White Sky, Black Ice

by Stan Jones

  Well, what should he have expected? The lawyer was right. If you held the case up to the light, it barely cast a shadow. Where did he go from here ?

  "Lucy Generous asked me to give you this," Evelyn O'Brien said as he headed for the coffeepot. She handed him a packet of Kleenex. She kept her eyes on the telephone bill she was checking against the office logs.

  "What did she say?"

  "She said, 'Give this to Nathan.' " He thought the corners of the secretary's mouth twitched. But he couldn't be sure because she didn't raise her head.

  "That's it? She didn't say anything else?"

  "Like what?"

  He went into his office, slammed the door, and put the coffee on his desk. How had Lucy gotten inside his head like this? He hung his coat and hat on the hooks by the door and looked out the east window at the lagoon, frozen now from shore to shore. Snowmachines buzzed back and forth between the village and the rolling swells of tundra back of the lagoon. What would she say about Saturday night on the bluff if he walked downstairs to talk to her right now? What would he say? Finally, he shook his head and dropped into the chair at his desk.

  He closed his eyes and massaged them with a thumb and forefinger. Instantly, the mental VCR clicked on again and he was back in the GeoNord office with Fortune and Jermain. The VCR kept rewinding to the moment he had said the words "leach field." Jermain had jumped as if kicked in the shins. Fortune had been cooler, but there was that tiny fumble with the gold ballpoint.

  After that, Fortune had paid careful attention to everything Active had said, writing it all down on his legal pad. Finally, he had waited for more. When it didn't come, he had ridiculed Active's "oral evidence" and sent him away.

  Clearly, the words leach field had meant something to the pair. Almost certainly, the Gray Wolf had one, necessarily a secret. But where? There had been no surface evidence when he had flown in and out for his talk with Tom Werner, but that was only to be expected. In the first place, leach fields were underground. In the second, no one would put an illegal leach field where it was easy to spot. It could be under one of the buildings, under any one of the hundreds of acres of snow-covered gravel at the mine site, anywhere. And the only two people he could think of who might know where it was and be willing to tell him were dead.

  His phone chirruped, but Evelyn O'Brien picked it up in the outer office as he paused his mental VCR. He looked at her through his window, eyebrows raised inquiringly. She spoke into the phone, then listened. Then she looked at Active, pointed at Carnaby's office, then down at the phone.

  He was instantly uneasy. Carnaby rarely called in now that he was on personal leave, and never this early in the day.

  Active scooped up the receiver. "Hi, boss, how's the great white hunter? You find Helen Ready yet?"

  "As a matter of fact, the FBI picked her up in Las Vegas last night and put her straight on a plane for Anchorage," Carnaby said. "I'm told she has a date with the grand jury later today."

  "Excellent. Congratulations."

  "Well, I owe it to you, Nathan. Thanks again. Who told you about the Lodestar Lounge anyway?"

  Active hesitated. Tom Werner hadn't actually asked him to keep quiet. Still, naming the source of the Helen Ready tip seemed to push against the edges of the court order banning trooper investigation of Senator Howell.

  "You really want to know that?"

  "Sure, why not?" Carnaby asked. "The state court will have to mind its own business now that the feds are rolling."

  "It was Tom Werner. He said he knew you from the old days in Nome and he wanted to help."

  "I guess I owe Tom Werner too."

  "I'll let him know."

  There was a silence that went on long enough to become uncomfortable. Finally Carnaby cleared his throat. "But that's not why I called."

  "I had a feeling." Active switched the phone to his right ear from his left, which was starting to sweat.

  "Bill Felix called me here at home this morning. I imagine you know what it was about."

  "I have an idea." Active's stomach cramped. Bill Felix was the Alaska commissioner of Public Safety. He wasn't the head of the troopers—he was the man who hired the head of the troopers. For Bill Felix to bypass the chain of command and contact a detachment commander like Carnaby was . . . well, Active had never heard of it before.

  "It seems that Alex Fortune called him and complained you've been making wild charges."

  "They know each other?"

