by Henry, Sue
“Can that relate?”
“Doubt it. I’m just interested in the gold rush. All summer Jessie and I meant to get over here and look around, but never got time. A personal account by someone who was here while it was going on should be fascinating reading.”
Chapter Six
“…WHEN YOU HEAR THE BEEP.” FOR THE second time, Jessie Arnold’s recorded voice came back to Jensen from the Knik end of the telephone line. He had tried once to reach her from Delafosse’s office, where he had also called his Palmer detachment for approval to extend his stay in Canada. When she hadn’t answered, he’d hung up, not satisfied to leave a message. Now, clad in a towel, damp from the shower, he tried again from the hotel room. Steam roiled from the half-open door of the bathroom, where Delafosse was using his own share of the hot water.
Beep. Damn…well. “Jess? It’s me. Del and I are still in Dawson. It’s…ah…sort of turned into a different case. One we didn’t anticipate…involves a couple of Americans, and…ah…It’s hard to explain. I wanted to talk to you…should have waited till later, but…”
Abruptly the receiver was lifted on the other end, interrupting him. He could hear a dog barking. “Shut up, Sadie. I’m here, Alex. Sorry. I heard it ring from outside and had to hustle. Down, now, it’s not for you. Good dog. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I wanted to talk to you, not that idiot machine. Look. I’m kinda hung up here. Won’t get back for a few days.”
“What’s the story? Sounded pretty straightforward when you called last night.”
“Yeah, I know, but…” He launched into an abbreviated version of the day’s activities and the new justification for his continued presence and involvement, while she uh-huhed on the other end of the line, occasionally asking a quick question.
He knew she was really listening, so he didn’t cut his account particularly short. In the six months since they’d met, he had found her not only interested in his work, when he could share it, but a good sounding board. She presented opinions of her own when she had them and often asked insightful questions that stimulated his thinking. She could also be relied upon to keep the discussions to herself.
Arnold was a talented dog musher, well known and respected as a top runner of the famous Iditarod Sled Dog Race. She operated a kennel twenty miles north of Palmer, breeding and raising dogs for her own pleasure and use and for sale, when she wasn’t out on the trail with a team, training or racing, depending on the time of year.
They had met the previous March, during a particularly hazardous running of the more than one-thousand-mile Iditarod race, when a musher had attempted to better his standing by eliminating several competitors…permanently. Jensen had been in charge of the team of troopers who worked the case as the race progressed. He arrested the perpetrator almost at the finish line in Nome, but not before Jessie was attacked by him and caught a bullet in the shoulder—although she still managed to take second in the race. Despite the circumstances, their interest in each other had continued to its present exclusive and mutual satisfaction and respect.
“You mean someone else may have killed the guy and set Hampton up?”
“Yeah, something like that…at least it’s possible. It’s a real confusing situation, with a lot of questions we don’t have answers for. Both Russell and Hampton are American citizens, so the powers that be have decreed I should give Del a hand with it.”
“So,” she said. “I think it’s a pretty sneaky way to get to spend time in Dawson without me, trooper. Who’s going to catch the bad guys here, huh?”
“Well…so I take a day or two off. The crooks in Palmer won’t mind.”
“And what if I mind?” she teased.
“Hey, I love you too, lady. Why don’t you come on over?”
“Naw. I’d like to, but I’ve still got some serious training to do here with Ryan. And for your information, I’m watching large white flakes float past the window. We got the first four inches of winter last night…more on the way. It’ll probably melt off, but we got ambitious and took some of the mutts for a quickie run this morning. It was kind of thin.
“Just finished feeding the whole gang of forty and am about to feed us. Then I intend to curl up and enjoy the comforts of my big couch and a roaring fire, with a mug of peppermint tea, Carolyn Hart’s latest Henry O mystery, and the company of Ryan, Sadie, and all four of her new pups. Yes”—smugly—“she didn’t wait for you…had them last night.”
Ryan. Alex hesitated, frowning, then forced himself to laugh. “You are a glutton for punishment if you’ve got Sadie and her kids all inside. She’ll lick you to death in gratitude. You’re a credit to mushing to take a team out at the first sign of snow. Better have a second sled ready when I get back. Ah…Ryan still there, huh?”
Jensen had spent part of the spring, when there was still snow on the ground, learning to drive some of Jessie’s sled dogs. They planned to take some overnight trips with two teams as soon as snow cover allowed for it this fall. That he liked mushing enough to take out a team of his own pleased them both as much as her interest in his detective work.
“I’ll do that, and, yes, he’ll be here another couple of days.”
Ryan was a musher friend of Jessie’s who had come to pick out three or four of her dogs to buy for his teams. The two of them were trying out different combinations in his strings of experienced dogs that had worked together before, seeing how the new ones fit. He was also looking for a new leader, which was more important than team dogs. He and Jessie had been running the Iditarod together six months before when a moose stomped through his team, killing several of the dogs, injuring others, and putting Ryan in the hospital with broken ribs and a scalp wound over a concussion. Now he needed replacements and Jessie was glad to help.
Jensen knew he wasn’t so glad, since he wasn’t there. Ashamed of his jealous reaction to Ryan’s presence, he tried not to let her know, afraid she would feel he didn’t trust her.
“You okay there with everything?”
She hesitated a second, then, “Sure. Don’t go protective, Alex. You know I can’t survive without periodic doses of independence.”
“Whoa. It’s not interference, Jess. I miss you a fair amount.”
“I think that’s more than fair.”
“Yeah, you’re right…a lot more.”
