Nobody Cares

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

His phone pinged, and he looked down at it. A text from Dace: Lanky said to tell you it’s Mary Ayek.

OK, that put a different spin on things, he thought.

Mary Ayek.

He’d first met her when he was a rookie cop, living in Anchorage, and partying with her grandson. At least, she called him that, and he called her grandmother, so it might have been literally true. But there were any number of people who were privileged to call her grandmother, including him, who had no biological relationship at all.

John Kuliktana had been a student at University of Alaska, Anchorage. A brilliant student, although Paul hadn’t known that at the time. He also knew how to party, and in that Paul recognized a kindred spirit. They’d met at some party or another, developed a nodding acquaintanceship, then a real friendship.

One night, John had called him in a panic. “Do you own a tux?” he asked.

“No, I don’t own a tux,” Paul said with disgust. “Who owns a tux?”

“I do,” he replied. “Maybe mine will fit you. Look, my grandmother is in town for the opening night of the symphony season, and she wants me to escort her. I can’t. I have a huge test in the morning, and I cannot do less than perfect on it. So, I need a replacement and you’ll do. You’re the only one in my circle she’d find acceptable.”

“Well, I don’t own a tux, and John? I’m a good 3 inches taller than you, so no yours isn’t going to fit. You’ll have to find someone else.” Paul didn’t go to the symphony. He didn’t want to go the symphony and he most certainly didn’t want to escort someone else’s grandmother to the symphony.

“Rent one,” John ordered. “I’ll pay. You need to be at the Captain Cook at 7:30 p.m. She has a car and driver when she comes to town, which is good, although she might actually enjoy a ride in your Corvette.”

He hung up, and Paul shrugged. He found a tux rental shop, picked it up, got dressed and was in the lobby precisely at 7:30 p.m. Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t the Inuit woman in a designer gown who swept out of the elevator and gave him a thorough going over.

“You’ll do,” she announced. “I’m Mary Ayek.”

After that he’d seen her in Bethel wearing what she called her ‘artsy garb’ for the art fair there. And in a combination of Inuit traditional clothes and modern snow gear when she’d raced him on snowmachines across the frozen Kuskokwim River. He’d watched Mary with her dog team; she’d finished the Iditarod in her younger days.

And he’d seen her in a business suit she might have gotten at Nordstrom, although Paul suspected she had gotten it on her last trip to New York City for her annual two weeks of escape during the worst of Alaskan winter when all the new shows opened on Broadway. She’d worn that suit to the board of directors meeting of the Bethel Native Corporation. She was a director and major stockholder.

In short, Mary Ayek was one of the most powerful women in Alaska. She’d made politicians and broken them. A U.S. Senator owed her re-election to her when she’d run afoul of Alaskan politics, and Mary Ayek had martialed all the Natives to register to vote and write her name in on the ballot. She won the election — as a write-in candidate — and she hadn’t forgotten how she got there either: Mary Ayek.

Mary Ayek’s word was practically law to thousands of people. She’d built the Bethel art cooperative into one of the premier festivals in the country. She donated liberally, sponsored dozens of “grandchildren” to attend college, and was a force to be reckoned with. She was a legend.

And she’d always been a free spirit. And yes, she had liked his Corvette when he took her for a drive up the Denali Highway at 100 mph. She had been married four times, had numerous other lovers — including a dashing pilot named Purdue, Paul thought.

Including a young cop named Kitka.

John had gone away to get his PhD in chemistry at the University of Washington. And Mary Ayek continued to request Paul escort her to things in Anchorage, and invited him to Bethel for weekends and trips. Paul had found her fascinating when he was 22. He still did. She’d ended things when he’d moved out to Talkeetna eight years ago. They’d never been exclusive. She wouldn’t have permitted that. She’d gently told him to call her grandmother, and he had known. He smiled. He’d learned a lot from Mary Ayek. Including an appreciation for the symphony.

Mary Ayek.

What brought her to Talkeetna looking for him?

“Change in plans,” Paul said, looking at the jeans and running shoes he’d put on. “I need to go to my place and change first. This isn’t a person I can meet looking like this.”

“Seriously?” Joe Bob asked. “First we’re in a rush and now you’re going to take the time to clean up? Who is this woman?”

“Mary Ayek. One of the most powerful people in Alaska,” Paul answered. “And yes, I need to be in uniform and not smelling like muskeg when I meet her. So, it’s both. Lights on. Shower and uniform. And I need to be there two hours ago.”

Joe Bob shrugged, but he kept the speed going until the hit the airfield, and then he slowed down, made a right turn and soon was parked in front of Paul’s home, a log cabin with a welcoming front porch, not far from the river. Paul was out of the car, and up the steps, in the door, and in the shower before Joe Bob could even ask if he wanted him to wait.

Ten minutes later he was back out to the car, properly dressed and groomed.

“OK,” Paul said. He looked at his partner and shook his head. Bringing him in to meet with Mary Ayek? Not in this lifetime. “You can just drop me off at the Lodge.”

