by John Straley
She took the pictures and held them with her dish towel as if the photographs themselves were bloody.
“She was eighteen?”
I nodded and took the photo from her. I sat down on the edge of the futon and considered what I wanted to say. Suicide, murder. It can be impulsive: an unformed thought that suddenly becomes an action, the surprise ending in the story you tell about your life. The story you constantly repeat to yourself and revise. Then, in one version, you follow a thread that leads to the impulsive death of someone else or, maybe, yourself. The narrative of your life doesn’t take you there but the context of the story does.
I was collecting jumbled facts but I couldn’t put them together to tell a story. I stood up and walked back toward the sink.
“She’d been a deckhand on her father’s boat. She was the only one to see some kind of struggle on the beach. The day before she would have testified, she was killed. Hawkes was in jail and he wouldn’t have wanted her dead if her testimony would have helped him. Hawkes could have killed Louis Victor but he would have had to overcome the fact that he was about sixty pounds lighter than a man who was a professional hunter, armed, and in excellent shape. And he would have had to get off a lucky shot to have hit Louis in the head because the medication he was taking blurred his vision.”
“But you said yourself Hawkes doesn’t deny that he killed Louis. How are you going to get around that in court?”
“My client isn’t concerned with the courts. This is a personal problem. If Hawkes didn’t do it, what happened? There were four other people in the bay that night—De De Robbins; her father, Walt; Norma Victor and Lance Victor. So I need you to look at those records for me. I need to know if there is anything that can tell me why any of them would want to kill Louis.”
“I told you. I’ll look tomorrow.”
She walked away from the sink and sat down near the stove with her head leaning against the wall. A strand of her hair fell forward and curled against her throat. It bobbed in time with her steady pulse. She knew I was going to spend the night. She wasn’t going to throw me out and she wasn’t going to call Edward to haul me away, like garbage. I could sleep on the floor near the oil stove, and as she slept in the loft she would smell my presence like the wet coffee grounds and avocado skin in the compost bucket. And in the morning I would be there to be dealt with. I watched her run these thoughts through her mind. Her face was half lit by the thin light from the reading lamp. I imagined the skin on her left cheek to be warm.
I put the pictures of De De Robbins back in my bag.
There are questions that should not be answered but I never know which questions those are.
TEN
THERE ARE SOME tricks to hunting by industry. Deception can play a part.
The courthouse in Stellar is a small brown building set on pilings above the tundra. There is a meeting room, a business office, a courtroom, and the office of the court clerk. It’s here that the public records are kept.
That morning the courtroom was filled with the voices of several people arguing at once. In one corner of the outer lobby a young white woman in blue jeans and a flannel shirt was speaking softly in English to an Eskimo man. She was explaining the difference between nolo contendere and guilt. He had a swollen eye and bruised knuckles. He nodded his head and looked at his hands.
I asked to see the card catalog for the case files. The woman beamed up at me. The lines of her face limned various circles, her eyes sparkled. Before she could answer me her telephone rang. I waited patiently, leaning against the wall, until she was free.
“They are all on our new computer,” she told me. “Do you have a name and a case number?”
I gave her Louis Victor’s name. She quickly typed in the information and waited. There was nothing. She frowned and tapped the space bar. Then she waited, staring into the monitor. Waiting.
“There should be something. Even if we don’t have the name we should get something.”
Two of her friends came over and I helped them tap the space bar, wiggle cords, and see if things were plugged in securely. The screen stayed dark. Finally, she said, “Well, we can let you into the file room and you can see what you can find. It’s really not that big. Nita will show you in.”
Nita led the way to a door that was locked. After much fumbling with the keys, we stepped into the file room; 20-by-30 floor to ceiling, four rows of court records encompassing more than fifteen years. Nita showed me where the coffee pot was and I started in on the files. She went back to her office.
I would fix their computer on the way out, if they hadn’t already figured it out by then. At first I had just unplugged it from the wall, then I had unplugged the monitor, and then I had unplugged the computer end of the main power cord. We had all been helpful, tapping and checking the cords. All I had had to do was keep checking cords and making sure one was a little loose while the ladies made sure the others were tight. It was a lot better for me to be alone in the file room. I could almost founder in a room so full of information.
I found a file for Walt Robbins. All it showed was one appearance for driving while intoxicated. I slipped his file back into the stacks.
I found the 1966 case file on Louis Victor. The grand jury had considered a charge for assault in the second degree. There were pages of notes and motions; there was a manila envelope with a red seal that was stamped “Confidential—Not for Public Record.”
I stepped behind the stacks and carefully began to peel the tape back.
The door opened and Nita stuck her head in. “You finding what you need?”
“Yes, thank you,” I answered, a cheerful note in my voice.
“Oh, good,” she said, and I heard her footsteps coming closer. I pressed the tape down firmly with my thumb and began reading one of the pages of a motion.
“We got the computer up again. Maybe I can help.”
“Oh, no thanks.” I waved the file gaily. It was beginning to feel warm in my hand.
