“I HAVE TO admit,” Active said. “I’m impressed.”
“Thanks, boss,” Alan Long said. “I got ’em out here right away and Gabe’s getting it figured out pretty good, all right.”
Active surveyed the scene before them—two of his officers from public safety, the chief and two members from the Chukchi fire department, all bundled up in Carhartts, parkas and Sorels and looking as if nothing could be more gratifying than to stand around on the ice near sunset and figure out how to drag a sunken snowgo out of icy water. There was even a portable emergency light on a stand with its own generator.
They had already snagged the snowgo—one of the skis, Active gathered—with a grappling hook when he pulled up. By the time he walked over to stand beside Long at the hole, they had a hook on the other ski and were horsing the machine up to the edge.
“Maybe I could help,” came a voice from behind them.
Active turned to see Anthony Childers.
“You sure can help,” said Gabe Reeder, the fire chief. He had a big belly, hair that was mostly gray, a big beard that was still red except for a brown streak from tobacco juice down the middle, and an air of immense competence about all things practical. Like most whites who settled in Chukchi, he was married to an Inupiaq. “You go over by the light there and make sure it doesn’t go out, OK?”
A look of alarm and suspicion spread over Anthony’s face. “But I still get the night in jail, right?”
“Yes, Anthony, if this is the right snowgo, you still get your night in jail.”
Anthony grinned and headed for his snowgo. Gabe shook his head. “Good kid, but…”
“Yeah, not the smoothest rock in the river.” Active watched Anthony walk away. His involvement in the case looked weirder and weirder. First, anyone who took undue interest in a criminal investigation automatically topped the list of suspects. And, second, how likely was it that anybody could spot a snowgo under the water unless he already knew it was there?
But, then, why would Anthony lead them to the abandoned snowgo in the brush near the cemetery? Was he capable of dragging such a red herring across the trail? Anthony was a Chukchi kid, so he would know about the perennial open spot near the mouth of the Katonak and figure it was a good place to look. And Anthony did act like all he wanted out of the matter was two nights in jail. Plus, he had been on a snowgo when he led them to his first find and looked to be sitting on the same one tonight as he watched the proceedings. Could he have stolen the snowgo now under water, hit Pete Wise with it, brought out it here to ditch, walked back to town, and then led them on this wild goose chase on his own snowgo to find it again? Had he cooked it up with an accomplice? Why?
Active’s head hurt to think about it, so he filed it away with a mental note to interview Anthony the next day.
Unless Anthony suddenly disappeared, say upcountry on a caribou hunt. Active walked over to Anthony at his station by the emergency light.
“I’m pretty sure this is the snowgo, so I think you got your night in jail, Anthony,” Active said. “How about we start tonight?”
Anthony beamed. “Arigaa!”
Active raised his eyebrows in assent. “In fact, we can even handcuff you to a sled right now if you want.”
“Really? Maybe you could take a picture for my Facebook.”
With an inward “Aha!” Active realized now what Anthony’s motive for the nights in jail must be: to share with the hive mind of the Internet one slightly less humdrum moment in a humdrum existence. Anthony Childers wanted to be famous.
They marched over to Active’s dog sled and Anthony was cuffed and photographed.
Active sat down beside him. “So how did you find that snowgo, Anthony? That’s pretty amazing.”
“I can do soul travel like them old angatquqs so I just fly around till I find it. You know I always try help.”
“I do know that. But even with the soul travel, it’s still pretty amazing. How did you know where to fly to?”
Anthony chewed his lip for a moment. Finally he grinned.
“Everybody know about this hole in the ice the current always make in the spring. Everybody except naluaqmiiyaaq, maybe?”
Active pulled out his handcuff key. “If it’s that easy, maybe you don’t deserve those nights in jail after all.”
“Arii, I jokes,” Anthony said. “You’re learning not to be a naluaqmiiyaaq so much, all right.”
“Uh-huh.” Active got up and returned to the patch of open water.
Just as Active wondered how Gabe’s crew would get a five- or six-hundred pound snowgo up and over the edge of the hole, one of the men went to a flat cargo sled parked several yards back and dragged over a wooden ladder.
Soon the ladder was levered out over the edge, rungs up, then angled down to form a ramp. A pair of snowgos was roped to the sunken machine’s skis and the tow began. The machine hit the ladder and caught on the rungs. The ladder tried to climb over the edge on its rails but broke through thin ice for a few yards. Then the ladder hit solid ice, skidded out of the hole on its rails, and whomped down flat with the snowgo on top, dripping seawater.
