“Oil taxes built the Utilador,” garrulous Dave Lillienthal always argued, over vodka, at our dinners on the base. “Oil paid for the old folks’ home.”
Bruce Friday usually snapped back: “One day you’ll blow a pipe offshore and kill or scare off every whale within a hundred miles.”
“Oh, posh! More Tito, Bruce?”
I wasn’t interested in their arguments now. I saw a lone figure inside the glass door, behind the admission area, wiping the counter, stooped, weighted, depressed.
Karen understands about completing a mission. What’s one more hour to wait?
Something about the scene in there reminded me of an Edward Hopper painting, Nighthawks. It was the sense of weary figures killing time, a diner in the painting, a museum here; but in both cases, night pressed in against human life. The figure beyond the glass door looked startled when I entered. He was tall and thin, wide nosed and thin lipped. He wore a spotted sealskin vest, thick workman’s painter pants, and a red-checkered flannel shirt. His stomach bulged over his silver buckled belt.
“We’re closed,” he said in a neutral tone.
“Leon? I’m Joe Rush. I’m helping out Chief Toovik. Can we talk about Kelley Harmon?”
He knew from my tone that this was an official visit. The look in his chocolate-colored eyes grew wide. He assumed I was a detective, at first. He glanced back into the museum, as if seeking help, but the only help back there was history; glass cases filled with Iñupiat harpoons, old skinning knives, wolverine ruffed polar bear fur parkas, mouth-chewed, softened sealskin boots.
I saw a big blowup shot of Merlin on a wall, standing on ice, bent toward the sea, eyeing the back of a bowhead whale with a harpoon sticking out. I saw black-and-white photos of elders; when they were young, carving up a caribou.
A stark, fishy odor filled the modern atrium, its rankness at odds with the curated, well-lit exhibits. The smell — I knew from visits here — meant that someone had been in back, in the community workshop, with a bucket of bloodied seal, building a new umiaq for the spring hunt.
“You’re a Marine?” the boy said, looking puzzled, handing back my ID. He seemed hemmed in by the counter. I felt that he wanted to leave. But it was unclear what he wanted to get away from. The investigation? Or the deaths?
“I’m a doctor,” I said. “We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened out there. I’m sorry, Leon, I heard you knew Kelley pretty well.”
Most museums are filled with artifacts from elsewhere. This one existed to explain the Iñupiat way of life to visitors, and to help educate young kids in town.
The boy said, softly, “Yes. I was a friend.”
“I know it’s late, Leon. Just a few questions.”
“What’s the point? I told the police what I knew.”
He wasn’t sullen, or defensive. It was more like I heard futility and grief. I said, softly, “Sometimes, when you’re trying to figure problems out, little things help.”
“She needed help before. And she didn’t get it.”
He walked out from behind the counter. He locked the front door, shut off the overhead lights, so a soft glow from streetlamps outside made the parka in a glass case seem alive. He beckoned me to follow and I trailed his slumped form down a shadowy corridor, into the glass-walled workshop in back, illuminated by a red nightlight. I saw a half dozen long, sturdy wooden worktables, tools on sideboards. This was where local artists carved walrus ivory into statuettes. I saw knives on the wall, neatly arranged hammers, saws, screwdrivers, and small jeweler-like hand tools. He took a stool. I sat down, too, making sure I stayed at eye level, to show respect.
“Leon, what do you mean, she needed help before? What was wrong before today, before the shooting?”
He rolled his eyes. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
“She’s dead,” the boy blurted out. “Of course something was wrong.”
“Do you have any idea what?”
He looked bewildered. “What are you asking me for? How would I know?”
“Did Kelley say anything about tension in the group?”
Leon Kavik had large hands, and I saw a long, healed scar on the right palm as he held both hands up. There were high school textbooks on the worktable… Chemistry Two… and I realized that he did homework here.
He said, “‘Tension’? No, unless her mother was driving a car or someone ate her dad’s ice cream… or that HBO guy, the one with the camera, was around. Pushy, Kelley said.”
“When’s the last time you saw Kelley?”
“A week ago, when they were in town. We rode to the quarry on my motorcycle. She looked for dinosaur bones. She found part of a mammoth bone, to use as a paperweight.”
“Did she seem sick to you last week?”
“The police asked that. No.”
“Think about it. Coughing? Headache? Sniffles?”
“I told the police! She wasn’t sick.”
“Did she say anything about her parents fighting, or them being sick?”
“She said they were like Moonies, always smiling. Never disagreeing. Borg people, she said. But sick? No.”
Which means, if he’s right, that the symptoms hadn’t started a week ago. They came on fast.
“Leon, this is helpful because it helps us pinpoint when any sickness started. Because they all had fever. Did she say anything to you about Clay Qaqulik?”
“Just that she liked him, I mean, as a person.”
“Did she mention anything about their water supplies?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. The taste? A shipment being late. Problems with food or water.”
“Well, they had accidents all summer, but that was equipment breaking.”
I watched him for signs of guilt; stiff posture, twitchy hands, change in tone. Kelley’s friend had said, “He has a temper.” I didn’t see it yet.
I asked when he’d met Kelley and he said, “Here, when she came in to look around the center.”
I asked what they did together.
“Ride around. It was tough to see her because she was hardly ever in town.”
I asked whether he’d been bothered by that.
“What does that have to do with what happened?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Well, it was a pain, that was for sure.”
“Made you angry?”
“Yeah. Sure. Her parents worked her to death.”
“By the way,” I lied, “I heard that you helped them with supplies, loading up food and water.”
He looked surprised. “No. I never did that.”
“I just asked because someone said they remembered you helping in the warehouse. You were a big help, they said.”
“Ha! I was never even there. Kelley warned me to stay away when her parents were around. They didn’t want her to see boys. They were tough on her back home, too. No boys.”
He seemed more hurt than angry, but who could tell? I was fishing. I switched direction. “Leon, what did she tell you about their project?”
“Not a lot. They collected stuff in lakes. Algae. Fish. Plants.”
“Did she say why?”
“She said species are dying out as the North Slope warms. And new ones are popping up. She said her parents concentrated on basic collecting, what’s the word, cataloging. She said they shipped their stuff back to New Jersey — and to a school in Norway.”
I’d not heard of this. “Norway?”
“Joint study. To write up everything they found. She wanted to go there. She showed me pictures. She said in Norway there are lots of big Arctic oil and gas projects.”
“But the Harmons didn’t do anything related to oil?”
He shrugged miserably, as if an inability to answer was an insult to Kelley. “I don’t think so.”