Read Online Village of the Ghost Bears by Stan Jones - Free Book Online

four-wheelers have been claimed except one.”
    “What do you make of that?” Carnaby asked.
    “I don’t know,” Long said. “Maybe—”
    Carnaby waved a big hand and said, “Never mind, let’s go over the interviews first.”
    “Well, as I said, four of the five ATVs have been claimed,” Long said. “And I think all the families have been interviewed.” He looked at Active and Nelson for confirmation. Both nodded.
    “Anything?” Carnaby asked.
    “A possible,” Active said as the other two shook their heads.
    “All right,” Carnaby said. “One at a time, then.”
    Each of the three reported on the interviews he had conducted over the course of the day, as more and more of the ATVs had been claimed and the paramedics had radioed the names of the claimants to Dispatch at the Chukchi Public Safety Building.
    In addition to Lena Sundown and the girl cousin of Buck Eastlake, Active had also talked to a superintendent for the construction company rehabilitating Chukchi’s decrepit elementary school. Two of the men on the job—a carpenter named Charles Hodge and an electrician named Roy Marks—had borrowed a company four-wheeler to go to the Rec Center for a sauna. Both had been in Chukchi less than a week, and the superintendent was pretty sure they hadn’t had enough contact with the locals to get anybody mad enough to want to kill them.
    Dickie Nelson had talked to the family of Rachel Akootchuk, who said she had gone to the Rec Center with Augie Sundown to watch him shoot hoops. Nobody at her house could imagine anyone wanting her dead. The name Buck Eastlake hadn’t come up.
    The owner of another of the four-wheelers found in front of the Rec Center had been identified as Lula Benson, who managed the bingo operation there. Her husband, a sixty-ish Inupiaq named Benjamin Benson, couldn’t think why anyone would want to kill her, either.
    Alan Long reported on his day’s work, including the fact that one of the four-wheelers had indeed belonged to Cammie Frankson.
    “So,” Carnaby said when the round-robin was over, “we’ve got seven fatalities so far, counting Cammie and Chief Silver.”
    “Plus whoever was on the unidentified four-wheeler,” Nelson said.
    “In all probability,” Carnaby agreed. “Plus maybe a walk-in or two. How does that square with what the paramedics took out of there?”
    “They didn’t yet,” Long said. “Barnes hasn’t released the bodies.”
    Carnaby frowned for a moment and finger-brushed his moustache. “What do we do about that last four-wheeler?”
    “I finished early,” Active said, “so I went by the Rec Center and checked it out. Like Alan said, there was no I.D. on it, but it is a fairly new Honda, so I towed it over to the dealer’s. They’re going to see what they can figure out. Check serial numbers and so on against whatever they’ve got in their records.”
    “Cop time or village time?” Carnaby asked, not sounding very hopeful.
    “They promised to have it done tomorrow,” Active said.
    “What else?” Carnaby said, looked around the three of them. “Dickie, what’s left on your list?”
    “Nothing, far as I know,” Nelson said. “I’m ready for the next phase, whatever it is.”
    “Go ahead and knock on doors around the Rec Center, then,” Carnaby said. “Maybe one of the neighbors saw something.”
    Nelson nodded and left.
    Active pulled at his lower lip. “Did Jim go to the Rec Center much? I don’t remember him ever mentioning it.” He visualized the Chief’s paunch-bellied middle-aged figure. “Or looking like it.”
    “Excellent point,” Carnaby said. “I don’t think he did hit the gym very often. What about it, Alan? You know if he ever went?”
    Long wrinkled his nose and squinted: an Inupiat no.
    “Maybe you should ask around the city force,” Active said. “See if anybody knows why he was over there last night.”
    “You bet.” Long scraped his chair back and stood up.
    “And weren’t you going to check