  "They worked together in the Anchorage D.A.'s office when they were starting out," Carnaby said. "Anyway, Fortune says you're claiming the Gray Wolf is killing fish in the Nuliakuk, accusing Michael Jermain of shooting Aaron Stone and—who was it?—one of Daniel Clinton's boys?"

  "Yes, George Clinton."

  "Well, have you?"

  "What?"

  "Been making these charges."

  "I guess I did."

  "So tell me about it," Carnaby said tightly. "What have you got?"

  Active took Carnaby through the evidence and then sketched the case he had built on it. He felt himself flushing as he realized how it must sound to a veteran like his boss, how Carnaby must be feeling at the thought of having to explain it to Commissioner Felix. Not to mention all the other bosses between him and Felix in the trooper food chain.

  Carnaby was quiet for a long time after Active finished. Then he cleared his throat again. "Your witnesses are Tillie Miller and Emily Hoffman?"

  "Yessir," Active said. It was all he could think of.

  "And they were both drunk when you interviewed them?"

  "Well, with Tillie you can never be sure ..."

  "Jesus Christ, Nathan!" Carnaby was shouting now. Active had never heard him do that. "You've got to know how thin this is!"

  "Yessir."

  Carnaby paused, evidently to collect himself. "I'm sorry I shouted. I try not to do that."

  "I know," Active said.

  Carnaby paused again. Then, "Fortune said you were a loose cannon. He suggested to Felix that both of us be counseled on the perils of overreaching."

  "He gave me a little briefing on the same subject."

  "Christ, you mean . . ." Carnaby caught himself and spoke in a normal tone. "You say Bill Felix called you directly about this?"

  "No, I mean Fortune talked to me about the perils of overreaching. He, ah, he mentioned you as an example."

  Carnaby exhaled gustily, as if he had been punched in the gut. Active heard him draw a deep, shaky breath before speaking again.

  "This guy Fortune is as dangerous as black ice."

  "Yessir, I know that."

  "Then I assume your gut is telling you you're onto something?"

  "Yessir. Ever since I saw they were both shot in the Adam's apple."

  "That's pretty unusual, all right. And a cop should always trust his gut."

  "Yessir."

  "But if this blows up on you, on us . . . well, I don't need another . . ." Carnaby faltered to a stop.

  "Nossir."

  "Especially now, with Bobbi Jean..."

  "Nossir."

  "And, believe me, you don't need your first one."

  Active felt pity for the older man, mingled with the fear of ending up like the Super Trooper. "I'll drop the case."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah, it's OK." Now Active's right ear was sweating, so he switched back to the left. "It's turned into nothing but a world-class collection of dead ends, anyway. I'll type up my notes and file them and forget it."

  "You sure?"

  "I'm sure."

  "All right, look," Carnaby said. "Fax me the report when you're done. That way I can tell Felix I've got it in my hands and it says the case is closed."

  "OK."

  They hung up and Active put his fingers to his eyelids again. What did it matter? Every cop had a case in his files that he took to bed at night and woke up with in the morning. At least if the feds nailed Howell, Carnaby would get his career back.

  And maybe Nathan
Active would become commander of the Chukchi detachment, like Tom Werner had said. And then maybe he would reopen the Gray Wolf murders.

  Or maybe not. Maybe he would be promoted to Anchorage first. And then maybe Chukchi with all its drunks and aanas and mayhem, Chukchi with its Kay-Snow and "Mukluk Messenger," the Chukchi of his mother and Leroy and Sonny, of Kinnuk Wilson, of Pauline Generous and even Lucy, would be someone else's problem and he could think straight again.

  He pulled out his notebook and began typing the interviews into the computer. When he came to the summary he had scrawled after his talk with Emily Hoffman at the Dreamland, he frowned in concentration. In his notes, the conversation ended with Simeon and Jonathan crashing into their table.

  That was accurate enough, but something was missing. What were they talking about just before the battle erupted? Ah, now he remembered. He had asked Emily how George found out about the"leeches" at the Gray Wolf.

  And she had said what? Nothing?