“Oh, good,” she said, then added, “I just better make sure that there isn’t any confidential material in there.”
Busted.
She took the manila folder out of the file and handed me back the useless legal documents. “There ya go!”
So much for cleverness; on to pure industry. For the next three hours I came up with common Eskimo, Armenian, Filipino, and Caucasian names and had Nita running back and forth to the file room. Every time I saw her pour a cup of coffee I asked her for a new string of names. With each file her professional cheeriness began to lessen. It was twelve o’clock exactly when I asked her for a series of case numbers including Louis Victor’s. Other people in the office were putting on their coats and were waiting for her.
She set the pile of files on her desk. “You’re going to have to hurry because it’s lunchtime and we close for an hour.”
She went through the files, taking out the confidential envelopes. I glanced at them briefly one by one. Nita shifted from one foot to another. I could tell her feet were beginning to hurt. I handed her back the files. She put the envelopes back in and started toward the file room.
“Oh my gosh, Nita, I forgot!”
“What?!”
“I have to make a copy of one of the original complaints for my boss.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to lunch.” She turned and started to walk away.
“It won’t take a second.”
I walked up to her and took the Victor case file from the pile in her arms and started walking toward the copying machine in the back office. Luckily, I could work with my back to the people waiting for lunch. I opened the file and slipped my thumb under the red seal. I took out all of the papers and copied everything on the six sheets of paper, resealed the envelope the best I could, and caught Nita as she was coming back out of the file room.
“Thank you. You were very helpful.”
“The next time you should try to be more organized.” She was putting her coat on as she scolded
me.
“I know.” I thanked her again and walked out.
I walked the half mile to the only hotel and restaurant in town, the Delt Inn. The sign above the door showed a hand of playing cards fanned out in a full house. The sun was out, although lower on the horizon than I was used to in the fall. The sunlight was a milky pastel and the shadows were blurred and mixed with the darkness. The snow was not deep but already people were driving snowmachines along the right-of-way. Several of the buildings I passed were Quonset huts, others were frame houses with thin plywood sheeting, old oil stoves pumping like steam engines on the inside. There were countless sled dogs. I couldn’t see any trees or fire plugs, but lots of dogs. When one, tied in the yard of a cabin, started barking, dogs from a great distance would answer and soon it sounded like a pounding surf of dog voices.
Standing by the side of the road, I opened the file that I had copied. Two pages contained a psychological evaluation of Emma and Louis Victor’s daughter, Norma. The other pages were notes taken by a court reporter that were meant to accompany a child’s taped statement. I leaned up against an oil drum that was inexplicably sitting next to the road. I read through the profile of the nine-year-old Norma Victor.
In the opinion of the examiner, Norma was a deeply confused child, with “fundamental questions about identity.” She was “experiencing sexual awareness but had no reference point by which to incorporate it into her problem-solving capabilities.” Toward the end of the report the last paragraph led off with:
Concerning the suspected sexual abuse, the child N. V. does not acknowledge any such activity. She describes a loving, almost reverential attitude toward L. V., her father, and the suspected perpetrator. Yet because of her anxiety in the areas related to sexuality and because of her periods of depression and hostility, it is recommended that the family enter into a voluntary program to monitor its members’ interaction.
On the front of the report there was a box for the name and date of first agency contact. Beside the date was the name Emma Victor.
As I walked toward the inn I began to notice more and more empty plastic liter bottles of Canadian whiskey. Often they’d be sunk in the snow surrounded by the stains of the last swigs of the contents, like strange animal scat. On the porch of the hotel, men were standing around talking, smoking, with those plastic bottles down the fronts of their jackets. Occasionally, they would step behind the side of the building and share a drink.
There’s an arctic entry way at the inn. As I walked into the dimly lit lobby I saw several people sitting on the floor. There was one very old couple. The woman was wearing a beautiful muskrat parka pieced together with marten trim and a wolf ruff. She was sitting with her legs flat on the floor, stretching straight out in front of her. Her mukluks pointed toward the ceiling. She was holding hands with her husband. She was speaking with Edward.
He gave me a short bow from the waist. “This is my grandmother’s sister and her husband from Hooper Bay. They’ve come down to go to the hospital.”
We shook hands all around, with smiling and nodding.
“Everything all right with them?”
He shrugged. “The public health nurse told them to come. They don’t know that they’re sick. They came anyway.” He gestured around the room to include everyone in the entryway. There was a girl slumped in the corner. She was wearing only a white T-shirt, blue jeans, and her pack boots. She was breathing. I checked.
I offered to buy Edward lunch. As he made explanations to his family, I went inside and got us a booth.
There was a TV on a stand hanging from the ceiling above the stainless steel pie case. On the screen a man in a black leather suit was swinging an electric guitar as if it were an ax laying into a plate-glass window.
Edward slipped into the booth opposite me. He looked up at the TV and grinned. His teeth were very white but several of them were missing.
“I don’t like TV so much.” Again he smiled. “Too many white people.”
“Don’t you like any TV?”
“I like Los Angeles’s Magic Johnson.” He looped his arm over his head in the imitation of a hook.
