Polar (Book 1): Polar Night (8 page)

Chapter 17

“It’s no coincidence these two
both went up to the Arctic before they disappeared, Tessa,” Danny said into his phone.

“I’m not disagreeing with you. I’ll meet you at Clancy’s.”

Danny turned the corner of Hampton Street and dropped the phone as his car started to fishtail in the snow. He straightened the vehicle, then grabbed his phone from the floor.

“You still there?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, I dropped my phone.”

“Why don’t you just put it on speaker?”

“Because I hate that damn echo.” Danny cradled the phone on his shoulder and used both hands to steer his car through the snowy streets. “Anyway, you don’t have to meet me. It’s Christmas.”

“I’m aware of that. But this is my case. You shouldn’t have to handle it on your own.”

“There’s not a hell of a lot to handle right now. All I want to know is where Clancy and Maria went up there in the Arctic. There’s no reason for you to have your holiday screwed up.”

It was obvious Tessa didn’t take much convincing. “Are you sure you don’t mind? And you’ll get back with me as soon as you talk to Clancy?”

“What, are you worried I’m going to steal your case?”

“No, no, it’s not that…”

Danny interrupted. “Kidding. I’ll get back to you, I promise. And no, I don’t mind.”

He tossed the phone onto his passenger seat, and focused on driving. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up in a ditch before he ever got anywhere near Nate Clancy.

Relieved when he finally got to Clancy’s house, he parked his car and once again trudged through a snow-covered sidewalk. His already cold feet turned freezing, and wet. He really needed a better pair of boots.

Just as Ted Alexander had, Nate opened his front door before Danny had a chance to ring the bell.

“Detective Fitzpatrick,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you, psychic? How’d you know I was out here?”

“I was walking past my front window and saw you get out of your car. What is it? Have you found Maria?”

Danny shook his head. “Wish I could say I have, but no. I just need to ask you some more questions.”

“On Christmas Day?”

“Criminals don’t take holidays.”

Nate’s face turned red. “I know, I’m sorry. It’s just that I was about to leave for my parents’ house…”

Danny held up his hand. “I won’t take up too much of your time.” He shivered as a gust of wind blew across the porch. “But can I please come inside? I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

Nate held the door open and stepped aside to give Danny room. “Of course. Please, come in.”

He walked ahead, and led Danny into his sparse but stylish living room. He motioned for Danny to have a seat on his black leather couch. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said.

Danny sat down and slid out of his parka while Nate took a seat on a black recliner. He didn’t recline, but instead sat forward in his chair, his posture tense.

“What questions do you have?” Nate asked.

“I need to know exactly where you and Maria went when you visited Prudhoe Bay last month.”

“You mean, our hotel? That’s easy. There’s only one there.”

“What is it?”

“The Reindeer Inn.”

Danny resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the name. “Alright, what else did you do there? What about restaurants? Tourist attractions?”

“The tourist attraction is going to the Arctic Ocean, and seeing the oilfields. That’s it, honestly.”

“Restaurants?”

“The Reindeer Restaurant is connected to the Inn. We ate there.”

“So you went all the way up there to see the ocean and some oil drills?”

“I told you I wasn’t thrilled about the trip.”

“
What about Coldfoot? Did you go to Coldfoot? A place called Snow Creek?”

Nate nodded. “That’s where the tours stop on their way to Prudhoe Bay. We stayed overnight there. That’s the old psychiatric hospital I told you about. It’s a tourist attraction now, that’s where we stayed. The asylum is a hotel now and there’s a restaurant there, too. We went on the haunted tour with the guy that owns the place. I think his name was Alex, or Alexi, something like that.”

Danny remembered Anna’s excited ramblings about the “hot” owner of the asylum.

“Was he good looking?” he asked.

Nate shrugged. “I didn’t exactly notice. But Maria thought he was. She teased me about it, said since I was being such a grump that maybe she’d just dump me for the Snow Creek guy.”

“Did she have a lot of interaction with him?”

“Not really. He just took us on the tour of the place.”

Danny put his hands on his knees and stood up, anxious to get going and find out more about this asylum and its caretaker. He knew he was on the trail of something now, he could feel it. And it wasn’t going to end with a crazy woman and a vampire tale.

“Thank you; this is just what I needed.”

Nate stood up next to him. “You think that guy or somebody else up there in the Arctic had something to do with Maria going missing?”

“I don’t know, and I couldn’t tell you even if I did.”

“Will you let me know if you find anything out about her?”

He was talking to Danny’s back, as Danny had pulled on his parka and walked to the front door before Nate could finish his question.

“You know I will. Merry Christmas to you.”

