I did some quick math. Given the cost of development, construction, and maintenance, and a very limited life span, the profit in diamond mining had to be monstrous.

“Where is Kennady Lake?” I asked.

“Roughly three hundred kilometers north of here. Ninety kilometers southeast of De Beers’s Snap Lake mine.”

“What does this have to do with Eric Skipper?”

“Throughout the review process, the panel holds open sessions at the local level, so anyone interested can express his or her opinion.”

I saw where she was going. “Skipper came to Yellowknife for one of these town meetings.”

“And ended up dead.”

“What did he plan to say?”

“Don’t fuck with the caribou.”

“How long was he here?”

“He left Brampton on March first. By bus.”

“Allowing for travel time, that means he was in Yellowknife a few days before he died. Did he get into any trouble while he was here?”

“Let’s find out.” She dialed, then leaned back. The chair made a sound like an air compressor gasping its last.

“Hey, Frank. Maureen King.”

A tinny voice said something I couldn’t make out.

“I’m good.”

More tin.

“Tell her to keep applying heat. She’ll be fine. Listen, do you remember a guy named Eric Skipper? Came from Ontario to speak his piece at a review panel session in March 2008.”

Tin laughter.

“Didn’t think so. Do me a favor, run the name? See if anything pops?”

Tin.

“No, I’ll wait.”

She laid the receiver on the blotter.

To me, “This shouldn’t take long.”

It took ten minutes. As Frank spoke, King took notes. “Thanks. Have a good one.”

She said to me, “Skipper made it into the books, all right. On March seventh, 2008, G Division got a call about two guys having a throw-down in a parking lot on Forty-seventh. The responding officers defused the situation and made no arrests. One combatant was Horace Tyne. The other was Eric Skipper.”

That was a shocker.

“What were they fighting about?”

“The incident report consists of two lines.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Tyne sees himself as the savior of the tundra. He and Skipper should have been comrades.”

Our eyes met. We were on the same page.

“A little face time with Captain Caribou?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

*  *  *

Ryan called as we were pulling into Behchoko. For the first time in days, he sounded energized.

“We got him.”

“Unka?”

“Yes.”

“Where was he?”

I looked at King. She gave a thumbs-up.

“Some kind of root cellar under a barn behind his mother’s house. Looked like goddamn Saddam Hussein crawling out of his spider hole.”

“You didn’t notice it when you first tossed the place?”

“He’d parked an old truck over the pull-up panels, then crawled under and down. Bastard had the place tricked out with camping gear and a battery-operated TV. I guess Mama delivered meals.”

“Where is he now?”

“Sitting in an interview room, trying to look tough.”