Village of the Ghost Bears (7 page)

“Or not,” Carnaby agreed, with a burdened look. He was silent again. Finally he said, “Christ, I hope Barnes comes up with something.”

Active raised his eyebrows in agreement. “Like maybe a short in the wiring at the Rec Center?”

“Something like that. Accidental origin would be nice,” Carnaby said. “You think?”

“I don’t think anything yet, but my gut says not.”

“Mine, too,” Carnaby said. “Dammit. Seven, eight people, whatever we end up with. How much do you like this Buck Eastlake? Worth flying up there to talk to him?”

“Probably, unless something better comes along,” Active said. “It is kind of shaky, though. Couple kids bump chests over a girl with big
miluks
for what, two, two and a half years, then all of a sudden it turns into mass murder by arson?”

“Stranger things have happened,” Carnaby said. “What else we got? I mean, who the hell would do such a thing? Whatever it was about, it can’t possibly make any sense.”

Active shrugged. “Most arsons are never solved. Remember the
Investor
?”

Carnaby winced at the name, as did most Troopers who had been in uniform at the time. Active had been only a kid then, but had heard plenty about the
Investor
fire when he hit the Trooper Academy several years later.

The fishing vessel had been set ablaze near the hamlet of Craig in Southeast Alaska. Eight people had died, including a family of four. No one had ever been convicted of the crime.

“God, I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a rerun of that one,” Carnaby said. “I didn’t work the
Investor,
but . . . the guys that did, they still obsess about it. It’s the kind of thing that stays with you your whole career. And after. All right, you get hold of Cowboy and see about getting up the river to Eastlake’s camp after he gets your guy out of One-Way Lake tomorrow.”

Active nodded.

Carnaby cleared his throat and looked at something scrawled on his desk blotter. “Listen, I had a call a couple hours ago from Harry Winthrop down in Anchorage. He was checking references.”

Active’s eyes widened, but he held his tongue.

Carnaby made him wait a good thirty seconds, then grinned. “I told him you weren’t a total screwup.”

Somewhat to his own surprise, Active found himself whooshing out a breath. “I finally have a shot at getting out of here?”

“More than, looks like,” Carnaby said. “I got the impression it’s just a matter of working the paper at this point. I imagine you’ll be in Anchorage by Christmas.”

“Thanks, boss,” Active said.

Carnaby waved it away. “Ah, I’d never stand in your way. Just wish I could buy a ticket out myself.”

Carnaby, as they both knew, was likely to finish his career running the Chukchi Trooper post. A few years earlier, he had been unlucky enough to bust a prominent state senator from Anchorage on cocaine charges and had barely escaped with his job when the jury let the senator off. It was unspoken but understood from the top of the Troopers to the bottom that the politicians would allow Carnaby to stay on long enough to get his pension if he did it quietly and at the maximum possible distance from Anchorage. Carnaby’s family—a wife and a nearly grown son and daughter—still lived there, and Carnaby commuted home a couple of weekends a month.

“I don’t know about this outfit sometimes,” Active said.

“Yeah, but what human organization isn’t at least twenty percent screwed up?” Carnaby said.

Active shrugged and changed the subject. “You want me to hang around till Barnes shows?”

They heard steps in the hall, and Carnaby sniffed. “I think I smell him now.”

CHAPTER FOUR

RONNIE BARNES PUSHED INTO Carnaby’s office without knocking, sagged into a chair, and took a long pull from a bottle of Diet Pepsi. Red-rimmed eyes peered from his soot-covered face like wolves in a cave.

He set his drink on the floor, pulled a tube of Rolaids from a coat pocket, broke it in half, and chewed about four of the tablets. “One in the women’s sauna,” he said. “Looks like the fire came up so fast, she couldn’t even get out of the sauna. Just curled up in a corner like a kitten.”

“That must be Rachel Akootchuk,” Active said.

Carnaby nodded.

