“The bank doesn’t care as long as the mortgage gets paid.”
“You think the place belongs to Joane and Clifford?” Lester looked doubtful.
“I am curious, that’s all.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s head out to Cape Blossom. We can take the bypass on the other side of the airport and come up along the shore.”
“I wasn’t avoiding that,” Meghan said. She knew it was the right decision. “We have to do that.”
Meghan climbed on the back of the Polaris. Lester revved the machine and pulled away from the pale house on Rurik Way.
The last thing Meghan wanted to think was something awful happened to Christine. So far, over the previous twelve hours, they had a girl who went missing. Sometimes to get a little attention, kids will act out, hide, ‘cry wolf.’ The longer it went on, the more it looked like their worries became legitimate.
Heading to the coastline to check the ice blocks that hampered the shoreline seemed like the first place to look for some people. Meghan wanted to keep an optimistic approach. She was a realist. If Christine Tuktu decided to hop on the ice, then racing along the shoreline was the act of a desperate person who thought the worst.
Kids in the north faced the same problems as anyone else in the world. The opportunity came once a year when winter lost is clutches on the land and water. Jumping on pans of freed ice presented too tempting a curiosity for many of the younger residents of the city. Meghan and her officers warned children throughout the weeks’ long break up the season when open water wasn’t an option immediately, and ice roads turned risky. The sheets of floating ice weren’t stable. They were impossible to predict and never a good idea to play on. The trouble with teenagers and adolescents, the more someone said ‘no,’ the more they wanted to do it.
Since Meghan’s tenure as police chief, they had a few close calls, one set of teens who needed rescuing when their ice panning—jumping on ice floes—took them too far away from shore to get back without taking a dip. They returned to shore safely, and Meghan had their parents billed for the cost of boat fuel for the rescue. The problem with falling in icy water wasn’t necessarily hypothermia as much as getting crushed or trapped under the ice sheets. It was a popular and dangerous sport. The older people got, the more they realized how foolish they were as kids. Sometimes it was about a reality check and the death of a child that woke up a community to traditionalism that needed a modern approach. Meghan knew kids did dangerous things sometimes and survived to look back and reflect on the near-death fun they had once they grew to adulthood. Sometimes it was to lament the few youngsters who never grew up.
Chapter Eleven
The call came from Oliver while they were halfway along the elevated tundra trail way. It was an expansive project road set up by the state and city for the community to have a way to experience the tundra and wildlife outside town. Cape Blossom Road started as a contractor project years before Meghan arrived. She appreciated the scenic view and isolation occasionally. Mostly she drove it at night or during the summer when school let out and kids had nothing to do around town. The nature trail became a place to get away from adults. It was a place for parties, and sometimes, when people thought they got away with smuggling booze into the neighborhood.
That Sunday afternoon it was sunny and cold, a little windy away from town. Lester drove at a steady speed, looping back toward the airport.
“Hey Chief,” Oliver said. Meghan tapped Lester’s shoulder for him to slow to a stop. Oliver sounded far away and tired. “You need to get to the south side of town. “The Air Force patrol spotted something on the ice.”
It was enough for the cold air that surrounded Meghan to crawl inside her. She felt her blood run cold. It was the worst feeling next to the reality that what they fear and never expressed openly finally happened.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m with Duane and Ulva.”
“Do they know yet?”
“Yep,” he said.
“Okay. Do your best to keep anyone who isn’t law enforcement away from the area. We’re about twenty-five minutes from there. We’ll take the east road to the fence and ride down. How far out is it?” Meghan avoided personifying whatever the military police saw. She kept it vague because it gave her a little hope.
“I got all this third-party,” Oliver said. “I think it’s around the hump heading southward along the coastline. You know how the ice gets away from shore and drifts into the Sound? It’s probably along the peninsula arm.”
“Okay, thanks Oliver. Stay with the mayor. Have Duane help keep people back. The last thing anyone needs this weekend is more bad news.”
“Sure, Chief,” he said and ended the call.
Meghan shared a look with Lester.
“Where?” he asked.
***
Four miles south of Kinguyakkii, the General Surveillance Radar station was an active long-range radar site that acted as part of the Alaska NORAD region. In 1958, the Army Transportation Corps completed the project to act as early warning defense system for the United States. The United States Air Force commissioned the construction for the Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron as an extended arm for the Air Support Group out of Elmendorf AFB outside Anchorage.
Since it began operations in 1958, the support barracks and ongoing construction created a township on the south peninsula arm of the Kinguyakkii spit. The personnel stations, power and heat plant, gymnasium, furl storage, and full facilities had an active military presence year-round that never interacted with the city. Meghan never worried about the place because the soldiers never