Danny returned to his car and felt a surge of adrenalin that was even better than coffee for curing his hangover. He couldn’t wait to call Tessa and share the news. And most of all, he couldn’t wait to take his own trip up to Coldfoot and Prudhoe Bay.

Chapter 18

“
Danny, you can’t go up
there by yourself,” Tessa said.

“I’m not going by myself. Do you think I’m crazy? I’m meeting Sergeant Yazzie at the airport. He’s the lucky stiff who gets to be my back-up.” Danny struggled to hold his phone, drive, and look at his directions to the airport all at the same time. He thought back to the day he bought his Subaru after deciding to stay in Fairbanks. Why the hell hadn’t he bought the model that had the built-in gps?

“But it’s dark. You should wait until tomorrow.”

“It’s dark almost 24/7 in this god-forsaken place. I could be going at two in the afternoon and it would still be dark. What the hell difference does it make?”

“I’ll come with you too.”

“No, no, no. I don’t want you walking out in the middle of your Christmas party. I already told you, I’m fine with doing this.”

“But…”

“I’m not talking about it anymore,” Danny said. “I’m almost to the airport and I still need to call Judge Shriver and get my warrant approved. On top of all that, I have to figure out where to find my charter.”

“This seems dangerous. What about the snow?”

“I checked with the pilot when I made the arrangements. He said Coldfoot is fine. We’re not going to Prudhoe Bay today because he doesn’t think he can land in the weather up there right now. But I don’t really care because I know it’s the Coldfoot place we’re interested in.”

Danny pulled around the back of the airport and found the Arctic Charters hanger.

“I’m here now,” he said. “I’ll call you when I get back to Fairbanks.”

“Call me from Coldfoot if you learn anything interesting.”

“Demanding, aren’t we?”

“Well I just..”

“I’m kidding,” Danny said. “If I have a signal, I’ll call you. Hell, I’ll call you during the ride up if it would make you feel better to hear my voice.”

“That would mean the world to me. In fact, it would make my whole Christmas.”

Danny chuckled and ended the call. He paused and searched his contacts for the number of Judge Anthony Shriver. He knew Shriver wouldn’t be thrilled about having his holiday interrupted, but Danny couldn’t have cared less. Life was tough like that sometimes. He leaned back against his headrest, noticing Teriaq Yazzie pulling up beside him in his battered black pick-up truck. He gestured for Yazzie that he would be with him in a minute and waited for Judge Shriver to answer his phone.

Chapter 19

A few hours later, Danny was
on the ground in Coldfoot, grateful to have Teriaq Yazzie as company. With the exception of Tessa, Danny hadn’t bothered to get to know anyone in the Fairbanks police well, but he still liked what little he knew about Yazzie. The man seemed to abhor idle chitchat and was typically quite reserved, a quality Danny very much appreciated. What’s more, Yazzie encouraged the non-native members of the department to call him Terry instead of his Inuit name Teriaq. Something else Danny greatly appreciated, as it had taken no time in Alaska at all for him to discover that he was hopeless when it came to pronouncing the words of the native tribes.

Danny and Terry shivered as they made their way from the hanger to their waiting driver. Danny knew he shouldn’t have been surprised, but the temperature was so low it made Fairbanks seem warm. And, he had to wonder what the conditions must be in Prudhoe Bay if his pilot had considered them unsafe, but had no issue with landing in Coldfoot. Danny’s hands still ached from gripping the passenger seat as the plane landed in what he would call a blizzard.

The pilot had seemed completely unfazed, and so did their driver, Doug Matheson. Matheson had agreed to drive him to the Snow Creek asylum in his 4X4 Ford truck. Danny was glad to see the truck had studded snow tires when he got inside. He may not be used to Alaska but, as a Chicagoan, he still knew what it took to drive in heavy snow.

“It won’t take us long to get to Snow Creek,” Matheson said, as Danny settled in next to him and Terry took the truck’s rear seat. “It doesn’t take long to get anywhere in Coldfoot. You go too long and you’re out of here and on your way to Prudhoe Bay.”

“I gathered that from looking at the map,” Danny said. “Not much of a town.”

“Not a town at all, really. Used to be a gold mining camp, did you know that?”

Terry likely did, but he stared straight ahead out the front window without responding, all but ignoring Matheson’s chatter.

“No,” Danny said.

“Yeah, that’s how it got its start. The miners gave Coldfoot its name, for obvious reasons.”

“How’d you end up here?”

“I used to drive through here all the time on the Highway, I was a trucker. Got sick of driving and decided to stick around here. I like living in the middle of nowhere.”

Danny nodded. “I can see the advantages.”

