At the Scene of the Crime (33 page)

She stopped laughing and threw off the covers to swing her feet to the floor. Over her shoulder she said, “I’ll call around, see what I can find. This time of year everybody’s grounded except for Alaska Airlines.”

He watched her ass as she walked into the bathroom. She knew he was watching, and she was putting a little extra into it.

“Sir?” Prince said in his ear.

“Huh? Oh. Hold off on confirming the seat on the jet,” he said, “Wy’s going to try to rustle something up that might be a little more direct.”

“I’ll just bet she is,” Prince said, but by then Liam had put down the receiver and joined Wy in the shower.

Kurt Fraad was white, which surprised Liam when he walked into the interview room.

He found Fraad’s story almost credible, which surprised him even more.

But what really knocked him off his balance was finding Kurt’s father sitting next to him.

He looked at Johnny Nageak. Johnny’s expression gave nothing away, but then he was Inupiaq and they medalled in poker face.

Liam turned to Karl Fraad. “Sir, could I ask you to step out? I need to speak to Kurt alone.”

Karl, burly arms folded, massive, low-slung brow furrowed, eyes glaring, sat where he was.

Liam could force the issue but it would require fuss and bother, not to mention a large amount of physical exertion, and Liam had always preferred guile to brawn. He pulled out a chair. “I wanted to ask you some questions, Kurt.”

“I already gave my statement to Officer Nageak,” Kurt said. He clasped thin, almost frail hands on the table in front of him, peering out at Liam beneath hair growing untidily over the shelf of a brow he shared with his father. He was nineteen, according to Johnny Nageak, although he looked an undernourished twelve. “I don’t know what more I can tell you.” He dropped his head. “I ran,” he said, his voice muffled. “I ran and hid. That’s the only reason I’m here.” He looked up, his eyes wet. “Maybe if I hadn’t run—”

“Sometimes,” Liam said, steering Kurt briskly away from the emotional
shoal he was headed for all ahead full, “we remember more about events we’ve witnessed when we talk about them a little bit. They kept you in the hospital overnight, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” Kurt said in a low voice. “They were really nice to me, too. And I even told them that I ran, I—”

“Well, Kurt, shock from what you witnessed, followed immediately by exposure—” Liam shook his head. “I wouldn’t be surprised if your memory of events was more than a little fuzzy.” He smiled. No women were immune to Liam’s smile, and for that matter very few men. “Could we just go through it? Only once more, I promise.”

Kurt looked from Liam to his father. “Is it okay, Dad?”

There was a long pause. Liam kept his face as bland as possible beneath the burning stare. Kurt might be soothed, but Karl wasn’t buying Liam’s act for a moment. Still, a low growl rumbled up out of Karl’s barrel chest that might have been assent.

“Good,” Liam said. “Let’s start with why you were in Kiana to begin with.”

Karl was a construction manager for the Arctic Housing Authority. He lived in Anchorage, but was at present working from Kotzebue, surveying the outlying villages to assess each community’s housing needs. Kurt had come with him, Liam gathered, because he didn’t have much else going on at the time. Delicate inquiry as to Kurt’s present employment came up with a reply of “business consultant,” offered by his father, which was about the best description of someone who’d never held down a real job that Liam had ever heard.

While Kurt and Karl were in Kiana—the alliteration alone on this case was going to drive Liam insane—the village elders, always happy to see someone who was going to build them more housing, offered to take Kurt on a caribou hunt while Karl was busy in the village. Kurt accepted, Karl agreed, and Kurt left the following day, January 22, on the back of Noah Adams’s snow machine, carrying the new .30-30 Winchester his father had given him for his birthday the week before. At three o’clock that afternoon
they arrived at the camp Ray Nageak and Ben Amunson had set up the day before. That evening, Lars Kayuqtuq of Ambler, returning home from a hunting trip of his own, stopped by and stayed for dinner. Afterward, Kayuqtuq continued up the river.

At about ten o’clock, after Kurt had gone into the tent, he heard another snow machine approach. “It was cold,” Kurt said, shivering at the memory. “There was ice on the inside of the tent. I didn’t want to get out of my sleeping bag. I heard Noah and the other guys talking to a fourth guy whose voice I didn’t recognize.”

