by Sue Henry
The preplanning this idea indicated did not ease Jessie’s mind, for it would have to be someone who knew there was about to be a reason for Anne’s leaving, and that meant she could have set the fire with help.
Jessie decided that tomorrow she would try to contact more of the firefighters with the question. Someone must have seen something.
She would also tell MacDonald about seeing Greg
Holman and Hank Peterson together and see what he would make of it. Did he know that Robert Martin’s nickname was Buzz—that he had been a mechanic for Cal Mulligan? The fire at Oscar’s Other Place and the one that had killed Mulligan now seemed definitely connected in Jessie’s mind. That they had both died must be more than coincidence, but who was responsible, and why should anyone wait ten years to kill them, if it had anything to do with the situation surrounding the old fire in Mulligan’s garage? Why kill Martin anyway? What could he possibly have to do with it?
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Shana, she thought suddenly. Could Shana Mulligan have waited and now be getting even for the death of her children? Where was she? Still in the area? It was another question for MacDonald—something else to add to her list of things she wanted to know.
But I had nothing to do with any of this, she thought.
Why involve me, set me up, and burn my house? Was Tatum manufacturing evidence again? Was Anne?
Sick of worry and loose ends, she gave up and went to sleep, resolved to find some answers tomorrow, one way or another.
It was very dark and silent at three in the morning, when a shadow slipped swiftly from the trees to the back of the large tent in the yard on Knik Road and the dogs began to bark at the presence of an intruder. The yard light blinked on automatically at their movement, and Jessie woke, rose, and padded quietly to open the door and look out, carrying her handgun.
Seeing nothing, she called to the dogs to quiet them, but, as their barking continued for a moment or two before dying, she did not hear the small distinct sound of a razor slicing across the lower part of the canvas wall, opening a long slit, then another, perpendicular to it, which allowed the shadowy figure to slide easily in and freeze into a crouch behind the easy chair—part of the dark.
Satisfied that there was nothing unusual in the noise that had awoken her from a deep sleep—a moose, a scuffle, nothing more—Jessie locked the door and returned, yawning, to her bed, placing the handgun in easy reach. Settling in, she shrugged the blankets
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around her, wriggled herself comfortable again, and in a few moments had gone back to sleep—with only a passing thought that the room had seemed colder coming back than when she had gone to the door and wondering if she should have turned on the space heater, but sliding into dreams before she could act on the thought.
Silent and unmoving, the shadow waited, listening intently, until everything was still and the small purr of the woman’s unconscious breathing was the only sound. Then, with infinite care, it rose, alert and vigi-lant for any movement or awareness of its presence.
Slowly, silently, it removed a small bottle and a folded bandanna from a pocket and unscrewed the lid. A step at a time, it crossed the room until it stood over the bed in which Jessie continued to sleep.
It took only the tiny gurgle of liquid poured from the bottle onto the fabric—a foreign sound that did not belong to the usual night noises—to rouse her again. But before she could move to reach for the gun, a knee, with the weight of a body behind it, pressed her down and the bandanna was applied to her mouth and nose with a strong, forceful gloved hand. A sharp and unpleasant smell was drawn into her lungs with her gasp of surprise and resistance, making her head swim. She tried to hold her breath and move, but was only able to flail with the arm that was not pinned under her.
Grasping at the hand that held the bandanna, she attempted to yank it away from her face, but failed, growing steadily weaker as she struggled and drew in more of the consciousness-draining fumes. Her last awareness was of her complete inability to move, or
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even think clearly, that there were sounds and the weight that was holding her down had gone away, but the gloved hand remained, holding the fabric to her mouth and nose. Faintly, far, far away, she could hear her dogs barking again in the yard. It didn’t seem to matter much. Then there was nothing.
19
Q
THERE WERE LINES OF PALE
,
LIGHT THIN VERTICAL LINES
within a square, and tiny fragments that floated in them like a swarm of infinitesimal insects so small they were almost invisible. It was quiet. Nothing made a sound or moved, except for those bits of whatever they were, hovering like a swarm in the lines of light.
Jessie stared at them through half-open eyes and was perfectly content to do nothing, know nothing, just watch their slow movement in the air. The lines of light seemed familiar somehow, but she couldn’t make herself care enough to work out a reason for that feeling.
They were simply there, far away and vaguely interesting.
Tired of looking, she closed her eyes and drifted away again, dreamed she was riding her sled behind a team on the frozen surface of the Yukon River. It was too dark to see anything but what was revealed in the narrow beam of her headlamp, and the reflective tape on the harnesses of her dogs caught the slender beam of light and winked back at her as they trotted forward, 224
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pulling the sled toward . . . Where was it she was going? Dawson? Right—she was headed for Dawson.
