“BRAD MERCER,” THERESA Procopio said.
Active nodded.
“No shit.”
He nodded again.
Procopio rattled her nails on her desk and gazed out her office window. Active looked, too. So much for the golden April weather and oral sex, maybe more, in sheefish camp. Today was pure Chukchi—a hard wind from the west that had come up in the night, snow falling sideways, more being kicked up by the blow.
Procopio was curly-haired, intense, possessed of a law degree from Stanford, and had been around the village for years, much longer than Active. When he’d first crossed trails with her, she’d been a public defender. In fact, she had defended Grace Palmer against charges of murdering her father.
Now she was the a state prosecutor, which Active supposed was a step up. But Chukchi, he thought, had started to get to her. She’d been presentable enough when he had arrived, but now—well, she was getting close to what Cowboy Decker would call a widebody, her horizontal dimension approaching parity with the vertical. Manless—or womanless, as the case might be—and stuck in a town hard enough on couples from outside, much less singles. As far as Active knew, she didn’t do much off duty except volunteer at the senior center and watch talent shows on TV. She was in over her head in every aspect of life except the courtroom. But there, he was just glad they were on the same side.
“Let me see if I got this straight,” she said. “You pull a snowgo out of the water and it was bought by the governor’s husband four years ago. It has damage consistent with the hit-and-run that killed Pete Wise.”
“Or not,” Active said. “Anyway, it’s on its way to the crime lab in Anchorage. Maybe they can tell us. And if there’s any fiber or human remains on it.”
Procopio rattled her nails some more. “He got a rap sheet? I don’t remember him ever winding up in my crosshairs here.”
“Nothing in the crime computer. But Lucy Brophy remembered a 911 call from their house a few years ago, when she was still in Dispatch. She dug out the old logs and actually found it, amazingly enough.”
“And?”
“Dispatch gets the call one night, they hear a lot of yelling and screaming, then the line goes dead. They call back and Helen comes on and says it was just one of the kids goofing around on the phone and she’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Hmm,” Procopio said. “Did Dispatch send somebody over?”
“Not that Lucy could remember. She was referred to as ‘Mayor Mercer’ in the report.”
“Ah. That would explain it. And that’s all?”
“Not quite. She had a bruise and a little cut over one eyebrow when I dropped her off at the airport yesterday.”
“Hmm,” Procopio said.
“Hmm, indeed.”
“She say how it got there?”
“Ubetcha. Said she was pulling luggage off a closet shelf with her cell phone to her ear and the bag got away from her and hit her in the face. Blamed it on innate klutziness, just like with the scratches on her throat after our night in the tent.”
“Plausible,” Procopio said. “Or, Brad Mercer could have beat up the governor of Alaska and killed Pete Wise with a snowgo.”
“Yeah, right.”
Procopio chuckled. “Anything else?”
“That’s it,” Active said. “No arrests, no charges, no nada. The First Mate’s as clean as a hound’s tooth, officially speaking. So what now? We still gotta talk to him, right?”
Procopio nodded. “It was his snowgo under the water and said snowgo’s our best candidate to be the one that hit Wise.”
“Do we, um, need to Mirandize him?”
“You kidding? A, he’s the governor’s husband. B, he’s not in custody. C, somebody could have bought that snowgo from him years ago. D, whoever owns it now, how many snowgos get stolen around here? Wouldn’t surprise me if we find some drunk’s body under the ice at breakup. So, E, no, Brad Mercer is not a suspect and we do not need to Mirandize him.”
“How much of this do we ask him about? Just the snowgo? Or all of it?”
The prosecutor rattled her nails again. “Let’s stick with the snowgo. Let the old 911 call and the bruise over her eye lie for now unless he says something that leads that way.”
He pulled out his cell phone and found the voice memo app. “We’ll record this, eh?”
“Absolutely,” Procopio said. “You’ll email me a copy?”
“Posilutely. Let’s just do it on speaker and we’re good to go.”
She pushed her phone across the desk to him. “That button right there. Dial 9 for an outside line.”
He pulled out his cell phone. “I’ve done this before, thanks.” He found Mercer’s listing in his contacts and punched in the number on Procopio’s phone, then started the recorder app on his cell.
Maybe they’d get lucky and he could leave a voicemail. But what would he say, exactly? Then she was on the line.
“Nathan! What a pleasure! What’s new in the pearl of the Arctic? How’s sheefishing?”