“Couple in the hallway outside the locker rooms too, stretched out like they were crawling for the exit when it got them,” Barnes continued. “But the men’s locker room. The guys in there were all stacked up at the doorway. Maybe the crime lab will be able to figure out how many, but I sure as hell can’t. Three, four, maybe.” He rubbed the grime on his face and drained the bottle of soda. “All burned and melted together like they were fighting each other to get out but the door wouldn’t open. Now, why would that be, do you suppose?”

Carnaby opened his window, then his door, letting a little breeze circulate through the office. The smell of smoke thinned out somewhat.

“It was locked?” Carnaby said.

Barnes shook his head. “Not when I got there. The mechanism still worked fine.” He reached into his coat again and came out with a plastic bag, sealed with evidence tape and tagged. “I think maybe this is why.”

Carnaby took the bag and examined the contents: a twisted loop of blackened wire. “This? How?” He passed it to Active.

Barnes sighed. “Either one of you guys go there to work out?”

“I do,” Active said. “Or did.” It was hard to think of the Rec Center in the past tense. “Three or four times a week. Especially when the weather was bad and I couldn’t run.” He paused and counted back. “I was there three nights ago, I think.”

“Lucky it wasn’t last night,” Barnes said.

Active cleared his throat and said nothing.

“See anybody weird hanging around, like they were casing the place?”

Active reflected, then shook his head.

“How about this wire here? Ever see anything like that around the door to the men’s locker room?”

Active studied the contents of the plastic bag, trying to visualize the locker room entrance. It was down a hall, near the back of the building, opening to the right. “Don’t think so,” he said.

“Well, when I found those guys piled up there, I shoveled through the debris around the doorway and found that wrapped around what I think was the inside doorknob. The door was some kind of heavy-duty wood, so it was eventually consumed, just the doorknobs left and the lock and the hinges. And that.” He pointed at the plastic bag with the wire in it.

“On the inside doorknob,” Carnaby said.

Barnes nodded. “Which way’d that door open?”

Active closed his eyes for moment and remembered turning into the locker room. Pull the door toward him, or push on it? “It opened in,” he said. “Hinged on the left as you entered.”

“Thought so, but it’s hard to be sure of anything in there now,” Barnes said. He paused. “You’ll see what I mean in the pictures.” Then he shook his head as if to clear it. “Suppose you wrapped a loop of wire around the inside doorknob, then shut the door on the wire so it came out on the other side, right by the outside doorknob?”

Active and Carnaby nodded. “And then?” Active asked.

“Exactly,” Barnes said. “And then what? Was there some kind of hook or something outside the door he could have anchored the wire to so nobody inside could get the door open and, after everything burned up, all we’d have is this little piece of wire?”

Active thought for a moment and shook his head. “I don’t remember anything like that. But I might not have noticed.” He shrugged. “You know how it is. You don’t see things after four or five times. You didn’t find anything like a hook in the debris?”

Barnes shook his head. “Nope. Just the wire.”

“Didn’t that place used to be the Air Guard Armory before they built the new one?” Carnaby asked.

“I think I did hear that,” Active said.

Carnaby looked at Barnes. “The wire might not mean anything, Ronnie. It could have been lying around ever since the Guard was in there. Maybe the door jammed by itself. From the heat. Or maybe those guys panicked and jammed it trying to get out.”

Barnes gave his head a slow wag, reflecting. “Anything’s possible. But I don’t think so.”

“Is there any other sign of arson?” Active asked. “Other than the wire?”

“I can’t say it’s unambiguous,” Barnes said. “The fire appears to have started in the southeast corner of the building. That’s where the furnace and the water heater were, right?”

Active nodded. “I think so. I know there was some kind of utility room at the back of the building, right behind the men’s locker room. You could hear equipment running in there a lot of the time. Especially when all the showers were on and using hot water.”

“And that was a forced-air heating system?”

“And that was a forced-Active nodded again.

“Mm-hmm,” Barnes said. “That explains why the fire seems to have broken out in several other places in the building as well. As the fire built up in that utility room, the ductwork would have carried superheated air all over the building until the fan overheated and quit. That old wood was probably bone-dry, and that was that.”