So it must be the Yukon Quest she was running. But how could she be so tired this early in a race? It must be almost over. But the long run down the Yukon came after Dawson, didn’t it?
A cabin came into view at the top of a bank, with an old man standing in the doorway, waving something at her—motioning her in. As she came closer, she could see that it was a green gym bag, one handle flapping loose.
“Come in for popcorn,” he called, waving it wildly.
“It’s got your name on it.”
Then, suddenly, it was snowing. But it wasn’t
snow—wasn’t even cold. It was popcorn, coming down all around her. She lifted her face and caught a fluffy kernel in her mouth—and choked on it. Convulsed with coughing, unable to stop, she opened her eyes and the dream faded, but the coughing, choking continued. There was something in her mouth and throat—something uncomfortable and dry that tasted nastily chemical.
It was still dark, but the lines of light were stronger now and more familiar. She had seen them before from this position on the floor. Then Jessie knew where she was. It was the cabin in the Little Peters Hills, where she had once lived, where she had brought Anne only a few short days ago. What was she doing back here?
The lines of light were filtering in from outside the window through the gaps between boards that had
been nailed up to close the place. And what she had earlier thought were insects were dust motes floating in the bars of light.
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She tried to spit out what she now recognized as fabric in her dry mouth, couldn’t, and knew that something was secured over it, holding it in place. Tape. She could feel its stiffness on her cheeks and lips. Duct tape, probably, from the width of it. Again she
coughed, then worked with her tongue until she got the horrid-tasting cloth pushed up to the front of her mouth. It was enough to allow her to stop coughing and gagging.
She started to sit up, to see if she could find out what she was doing in this place, and found that she was im-mobilized. Both her wrists and ankles were fastened tightly together with something—more tape, she
thought. When she tried to raise her head to see, sharp sickening pain flashed through it and dizziness made her almost retch. Afraid she would throw up behind the gag and choke to death, she lay back down and assessed what
she could.
She was not only bound but was also inside what felt like a sleeping bag that was secured with tape that had been wrapped tightly and completely around it in three places—at waist, thigh, and shoulder. Some kind of string had been tightened and tied around her neck, enough to keep the bag closed but not enough to strangle her, thank God. Helpless, she could barely roll from side to side, could not even begin to turn over.
The wood floor she lay on was hard. The whole cabin was cold. Jessie could see her breath in the air as she exhaled through her nose.
What the hell was going on? Who had brought her
here and clearly meant to keep her from moving—let alone leaving?
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Thinking hard, she remembered going to bed, re-
solved to begin a serious search for Anne the next morning and get some questions answered. Something had disturbed her dogs. Someone had been in the tent.
She recalled a weight holding her down—something strong and bad smelling—struggling—not much else.
She had heard nothing but the dogs, seen no one in the dark. Who could it have been?
There was enough light for her to make out the ceiling, its heavy log rafters festooned with spiderwebs that hung in dirty strings and clung stickily in the corners. By tilting her head back, she could see, upside down behind her head by the stove, a pale square that she knew was the Maxfield Parrish picture of two chefs. It was her old cabin all right. How and why had her abductor brought her here? And why had she been left here alone? When would—whoever—come back?
An unexpected and alarming idea slid into her
mind, taking her breath with its appalling possibility.
What if he or she wasn’t coming back? What if he wanted to get rid of her and her questions? What if she had been left here to die? Unable to free herself, she would eventually starve—or freeze, if the temperature fell far enough, as it sometimes did this time of year.
Had whoever set the fire at her cabin decided to try again? Would they burn this place as well— with her in it?
Suddenly, without warning, she retched again and could taste and feel hot stomach acid rising in her throat. Terrified she would smother, she fought, rigid with effort until the spasm passed and she could swallow and breathe again without panic.
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Would she have been left with the sleeping bag to keep her warm, if she was meant to die? Possibly, but probably not. Had they left anything else that could indicate that they intended to return? Jessie raised her head, more slowly and carefully this time, though the room almost immediately began to spin again. She looked quickly around the room, though little light filtered in through the cracks of the boarded-up window.
In one corner, to the left of the door, lay a bag of some kind that had not been here when she left with Anne. Lying back down, she waited for the dizziness to pass, then tried again and, taking another long look, knew what it was—Anne’s day pack, the one she had brought here as she rode in the sled, then carried back again, containing the small bones in their makeshift metal box-coffin.
Anne had not been willing to part with it, or anything in it. If it was here, she must be somewhere close.
But was her presence voluntary, or had she been abducted, too?
Her panic lessened somewhat with the idea that it was likely that someone would return for the pack, especially if it still contained the bones of Anne’s child.