  No, she had started to answer. What was it, something about a pick? That was it. "He find pick," she had said. What did that mean? A pick to dig the leach field? A pick to locate it?

  Should he talk to her again? The case was closed, of course, but this wouldn't be a new interview, or even a reinterview. It would just be a matter of completing the original interview so he could complete his notes, which would allow him to complete his file and close the case. Just like Patrick Carnaby was probably telling Bill Felix that Nathan Active was doing at this very moment.

  One more question couldn't hurt.

  ACTIVE PARKED the Suburban on the ocean side of Beach Street in front of the Arctic Inn, a three-story wooden structure that looked west over Chukchi Bay. The Arctic Inn's main architectural statement was its greenish brown wood siding called T-111. The stuff was just one step up from ordinary plywood, but it passed for stylish in Chukchi, especially fifteen years earlier when Chukchi Region Inc. had built the Arctic Inn on the theory that tourists would flock to the Arctic to admire the tundra and the Inupiat. Instead, the place had become home to traveling businessmen and bureaucrats, construction hands like Travis Taylor, and folks in from the surrounding villages for a night or two in the big town.

  Odd-looking steel pipes with cooling fins on the tips stuck out diagonally from the soil under the Arctic Inn. They were part of a high-tech system designed to keep the permafrost from thawing and slowly lowering the Plywood Palace, as it was known, into the muck.

  The Arctic Inn had no door onto Beach Street, so Active walked down the alley past the permafrost pipes and turned into the side door that led into the lobby.

  The front desk was staffed by a teen-age Inupiat girl who was chattering into a telephone and watching MTV on a miniature set on the counter when Active walked up. He asked what room Travis Taylor was in and she scribbled "329" on a yellow stickie without missing a beat in her conversation. Active took the slip of paper and climbed the stairs to the third floor.

  Room 329 was at the end of the hall, next to an emergency exit with a sign warning Alarm Will Sound. He knocked, waited, and knocked again. Finally, he tried the knob and the door slid open.

  The room smelled of pizza, beer, sweat, and sex, and was dark except for a little light leaking in around the window blinds and through the open door from the dimly lit hallway behind him.

  A naked girl, just recognizable in the dusk as Emily Hoffman, lay curled on her left side on a double bed, facing him. Without clothes, she looked even younger than she had in the Dreamland, almost genderless, with her thin childlike limbs. There was just the slightest hint of a belly, rising and falling with her breathing, proof that Mother Nature, at least, deemed her an adult female, ready for the work of propagating the race.

  Beside her on the bed, he saw what looked like the remains of a pizza and a twelve-pack of Oly. There was no sign of Travis Taylor, who presumably was off painting the new armory.

  Active crossed to the bed and drew a sheet over the girl's nakedness. Then he returned to the doorway and knocked loudly on the frame.

  "Emily. Wake up. It's Nathan Active."

  She stirred, mumbled, "Mmmf fway oma fieep," rolled over to face the window, and was still again.

  "Emily. Wake up. I need to talk to you."

  No response. He walked to the bed, leaned over her, and raised the blind on the window in front of her. Then he pushed her shoulder.

  "Emily. It's Nathan."

  Still no response. He noticed a TV controller on the bed next to the pizza box. He picked it up, clicked on the set in the corner, and surfed till he found the MTV channel. A band identified at the bottom of the screen as Lung blasted into the room. Active turned the volume up as high as he could bear, then sat on the corner of the bed and waited.

  Finally the girl rolled over and opened her eyes enough to peer, first at the television, then at him.

  "Arii, Nathan! I've got a headache." Her face was oily and the left side of her chin was silvery with saliva.

  He muted the set and the girl relaxed.

  "Can you wake up now? We have to talk."

  She rolled back to the window. He clicked the controller and Lung howled from the set again.

  "All right, turn it off," she said, her back still toward him. "We could talk." He clicked the set into silence and she rolled to face him. She started grabbing Oly cans and shaking them. "I'm thirsty. You got anything to drink?"

  He went into the bathroom and returned with a glass of water. She sat up, letting the sheet drop to her waist, drained the glass, and dropped it beside her on the bed. She wiped her mouth and looked at him.