“But you think the utility room was the original source?” Carnaby asked.

Barnes rubbed his face again, moving some grime from his moustache to his cheekbones. “There was a big heat trail in there. It ran—”

“A heat trail,” Carnaby echoed. “You mean—”

“The floor was saturated with an accelerant,” Barnes said. “Something set it off and the scorch mark still shows on what’s left of the floor. It probably only took two or three minutes before the situation was out of control.” He made an erupting gesture with his fingers. “Whoosh!”

Carnaby was taking notes now.

“Anyway,” Barnes continued, “this heat trail ran from under a fuel pipe on an exterior wall, across the floor, and to the base of the wall between the furnace room and the men’s locker room. Seems like the floor kind of sagged there along that wall?”

“A lot of the old buildings around here are like that,” Carnaby said. “They heat up the permafrost, it melts, and they start to settle. The middle’s the warmest, so it settles fastest.”

“Mm-hmm, we get that in Fairbanks too,” Barnes said. “So if you pour something on the floor at an outside wall, it’s naturally gonna run to the middle. My guess would be, the base of that common wall was pretty well saturated with stove oil. That locker room probably became an inferno almost instantly.”

“So they all headed for the door,” Active said.

“Only to find it wired shut,” Barnes said.

“Maybe,” Carnaby said. “Let’s hear about the fuel pipe.”

“There’s your ambiguity,” Barnes said. “That pipe brought in stove oil from those tanks back of the building. Just inside the wall was a ‘T’ fitting, with one pipe going to the furnace and another one to the water heater.”

The other two men nodded.

“Well, one of the couplings in that fitting was loose, and there was still oil dripping out of it when I got there.”

“Shit,” Carnaby said. “You stop it?”

“Uh-huh. I closed the valve outside at the tank.”

Carnaby was silent for a time, then shook his head. “I’ll say it’s ambiguous.”

“Yup,” Barnes said. “Guy uses an accelerant that’s available at the scene, it’s a bitch to prove anything. I pulled up some of the floorboards to test, but I’m figuring it’s about a hundred to one I’ll find stove oil.”

“The way maintenance is around here, that fitting could have been like that for months,” Carnaby said.

“Uh-huh,” Barnes said. “Until finally conditions reached the point where the furnace or the water heater set it off, and here we are.”

“But you don’t think so,” Active prodded.

“Nope. I don’t like the wire.” Barnes frowned. “I think our guy comes in the back door to the furnace room, opens that fitting till it’s gushing, makes himself a trail over to the locker room wall, and then tightens the fitting back down till it’s just dripping a little, like when I found it. And then—Nathan, was there a door to the furnace room at the end of that hall?”

Active visualized the layout again. He imagined himself moving down the hall, stopping at the locker room door, turning in. But if he kept going, would he hit a wall, or a door?

“Yes,” he said finally, with a nod. “There was a door at the end of the hall. I never tried it, but I think it would have had to go into the furnace room.”

“Right,” Barnes said. “So our guy sets up the furnace room, then comes into the hall through that door, and there’s the door to the men’s locker room just a few feet away. He opens it a little bit, wraps his wire around the inside knob, and—” Barnes shook his head and looked out of his cave again. “—and somehow wires the damned thing shut.”

Suddenly Active snapped his fingers. “Hang on,” he said, and left Carnaby’s office. He walked to the supply cabinets behind Evelyn O’Brien’s desk and rummaged for a moment, then returned, hands behind him to conceal what he had found in the cabinet. “Turn your backs,” he told the two men in the office.

As the secretary got up to watch, they obediently turned away and Active brought a roll of package twine out from behind him. He looped a piece around the inside knob of Carnaby’s door, pulled the twine past the edge of the door and closed it. Then he took the eighteen-inch ruler he’d found in the cabinet and lashed it in position so that one end was braced against the door frame, and the other against the middle of Carnaby’s door.