The tow continued another few yards for safety, then the snowgos shut down and everybody walked over for a look.
“There ya go, Chief,” Gabe said as they watched the rest of the crew hoist the snowgo—a black Arctic Cat—onto the cargo sled and strap it down.
“Nice work,” Active said. “Never saw anybody do that before.”
“We don’t do it much,” Gabe said. “Usually, one goes into salt water, it’s not worth pulling out because it’ll never run right again. We’ll yank one outta fresh water for somebody once in a while, that’s about it.”
“Mm-hm,” Active said, his mind already on the possibility of getting back to sheefish camp that night.
Gabe waved at the snowgo. “Where do you want to put it?”
“Oh, yeah.” The blood returned to Active’s work brain and he realized the snowgo would have to be locked up for the night. It was evidence. “I’ll take it back to public safety. We’ll put it in the garage bay at the jail.”
He walked over and kicked the snowgo on the sled. “What do you make of it?”
“’Bout like my Cat.” Gabe pointed to a machine a few yards off. “Four-five years old maybe.”
“Borrow your light?” Active asked.
Gabe handed it over and Active took a tour around the machine. There was a dent in the aluminum bumper that could be from hitting a man in the legs at high speed, a kind of cracked furrow up the cowl that could be from his body crashing into it, and a vertical split in the windshield that could be the body sliding up it after the impact.
Or not. Most Chukchi snowgos more than a month old had dents and cracks and there was no way to tell by flashlight if these had trapped any blood, flesh or fiber. That would have to be checked back in Chukchi, or perhaps at the crime lab in Anchorage.
So would the machine’s drive track. Judging from the state of Pete Wise’s face, scalp, and severed leg, the track of whatever had run him over was highly likely to hold minute pieces of him.
Active squatted and ran the light over the aluminum drive tunnel beneath the driver’s seat. That’s where the state registration decal would appear if, contrary to Chukchi custom, the owner had bothered to register it. This one hadn’t.
He shook his head and rose. “Anybody recognize it?”
He looked around at Gabe and the rest. Head-shakes, shrugs, the Inupiat squints for “no”.
“My brother-in-law could probably figure it out for you,” Gabe said. “He works for the Cat dealer.”
“You get back to town, call and ask him to meet us at the jail, OK?” Active asked. “And bring whatever invoices they’ve got from three-four-five years ago?”
Gabe grunted assent, flipped up his hood, and pulled on the heavy mittens dangling from lanyards braided from colored yarn. He straddled his own Cat and took off.
Long hitched Anthony’s snowgo behind his machine, then Active hitched his own dogsled with Anthony still cuffed to it behind Anthony’s snowgo, and instructed Long to pull the whole train to the borough jail.
Then Active hitched the cargo sled with the Arctic Cat on it to his own machine and pulled away.
A few minutes later, he passed within a couple of hundred yards of Leroy’s tent. It was almost full dark now, so it was easy to see the glow of the Coleman inside. He resisted the temptation to imagine he saw Grace’s silhouette on the canvas and kept his focus on the lights of Chukchi as they grew on the horizon.
An hour later, he stopped with his load behind the jail and punched in the code to open the big garage door. Soon enough the Cat was safe in the garage and Anthony was happily ensconced in his cell and photographed there with his own phone. They even let him keep the phone, since nothing he could photograph from behind the bars seemed likely to be a threat to security. As they left him, he was trying to upload the photo to Facebook over Chukchi’s snail-like data network and grumbling about the jail’s lack of wi-fi.
Active and Long returned to the garage and went through the machine, checking the storage compartments and flipping up the cowling for any sign of the owner’s identity, without success. Nor did a closer inspection of the damage give any clue about what caused it. Perhaps the driver had cleaned it before dumping it. Or maybe anything left in the cracks in the plastic and the crevices of the track had been washed away by the Katonak.
Active was contemplating turning the machine on its side to examine the drive track when the dispatcher ushered in an Inupiaq of about forty with bristling black hair and black-framed glasses that gave him a studious look. He had a clipboard under his arm with a sheaf of papers attached.
He came down the steps from the jail into the garage and Long introduced him as Reggie Garfield. Active nodded, remembering now that he already knew Garfield slightly from having visited the Cat dealer before ordering his own Yamaha.
Garfield copied down a number stamped into the side of the metal drive tunnel, then flipped through his papers for a minute or two as Active and Long watched.
“Oh, yeah,” Garfield said. “Now I remember. We sold this one about four years ago.”
“Yeah?” Active pulled out his notebook. “Who to?”