by Sue Henry
she examined the feet and legs of those she had taken on the run, carefully making sure they had sustained no damage from the unstable ice and snow.
Finished with kennel work for the moment, Jessie went into the tent and took off her boots and outer gear.
She put the kettle on for tea and, turning on the space heater, hung the soggy boot liners and wool socks that she had changed on the trail and brought home in her sled bag near it to dry.
“Looks like you went wading,” Mac commented.
“Not by choice, believe me. Some of these younger mutts I’m training need more lessons in coping with spring conditions—specifically the right way to cross half-thawed creeks.”
He grinned. “They looked pretty dry now.”
“They dry faster and easier than people. I don’t have fur to shake.”
For a few minutes, until the tea was ready, he asked questions, and she briefly described the physical and mental conditioning and education of young sled dogs.
“It’s much more complicated than I imagined,” he told her, accepting a mug of tea. “I guess I thought you just put them in harness and it was natural for them to pull sleds.”
“A lot of it’s natural ability, but it takes much more than that to make real winners of sled dogs. Some of it’s quite subtle and even goes against their natural ten-dencies—like the hunting instinct for chasing moose that I have to discourage aggressively. We saw one today that made them crazy, but the older dogs dragged the younger ones along till they got over it. It takes a long time and a lot of patience and positive reinforce-
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ment to help them learn to do things right—a lot like people, I guess. But you didn’t come out here for a lesson on mushing, did you?”
She sat down on one of the metal chairs and faced him across the table, mug of tea clutched between both hands, instinct for self-preservation rising.
“No,” he admitted. “One of the guys who helped
load your sled on Petersville Road is out of state on business—won’t be back for a week. I found the other one, Gary Jeffers, but he says they didn’t see anyone with you, that the reason they had to help you lift the sled was that you couldn’t do it alone.”
She thought about it and remembered Anne climb-
ing immediately into the cab of the truck in a sulk. It was possible that they hadn’t noticed her. The truck itself had been between them, with the cab farthest away from where they were working with their snowmachines. She explained this to MacDonald, frowning with the frustration of having her proof vanish.
“Dammit, anyway. She was there, Mac. She was being a real pain, but she was in the cab of the truck.”
“Look, Jessie. Is Petersville Road a place you usually use for training?”
“No. It would waste a lot of time—and money for
gas—to haul the dogs seventy miles back and forth every time when there are lots of trails right here for day runs. For overnights, I run them out toward
Skwentna along the Iditarod Trail, more often than not.
I haven’t been on the Trapper Creek trails since I lived up there ten years ago.”
“You lived there?”
“Yes, for part of a winter. That’s how I got to know
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the Holmans. But it was too far from town and the trails weren’t all that good.”
“But, unless you had some reason other than training, you wouldn’t have gone out there?”
“That’s right.”
“What was that reason? Tell me again.”
Jessie stared at him. This man was no dummy. He
had put his finger on the key question. She frowned and shook her head. What was important to tell him and what not? Should all her feeling of responsibility to maintain a confidence have disappeared with Anne?
Exactly why had she taken Anne out there? Mostly so she would leave—to stop her begging, demands, and the huge interruption of having her around. She hadn’t really cared why Anne wanted so badly to go. But there had also been sympathy for her difficult situation, hadn’t there? Again, Jessie felt manipulated and used. If Anne had started the fire that burned my cabin, do I want her to get away with it? Telling MacDonald all she suspected might keep that from happening.
“Listen”—he interrupted her thoughts. “I know
you’re not telling me all that you know about this whole thing—probably through misguided loyalty. It would be a good idea if you did. We could do better at figuring all this out if we shared information. Besides, she may not have told you the truth.”
He could be right and she knew it. But was it wise from her point of view, considering the things that seemed so stacked against her—things she had no way to prove weren’t true? The Mulligan fire, for instance, and the fact that she could have been there—couldn’t prove she hadn’t been. How the hell had her hat gotten
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there, anyway? Would she be hurting herself by helping him?
“Mac,” she said finally, “I’m not opposed to sharing, but some of what I know is other people’s business and was told to me in confidence. Besides that, I honestly don’t know what’d be helpful to tell you. So much has happened between so many people and at different times that it’s a huge confusion. What’s related, and what’s not? I’m having real trouble sorting it all out, and I don’t understand why Tatum’s focused on me.”
“Why don’t you just tell me—whatever—whether it
seems related or not, and let me ask questions. If something I don’t ask about seems important, tell me that, too. Maybe we can put something together, if you don’t try too hard to sort it out by yourself.”
He paused and thought for a minute, nodded to himself, and continued. “Some of what I know may help.
How about if I start by telling you that I’ve been digging into Tatum’s background—the Holmans’, too.
