and amulet.”
Sivula turned his measuring gaze on Active again. “I think this guy take Natchiq and then head back into the mountains to put him out on the tundra, like his family always want, but first he throw away the harpoon and amulet on the trail because they’re Saganiq’s, maybe unlucky for anybody in that family. Then somebody come along and find them on the trail, go kill Victor Solomon with the harpoon and leave the amulet there, too.”
Active pursed his lips and gazed back at Sivula. “The person who just happens to find the harpoon and amulet also just happens to want to kill Victor Solomon? Too much coincidence.”
Sivula shrugged. “There might be somebody like that.”
Active sensed Sivula was trying to nudge him toward Calvin Maiyumerak, without having to name the name. “Still too much coincidence. We troopers don’t believe in coincidence.”
“So you think this man I’m telling you about did it?” Sivula asked.
Active said nothing, but lifted his eyebrows.
“Even if he did, it’s over now,” Sivula said. “Old-time Eskimo business, all done. Nobody else will be kill. Maybe you don’t need to bother him, ah?”
“You still don’t remember his name?”
Sivula was silent, examining the depths of his teacup again.
“Do you know that naluaqmiut Bush pilot, Cowboy Decker?”
“Ah-hah,” Sivula said. “Fly for Lienhofer Aviation. I ride with him sometimes.”
“Could you tell him how to get to this man’s camp in Shaman Pass?”
Sivula rubbed his chin and looked into the far distance. “I tell you already, I’m not sure where it was. Shaman Pass, Howard Pass, I dunno. Like I say, it’s long time ago. Hard to remember, now that I’m old.”
Suddenly his face crinkled in a grin and he chuckled. “Maybe this guy never find Natchiq because he look in wrong pass all his life? Pretty funny, ah?”
Then the bland, impassive contours of the Eskimo mask dropped over his face.
AN HOUR later, Active was in Carnaby’s office, finishing his briefing and pitching a trip to Shaman Pass.
“But wait a minute,” the trooper commander said. “Whyborn never actually named the guy? Then how do you know he’s this Robert Keller—”
“Robert Kelly.”
“This guy Robert Kelly? Tell me that part again?”
“I called the village public safety officer in Caribou Creek, said we needed the name of an older man, used to run the power-plant up there, supposedly comes from an old Chukchi family, had a camp in Shaman Pass, or maybe Howard Pass.”
“And he—”
“Took him about two seconds to come up with the name. ‘Oh, sure,’ he says. ‘That’s old Robert Kelly.’ ”
“And the camp? How do we know where it is?”
“That part was harder. The VPSO calls his wife on the CB, she calls her aunt, whose brother-in-law—”
“Christ, never mind. Anyway, somebody somewhere in the Caribou Creek gene pool has actually been to the place?”
Active nodded. “Uh-huh. South side of Shaman Pass, edge of the mountains, between two creeks. Moose Creek and Ptarmigan Creek, they think.”
“They think?” Carnaby stared in disbelief. “That’s it? This guy Robert Kelly, if he is the same guy, tells Whyborn Sivula a story in caribou camp thirty years ago and that’s your big lead? And now some people in Caribou Creek think they know where the camp is and you want to hire Cowboy Decker and fly all the way up there—how far is it, anyway?”
“About one seventy five, Cowboy says. I had him call the guy in Caribou Creek who knows where it is.”
“Let’s see.” Carnaby grabbed a pencil, pushed Active’s travel authorization off the desk blotter, and scratched out numbers. “A Super Cub on skis will make, what, about ninety miles an hour?”
Active shrugged and nodded.
“So you got roughly two hours up and two hours back, maybe an hour in the pass looking for this camp, which may not even be there anymore, and figuring out a landing spot if you do find it—”
“Cowboy says he kind of knows the area, all right.”
“Has he actually ever been to this camp? Seen it?”
Active shook his head.
Carnaby snorted. “Trust me, Nathan, it won’t go according to plan. This is the Bush. Let’s just say five hours for the round trip. What’s Cowboy’s Super Cub go for these days? Still two-fifty an hour?”
Active sighed. “It’s three hundred now.”
Carnaby threw down his pencil. “There you are, then. Fifteen hundred dollars to cruise up for a chat with this Robert Kelly, if he’s even there.”