“Oh, fine, Suka, all good here. Except we’re investigating a fatal snowgo hit-and-run—”
“I heard about that. Too bad, huh? From all I hear, Pete Wise was a solid member of our community and—”
“Yes, and thanks for asking the Troopers to help. But I’m here with Theresa Procopio from the district attorney’s office and we need to talk to your husband. It looks like his snowgo may have been used in the hitand-run and—”
“Brad’s snowgo? You’re kidding. That Cat he bought a few years ago, how long was it?”
“Four years, according to the dealer.”
“Mm-hmm, that sounds about right. But how awful. Let me get him. I’m home with some Taco Bell for lunch, he’s around somewhere. Oh, and hi, Theresa, we’ve met, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Procopio said. “When you toured the state building.”
“Of course, well, thanks for the good work you do for the entire Chukchi region. But you two hang on, OK?”
The line went silent. Active muted his line and looked at Procopio, eyebrows raised. “Well?”
She grimaced.
Active nodded.
After a long wait, the governor’s line came back to life and Active punched his off mute. “Hi, this is Brad. Helen says somebody ran over Pete Wise with my snowgo?”
“Our best guess at the moment. We pulled it out of Chukchi Bay last night and the front end is banged up in the right places to match what we found at the death scene. We sent it and Pete’s dogsled and clothes down to the crime lab in Anchorage to see what they can figure out.”
“You say it was in the water? How the hell did you find it?”
“We didn’t. A guy named Anthony Childers did.”
The First Mate snorted. “Anthony? I’d be surprised if he could find his butt with both hands. But how did he find my snowgo?”
“It went in up near the mouth of the Katonak in a spot that opens up early, apparently. Something about the currents thinning out the ice right there?”
“Yeah, there’s places like that around the bay, all right. Whoever took my snowgo would probably know where to dump it if they’re from Chukchi.”
“So Anthony’s your suspect, I suppose?” the governor said.
“Not exactly, no.”
“No?” Was there some frost in her voice now?
“We can’t see why he’d essentially turn himself in if he used Brad’s snowgo for the hit-and-run.”
“Maybe to throw you off the trail? What do you guys call that, a red halibut?”
Active decided against correcting her attempt at cop-speak. “I suppose Anthony could be a criminal mastermind,” he said. “But we think he probably just wants—”
“Oh, yeah,” the governor said. “The night in jail. I heard about that on Kay-Chuck. That still a big draw up there?”
“Big as ever, ma’am,” said Procopio.
“Yet another reason I love my Chukchi,” the governor said. “So who is your suspect, if you can tell me?”
“Actually, we don’t have one yet. Brad’s snowgo is the only lead we’ve got so far. Other than the basics—happened a half-mile east of the airport sometime early yesterday morning. So…”
“Let’s see,” Brad Mercer said. “When was the last time we used it? I did some running around on it a couple days before the race started, all right, then I parked it behind the house under a cover. I don’t think I took it out at all after the race. I was busy getting the dogs squared away, so I used my dog truck, then there was the banquet Monday night and we left for Juneau yesterday morning.”
“I didn’t use it,” Helen Mercer said. “I only used my old Expedition. I think my snowgo days are over now that I gotta run our nation’s largest state.”
“Mm-hmm,” Active said. “And Pudu?”
“He better not have,” the First Mate said. “He’s got his own machine and he knows that one’s mine. It’s hands-off other than me and Helen.”
“Anyway, once we got back, Pudu spent the whole time editing video, except for going to the banquet,” the governor said.
“And did you check on the snowgo after you got back from the race?” Active asked.
“Hmm,” the First Mate said. “I can’t say that I did. Like I said, I was running around to get the dogs squared away and lining my brother up to watch them till I get back up there again, then we went to the banquet and I came down here yesterday.”
Active scanned his notes. “So, if I’m hearing you right, the machine could have been stolen any time from a couple days before the race up through yesterday morning when it hit Pete Wise, assuming the state lab confirms your machine was in fact the one that hit him?”
“Sounds right to me,” the First Mate said.
“Me, too,” said the governor. “Do we need to file a police report about it being stolen, or can this be it?”
“This can be it,” Active said. “It’s all in my notes here.”
“Thanks, Nathan. And you’ll keep us posted if you find out who took it?”
“When we can, yes.”
They disconnected and Active pushed the phone back across the desk. “Well?” Procopio said.”
