Captain Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville Police Department, did not have a nice thing to say about bicycling. Rather, it was not the bicycle itself about which he had nothing nice to say. It was the landscape beneath the bike he abhorred.  Macadam, asphalt, cement, earth, dirt, rock or mud, each and all were anathemas to him.  He resolved his dislike, distrust and distaste for bicycles with a single rule: If you do not ride a bicycle you will not fall off the bike.

Thus it was with a bit of existential glee he took the call from the North Pole, Alaska, Borough Sheriff’s Department.  A specific unscrupulous individual, Horatio McAlister, was quietly buying up discarded bicycles from communities’ bicycle shops.  He was doing the same with the Fairbanks bicycle shops as well.  To date he had purchased sixty bicycles in various conditions of unusability.  Some the bikes had wheels so twisted they could not straightened, snapped chassis, badly bent handlebars and rusted cranks. None of the parts could be salvaged so McAlister was able to buy the refuse by the dumpster load.

“There’s no crime in buying old bicycle pieces,” Noonan told Captain James Cook –[“No relation to THE James Cook of Southcentral Alaska,” Captain Cook had asserted.]  “I would have thought the Borough Troopers would be happy to see garbage put in good use.”

“True,” Captain Cook said sadly. “But you see, Horatio McAlister can’t put anything to a good use. He is the Borough bad boy and has been that way since he got out of the seminary.”

“He’s a priest gone bad?”  Noonan was surprised.

“Was never good. Promised his mom he’d try to mend his ways.  That lasted until his mother died. He was in his first year of seminary school.  When she was gone, so was he. Then it was back to his old ways.”

“OK,” Noonan chuckled as he found a notebook with an empty page.  “What were his old ways?”

“Right on the edge of felonies.  Nothing like burglary, assault or anything serious.  Serious, as in got sent to jail.  No violence. He sold marijuana, managed some after-hours joints because he was under 18 and when he was caught, he was simply released.  He was involved in some insurance scams. He and his buddies would buy a car, insure it and then it would be stolen, if you know what I mean.  The insurance company paid and the car magically appeared abandoned. They’d rebuy the same car at a police auction and whadyaknow, it would be stolen again. Happened with two planes and twice warehouses he owned burst into flames. He ran a fly-by-night car insurance racket for a while and did some bait-and-switch of electronic devices.  He’s the kind of a guy who’d rather steal a dime than earn an honest dollar.”

“I see,” Noonan said as he wrote “Con” on his notebook paper. “Did you do any surveillance on McAlister?  Is he stacking the bicycle parts on his property?”

“He doesn’t live in North Pole.  He has a small condo here when he comes to town but he lives outside of the Borough …”

“… for a good reason,” Noonan suggested.

“Yes, sir. He has a sizeable cabin on the Pedroni River. It was the original river where Felix Pedro made – and then lost – his largest gold find.”

“Let me guess, everyone’s been looking for it ever since.”

“Yup, McAlister among the prospectors.”

“And let me guess again, no one’s found zip.”

“The larger companies, yes. But they are in the prospecting business as professionals. The small time, man-with-a-pan operations are only finding small amounts.”

Noonan smiled.  “So you think whatever McAlister will be doing with the bicycle parts has to do with a scam to get gold.”

“I don’t think it,” Cook said confidently. “I know it. So I’m being proactive. Your name was given to me by the North Pole Commissioner of Homeland Security. She said if anyone could figure out what McAlister was up to, you could.”

“I’m flattered,” Noonan said as he shook his head sadly. “OK, I’m going to give you a number of questions.  When I call back in a few days I will want the answers to all of the questions at the same time.  Got it?”

“I do.  Give me the list.”

“Here goes, is McAlister buying anything else in North Pole or Fairbanks that is unusual or odd, how is he getting the bikes out to his property, does he use any bank in North Pole and Fairbanks, does he have a gang, how many are in the band, are any Alaska Native, does McAlister have a lawyer in town, does McAlister have a business of any kind in North Pole or Fairbanks and that’s all I can think of right now.

*  *  *

Noonan had actually been to North Pole on numerous occasions.  When his twins were young they wanted to visit the Santa Claus House even though the ‘real’ Santa Claus lived at the ‘real’ North Pole which was 1,800 miles further north. It was a quaint community with a population of about 2,000. The ‘Big City’ was Fairbanks, 20 minutes away with a population of about 40,000.