“Could you make out what they were saying?”

“I could hear them fine, but they were talking Eskimo,” Kurt said. “They sounded mad, though.”

Liam wondered if the new arrival had been drinking. “Was there alcohol in camp?” he said.

Kurt looked shocked. “Oh no, nothing like that. I don’t think any of those guys drank. At least they didn’t in front of me.”

Liam nodded and motioned Kurt to continue.

The next day the four men went hunting for caribou. Or three of them did.

“I fell off the snogo,” Kurt said. He didn’t look at his father. “I had to follow on foot. By the time I caught up to them, they had already shot twelve caribou. I helped butcher them out, and we made camp for the night. They fried up some caribou heart. First time I ever ate something like that. It was really good, I was surprised.”

“How far did you have to walk?”

“I don’t know. Miles. It took hours for me to catch up.”

“Not much fun, postholing through the snow on a cold winter day,” Liam said in a neutral voice, and waited for a reaction.

Kurt shrugged. “They were hunting for food for their families. I understood.”

“Still. One of them could have swung around and picked you up.”

Kurt looked Liam in the eye and said firmly, “It was my own fault,
Sergeant Campbell. I’m not used to riding on a snogo and I had on the wrong gloves and my hands were so cold I couldn’t hang on. And they told me they were in a hurry, that the caribou herd could move on and it would take that much longer to find them. And we only had food for five days.”

Liam nodded, keeping his expression interested and cordial, acutely aware of the solid bulk of parental wrath simmering away at Kurt’s side. “You butchered out the caribou, you set up camp, you had dinner. What happened next?”

“I hit the rack,” Kurt said. His smile was rueful. “It had been a long day for me, and I was tired.” His smile faded, and his face took on a strained look. “The guy on the snogo came back.”

“The same one who had been there the night before?”

“Yes.”

He recognized the sound of the snow machine because it was running very roughly. Again there was conversation in raised voices. This time Kurt got up to look.

The new guy was another Eskimo. He was wearing a dark green parka with fur trim around the hood. He had on a dark blue headband with the word “Alaska” written in white across it. He had a beard. His snow machine looked old, the black seat worn through in spots, the maker’s name chipped and rusted off to the point of illegibility.

Kurt got cold so he crawled back in his sleeping bag. The voices outside the tent got louder. The snow machine with the bad engine started up again and moved away. Noah Evans and Ray Nageak came into the tent and started to get into their sleeping bags.

“That’s when we heard the shots,” Kurt said. “We could hear Ben’s voice shouting ‘No, no!’ And then we couldn’t hear him anymore.”

Noah and Ray grabbed for their clothes, and then the bullets started hitting the tent. Noah went down first, then Ray. “They were in the middle of the tent, and I was in my bag on the side. I think that’s the only reason I didn’t get hit. Noah’s knife was on his belt, and I used it to cut a way out of the back of the tent and ran and hid behind a tree. I looked back and I could see
the guy shooting.” He swallowed hard. “And then he stopped.”

The killer got back on his snow machine and headed out in the direction of what Kurt thought was Kiana.

It was a vivid and detailed description. Kurt’s voice shook a little when he gave it, and his face was pale and strained. This guy was either telling the truth or he was the best liar Liam had ever met, and he’d met some pretty good ones in his years on the force.

Kurt sat back with a shaky sigh. “I went back to the tent to get my clothes. And then I just started walking.”

“Why didn’t you take one of the snow machines?”

Kurt flushed again. “I don’t know how to drive one,” he said, shooting his father an anxious look. “And I was scared the guy would come back. I wanted to get out of there before he came back. I just—I don’t know, I guess I just panicked, and ran.”

 

Johnny looked at Liam when he came out of the room. “Feelings are running pretty high, Liam. We need to get both of them out of town.”

They were in the school cafeteria, commandeered for them by the town mayor. Two doors into hallways leading to classrooms were monitored by grim-faced adults, around which peeked curious faces. Wy was sitting at one of the tables, nursing a cup of coffee. “I’m good to go,” she said.

