A Stranger in Town: a Rockton novel

by Armstrong, Kelley

  An adventure is what she wanted. What she got, I fear, is a true taste of what it means to be dropped off in the wilderness a hundred miles from the nearest community.

  This morning, Dalton and I had sat on a patio, enjoying a coffee and a pastry in what felt like summer sunshine. Another group of tourists had walked by, American weekend warriors in full gear, talking about their plans for backwoods camping up in Tombstone. Dalton had tracked their progress down the street and muttered, “Fucking climate change.”

  A local sitting nearby had chuckled and said, “And here we thought we had another two weeks of peace and quiet.”

  What Dalton meant, though, was that climate change is a trickster, luring outsiders into the wilderness before Mother Nature is ready to receive them. According to today’s weather reports, by midafternoon, Dawson City would be the warmest place in Canada, which is truly insane. Yet when we left our beds predawn to hike the Ninth Avenue Trail, we’d layered up with fleece. Those hikers were about to head into the wilderness, expecting gorgeous weather, when the truth was that they could be buried under a foot of snow tomorrow. At the very least, they’d encounter frozen lakes and muddy bogs.

  As we wait for my sister, I cannot help building a potential story for this woman. She’s in good shape. Maybe thirty. Probably has some experience with the outdoors. Comes to the Yukon for her Canadian adventure. Dropped off in the wilderness. Then something goes wrong. The abdominal injury is almost certainly a freak accident. She slipped on mud or ice coming down the mountainside and impaled herself on a branch.

  The next step should be to turn on your satellite phone and call for help. Had she underestimated the severity of her injury? Realized how much an emergency pickup would cost and decided she’d “tough it out”? I’d love to say that no one who bought this brand of outdoorsman wear would risk their life to save a rescue charge, but people are not always rational.

  There’s another reason her sat phone might have failed, though I cringe to consider it. Our own radios barely work, and the council—who run our town from the safety of civilization—blame all kinds of environmental factors, but we think they employ technology that interferes with the signals, ensuring residents are truly cut off from the outside world.

  Whatever the reason, this woman failed to get help, and what started as a coolheaded search for civilization would have turned into a panicked run, as fever set in. She keeps running until she loses her shoes and is too far gone to care. Finally hears voices, laughter even, and races toward the sound, only to collapse the moment she sees salvation.

  It’s a reasonable story, and I’m sure it bears at least a superficial resemblance to the truth. There’s only one element missing. One element that tells me this is more than a woman whose adventure went horribly awry.

  She is alone.

  No reputable bush plane operator would drop off a solitary tourist in the forest. That means she came with at least one other person.

  So how did she wind up here, injured and alone?

  I’m not sure I want the answer to that.

  3

  Seventy minutes after sending the boys off, we hear the roar of the ATV. It’s dusk now, sliding into darkness, and the lights of the vehicle appear moments after I hear the engine. I run to meet it with Storm at my heels. The wide path ends where we left the horses, and they need to finish the journey on foot. I’m there both to direct April and to bring her up to speed.

  The first person I see isn’t April. Not unless my sister has turned into a guy with his sleeves pushed up to show off impressive muscles and a US Army tattoo. That would be Will Anders, our deputy, driving the ATV.

  Anders leaps out as he yanks off his helmet. The woman in the passenger seat is taking her sweet time removing hers and then placing it in the back seat before climbing from the vehicle.

  When Dalton first met April, he’d known instantly that she is my sister. The resemblance, obviously. Except it wasn’t obvious to me. I overlook the parts we both inherited from our Filipino-Chinese mother—high cheekbones, heart-shaped face, dark straight hair. In April, I only ever see the things we don’t share, the ones she inherited from our Scottish side—her pale skin, her blue eyes, her hourglass figure, all of which mean it’s rare for anyone to ask where she came from, whether she speaks English, does she know any good local sushi restaurants . . .