Matheson chuckled and pulled up next to a building that looked more like a military prison than a tourist attraction. Danny noticed the sign in the front.

“This is Snow Creek?” he asked.

“The one and only,” Matheson said. “You heard all the ghost stories about this place?”

“I heard it’s supposed to be haunted.”

“Yeah. Aleksei milks that for all it’s worth.”

“Aleksei?”

“Guy who owns Snow Creek. He’s the one that renovated it and re-opened it. Before that, this place had been empty for decades.”

Danny remembered Nate Clancy mentioning a guy he thought was named Alex. “So this Aleksei gives tours of the asylum, right?”

“Right. Big tourist thing. People love it.”

“He’s the one we need to talk to.” Danny started to get out of the car, and paused. He glanced towards Matheson. “You sure you don’t mind waiting out here? It’s freezing.”

Matheson shook his head. “I don’t mind at all. I’ll keep the heater running if you guys take too long.” He held up a paperback. “And I’ve got a book to read. So take all the time you need.”

Danny
nodded and slipped on the snowshoes that Terry had brought for him. Danny never would have thought of the shoes himself, and he really had no idea how to walk in them, but he assumed he’d figure it out. It couldn’t be that hard.

“Thanks,” he said to Matheson as he got out of the car and shut the door. Terry had already exited the rear and was gliding across the snow as
gracefully as if he was on skis.

Danny’s progress was much more plodding, but eventually he got the hang of his shoes and headed towards the Snow Creek entrance. Noticing a small bungalow that had been added on to the original building, Danny wondered if their arrival had already been noted by the bungalow’s inhabitant. There was a light on, and Danny thought he saw a face in the window.

Relieved to find the Snow Creek door open, the two cops walked inside to the lobby. It was dark, and no one seemed to be working at the front desk. Terry saw a buzzer attached to the desk, and pressed it.

Within seconds, a tall blond man appeared and turned on the lobby lights.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I hope so,” Danny said. “You the owner of this place?”

“I am. But if you want to book a tour or a room, we’re closed for the winter season.”

“No problem. We’re not interested in staying here. We just need to talk to you.”

“Talk to me? Why?”

Danny held up his badge. “I’m Detective Danny Fitzpatrick, Fairbanks PD. And this is Sergeant Yazzie.”

The blond man nodded. “What can I do for you?”

“We’re investigating the disappearance of a young woman from Fairbanks.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“How about telling me who you are? I feel kind of strange talking when I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m Aleksei Nechayev. Why do you want to know?”

“The woman I’m looking for, she and her boyfriend came up here a few weeks ago and toured your place.” Danny took out a photo of Maria and showed it to Aleksei. “You remember her?”

Aleksei stared at the photo. “Possibly. We’re always very busy in the weeks before we close, and we get so many people in and out that it’s hard to keep track.” Aleksei shrugged his shoulders. “I do think I remember this woman, but I can’t say for sure.”

“Do you keep a record of your guests?”

“Of course. Would you like to see it?”

“Yeah. That would be great.”

Aleksei slid behind the desk and produced a large leather bound book. “I like having an old-fashioned guest book for our guests to sign. It adds to the atmosphere of the place.”

“I can imagine.” Danny pulled the book around to him, and thumbed through the pages until he got to Thanksgiving weekend. Sure enough, he found the names he expected.

“Here she is,” he said, pointing to Maria’s name. “And her companion, Nate Clancy.”

Aleksei looked at the names and pretended to search his mind. He shrugged again. “Obviously they were here, but the names really don’t ring any bells.” He leaned backwards against the wall behind the desk. “I can tell you though that from here they likely went to Prudhoe Bay. That’s how the tours work.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been told.” Danny stared at Maria’s crisp handwriting, and drummed his fingers on the desk.

“What is it you’re hoping to find here, Detective? How can I help you?”

Danny flipped through the rest of the book. The last entries were in 2011. He looked up from the book and stared at Aleksei. “What about your older records?” he asked. “Where are your listings of guests who were here before 2011?”

“We don’t keep the books, but we have records of our guests on computer files. Why?”

Danny could have sworn he saw Aleksei flinch. But maybe that was just wishful thinking.

“I’d
like to see your files from 2009.”

“May I ask why?”

Aleksei’s voice sounded the same. Maybe he hadn’t flinched.

Before Danny could answer him, Aleksei spoke again.

“Was this…” he glanced down at the book and re-read the name. “Ms. Treibel here in 2009 as well?”

“I’m not sure,” Danny said. “I’d be interested in finding out.”

Aleksei booted up the desk computer and waited for the programs to load. “I can show you our database,” he said. “It will just take me a minute.”