Noonan had never heard of the Pedroni River and none was listed on the internet.  So he started reading the newspapers of Fairbanks and North Pole. From the regularly publishing presses and tabloids, he got zip.  His best source was a supposed-mining journal published out of some dorm room in the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  It was actually a scam to get students to invest in the GOLD STRIKE on Pedroni River.  About half of the alleged facts were accurate.  Felice Pedroni, anglicized to Felix Pedro, had made a massive gold find in the area in 1902 and then lost it. Supposedly, that find has been rediscovered and there was a rush to stake land and pan for the gold. So far, about three million dollars in gold had been pulled from the river by the Pedroni Gold Company. This was probably true as the tabloid published pictures of the shacks with an arrow pointing to a smelting operation on site. Students were advised to join one of several “expeditionary companies” to stake land in the fall which they could work the next summer – the coming summer.  After all, “Finding gold would be a great – AND PROFITABLE – summer job!”  The buy-ins was in tiers. Students could buy stock in any one of several of the “expeditionary companies” for “as little as $1,000.” Or a student could work the riverfront claims for “$200 a month” which included food and a “bunk to sleep.”

The tabloid throbbed CON and Horatio McAlister.

*  *  *

When Noonan called Captain Cook back, he had a few preliminary questions. “Captain, is the Pedroni River in the North Pole Borough?”

“No.  That’s why the Sherriff’s Department is involved.  It’s outside both city and borough limits.”

“But it’s state land, correct?”

“That’s one of those yes and no answers.  The easy answer is the land on both sides of the river and below water are federal lands. Then there are a rat nest of regulations, state and federal, which have to be followed for digging into the land and getting to it. Anyone can claim the land for the purposes of mining. But you have to buy the land if you want to live there.  McAlister is living there and he has bought his land, for instance. But now it gets complicated.  The Governor of Alaska recently claimed the State of Alaska owns all land rights to navigable waters. Those rights are underwater too, not just the surface. So, technically, probably, if you find gold in the river, that is, below the waterline, it is going to be on State of Alaska land.”

“Is there a tax of any kind on gold found on Alaska land?”  Noonan chuckled at the statement. “I think I know the answer.”

“I’ll bet you do too,” Cook chuckled back.  “The quick answer is ‘not right now.’ The long-term answer is ‘quite likely.’ Federally speaking, gold is not income. You can mine gold and pay no taxes. But the moment you convert the gold to cash, it is called income.”

Noonan was writing furiously. “Another quick question, from what I have read, the big player on the river is the Pedroni Gold Company.  How close is McAlister’s land to the Gold Company land?”

“Right next door, upriver.”

“I should have figured that.  Tell me about the river.  Is it broad, deep, fast, whatever?”

“Depends on where you are.  Well, upriver from McAlister’s land the river is broad, slow-moving and shallow.  Just upriver from his land it narrows and moves a lot faster. It’s deeper there, the reason the Pedroni Gold Company has been able to dredge the bottom and get the nuggets. Then the land flattens out on both sides of the river; that’s where the Pedroni Gold Company is situated. But the river’s bottom rises about 20 yards further downriver to a boulder-patch. Then the water really speeds up.  The boulder area is about 200 yards in length and as wide as a football field.  It might be four feet deep there. Then the river spreads out and slows down.”

“Does McAlister own property on both sides of the river?”

“Yes. How’d you guess that?”

A distant gong went off in the convolutions of Noonan’s brain.

There was silence for a moment and then Cook asked, “Any other questions before I give you your answers?”

“Just one.  When the last time McAlister ran afoul of the law in Alaska?”

“About the time he bought the land on the Pedroni River.”

“But he did buy the land?”

“Cash.”

“OK. Now I’ll take those answers.”

Noonan heard Cook shuffling papers.  “Here you go, in the order you asked. McAlister is buying nothing else in North Pole or Fairbanks. I checked Anchorage and statewide records. He’s buying no land anywhere. I did not some checking of stores and he did buy about 40 concrete blocks and some cable. He split the block and cable purchases up so they were not all from the same store. He also bought a half-dozen pair of hip waders and a welding torch. He does not use a bank in North Pole.”

“Interesting,” Noonan said as he wrote down the answer. “Go on.”

Cook shuffled his papers again. “Everything McAlister buys is flown out to his land on the Pedroni River. He banks in North Pole but there’s not a lot of money in his account.  He has a gang; it’s called his family. Rotten to the core. He has an Alaska Native in-law but the man’s young, maybe 22 or 23. He’s a student at UAF and is hyping sales of claims along the river.”

“I’ve read his tabloid.”

“So far, everything is legal.”

“Hold onto your pantaloons. How about the other answers?”

“There are no felons working with McAlister and his lawyer is a sleazy mining lawyer, of all people, out of Fairbanks. The lawyer specializes in state land issues. Why McAlister needs a mining lawyer is beyond me.”

It did to Noonan.

The distant clang in Noonan’s mind was metaphorically deafening.

*  *  *

“According to his majesty,” Harriet, the office manager and office common sense maven, noted when she came into Noonan’s office the next Monday, “he stopped a nefarious plot in Alaska, of all places.”

“Crime never sleeps,” Noonan said as he casually looked over a cold case file.

“Don’t give me that song and dance.” Harriet sat in a chair beside his desk.  Then she leaned toward Noonan and pulled down the cold case file with her right index finger. “Now, tell momma what’s going on.”

“Not much. Just another loo-loo case.”

