Shaman Pass Read Online Free

that before. Even if I don’t cut it, that chain is evidence now. You’re going to be sitting in my jail and Dolly’s going to be trapped in the house with that damned monster of yours. Now put out your wrists.”
    Maiyumerak put his hands behind him and backed away. “Wait a minute, maybe I could unlock it.”
    Silver dropped the handcuffs to his side. “All right. Do it.”
    “In fifteen minutes I could.”
    “Fifteen minutes?” Silver’s smile vanished. “Why not right now?”
    “Fifteen minutes.” Maiyumerak’s lips took on a stubborn set. “That’s my protest. Fifteen minutes.”
    Silver glanced at his watch, started to say something, checked himself, and looked at Malcolm Anirak.
    Anirak, who had his window down and was watching from the warmth of his pickup, shrugged. “I guess I could go get a cup of coffee.”
    “OK.” Silver turned to Maiyumerak. “You can have your fifteen minutes, but none of your bullshit when I get back. You take off that chain and clear out, or you’re going to jail. Just like when you put seal oil on the seats of the tour bus, remember?”
    Maiyumerak showed them the gap in his teeth again. “Smell good.”
    “Not to tourists,” Silver said. “To tourists, seal oil smells like dead fish.”
    Maiyumerak grinned again, then looked stubborn once more. “But you have to pull your gun on me, too.”
    Silver groaned. “I pull my gun when I’m going to shoot somebody. You want to get shot?”
    “You have to make me stop with your gun. So I can put it in my petition to the United Nations.”
    Silver swore and stuck out the handcuffs. “All right, damn it, the deal’s off. Gimme your wrists.”
    Maiyumerak put his hands behind his back, looking more stubborn than ever.
    “OK, how about this?” Silver made a pistol with his hand, pointed it at Maiyumerak, and jerked his thumb up in a cocking motion. “Symbolic gunpoint, will that work?”
    Maiyumerak relaxed, grinned, and behind the mirror glasses lifted his eyebrows in the Eskimo yes.
    Silver dropped his hands to his side, drew himself up to full height, and put on a stern expression. “Calvin Ray Maiyumerak, in the name of the Chukchi Public Safety Department—”
    “And against the United Nations Charter on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” Maiyumerak said.
    “— and in possible violation of the United Nations Charter on Whatever, if there is such a thing, I hereby order you, at symbolic gunpoint, to unlock your damned snowmachine and vacate these premises within fifteen minutes or you will be arrested and incarcerated in the jail of the Chukchi Public Safety Department for an indefinite period of time.”
    Silver raised his right hand, turned it into a pistol again, cocked his thumb, and put his index finger to the middle of Maiyumerak’s forehead. “OK?”
    Maiyumerak grinned and lifted his eyebrows again.
    Silver pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, then turned and strode toward his Bronco. “Just another day in the annals of Chukchi law enforcement,” he said as he passed Active.
    “I’m speechless with admiration,” Active said, straddling the purple Yamaha.
    Silver turned for another look at Maiyumerak, who had unbungeed the FREE UNCLE FROSTY sign and was waving it while he marched in circles before the loading door as Kennelly snapped away with his camera.
    Then Silver swung on Active with a suspicious frown. “Of whom?”
    Active grinned and shrugged.
    “Fucking Calvin,” Silver said. “You wanta get some lunch?”

    ACTIVE WAS working at his desk shortly after noon two days later when Silver stepped into his office.
    “Fucking Calvin,” the police chief said. “You hear?”
    “Hear what?”
    “The museum was burglarized last night, and guess what’s missing.”
    “Wha—you mean Uncle Frosty?”
    Silver nodded grimly.
    “No kidding. And Calvin did it?”
    “Who else?”
    Active couldn’t help smiling a little. “And what does he have to say for himself? Just exercising his