“All right,” he yelled through the door. “See if you can get out without breaking anything.”

The two men in the office pressed against the window in the upper half of the door, craning their necks in a futile effort to see what Active had done. They gave up and Barnes reached for the doorknob. He pulled, producing only a slight bend in the ruler. He pulled harder, then jerked, and the ruler snapped. The two halves fell to the floor.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said as he opened the door.

“Thanks,” Evelyn O’Brien said, as she picked up the broken ruler.

Barnes pulled the twine off the doorknob and dangled it in front of him. “So he uses a piece of wood—maybe a chunk of two-by-four—as a brace on the outside of the door like Nathan did with the ruler. It burns up in the fire, and there’s nothing left but this.” He picked up the wire in its baggie and held it beside the string. “Shit, it could be.”

“Or not.” Carnaby shook his head. “Those guys in that room were bush Alaskans. At least half of them had to have a Leatherman on their belt, and the rest had knives. No way they couldn’t have gotten through that wire.”

“You ever been in a burning building, Captain?” Barnes asked. Carnaby shook his head. “I thought not. Well, in a fire like this one, you got about ninety seconds from the moment you smell smoke before the room is so hot you can’t breathe and so full of smoke you can’t see. All you can think about is smashing your way out.”

Barnes fell silent. “More likely arson than not,” he said eventually. “That’s my opinion, and that’s what my report’ll say.”

“Let me see that.” Active took the bag containing the wire from Barnes. “Look how tight it’s twisted together to close the loop.”

“So he used pliers from the furnace room,” Barnes said.

“No, it’s too neat. Like a machine did it. And wouldn’t you expect more damage from the heat? It looks almost untouched except for the soot on it.”

Barnes shrugged. “I’ll send it to the crime lab, see what they come up with. You guys have any luck today?”

“Eh,” Active said with a shrug of his own.

“Maybe,” Carnaby said. “Nathan here might have turned up a jealous ex-boyfriend.”

Barnes’s eyes widened in inquiry, and Active recounted the saga of Buck Eastlake, Augie Sundown, Rachel Akootchuk, and the
miluks
.

“Wouldn’t be the first time a guy went nuts over a pretty face,” Barnes said. Then he grinned. “Or a nice set of
miluks
. Never heard ’em called that before. It’s a good name.”

He looked at Active, serious again. “You get a moment, let me know what you make of this Eastlake guy after you go up there. Maybe I can help you get a fix on him. Especially if he shows any sign of a burn injury.”

“Sure,” Active said, mildly annoyed that Barnes would tell him for the second time to be on the lookout for scorched suspects.

“You’re done here?” Carnaby asked.

Barnes nodded. “I think so. I’m on the noon plane tomorrow. I’ll spend a couple more hours over there in the morning, but unless I turn up something new, probable arson is what you’re going to get. I’ll e-mail you my report from Fairbanks. The crime lab will send their report to both of us.”

He shook their hands. “It’s up to you guys now,” he said. “If it’s not your Buck Eastlake, find out who our arsonist was after, and you’ll find out who he is.”

After Barnes left, they needed to talk about something else to ease themselves out of that locker room with the burnt bodies piled up at the door. So they chatted about Active’s shot at the job in Anchorage. Carnaby spoke highly of the salmon fishing on the Kenai River to the south of Anchorage and the moose hunting in the Talkeetna Mountains to the north, neither of which interested Active very much. Carnaby also mentioned that he thought somebody at the Anchorage post was organizing a Trooper hockey team for the Anchorage City League, which interested Active a great deal.

Finally, they locked the office and headed for the stairs, but before they got there Alan Long emerged from the well and waved a manila envelope.

“I knew there was something,” he shouted. “The chief must have been psychic. Couldn’t be more than a couple weeks ago he asked me to check if this guy was out.”

Active and Carnaby looked at each other. They exchanged eye rolls, and Carnaby unlocked his office again. Once they were seated around the captain’s desk, Long dumped out the contents of the envelope.