Life was overwhelming to Deputy Ch'ák’. He used to come to Echo Beach with his wife when they were in high school. It over looks the bay side islands and main causeway to the mainland that took a long northeast route. This was a US territory, seized with out treaty or funds allocated. His people have been shoved around for years, villages torn down for Naval bases, kids stolen away to Catholic schools. They were technically in Canada on the map, tied into the Prince William Sound by a network of causeways. This no mans land was finally given back to his tribe when the shipyards went bust and the ground water was full of so many cancers that the military didn’t want to clean it up so it was abandoned. Families where are named after animal clans. Eagle-Ch'ák', Elk-Gowukàn, Wolf-Gòoch, Whale-Yáy, Bear-S’èek, Raven-Yéil, Beaver-S’ugeidée, Seal-Tsàh, Honey Bee-Gundas'ajée, Duck-T’awúk.
There is a beauty here that defies the surrounding terrain. A microclimate of vast ecological diversity. Animals found here are listed extinct elsewhere. Songbirds, mammals and marine life could make this an oasis in the world outside. The families here speak the Tlingit and Haida languages, share customs but they are unrecognized by larger Federally funded tribes. Many people here survive on welfare. The causeway brings in outsiders and death. Abandoned logging camps mean the roads here are perfect for big rigs and many young girls here run away or are found dead in equal number. He picks up the golden tinged sand and casts it into the sea foam as he takes one last look at the causeway and bridge where his wife died, that cleaved his head open in a giant hook scar along his scalp. Leaving him neurologically damaged, perhaps more emotionally than mentally.
Radio squawking as the dawn sun turns from red to silver on a white horizon of morning mist. Birds fleeing the cold fly south over head. The call was about a body. A young woman found wrapped in a carpet and hidden in a pile of snow that hadn’t melted in the summer thaw as it sat in the shadow of the mountain. He drives his tan and brown police Bronco to the scene. A drunk driver at hit the snow pile and revealed a human foot protruding. Locals with axes and pry-bars dashed open the snow pile that had sat so long it had settled into a block of dirty ice. Full of leaves, broken brambles and fast food cartons. Inside, frozen solid was turquoise shag carpet with a woman’s feet protruding from the bottom. Unable to unroll the carpet it was transported whole to defrost at the station and await the Medical Examiner.
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The Sheriff as a small and brutish man who although claiming Native ancestry looked more like a balding Eastern European. He made sexual jokes and had a loud and dismissive tone with subordinates. They call the Sheriff “Naak'w s'aati” or Witch Man, not because he is particularly powerful or mysterious, but their other term of disparagement “Skookum” means Sasquatch or White Man is a word he knows and reacts violently to. The Sheriff comes from the the Seal and Bear clans that have died out because he never had kids and his sisters family were killed in a fishing boat accident back in the 70s. They own a junkyard and handles most of the impounds with exclusive contact with the state of Alaska. Also makes him the town used car salesman.
The Deputies group up around the coffee vending machine joking around sports and current news headlines. Once the M.E. arrives from the mainland they huddle around the square window as Sheriff S’ugeidée watches the frozen carpet cut off with a bone saw. Inside is a perfectly preserved Native Women. Jane Doe is mid 20s, tan skin, approx 130 pounds and 5.6. She has silver duct tape around her mouth and the horrible part. Blue Draino coming out of her nose and had caustic acid wounds, burned out pieces of her eyes. The burns were deep and black from age. She was beautiful once and somebody killed her and discarded her corpse in a pile of snow beside a road. A sad reality for Native women across the new world.