  April can pass for white, and I cannot, and this has always felt like a division that superseded all similarities. The world told us that this meant we did not look like sisters, and that made the gulf between us feel all the more impassable.

  “Hey.” Anders throws one arm around my shoulders. “You doing okay?”

  “Better than our patient.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He hefts the medical bag in his hand. “I’ll run ahead and get started.”

  “Did April pack sedatives? She’s going to need it.”

  “Sebastian warned us. We’ve got extra. Everything’s good.” He claps a hand against my back and takes off to begin triage.

  Anders was premed when he enlisted in the army. He’d gotten some medic training before his superiors switched him to MP duty. He’d have made a fine medic, but he made an even better cop. When a fight breaks out in Rockton, we send Anders first. Most times, he just needs to turn up the charm, and people forget what they were arguing about. If fists do fly, he’s got the muscle to subdue any resident and the equanimity not to throw any unnecessary punches doing it. He keeps up his medical training, though. In Rockton, we can always use more people who know how to set a broken bone or stitch a gash.

  He’s halfway down the path before my sister makes her way to me.

  “Come on, April,” I say. “Can we pick up the pace? This isn’t a garden party.”

  “No, it’s a bonfire party. Or it was, until this woman intruded.”

  I stifle a snort. “She’s in septic shock, April. I think she can be forgiven for party-crashing.”

  “Septic shock is your diagnosis. You are a not a physician, Casey, and I will reserve judgment until I see the patient.”

  “At this rate, we won’t need a physician. We’ll need a coroner. Come on.”

  “Running pell-mell through the forest is a sure way to end up like this woman. Sebastian says it looks as if she fell and injured herself.”

  “Mmm. I could speculate, but if I do, you’ll remind me that I’m not a doctor.”

  She shoots a hard look my way as we continue toward the lake. As I tell her my theory, I leave out the “fell on a branch” part. That’s where I’m most likely to be mistaken, and part of me will always be the little girl who doesn’t want to look foolish in front of her big sister.

  It doesn’t help that April’s autism means she has no problem making me feel foolish. I know that’s not her fault, but a diagnosis thirty years late doesn’t undo the damage. I grew up with parents who always made me feel not quite up to snuff, intellectually, and a sister who didn’t realize that every time she “made allowances for my diminished mental capacity,” I felt stupid and useless. It was hard to make anyone understand that when my IQ put me well above average. I just wasn’t a genius like the rest of my family.

  “Does that make sense?” she says when I finish my theory.

  I tense. “Does . . . what make sense?”

  “That she fell and injured her stomach.”

  There are a lot of things I hate my parents for, but this tops the list—that they knew April was on the spectrum and ignored it because, to them, it meant their child was broken. Yes, if I’m being charitable, I’ll admit that maybe they thought this was best for April. Treat her as if she were neurotypical and refuse to allow her to be labeled or otherwise held back. In the end, though, it led to a woman who spent her life feeling different and blaming it on herself.

  One of our residents, Kenny, has an autistic brother, and when he talks to April, I swear it’s like seeing someone speak a language I never learned, a language I desperately want to master. When April questio
ns whether my theory makes sense, it sounds combative, and my hackles rise, even as a voice inside me says that’s not how she means it.

  I take a deep breath and explain that, with the rough terrain and the endless slopes—foothills and mountains and valleys—one of the biggest dangers isn’t falling off an edge, but losing your footing and sliding.

  “One of the residents died from that in the nineties,” I say. “He slipped on a muddy slope and impaled himself on a branch. Before that, a woman had to be rushed into emergency surgery for a punctured lung after falling on her own walking stick.”

  “I am well aware of the past cases, Casey. I’m the town doctor. I have the files.”

  Deep breath. “Yes, but they’re very old cases, and I wouldn’t expect you to read them much less remember them.”

  “Others perhaps. Not us,” she says with a sniff, and I do not fail to miss that “us.” One inclusive word that has the little girl inside me dancing with glee.

  We reach the lake and start across it.