One interesting thing I found out is that Tatum had a romantic thing for Anne—Marty— whatever—back before the Mulligan fire. And she was Marty Gifford then—changed her first name when she changed the last to Holman. She evidently flirted with but wasn’t really interested in Tatum—strung him along for a while, then put him down pretty hard. One of the firefighters he worked and socialized with then remembered quite a bit about it, because Tatum talked to him.
Tatum was angry—resented her rejection, especially when he found out that she was seeing a married man, Cal Mulligan. It may help explain his obsession and the attempt to hang that old arson charge on her—if it
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was arson. She may have actually been responsible. He kept at it in his spare time after he got out of the hospital. That’s how he got into arson investigation—they saw he was good at it.”
“You think he’d actually do that out of revenge?
Isn’t he supposed to be a professional?”
“Sure, but he’s human, and he was evidently furious and very convinced he was right—or wouldn’t let himself see it any other way. The burns he got probably in-fluenced his fixation. He hated having to give up fire fighting. He was good at that, too, and loved doing it.
Not being able to save those two kids did something to him, too. He’d promised their mother he’d get them out, so when he couldn’t . . . well. He’s not the enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky person he used to be, according to the guy I talked to.”
Jessie thought about it and, not for the first time, felt some sympathy for Tatum. But it was combined with her anger at his behavior and insinuations about her.
“You know, there are fires mixed up in all of this,”
she commented reflectively after a minute.
“Yeah, all three of them happening in such a short time, plus the one ten years ago. I keep thinking they’re tied together somehow by the people involved.”
“But there’re more—several more that I gues
s you don’t know about. I don’t know much, but more than I did yesterday—maybe. Greg showed up here last night, after everyone had gone. He’s looking for Anne.”
“Her husband—right? I thought he was somewhere
out of state.”
“Colorado’s where she said she left him. But he’s
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evidently followed her up here, is trying to find her, and she seemed to be really afraid of him. Their stories are complete opposites. He says she burns things—that she burned a place in Colorado before she took off to come here, that she burned their cabin in the Little Peters Hills ten years ago.”
MacDonald leaned forward in his chair and set
down the mug he had half raised to his mouth.
“Make some kind of sense, wouldn’t it?”
“But she claims he burns things—that it’s all his doing, that he beat her, terrorized her, even killed her child when it was born.”
“And he blames it all on her?”
“Yes. He has a temper and holds grudges. But whoever did what to who, there was a child. She dug it up when we were up there. Brought its bones back in the metal box it had been buried in.”
“I know you said that, but . . . My dear sweet Jesus.
Why?”
“She said she wanted to take the bones to the police to prove he killed it. I don’t know how—or what they’d prove—but she seemed convinced. She’s got some real problems, Mac. I know firsthand that when she’s
threatened or angry or insecure, she cuts herself with razor blades. I saw the result on her arm. But she told me that it was something he was responsible for—like the fires. Each of them accuses the other, but she’s the one that’s been physically hurt, however it happened.
He says she had an affair with a guy in Colorado who beat her up—put her in the hospital.”
“What do you think?”
“I know it’s possible. She was having an affair with
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Mulligan, after all, wasn’t she—and teasing Tatum at the same time?”
“But which of them do you believe?”
“I don’t know. Depends on who’s talking and what I’m seeing at the time. Maybe they’re both responsible for parts of it. I wish it would all go away. I wish neither of them had ever shown up on my doorstep. I wish I had my house back, dammit. I had nothing to do with any of it, but now I’m right in the middle, and liking it less and less all the time.”
“If there is a warrant for Anne in Colorado, I can find out pretty fast. She may have run to get away from it.”
“She said he promised to follow and kill her, like he killed her baby.”
“Pretty convenient, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess. But he is here looking for her.”
Jessie got up and walked to the door of the tent.
Opening it, she stood for a minute or two, looking out at the ruins of her cabin and at her dogs, many of which were out of their boxes. Tank had jumped to the top of his and lay with supreme dignity, surveying the activity around him.
“The thing I don’t like about this tent is not having any windows,” Jessie said. “I can’t see out and I’m used to keeping an eye on the dog yard.”
“Shall I cut you out a couple?” He took a knife from his pocket and waved it at the canvas wall.
She grinned and shook her head. “I don’t think the owner would appreciate it.” Closing the door, she returned to her chair, once again serious.
“You know, Mac, if I could just figure out how Anne
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disappeared and where she’s gone, maybe I could find her and get enough information to straighten this thing out somehow. I wonder if she knows Greg is here. If she does, maybe she’s hiding from him. Maybe she’s gone—back to Seattle or somewhere he wouldn’t look.
She said she would do that once we’d been up to the hills, but maybe she didn’t. She lied about a lot of other stuff. Maybe she’s still here—somewhere. I could look for her.”