Active shook his head as he emailed the recording to Procopio. “Back to square one, I guess.”
“Alan went to the house again, right? Maybe he came up with something.”
“Ah,” Active said. He tapped Alan Long’s contact in his cell phone.
“Hey, Chief,” Long said in a few seconds.
“Anything so far?”
“Not really. Found an Arctic Cat cover blown up against the wall of the house and kinda snowed under.”
“Brad Mercer just told us he parked his Cat behind the house under that cover a couple days before the race and it must have been stolen.”
“Makes sense,” Long said. “But I can’t see any tracks from anybody doing that now. Too much blow-in and new snow.”
Active thanked him and disconnected.
“Yup,” Procopio said. “Square one.”
“WHAT, OUR KOREANS are Vietnamese all of a sudden?” Grace grinned a little as she scanned the new menu at the Arctic Dragon.
Like almost every restaurant in town, the Dragon was run by a Korean named Kyung Kim. As long as Active had been in Chukchi, the Dragon had confined itself to burgers and Chinese food. The new menu had a page headed “Pho Saigon.”
Active grinned back. “You think Kim knows anything about Saigon? Or pho?”
“I think it’s ‘fuh,’ ” Grace said.
“What?”
“It’s ‘fuh.’ You said ‘foe.’ ”
“‘Fuh’ Saigon?”
Grace nodded.
“What is that, anyway? Pho.” He said it right this time.
“Soup, I think.”
Active ran his eye down the menu. “You must be right. Look at the phos. Pho this, pho that, pho everything, pho Pete’s sake.”
“How about a pho seafood superbowl? We could split it.”
“I was thinking a bacon cheesebur—” Active stopped at the sight of an arched eyebrow. “a bacon cheeseburger would play hell with my cholesterol, so a seafood superbowl would be perfect!”
Grace grinned.
He grinned. “Did you pass a pleasant night in Leroy’s tent?”
She leaned in and he knew she was up for a little dirty talk.
“You kidding?” she said. “You’re gonna pay for leaving me in that state.”
“Happily,” he said. “I never welshed on a debt in my life. Plus, I always dreamed I’d die from having my skull crushed between a woman’s thighs. Did I ever tell you that?”
She grinned. “You did not, and I’ll thank you not to do so again. A lady does not care to hear such talk. Well, not more than a dozen times a day or so.”
“No hope of a rematch tonight, looks like.” He pointed out at the blow.
“Getting pretty thick out there, all right,” she said. “Darn it. But we’ve got a few weeks before the ice goes out, so fish camp will keep.”
“How’d you guys finally get home?”
“With Christina and her mom, like we talked about. We jumped outta bed at the crack of ten-thirty and loaded up and made it into town, what, about an hour ago?”
“Mm-hmm. Sounds very fish-campy, all right. No trouble finding the trail in this weather?”
“Christina’s mom must have a GPS in her head.” She paused as if she expected him to speak. “So. You found your snowgo last night?”
He nodded.
She tilted her head and narrowed the silver eyes. “And?”
“It’s police business. You know. Fifty shades of secret.”
She snorted, but in a ladylike way. “In Chukchi? Stand and deliver, Chief Active.”
He chewed his lip for a moment, then told her who owned the sunken Arctic Cat.
“Brad Mercer? You’re kidding.”
He shrugged and explained the Mercers’ explanation of how the First Mate’s snowgo might have come to kill Pete Wise.
“You believe it?”
“Why not? This is Chukchi. My guys spend half their time chasing stolen snowgos. A ten-year-old could hotwire one. And anybody in the mood for a little joyride could figure that one wouldn’t be missed for a while, what with the Mercers heading back to Juneau and all.”
“Uh-huh.” Grace nodded and pursed her lips.
“What?”
“It’s just that I talked to the governor this morning, too.”
“What?”
“The phone at the house was ringing when I got in from camp.”
He took a moment to line it up in his mind. “So this would be a couple hours after Theresa and I called her about the snowgo?”
Grace raised her eyebrows.
Active was about to say, “What the hell did she want?” when a Korean kid with bleached hair and a ring in his lip came to the table. Active kept silent as his mind cycled through the possibilities and Grace ordered the superbowl, plus tea for herself and a Diet Pepsi for him. She passed their menus to the waiter and he left.
“What the hell did she want?”
“To apologize.”
“Helen Mercer apologized? Seriously? For what?”
