ACTIVE SWIVELED TO survey the terrain around them and shook his head as Helen Mercer’s flight faded into the haze. “So, again, what was he doing out here? Did he fall off somebody’s snowgo and they didn’t notice?”
“Yeah, and then he started walking and they finally came back to get him and ran him over by mistake,” Long said. “You know how those drunks are.”
“Let’s see if we can figure out who he was.”
He knelt beside the victim. Should he cut away the mask to see if one of them would recognize the man, or search his clothes for ID first?
No need to touch the mangled face if it could be avoided, he decided. He went through the parka pockets. Nothing. Then the cargo pockets of the snowgo suit. Nothing but a couple of the nylon booties mushers used to keep ice from balling up between their dogs’ toes and cutting up the pads. He showed Long the red booties.
“He’s a musher, ah?” Long said.
“Looks like it. Check around for dog tracks, eh?”
Long crunched away. Active put the booties back in the parka. Now he’d eliminated everything except the pockets of the dead man’s jeans.
He dropped to his knees and folded up the tail of the parka, then sliced through the shoulder straps in back. He pulled the rear bib down until the jeans were exposed. One hip pocket had a prominent bulge.
He flipped off his gloves and fished out the wallet, then flipped through it until he found a driver’s license. The photograph matched what he’d seen of the dead man’s face.
Long crunched back up. “No dog tracks over here by the body, but maybe some over there on the trail. Hard to tell if they’re new or even dog tracks for sure, the trail is so beat up from wind and snowgo traffic.”
Active showed him the driver’s license. “You know a Peter Wise?”
Recognition spread over Long’s face. “Oh, yeah, Pete Wise. He was a couple years ahead of me in school. And he was on the basketball team.”
Active nodded. The name was familiar but he couldn’t place it. “He run dogs?”
“I think so, yeah,” Long said.
“But he wasn’t in the 400, right?”
“Not this year. He won it a couple times before, all right, then he quit.”
“Got tired of it, did he?”
“I dunno, he said it was time for someone else to win,” Long said. “After that he just did it for fun.”
“He have a job?
Long thought about it for a few seconds.
“Let’s see, I think he’s—oh, yeah—he was the alcoholism counselor at Natchiq Association, remember?” Long said.
Now it clicked. Natchiq Association was the nonprofit corporation that ran the Chukchi hospital and most of the social services in the area. “Yeah, sure, now I do,” Active said. “His office takes counseling referrals from the court system when people get sentenced on something alcohol-related.”
Long lifted his eyebrows. “And he was a volunteer basketball coach at Natchiq’s summer camp, usually.”
“He ever have a drinking problem himself?”
Long squinted the Eskimo no. “Not that I ever heard of. He was pretty much a straight arrow. Even though he was a basketball star and could have had all the girls and booze he wanted.”
Active turned a full circle, scanning the folds of tundra around them. “So, again…”
“Yeah,” Long said. “Out here with no dogs and no snowgo. Not even skis. This is pretty far from town to be walking.”
There was a lull in the breeze and silence fell over the tundra. First Long, then Active, cocked an ear toward a brushy little draw that dropped away from the ridge where the Isignaq trail ran.
“Is that…?” Long said.
“Has to be. Let’s get him loaded in the ahkio, then we’ll check.”
Long started his snowgo and pulled the ahkio alongside the body. They flexed the corpse’s shoulders until the muscles loosened up, then bent the arms down along his sides.
Active took the armpits and Long the boots and they heaved. The corpse’s left leg folded at mid-thigh and the boot started to slide out of the snowgo suit. They lost their grip and dropped the body back onto the snow.
“Jesus!” Active knelt to examine the red-black stain where the thigh had been, then rolled the corpse onto its side and pulled apart the tatters of the parka, snowgo suit and jeans to check the damaged leg. He sat back on his heels and gazed at the mess. “It’s actually severed. The impact cut off his leg. One of the skis, maybe.”
“What a way to die,” Long said. “Bleeding out on the tundra.”
“Although with that head injury…,” Active said. They looked at each other, then at the corpse, then at the snow around them. Finally Active grunted. “All right, let’s get him on the sled.”
This time, they slid him sideways across the snow to the ahkio, then rolled him on. Wisps of goose down floated up from the ripped parka and wafted away on the breeze.
“You cover him up and follow me, OK?” Active mounted his Yamaha, hit the starter, and accelerated off the ridge and into the draw.
A quarter mile downhill he found the sled snagged in the willows. Seven huskies, still in their traces, erupted in hysteria as he circled the scene for a look and shut down the snowgo. A few seconds later, Long pulled up on his Arctic Cat with the remains of Pete Wise wrapped in a blue tarp on the ahkio.
“I guess we know how he got here,” Long said.
Active raised his eyebrows. “Call animal control to come get them. And put an announcement on Kay-Chuck asking anyone spotting a snowgo with front-end damage and maybe blood on it to get in touch.”