  “My point,” April continues, “is that I believe there are far more rational explanations for the abdominal injury.”

  That inner child sags. “Uh-huh.”

  “Have you considered the fact she may have been attacked by her companion?”

  “Sure, that’s a possibility but—”

  “Shot perhaps? Or knifed?”

  “Knifed?” That is not a word my sister uses. “Okay, those are possibilities, but I prefer to start with the ones that don’t involve crazed companions—”

  “He—or she—doesn’t have to be crazed. The isolation drove them to lash out, perhaps over the last piece of chocolate.” A glance my way. “I’m sure you could appreciate that.”

  I laugh more than the joke warrants. Attempting humor is a new thing for my sister, and we may overencourage her, rather like showering Storm with praise when she picks up a difficult scent trail. April would love that comparison.

  Before I can answer, April continues, “It might also be a mountain man, who attacked her in her sleep. Or perhaps she was part of a group, friends who had a falling-out, and she is the lone survivor. It could have been sexual jealousy. Two friends both coveting the same lover, and when one is spurned for the other, the spurned lover—”

  “—massacres the group. All except her. As we’ll soon discover, though, she wasn’t the lone survivor. She was the killer.”

  “That is a very good theory. We’ll have to be careful.”

  I bite my lip and struggle to keep a straight face. With anyone else, I’d presume they were mocking me. My own theory sounds outlandish, so they come up with even more outlandish ones. Except mockery, like humor, is not part of my sister’s DNA. Her words can cut deeper than any sword, but they are spoken in honesty. Harsh truth.

  “You’re enjoying those mystery novels you borrowed from the library, aren’t you,” I say, apropos of absolutely nothing.

  “They are a much more pleasant way to pass the time than I imagined. Isabel is correct that a mental break is useful for lowering stress, but what I feared would be a frivolous waste of my time has turned into quite the mental challenge. Piecing together the clues, avoiding the trap of the red herring, identifying the killer . . .”

  “A lot more fun to read about than to actually do for a living.”

  She waves a hand. “That’s an entirely different thing.”

  “It is.”

  “The detectives in the novels always find the clues and follow a clear path to the killer. You spend far too much time dithering about, talking to the wrong people, chasing subpar leads, waiting for some vital piece of information to land in your lap. You could learn something from those books, Casey.”

  “Right . . .”

  “I’m not saying you’re a poor detective. You’re actually quite adept. But there is always room for improvement.”

  “Oh, look,” I say, raising my voice. “We’ve reached the patient. Finally.”

  Dalton takes the cue and strides over, guiding April to the injured woman, as if she could somehow miss her. Not that she’d ever snap at him for providing the obvious. To April, Dalton is competency incarnate, and there is no greater compliment she could give.

  I’m heading off to speak to Felicity when April’s sharp voice cuts through the quiet. “Casey?”

  I turn, slowly, trying not to cringe.

  “I am about to examine the victim. Don’t you need to be here, taking notes?”

  “Victim?” Dalton mouths.

  I shake my head, telling him not to ask, and I make my way back to my sister as she lowers herself beside the injured woman.

  * * *

  It’s well past midnight. We’re still on the ice, the two fires lighting our makeshift emergency room. Baptiste and Sidra have left with the baby, and they’re camped nearby with Felicity.

  The mystery woman is indeed in septic shock, as my sister grudgingly admits, while issuing another warning against me practicing medicine without a license. I say nothing about her detecting without a badge.

  The woman is asleep now. At first, April had been reluctant to administer the sedative—the woman had been resting, if fitfully, and as April said, we can’t question her about her injuries if she’s unconscious. I could point out the “can’t communicate with her even when she is talking” language issue, but April would probably just suggest I wasn’t trying hard enough.

  Fortunately, we never reached that point. As soon as April tried to look at her patient’s stomach, the woman demonstrated why we needed the sedative. We wrestled her down while my sister administered it, and once that took effect, we were finally able to examine that horrific wound.