We ordered hamburgers and drank coffee while we waited.
“Did you know Louis Victor?”
“He was a pretty good hunter. He had a Yupik girlfriend. He was Indian, I think. His girlfriend’s brothers are pretty good, too.”
“He had a girlfriend here while he was married?”
“People knew about it. He would hunt with her and drink with her. She was real pretty. I heard that he really liked her.”
“What about his wife?”
“I don’t know, maybe she didn’t like Eskimos or Indians either one. I saw her once with a broken nose. Maybe he hit her but I don’t know.”
“What about the other woman?”
“She lived upriver with her family. I heard that Louis’s wife was gonna kill her. I don’t know, I hear lotsa things.”
“What else did you hear?”
“Louis’s wife went south, I guess to be with her family. Some of her brothers came back here. They got drunk one night and said they were going to kill Louis. Said that it was dangerous for their sister to sleep with a man if he was … violent.”
Edward smiled as he recounted this last. An enigmatic grin, which seemed a mixture of pity and suppressed anger. He wiped his mouth and then put on a more polite smile.
“The brothers were from San Francisco. They were big shots in the police department—Cecil, do you think that I’m stupid?”
“Christ, where’d that come from?”
Our hamburgers arrived, ground beef on buns that came out of ovens two thousand miles away, wilted lettuce, and weary tomato slices. Edward looked down at his sadly as if it were a sign of his own failure.
“Some people make me feel stupid. They don’t know anything; they ask me for things … for information. But even when I have to translate so they can understand, they make me feel stupid. Emma Victor’s brothers were that kind. Big white men who stand up straight all the time with their arms folded.”
I was chewing on the rubber meat. I thought about Louis Victor sneaking away to his Eskimo lover and beating his white wife. I realized he would have started to beat his lover given time. On a particularly evil drunken night, just before Hannah left, she accused all men of being motivated by death. I didn’t understand it then and I’m not sure I understood it any better now.
“What do you know about Eskimos, Cecil?”
“I don’t know shit about Eskimos.”
“You feel stupid?”
“Sometimes.”
“Your father, did he make people feel stupid?”
“I think he did, but he wouldn’t admit it. I think he’d call it something else, not stupid.”
“What would he call it?”
“Their failing.”
He smiled at me again. “Your father, the Judge, was he really smart?”
“Shit, Edward, what is this? I guess he was smart. Maybe he talked more than you but he wasn’t any smarter.”
We sat in silence and ate until the hamburgers were gone. Then we were done eating and were sipping coffee for a moment.
“You know, Cecil”—he leaned forward—“lots of people say you’re an asshole, but I think you’re pretty good.”
I dabbed the stub of a french fry in the residue of my ketchup. I traced a five-pointed star, then several circles. I’m not so good with compliments.
Hannah walked into the restaurant. There was the sound of hissing grease and the smell of cigarette smoke in the air, the clatter of dishes and the consonant thrumming of Yupik being spoken. She stood framed in the doorway: She had her parka draped over her arm and she wore clean blue jeans, a burgundy blouse, and a silver pendant of a killer whale around her throat. On her feet she wore white snow boots, with the laces undone. She stood in the doorway surveying the crowd as if this were the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel. Edward and I weren’t hard to see but she stood there for seve
ral seconds looking. Everyone, even people with great confidence, should be allowed some vanity. Finally, without any nod of recognition, she started to walk toward our table.
Edward had not seen her; he was looking down at my plate. He leaned forward and whispered, “You need to learn the story about the bears.”
Before I had time to ask him another question, Hannah sat down next to Edward. With a rustle of nylon she slid her parka behind her back.
“Christ, Cecil, I don’t know why I get into these things with you anymore. I almost got into a real situation looking up those files.”
“You going to say hello to Edward?”
She stopped. “I’m sorry. We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
Edward smiled and raised his eyebrows to indicate yes.
Hannah smiled back at him and then turned a frown on me. “I didn’t mean to be rude but Mr. Younger’s got me going. I never liked his kind of work and now he’s got me doing it.”
Edward gave her a full smile: curves and echoes of curves, and then he picked up the gloves and hat that he had wedged down into the seat of the booth.
“I gotta go. Maybe we’ll talk about it later. Okay?” Hannah stood up and let him out. I waved at Edward with a french fry.
“Did I interrupt something?” she asked.
“That’s okay. What did you find out?” I continued my ketchup painting.
“Well, there was an investigation concerning Louis Victor. There are no substantiated charges. I’m not going to tell you any more.”
“Come on, Hannah. You know how serious this is. You already looked it up. You already broke the rules. So tell me.”
She sighed. “Apparently, he beat his wife, and a teacher suspected there was some sexual abuse going on. Emma and Lance gave statements but nothing was ever confirmed. And Norma testified at a Child in Need of Aid hearing. She said that there’d been no abuse. She broke down and pleaded that she loved her dad. But that behavior is consistent with a child who has been abused.”
“It’s also consistent with a girl who loved her dad.”
“Don’t start, Cecil.”