They parked the Fraads, pére et fils, at the airport terminal in Kotzebue, notified the troopers in Anchorage that the Fraads were on their way in and told them to make sure they didn’t immediately get on another plane headed even farther south, stopped briefly in Kiana to pick up Johnny Nageak, and flew out to the scene.

It was after 2 p.m. by the time they got there and that flat bright light peculiar to an arctic winter sun was beginning its inevitable slide into a softer lavender twilight. Shadows lengthened on the Kobuk River, a white swath making wide turns through a dark forest of black spruce. It was clear and cold and absolutely still when Johnny touched Wy’s shoulder and pointed. She banked immediately, a turn so smooth it felt painted on the
sky. Liam was concentrating so hard on keeping the plane up in the air by the grip he had on his seat that he didn’t realize they had landed until he heard the snow passing beneath the skis with a sibilant hiss. They stopped and Wy pushed in the throttle and the engine died. Liam took a deep and he hoped unobtrusive breath and let it out with a long sigh.

When he got out the cold hit him like a blow. The inside of his nose felt frozen, and he could actually feel the frost forming around his mouth. He pulled the hood of his parka as far forward as it would go. “Stay with the plane,” he told Wy.

“Like hell,” she said.

Liam would have sighed but he was afraid his lungs would freeze on the inhale. “Fine, but don’t step on any evidence.”

 

The camp was in a clearing about fifty feet off the bend of the river. The tent was Army surplus olive green, a battered twelve-by-twelve with front and back flaps, pitched to face south. A snow machine track that had seen a lot of use ran the fifty yards between the river’s edge and the front flap of the tent. Another, lesser used track led to the back of the tent and into the woods beyond. A single track broke off a few feet up the bank from the river and made a loop around the camp before joining the main trail again.

Two snow machines sat in front of the tent, both with sleds attached. Liam and Johnny took photographs of the tracks surrounding them, thawing out the cameras under their arms between shots, and then Liam straddled the Bearcat and opened the gas cap. Johnny produced a flashlight and they both peered inside.

“Half full,” Johnny said.

Liam nodded and replaced the cap. He pressed the starter and the engine roared to life. He switched it off and looked at Johnny. “How cold was it last night?”

Johnny shrugged. “Forty below? Forty-five?”

The other snow machine, a Ski-Doo Mach Z, took a little more coaxing, but it, too, started eventually.

They went through the sleds, which were loaded with camping and hunting gear, including a Winchester .243 caliber rifle. Liam’s nose was so cold he couldn’t smell if it had been fired recently.

“Liam,” Johnny said, pointing with the flashlight.

In front of the Bearcat, two brass casings gleamed. “Get a photo,” Liam said, and when Johnny was done, picked up the casings. “A thirty-ought-six and a thirty-thirty,” he said, and bagged them.

There was more camping gear and multiple caribou carcasses in various stages of butchering out in the snow around the camp. Johnny found another rifle, a Winchester Model 94 in a case. He held up a box of .30-30 ammunition.

Liam nodded, and turned his flashlight to the tent. He heard Wy’s breath go out in a little sigh.

A man lay on his stomach next to the side of the tent facing the river. He was fully dressed in jeans, boots, and a plaid shirt, but no coat. Both hands were stretched out in front of him, holding a pine bough.

“Ben Amunson,” Johnny said.

Amunson was stiff with cold and death. He’d been shot more than once, but by now it was too dark to count how many times. The snow was stained in a trail that led to the front flap of the tent.

Liam stepped around Amunson’s body, his boots crunching into the top layer of fallen snow, and lifted the tent flap. It caught on something. He pulled, and it came away, revealing an overturned camp stove. Beyond the stove was a second body, also lying face down, also fully clothed.

“Ray Nageak,” Johnny said.

Like Amunson, Nageak’s body showed multiple gunshot wounds. The knife sheath on his belt was empty.

Againt the rear wall of the tent was the third man, on his back, shirt on, hands grasping the waist of his pants, which were halfway up his legs.

“Noah Adams,” Johnny said.

The tent was a mess, the stove and cots overturned, pots, dishes, utensils, duffle bags, parkas, mittens, boots scattered wall to wall. The tea kettle sat
oddly upright in the center of the debris field, pierced dead center by a bullet hole. Brass winked up at Liam from wherever he turned the flashlight.