“He is,” Active said. “Our guy in Caribou Creek said he’s been out at camp for a couple weeks. I guess he spends most of his time there, now that he’s retired from the power plant. His wife passed on a few years ago, and his girls live in Barrow and Point Hope.”
“Well, at least you’ve done some homework.” Carnaby studied the fifteen-hundred-dollar price underlined and circled on his blotter. “But suppose he is there. Suppose he even has Uncle Frosty on display out front. How do you tie him to Victor Solomon’s murder?”
“Well—”
“According to what Whyborn told you, Robert’s one mission in life is to get Uncle Frosty or Natchiq or whatever you call him hidden somewhere in Shaman Pass so the ravens and wolves and foxes can do their work in the old-time Inupiat way, correct?”
“Yes, but—”
“ ‘Yes, but’ my butt! There’s going to be no sign of Uncle Frosty up there and Robert Kelly’s not going to have any idea what you’re talking about and you’re going to come back with not a shred of evidence, nothing but a fifteen-hundred-dollar hole in our travel budget. What, are you guys taking your rifles? Is this just a caribou hunt on the state nickel?” He pushed the travel authorization back across the blotter to Active.
Active couldn’t help grinning.
“What?”
“I don’t own a rifle,” Active said.
Carnaby shook his head, but appeared to calm down.
“You want to listen now?”
Carnaby shrugged, but put on a somewhat less baleful expression.
“I think there’s a good chance Kelly won’t have had a chance yet to hide Uncle Frosty—”
“And why—”
Active held up a hand. “—because of this storm. Cowboy says judging from what we’ve been getting down here the past few days, the pass is probably getting sixty-, seventy-knot winds, blowing snow, visibility maybe fifty feet, maybe less.”
“But if this Robert Kelly spends all his time out in the country anyway maybe he could—”
“Cowboy says not,” Active said. “Not in that kind of weather. Not in that pass.”
“I don’t know,” Carnaby said. “There’s something about this that still doesn’t feel right. Let’s say it is Robert Kelly. He steals Uncle Frosty from the museum Wednesday night, maybe the wee hours of Thursday morning, right?”
Active nodded.
“Why would he wait till Thursday night, Friday morning, to kill Victor Solomon? Twenty-four hours later. What was he doing for a whole day?”
“I don’t know,” Active said, uneasy that Carnaby had put his finger on the same soft spot as everyone else. “But Robert Kelly’s all we’ve got. If we don’t go talk to him, the case is basically dead, as far as I can see.” He pushed the travel authorization across to Carnaby again.
“I still like Calvin Maiyumerak for this,” Carnaby said. “Maybe we should sweat him a little more.”
Active shrugged. “We tried. He’s unsweatable, unless something turns up to shake his alibi with Queenie Buckland.”
“How about Johnny Bass? He doesn’t even have an alibi.”
“He’s pure sleaze, but I got the feeling he was telling the truth. For once in his life.”
Carnaby sighed. “What about this past weekend? You canvass old Victor’s neighbors?”
Active nodded. “Silver’s people did. Nobody saw nada. I went through his house, too. More nada.”
Carnaby frowned at the travel authorization, making no move toward his pen.
“I don’t know,” Active said. “Maybe I should take somebody with me. This Kelly, if he’s our guy, already killed somebody. This could be dangerous. Maybe I should get a bigger plane, take Dickie Nelson along for backup.”
Carnaby’s frown deepened to a glare of pure suspicion.
“Cowboy says the only other plane that can get in up there is probably the Lienhofer Beaver . . .”
Carnaby reached for his pen.
“. . . which goes for eight-fifty an hour.”
Carnaby signed the authorization and handed it to Active. “You’re like a goddamn toothache.”
“Just doing my job.” Active folded the authorization and put it in an inside pocket.
“But seriously,” Carnaby said. “I am a little nervous sending just one guy on this.”
“Goes with,” Active said.
Carnaby nodded. “Uh-huh. But be careful. Wear a vest, take one of our rifles, use whatever cover you can find up there. You guys going up this afternoon?”
Active shook his head. “The storm’s starting to peter out, all right, but Cowboy doesn’t think there’s any point trying to get in up there before morning.”
“So it’s first light?”
“Yup,” Active said. “The dawn patrol.”