“I am waiting with bated breath.”

“Don’t go fishing that way. Just a simple case but you had to be an Alaskan to solve it. Or, at least predict it.”

“I’m all ears.”

“A rather dubious character in Alaska bought up some land on both sides of a river right next to a profitable gold mining operation.  Then he bought up about 60 broken bicycles along with some cement blocks and cables.”

“Odd. Why?”

“Just my guess.  A bit of politics is going to be played out.  The river where the gold is located was federal land.  But the State of Alaska has just claimed all water rights, above and below the surface, as State land.”

“So?”

“There are extensive mining regulations for federal land.  Not so much for state land.  But it’s not the regulations that make the difference. It’s who finds the gold underwater.”

“I’m lost.”

“Harriet, gold underwater is anyone’s.  Once you take it out of the water, it’s yours.  I told Captain Cook, the sheriff up there, what I thought was going to happen.  The Pedroni River is broad and deep as it flows through McAlister’s land.  He owns both sides of the river. Then it pinches off as it passes a gold extraction operation and slams into a boulder-chocked stretch of the river.”

“So?”

“You have to know Alaska winters in the Interior to understand. See, during the winter the rivers freeze from bank to bank. The colder the winter, the thicker the ice. Come spring, the rivers will break and the ice, in massive chunks, will float downstream as icebergs.  Riverbergs, actually. They will slowly break apart as they move downriver toward the ocean but in the Interior, the ocean is a thousand miles away.”

“Again, so?”

“As long as nothing stops the flow of the riverbergs as they flow downriver, they just go slowly and apart over the miles. But if something clogs the river, the ice cakes will pile up. Like a log jam but with ice.  The piling up of riverbergs forms a dam. As more and more riverbergs slam into ice dam, water builds up rapidly behind the dam. When the water level gets high enough – which is pretty quickly during spring breakup – the water will swirl around the ice dam and flood the countryside.”

“So the ice dam will flood out the gold mining company. So what?”

“There’s a tremendous amount of power in spring riverbergs and water, Harriett.  For years they took out bridges in Fairbanks.  The bad guy’s plan was simple. In late fall, about this time, he was going to cable the broken 60 bicycles and the cement blocks into a string long enough to cross the river. He’d give the string just enough slack keep the cable at surface level.

Then, as the Pedroni River was freezing – called freezeup in Alaska – the 60 broken bicycles and cement blocks would freeze into the ice in the river.”

“So they would be frozen in the ice. So what?”

“That was the heart of the whole plan, Harriett. When the river ice breaks from the shore, next spring, the ice will begin to shatter into smaller chunks. But the cabled bikes and cement will hold large ice blocks intact.  The unit will float downriver intact until it reaches a boulder-patch, just downriver from the gold company land, where it will hang up on the boulders. It will be like a dam and the waters of Pedroni River will build up and flood the land of the gold company.  My bet is the waters will wash out all of the gold company structures.”

“Won’t that wash out the gold too?”

“I doubt it.  Gold is heavy so it will sink to the bottom of the pooling water. The water will simply rush over the gold.”

“How does that help our crook?”

“Harriet, any gold under the water belongs to anyone!  The gold company isn’t making bullion bricks that have identifying marks. Their gold is just nuggets and gold dust melted together. There’s no way the gold company can claim any of the gold found by the perps is their gold.

 

After the rising waters have washed away the buildings, our miscreant and his family plan to wade through the water and pick up the gold left by the flood.  If it’s under the water, it’s anyone’s gold. And the gold company can’t go to federal court to get the gold back because the State of Alaska just seized control of Alaskan waterways which, as a matter of fact, is why our bad boy has a mining lawyer on retainer.

Harriet shook her head. “Let me guess, when the riverbergs held together by the bike and cement block netting finally get broken apart, everything washes downriver so there is no evidence of a crime.”

“That’s what’s so delicious about the plot – in the negative sense of the word, Harriet. There is no crime here. Our bad boy bought the bikes and cement blocks and cable honestly.  He owns land on both sides of the river so he can legally stretch the webbing across the river. If the ice sweeps his webbing downstream, it’s Mother Nature’s fault.”

“If it’s all legal, how can you stop him?”

“I can’t.”  Noonan smiled and then looked up at the ceiling tiles.  “But he can,” Noonan said pointing up three floors to the Sandersonville Commissioner of Homeland Security. “I suggested Homeland Security sequester the gold.  You know, just in case some nefarious forces may try to seize the gold for a heinous purpose.  The Office of Homeland Security does not need a court order.  It just seizes the gold and gives the mining company a receipt. The gold may be on State of Alaska land but that doesn’t make any difference to the Office of Homeland Security.”

“So the gold will be off the gold mining company’s property when the river rises next spring.”

“You got it. No one gets busted but the gold is safe.”

“What about the bad boy?”

“Oh, he’ll be back. But next time he’ll have to be a gold digger, not a gold wader.”