MacDonald frowned. “I don’t think that’s a real
good idea. We’ve been keeping an eye on the airport, and I think you’d better let us do the looking, Jessie. If she’s responsible for any or all these fires she could have started yours. If Holman started them, you might put yourself between the two of them, which doesn’t sound wise to me. Arson is no game, and it’s never reasonable.”
She nodded, but didn’t let go of the idea. When Mac had gone, promising to keep in touch, she went out to sit on the bench by the door and consider it.
She had absolutely no idea where to begin to look for Anne, but she realized that Greg Holman was another question. Her search of his jacket pockets had told her two things—that he was driving a Budget rental car and that he might be or had been staying at the North by NorthRest Motel in Wasilla.
There were several questions she wished she had
asked him. If she could find him, she could ask them now. The motel was at least a place to start looking.
MacDonald could be right about the risk in looking for either Anne or Greg, but she was no longer content to stay home, doing nothing but train her dogs with all
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this on her mind and a possibly psychotic Tatum making accusations every time she turned around.
In a few minutes, she was on her way to Wasilla in her truck, with her .44 in one pocket of her coat. For Jessie, it was now time to see what she could find out for herself.
17
Q
THE NORTH BY NOR
R
TH EST MOTEL, LOCATED JUST WEST
of Wasilla on the Parks Highway, was a small affair, clearly operated by someone who didn’t care much for his job, for it was conspicuously going to seed, in contrast to other tourist facilities nearby. Two lines of six ancient units faced each other across an open space that might have held a pool in some warmer climate.
Instead it was filled with a nightmare collection of plaster garden gnomes and animals, an odd structure that couldn’t quite decide whether to be a windmill or a wishing well, a chain-saw carving of a half-size black bear holding a Welcome sign, and a shabby set of playground equipment—all slowly emerging from the melting snow to reveal exotic colors never found in nature. A faded flock of garish pink plastic flamingos, heads up or down in one of two poses, seemed to float on a sublimating drift, wire legs still hidden beneath the snow. A circular drive looped around this anti-Dis-ney fantasy and provided a space for parking in front of each unit.
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Jessie stopped her truck in front of the office, a separate building, badly in need of paint. A neon sign in one of its streaked windows faintly glowed VACANCY in the middle of the afternoon, and she wondered if they ever had a reason to turn it off.
Inside, she pushed a button taped to the counter beside a smudged, almost unreadable card that instructed her to PRESS FOR SERVICE, heard a bell ring rustily somewhere in the back of the building, and waited. In a few minutes a door behind the counter opened and a very short man, so bald and pink he looked oddly naked from the neck up, came out and climbed on
some kind of hidden step that lifted him high enough to lean his forearms on the countertop.
“Help you?”
“I’m looking for Greg Holman. Is he staying here?”
“Holman? Holman. Let me check.”
Having noticed only one car parked in front of
the units, Jessie questioned his inability to remember the name, but she waited patiently while he
shuffled through a card file as though every room was filled.
“Holman. Right. Unit nine’s halfway back on the
left, but he’s not there.”
“How do you know?”
“Car’s gone. See?” He waved a hand in the direction of unit nine. “You wanna leave a messa
ge?”
Jessie thought for a minute and decided against it.
She didn’t particularly want Greg Holman to show up at her place on Knik Road again, and if she left a message he probably would.
“I’ll come back later,” she told the manager.
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“Whatever floats your boat. He goes out about nine every morning and usually comes back in the evening, but not always. You might try about seven, but he sometimes goes out again.”
“How long has he been here?”
Again he checked the card and counted. “Six—no,
seven days.”
A week. That meant that Greg had been there even before Anne called, supposedly from Seattle.
“Anyone with him?”
“No. A couple of people’ve stopped in, but he’s alone.”
“What’s your phone number? I’ll call first.”
He handed her a book of matches like the one she had seen in Holman’s jacket pocket. The motel number was on the back.
“Thanks.”
Jessie drove her truck around the driveway loop and across to the far lanes of the highway. As she acceler-ated, the insulated mug, from which she had been sipping tea as she drove, tipped and fell from the dash to the floor in front of the passenger seat, spilling the two or three swallows of liquid that were left. Pulling off the pavement into the parking lot of a convenience store directly across from the motel, she reached behind the seat for some paper towels to sop up the mess.
Once more ready to roll, she glanced across for a last look at the odd flamingo still life. As she shook her head in wonder at the eccentricities of human taste, a brown pickup swung off the highway into the motel drive, followed closely by a green compact sedan.
Hesitating, she watched the two vehicles stop in front of unit nine. Greg Holman parked nearest to the
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highway, got out of his car, and walked around it. He stood with his back to Jessie, talking to the driver of the pickup through its open window. She saw him nod his head, wave one hand in invitation, and finally reach to open the pickup door. He seemed to be trying to encourage the driver of the truck to get out. With the door open, the man inside finally did climb out and the two walked together to the door of the motel unit.