  “Horrific” is no exaggeration. The flesh surrounding the wound was rotting and putrid, and April had to excise dead tissue to get a look at what lay beneath. Even then, there wasn’t any sign of what caused the injury. No tree splinters. No bullet burns, either. Yes, April’s wild theories amused me, but that didn’t mean I was set on a diagnosis of accidental injury. It was just more dangerous to leap to the conclusion that she’d been attacked, only to have her wake up later and say “Oh, no, I just fell on a branch” after we’d spent days combing the woods for her attacker.

  Crime fighting in Rockton often feels like being transported back to the world of Sherlock Holmes. April can complain about me “dithering about,” but most of that is Holmesian thinking and working through the case by making endless notes.

  When it comes to actual crime-scene equipment, I’m back in the Victorian age, with my fingerprint dust and rudimentary ballistics. If I need DNA testing, I can send a sample to a lab down south, but so far I haven’t had a case that a modern crime-scene test would break faster than old-fashioned sleuthing.

  Medicine faces similar constraints. Being off-grid means we do have power from generators and solar panels, but that goes to essentials, mostly cooking and food preservation. If April had an emergency case requiring our entire power supply, though, we’d all be eating fire-cooked food for a few days, because medical care is our priority. Yet mostly she’s had to wean herself off technology the same way I have.

  She works into the night using the combined light of bonfires and strong flashlights. We hold the latter as she abrades the infected wound and then assesses damage. An ultrasound may help here, and she has a portable one in Rockton, but it appears that the injury hasn’t done more than nick the woman’s intestines. That’s what I already suspected. This woman has been alive with this wound for a few days now, which means it didn’t puncture a vital organ.

  The short version is that, had she gotten medical care immediately, she’d be in a hospital bed, probably arguing with the doctors to let her out of it. The issue isn’t the wound as much as what happened after—days of stumbling through the Yukon wilderness, each step aggravating the injury, while infection set in.

  Her feet and calves are a mess, testifying to the sheer hell of the journey that brought her to us. Two toes are frostbitten and will pr
obably need amputation.

  Besides cuts, scratches, and dehydration, there are no other obvious wounds. Or that’s what April concludes. She’s wrong, though, and I take no pleasure in pointing that out. Whatever our issues, proving April wrong is uncomfortable for me and always has been, even when we were children. Perhaps even then I’d realized, deep down, that she didn’t point out my own flaws and mistakes to be cruel.

  I glance at Anders, who’s assisting April. “Can you grab me a pop? I’m getting a little dehydrated myself.”

  April turns a hard look on me. “If you’ve allowed yourself to get into that state, then I believe you can remain there a little longer, Casey.”

  “She’s not actually asking for a soda, April,” Anders says. “She’s asking me to step away.”

  “Then she should say so.”

  “I was trying to be discreet,” I say.

  “Asking for refreshments in the middle of a medical procedure is hardly discreet. I presume you are questioning my assessment. I do not need you to correct me in private. I’m a grown woman, capable of handling criticism.”

  I’m opening my mouth to apologize when she adds, “However, since it’s unlikely I’m mistaken, if you wish to be corrected in private, I understand that. Your ego is more fragile.”

  Off to the side, Dalton gives me a sympathetic eye roll as he holds the flashlight for us.

  “I believe this scratch is significant,” I say, running my finger along a shallow cut in the woman’s side abdomen.

  “She has many cuts, Casey. She was fleeing through the forest.”

  “This part of her body was under several layers of bandage.”

  April goes still and then blanches, just a little.

  I continue. “It’s possible that this cut is unconnected, but there’s also something here.” I take her forceps and point. “This looks like part of the abdominal injury, but I don’t think it is. There’s a deeper wound over here.” I move the forceps an inch to the left. “That seems like impalement of some sort. An object that went directly in, causing a deep wound. This part here”—I pull back—“is much shallower. The infection has made it seem like it’s all one injury running together, especially after abrading the dead tissue. But if that other part is impalement, what’s this?”