She lay like a mummy in the bag, watching the dust motes float in the lines of light between the boards of the window, hoping someone would come to give her a clue to what was going on. Finally, she fell asleep again, wishing she could get rid of the evil-tasting gag, that her head would stop aching—hungry, thirsty, furious, and frightened to the point of tears at her confinement—unwarranted and unfathomable.
*
*
*
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Just before noon, MacDonald pulled into Jessie’s driveway, stopped by the tent, and got out of his Jeep Cherokee. Noticing that the storage shed door was open, he walked across, laid his hands on either side of its frame and leaned in, expecting to find her there.
Blinking, as his vision adjusted to the abrupt shift in il-lumination, he could just make out a figure moving in the shadows.
“Hi, Jessie, you wanted to see me?”
“She’s not here,” a young man informed him, turning from the harness he was sorting to walk out into the sunshine that glowed thinly through breaks in a high overcast.
“Oh. And who’re you?”
“Billy Steward. I help Jessie with the mutts. Who’re you?”
“MacDonald, arson investigator. She said she’d be here for a while around noon, after an early training run. Told Phil Becker she wanted to see me. Any idea where I can find her?”
“Nope. Don’t think she was even here this morning—
or else she left really early, but she hasn’t been back. Her truck’s gone, but none of the dogs had been fed or watered, and she didn’t take any of them out today.”
“Kind of unusual not to feed them, isn’t it? I got the impression she was pretty consistent about taking care of her dogs.”
“She is, and she didn’t call me to do it either. I wasn’t supposed to be here today, just found some extra time and decided to see if she needed help—
maybe make another run for her, since we missed a couple those two days she was gone.”
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“So she didn’t expect you to show up and take
over?”
“Huh-uh. She’d have left me a note saying what to do. Her door’s open, but she’s not here.”
MacDonald frowned. None of this sounded like the Jessie Arnold he had begun to know. The impression he had formed was of a careful, conscientious woman who wouldn’t leave her dogs unattended or her living space unlocked. Her unexplained absence seemed out of character and perplexing.
But how well did he really know her? Obviously not well enough, for he had no idea where or why she might have gone. This young man, Billy, did know her well, however, and seemed to agree that her actions were exceptional, curious at best.
“Let’s take a look inside,” he suggested to Billy.
“Maybe she left a note and you missed it.”
Billy shook his head, but followed MacDonald
across the yard and to the tent, the door of which was, as he had said, unlocked.
“This was open a little,” he commented, as Mac
opened the door.
“How little?”
“Like this.” He closed it to a crack to demonstrate that it had been just short of latching, as if Jessie had gone out in a hurry, shoving it to close behind her but not quite hard enough.
“You closed it?”
“Yeah. Thought the wind might blow it open.”
“What time did you get here?”
“Just before nine.”
Jessie’s lead dog, tethered close to the tent, had been
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watching the two men closely. As their conversation paused and MacDonald’s attention shifted to him from Billy, the dog paced the length of his tether toward Knik Road, gazed down the driveway, then moved
back the other way to the opposite end of his restraint, where he stopped for a moment before repeating the action.
“Does he always do that pacing?”
“Naw, Tank’s pretty laid-back. He usually watches from the top of his box—king of the yard, kind of.
He’s been doing that all morning—like he’s waiting for Jessie.”
“But he doesn’t usually do that when she’s gone?”
“Not when I’m here—never seen him do it before.”
“Well—by itself it doesn’t tell us much.”
They went on into the tent. MacDonald flipped on the overhead light and stood just in
side the door, examining the space.
“You move anything?”
“Nope, I only came in this far. I saw she wasn’t here and there wasn’t a note on the table. Didn’t really expect one. She usually leaves them in the shed. I’ve got a key for that.”
Slowly MacDonald circled the interior, carefully inspecting everything visible. The bed wasn’t made and a blanket hung half off it, partly on the floor. He lifted it, looked under it, and put it back, stopped, and squat-ted beside the roll-away and reached under the bed to feel around. The Smith & Wesson .44 Jessie had showed him after the fire, when he questioned the possibility of the arsonist returning, was not there. She must have taken it with her.
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“You’re looking for her moose gun,” Billy told him from across the room, where he had waited by the door.
“Yes. She told me she’s had it close since the fire.
Do you know where she keeps it when she’s not out with a team?”
“Locked in the shed or in—ah—her truck. Jeez—
she must have been spooked to bring it in here.”
MacDonald caught the slight hesitation in Billy’s voice. There was something he wasn’t saying. He let it go for a moment, considering.
“She any good with it?”
Billy looked relieved at not being questioned about his slip.
“Sure—well, I don’t really know, I guess. Never
seen her use it. But I know she practices at the range once in a while.”
“What did you mean by ‘in her truck’?”
The youngster’s face fell.
“Ah, you know—in her truck.”
