Village of the Ghost Bears by Stan Jones

went to prison for trafficking in bear gallbladders, and he blamed me and Jim. Jim figured there might be trouble when he got out.”
    Carnaby was rubbing his chin. “Do I remember this case?”
    “I think it was right around the time you got assigned here,” Long said. “And before you came, Nathan.”
    “Must be,” Active said. “It’s all new to me.”
    “Wait a minute, I think I remember it,” Carnaby said. “The Feds didn’t say anything till they made the case and arrested the guy. Then I got a courtesy call from an agent in Anchorage.”
    “Sounds right,” Long said. “You know how the Feds are.”
    Carnaby nodded. “So the guy is out now?”
    Long bobbed his head vigorously. “Yep, he was released from the federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, about three weeks ago and hasn’t been heard from since.”
    “You checked?” Carnaby asked.
    Another nod. “I called the prison and caught his case officer on her way out the door. She said Lee was due to check in with his parole officer in Anchorage two weeks ago, so I called the guy at home, and he hasn’t heard a peep from Mr. Lee yet.”
    “Maybe he slipped back into Korea,” Carnaby said. “I would, if Alaska didn’t work out for me.”
    “I don’t think so.” Long shifted in his chair and began straightening the papers from the Jae Hyo Lee file.
    “Why not?” Active asked.
    “This is not going to put
    “This is not going to put the chief in too good of a light,” Long said.
    Carnaby sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “All right, Alan. Back up, start over, and tell it all, in chronological order. The bear gallbladders, Jae Hyo Lee, why he’d blame you and Jim, and how any of it puts the chief in a bad light.”
    Long chewed his lip for a moment. “Also, it’s kind of a Cape Goodwin deal.”
    “Oh, no,” Active said.
    “Oh, God,” Carnaby said. “Cape Goodwin. What’s the saying? Famous for twins and schizophrenia—”
    “And polar bears,” Active finished. The village of Cape Goodwin, poor, tiny, and afflicted with a terminal case of beach erosion, lay sixty miles up the coast from Chukchi, just north of the landmark for which it was named. In a few years, the village was to be moved inland because of its disappearing beach, if the money could be found. If not, Cape Goodwin would presumably disappear also.
    “Oh, it’s not so bad,” Long said. “I got an uncle up there, an aunt, some cousins. I go whaling with them sometimes. They’re pretty normal.”
    “Sorry, Alan,” Carnaby said. “I was just repeating what I’d heard.”
    “I know a lot of people say it,” Long said.
    “But polar bears—wasn’t there a deal up there a few years go?” Carnaby asked. “I remember there was a big writeup about it in the Anchorage Daily News . Some guy’s walking down the street with his pregnant wife, and a polar bear jumps them, right there in the middle of the village?”
    Long raised his eyebrows. “That was Ossie Barton. I knew him for a couple years when his parents sent him down here for high school. He was a good guy.”
    The story was a new one to Active. “So, what happened? He shoot the bear?”
    Long shook his head. “He didn’t have his rifle along, so he tells his wife to run and he pulls out a pocket knife and takes on the bear with that. She gets to a house, screaming for help, and the guy inside grabs his rifle and comes out and shoots the bear, but it’s already too late for Ossie. At least he got the bear, though. He worked it over good enough with his knife that it had nearly bled to death by the time they shot it.”
    “Christ,” Active said.
    “Uh-huh,” Long said. “So they do a necropsy, and the polar bear is real skinny and there’s almost nothing in his stomach. It was like he couldn’t hunt like a regular polar bear, so he started coming into the village, taking garbage and dogs and what-not like they do, and then he made the mistake of taking on Ossie.”
    They were all silent for