“For those rumors about the scratches on her neck. She assured me they were self-inflicted and that your behavior in that tent was strictly honorable.”
“It was.”
“I hope so,” Grace said. “I think so. But her call coming when it did….”
“Yeah. The timing.”
“She went on to say she hoped the rumors hadn’t caused problems between us and then she asked how the women’s shelter project was coming. And she said to let her know if I needed anything. I almost said, ‘Posilutely.’ ”
“Almost?”
“What I did say was, ‘Thanks, Suka.’ ”
“Very prudent.” Active relaxed a little. “She apologized and she offered to help. That’s it?”
“Not quite. Then she asked me how Nita was.”
“Huh.”
Grace gazed out the Dragon’s window, across Beach Street into the semi-blizzard brooming snow across the ice. Then she read his face.
“What?”
“Remember when she came in last week and shanghaied me to play bodyguard?”
Grace raised her eyebrows, yes.
“There was some of that conversation I didn’t tell you about.”
“Didn’t tell me—wait, she mentioned Nita then?”
He nodded. “She called her your little girl.”
“My little girl. Oh, God. She knows that? How could she?”
“Maybe she just assumed it. I said Nita was your cousin you adopted after her mother’s death and she seemed to accept it.”
Grace studied his face and narrowed her eyes again. “What else?”
“She said her people looked into the records of your father’s death.”
“His death? No.”
He nodded. “But—
“Oh, Jesus.”
“But she said it was only due diligence so she could offer me the Trooper job.”
“The woman scares me to death.”
“My point is, that was long before I called her today about the snowgo or Pete Wise was even killed. So how could it be connected?”
Grace didn’t speak. Her lips took on a stubborn set.
“And she did offer to fund your crisis centers,” Active said. “And to run money through my public safety budget for the cell towers on the Isignaq. And she is coming back up from Juneau just to cut the ribbon at your center on Friday.”
The marimba ring tone sounded from Active’s shirt pocket.
“Jesus,” Grace said. “That better not be her.”
“If it is, I’ll let it go to voicemail.” He looked at the caller ID and felt the tension drain from his shoulders. “Nah, it’s a Chukchi number.” He moved the slider to answer.
“Chief Active.”
“I have a friend in the court system,” the tired voice said. “She says, you want to know about Pete Wise’s sex life, you should go to the courthouse.”
“The courthouse? Why?”
“Just don’t get my friend in trouble, OK? She shouldn’t have told me.”
Active disconnected with a frown and tapped Procopio’s contact on his phone.
“What’s in court?” Grace asked as the prosecutor answered.
Active held up a finger. “Theresa? We need to look Pete Wise up in court.”
“What?” Procopio said. “Why? How do you know?”
“A source, that’s all. Can you do it?”
“Call you right back.”
He punched off and looked at Grace.
“Pete Wise was in court?”
“Supposedly. We’ll see.”
“Sorry, this one really does need to be secret.”
She frowned for a moment, then nodded.
“So where were we?” he asked.
“Discussing Helen Mercer.” She shrugged. “As usual lately.”
“Well, again—it did start long before there was a Pete Wise case. Last week, remember? The only thing that’s happened since we found him on the tundra is, she called to apologize about the scratches and wish you and Nita well. And maybe that’s because she figured out why you skipped the musher’s banquet and she wants to help patch things up between us. How is that scary?”
“I don’t know. It just is. Call it woman’s intuition.”
He paused as the waiter delivered their order.
“Look,” he said when they were alone again. “Maybe we should take this all at face value. She does want to help us, she was doing due diligence for the Trooper job, she is sorry about the rumors, she does wish you and Nita well. It’s just her way. An idea a minute, popping out unfiltered. That gerbil wheel of a brain in overdrive, as usual.”
Her chin unwrinkled a bit. “I guess.”
But she didn’t look very convinced as she dipped into the pho seafood.
Active was dipping his own spoon into the superbowl when his phone marimbaed again. He checked the caller ID, then his watch as he put the phone to his ear. “Theresa. You went to the courthouse already? That was quick.”
“Modern times, Nathan,” she said. “We lawyers got our own computer system, too.”
“Ah. I forgot about CourtView for a minute. Whatcha got?
“Just get over here. You have to see this for yourself.”
“How about the short version?” he said. “What is it?”
She was already gone.
“Pete Wise was in court?” Grace asked. “What about?”
He took a last spoonful of pho and pulled on his parka. “I’m about to find out.”