  "You should put something on." He nodded vaguely at the fallen sheet and looked away.

  "Arii," he heard her say, with a groan. "I never notice. You turn your back and I'll go in the bathroom."

  He felt her move off the bed, then heard the bathroom door close. He waited until it opened again and Emily came out wearing a man's bathrobe several sizes too large for her. Her face was clean and her hair was brushed now, but she was carrying an Oly in one hand. She sat down on the bed, took a sip from the beer, pulled a pack of cigarettes from under the pillow, and lit one with a Bic she fished from a pocket of the robe.

  She took a long drag and said, "OK, what?"

  "Do you remember what we were talking about at the Dreamland Saturday night?"

  "When?"

  "Saturday. You were there with Travis? Remember?"

  "I think my head hurts too much."

  He sighed. "You were telling me about leeches killing fish at the Gray Wolf. You said..."

  "Oh, yeah, now I remember. Simeon and that guy bumped into us, then while 1 was dancing with Travis you left." She squeezed her eyes shut, circled her arms around a remembered partner, and swayed to remembered music, a tear sliding down each cheek. "George liked to dance. You like to dance with me sometime, Nathan?"

  He put his hand on her shoulders and shook her lightly. "Emily. I need you to think about what we said Saturday night. You said George told you about the leeches and how he found a pick."

  She opened her eyes, looked at him, wrinkled her nose, and squinted in the Inupiat frown of negation. "He never say nothing about a pick."

  "But you said he found one."

  "I never say nothing like that." She wiped her eyes on a sleeve of the bathrobe.

  "Never mind, then. How did George find out about the leeches?"

  "Like I tell you at Dreamland, he find picture." She put the cigarette to her lips and drew in, gazing over his shoulder at the soundless images on the television screen. Then she looked at him. "You forget?"

  "A picture? Not a pick? George found a picture of the leeches? Like a photograph?"

  "No, a picture like you draw, I guess." She frowned and watched the smoke curl up from her cigarette. "He call it a screenomatic, something like that."

  Active let the word roll around his head for a second. Then his brain made the connection. "A schematic? Did George say he found a schematic of th
e leeches?"

  "That sound right," Emily said. "A schemomatic."

  "Did he say where he found it?"

  "In the head man's office, I think. He find it while he's cleaning up."

  "Did he show it to anybody? Do you have it?"

  "I don't know what he do with it." Her eyes strayed to the television again. "George say GeoNord will have to take care of it."

  Active stood up, walked to the corner, and switched the television off. He turned and faced the girl. "Look, if I had that schematic, I might be able to help GeoNord stop the leeches from killing fish in the Nuliakuk. Do you think George brought it back with him?"

  "I dunno. He leave his stuff at my mom's when he stay with us, but I don't know what's in it."

  "We could go look."

  Emily squeezed her eyes shut and tears trickled down again. "I don't want my mom to see me like this."

  "Maybe she's not home."

  Emily was silent, thinking it over. "Could be. Sometimes she go to store on Monday. I guess I could call."

  She picked up the phone from the nightstand and dialed. "If she answer, I'll hang up, I don't want to talk to her now."

  Active nodded and waited.

  Finally, Emily hung up. "I guess she's not home. We could go over there."

  She stood up and started for the bathroom. "You could watch MTV while I get ready."

  CHAPTER 14

  Monday Afternoon, Chukchi

  THE RIDE TO EMILY Hoffman's mother's house was uneventful, except for when the girl shouted, "Stop, Nathan!" as they passed the Lions Club.

  He slammed on the brakes and Emily jumped out. She lurched over to the club, leaned against the orange T-lll wall, and vomited. A clear liquid that could have been this morning's beer came up, followed by what looked like the remains of last night's pizza. He thought about going over to offer aid, but decided he could in good conscience stay in the Suburban as long as Emily remained standing. So he watched from a safe distance as her stomach emptied and she progressed to dry heaves.

  Finally they stopped too, and she tottered back to the Suburban and climbed in. She leaned her head against the padded dashboard and sighed.