“I don’t mind waiting.”

Danny glanced around the lobby while he waited for Aleksei’s database to load. He knew very well how long a computer could take to actually get going. It had been too dark to notice much in the lobby when he arrived, but now he could see that Aleksei liked having an old-fashioned touch to everything here. Tacky brochures lined the desk, all promising fabulous Arctic adventures and polar bear sightings, but none looked as if they had been touched in decades. The whole lobby looked like that of a roadside hotel in the 1950s. The huge stuffed Arctic Owl that hung over the doorway behind the desk merely added to the creepiness factor. Danny expected Norman Bates to enter from the back room at any minute.

“H
ere you go,” Aleksei said. “2009. Are you interested in a particular month?”

“November.”

Danny looked for another flinch, but didn’t see any. Aleksei clicked the mouse and stepped back from the computer to make room for Danny.

Danny stared at the screen and scrolled down the list of names. It took only a second to find Anna Alexander. He highlighted her name and hoped for some kind of a reaction from Aleksei. He didn’t get any.

“I don’t see Ms. Treibel’s name there,” Aleksei said.

“No, I don’t either.” Danny paused. “But I do see Anna Alexander’s name. Anna also went missing not long after she stayed here at your lovely home.”

Now, Aleksei flinched. “I can’t say I remember Miss Alexander.”

“Of course you don’t. But regardless, we’re going to have to take a look around this place.”

“Okay. But first I’d like to know what this is about,” Aleksei said, his voice sharp.

“I’ve told you what it’s about. Two missing women named Maria Treibel and Anna Alexander. And before you ask, we’ve got a warrant.”

Aleksei cleared his throat and regained his composure. “Not a problem.” He opened the door of the lobby and held it for Danny and Terry. “Help yourselves, gentlemen. Or, I’d be happy to give you our tour.”

Danny held up his hands. “No, we don’t need the tour. We’re fine on our own. I’d suggest you stay here.”

Aleksei glared at him, and forced his mouth into a smile. “Suit yourself.”

Danny and Terry left the lobby and found themselves in an empty hallway, with rooms lining the walls on each side.

“You know anything about this place?” Danny asked.

“Only that it’s supposed to be haunted. Supposedly, people have heard crying and screaming, doors slamming, disembodied voices, that sort of thing.”

“Nice.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true. By all accounts, they didn’t exactly treat prisoners well up here.”

“It was an insane asylum, right?”

Terry nodded. “Yeah. For the criminally insane. I think they just dumped people here when they didn’t know what else to do with them.”

Danny shook his head. “Why the hell would anyone want to stay here as a vacation?”

“Novelty I guess. Hoping to see ghosts or hear scary noises.”

As if on cue, Danny heard the sound of a door slamming in the distance. Startled, he jumped and turned to Terry.

“Did you hear that?”

“Yeah.”

“So I’m not crazy?”

Terry shook his head. “If you are, so am I.”

Danny instinctively put his hand on his gun, noticing Terry had done the same. They moved down the hallway, entering each room as they passed and checking every closet and restroom they found.

Aleksei had furnished the old asylum cells to resemble hotel rooms, and each was decorated in a rustic Alaskan theme. Thick quilts covered the beds, and the walls were lined with photos of the frozen Arctic landscape, complete with polar bears, arctic foxes, and fluffy snow-white rabbits. The rooms were chilly, and Danny could hear the howl of the wind outside. It was the only sound besides Danny and Terry’s footsteps, as none of the rooms showed any signs of life.

The only thing they found of interest in any of the rooms was a closet full of women’s clothing. Long velvet dresses, button-up blouses, thick flowing capes and long full skirts were meticulously hung on padded hangers. Pointy-toed boots and velvet slippers were lined up on the floor. Danny thought the clothes looked old-fashioned, and they reminded him of clothing you’d expect to find in a costume shop.

“What do you think of this?” he asked.

“Can’t imagine,” Terry said. “Maybe they have some kind of costume drama here sometimes.”

“No men’s clothes, though. Or children’s.”

Terry shrugged his shoulders. “No clue.”

“We’ll have to ask Nechayev what he’s doing with these clothes.”

“Maybe he likes to dress in drag.”

Danny fingered through the dresses and skirts. “You saw how tall he is. None of these clothes would fit him.”

They left the room and came to the end of the hall, where they entered a large circular room with picture windows lining the walls. The hardwood floor was bare, and the room was empty of furniture.

“What is this, some kind of solarium?”

“I think it was a day room,” Terry said. “I’ve read about these kinds of asylums. They used to tie people to chairs and sit them in here for the day. Let them get some sun I guess.”