Mary Ayek was sitting in front of the windows that looked out toward the river. She and Lanky Purdue looked like they were having a good time, Paul thought, as he watched her laugh at something Lanky said. He was grinning in a way you didn’t usually associate with the gruff old bastard who was infamous for chasing away his office managers.

Not Dace. She’d been there nearly a year. A record. She just looked at Lanky with those clear gray eyes, and Lanky mumbled an apology and found something to do with his beloved planes. Purdue’s pilots practically worshiped her.

And here the cantankerous old man was flirting? Paul grinned. He didn’t blame him.

She looked up and saw him come in, and waved him over. He bent and kissed her cheek. “Mary Ayek,” he said. “It is a pleasure to see you. I hope this old man was an acceptable substitute until I could get here.”

She smiled at him. “There is no substitute for you, grandson,” she said. “But time spent with an old friend is never a bad thing.”

He sat down. The waitress brought him his usual iced tea. “What brings you way out here?” he asked. “I would have come to you if you’d called.”

“This is official business, in a way, Lieutenant,” she said more formally. She was good at indicating what role he was filling at the moment, he thought. Grandson to lieutenant? OK, then.

“How may I help?”

“My granddaughter is missing,” she said. “When her roommates reported it Sunday morning, the police blew it off, saying she hadn’t been gone long enough for it to be of concern. So, they called me. I was concerned as well. Sarah Itee is a good girl, she doesn’t go on benders, or sneak away with a man, which is what the Captain I spoke to over the phone suggested. So, I flew out this morning to discuss my concerns in person.”

She paused and toyed with the tea cup in front of her. Paul could read her easily: she was furious.

“The captain was no help in person either. In fact, he was quite rude,” she continued. She gestured to her clothes — jeans, a shirt, and a vest that had seen better days — and shrugged. “Perhaps I should have dressed up, but I didn’t realize I needed to impress the police in order for them to do their jobs.”

Paul winced.

“So, I asked to see his supervisor, a Commander Anderson, who was quite dismissive. They could take the information, and add it to their file, he said. But she would probably turn up. A weekend fling that’s gone long perhaps. He asked whether she used drugs or alcohol? Perhaps she would return from a binge. Or, was she known to pick up strangers? Paul, this is a good, studious young woman who wants to be a nurse!”

There were tears in her eyes. This granddaughter was special to her.

“So, I asked, how big was this file he was talking about,” she continued. “And could I see it? He said it wasn’t a paper file anymore, so he couldn’t show it to me, but it was a large file, because Native Alaskans, women in particular, disappeared all the time. They returned to their villages and didn’t tell their friends for instance.

“I asked him how many of them turned up as dead bodies?” Mary Ayek said. “He got angry and told me I had to leave now. If they received any information about Sarah, they would let her family know.”

“Family?” Lanky said. “Not you, but family?”

She nodded. “I’m not sure who that was supposed to be. But notice too, he didn’t say if they found any information? If they received any information. They’re not even going to look for her!”

Yes, she was angry, Paul thought. And she had every right to be. Even if Commander Anderson, and he knew the man, didn’t have answers, a bit of courtesy would have helped. No elder should be treated this way. And treating Mary Ayek like that would have repercussions Commander Anderson was likely not to survive. Not a great loss.

“I stopped back at the Captain’s desk, and said the Commander told me to ask him for how many Native Alaskan women were missing currently. That he could look that up,” Mary Ayek said and she laughed. “I lied.”

Paul grinned at her. Of course, she did.

“There are currently 18 Native Alaskan women between 15 and 30 who are missing,” she said quietly. “And the police aren’t even looking for them. I think even the Captain was a bit taken aback by the number. Some of them may have indeed gone home, or moved on. But the police don’t know, and apparently don’t care.”

“Anchorage is not in my jurisdiction,” Paul protested, because he could see where this was going.

“You are a Native Alaskan,” she countered. “This state is your state. You belong to it and to its people, and its people and this state belong to you in ways that Commander Anderson and the officers who work for him don’t understand.”

“Tell that to my grandfather,” Paul muttered, because having a white mother and a Tlingit father had made him an outcaste growing up. Things might be better now, but not a lot. He didn’t think of himself as Tlingit, or Native Alaskan, even though he had resigned himself to the fact that the world saw him as Native Alaskan. He thought of himself as half, not white nor Tlingit. Half.

Mary Ayek ignored that. “Paul, you need to find those women, and bring them home. Sarah is not the kind of girl who has a weekend fling go long — not that I would do anything but cheer her on if she did.”

Both men grinned at her, and she smiled.

“She doesn’t drink or do drugs. She’s not turning tricks, or whatever they call it these days. She’s a very serious and studious young woman. Something is wrong. I had someone check the hospitals and the morgue. She is not there. She didn’t go home. She is missing.”

“It’s not my jurisdiction,” Paul said again. She needed to understand this. “I cannot just go invading Commander Anderson’s jurisdiction and demand to search for her. My boss, Captain Wyckoff won’t allow that either. He has work for me to do here.”

“Then call Captain Wyckoff,” she ordered. “Ask him to come here, and I will ask him myself.”

Paul looked at Lanky for help, and it was obvious he wasn’t going to get into this. He sighed, pulled out his phone, and sent a text to his boss.