“Me too. Everything’s fine here, Alex. Really. Call me tomorrow?”
“Sure. Here’s the hotel number, or you can reach me through Dawson RCMP.” He gave her that number too.
“Yes, sir.”
In the receiver, she heard relief, acceptance, and satisfaction in the smiling sound of his breath as he puffed pipe smoke into the air, and was glad it was familiar enough to recognize. And he thought she didn’t know he was bothered.
“Hey,” he heard her, quietly. “I love you, trooper.”
“Me, too, lady. Home soon. Pat the new pups for me. And…tell Ryan I said…hello.”
As he hung up the phone, Delafosse came out of the bathroom, showered, shaved, and shiny, as he put it. “She got any sisters?” he asked, with a grin. “Sounds like a pretty good thing you got going there, if the nightly phone calls are any indication.”
Jensen grinned back, pleasantly satisfied with his long-distance conversation, but irritated with himself because an unreasonable thread of concern still sat heavily in the middle of him.
“Get dressed and let’s go get dinner. I’m empty as last year’s bird’s nest. Besides, you should be paying attention to that knockout redhead in your office. She’s obviously trying to attract your attention.”
It came as no surprise when Del grew exceedingly red in the face and sputtered an immediate denial. “Clair? Not…I m-mean, not…not a chance. She’s way out of my league. What would she have to do with a policeman anyway?”
Alex had to laugh. “Man, you are blind. Every time you come into the room she registers you like a motion detector—all but sets off an alarm. Don’t tell me you haven’t
noticed.”
Delafosse stopped with his shirt half-buttoned, clean denims hanging unzipped around his hips, waiting for the shirttail to be tucked in, and stared at Jensen.
“You’re not serious,” he said. “She’s like that with everybody.”
“Bullshit. She thinks you just about walk on water, Del.”
“No-o. You’re going to get me in serious trouble, Alex. She’s tied up with someone. Anyone that little and pretty’s got to have some enormous bruiser around to take care of her.” The Canadian jammed the shirttail in and zipped his pants with exaggerated care and attention, avoiding Jensen’s eyes.
“Nope.”
“How would you know?”
“Had a long talk with her the other day, when you were on the horn to Whitehorse.”
“And she talked about me?”
“Well, no, not directly. But she let her appreciation show pretty clear. Fragile, you say? Looking, maybe. Did you know she coaches a softball team? Told me she built her own log cabin too. We got into a discussion on the relative merits of continuous foundations as opposed to piers, and the benefits of grooving and insulating logs as they’re placed instead of chinking later. She knows what she’s doing, Del. I’d take another look at just how fragile she is.”
“She built that cabin by herself?”
“She must have had some help, but I bet she told them what went where, and why. Even you and I’d need help to get the logs up, but she cut, peeled, and grooved her own logs from the sound of it. Must swing a mean chainsaw. Better put her out of her misery and ask her to dinner, huh?”
“Easy for you to say. No risk involved for you. Besides, we want to feel out Hampton, remember?”
“Well, I didn’t necessarily mean tonight.”
“Oh.” He crammed his billfold into his back pocket, grabbed his jacket, and escaped through the door, discussion over. “I’ll think about it. Sometime. Maybe.” The last words echoed back from the hallway as he reached the head of the stairs. “Come on.”
Jensen shrugged and followed, checking to make sure he had his key and that the door was locked.
In the dining room of the Downtown Hotel, Jensen, Delafosse, and Hampton found a vacant table against one wall and settled in three of the four chairs. Patterned wallpaper, lace curtains, and period furniture decorated the large room in a comfortable old-fashioned style. Electrified versions of gas lamps lined the walls and elaborate turn-of-the-century fixtures hung over the antique tables.
Before their dinner choices, Jensen and Delafosse both asked for the Canadian whiskey they had joked about earlier, but Hampton, turning slightly green when it was offered, requested a beer.
“I honestly can’t stand the stuff,” he stated, then frowned in embarrassment at the defensive sound of it. “Sorry.” He was obviously nervous and uncomfortable with the two law enforcement officers, aware that they were sizing him up.
“Look, Hampton,” Alex commented, when their drinks had been served. “The situation is not conducive to much in terms of relaxation here. You’re in a tight spot. Can we declare a truce for the meal at least? We’re not for or against you at this point, but we’re not ganging up on you. Let it go long enough to enjoy your dinner. Okay? I, for one, would just like to get to know you a little better. It might help.”
There was an honesty in the appeal from the tall trooper that Hampton couldn’t help responding to. He found himself wishing he had met Jensen in some other—any other—circumstances. He nodded and took a healthy swig of his beer.
“What do you do in Denver, Jim? Been there long?”
“All my life. Carpenter. Construction…foreman.” The words came out stiffly, in jerks.
“That canoe looked handmade. You build it?”
“Yeah, last winter. I got a basement shop.”
“Handsome. Ever build them for sale?”
“My first one. Furniture. I build furniture. Refinish some. Work construction in the summer.”
“I did a little summer construction for college money as a kid. Liked the outdoor part of it. Denver had really changed the last time I was there. Looked like Los Angeles smog and traffic jams.”
“Where you from?”
“Idaho, until eight years ago.”
“Hey, I really like the North Fork of the Salmon River. Ever run it?”
“You have good taste. Salmon’s my hometown. My folks still live on the land my grandfather homesteaded, up across the North Fork near Shoup. Old two-story log house. Have to go across the river on a cable or in a boat—no bridge. Run it? Hell, we used to innertube it in the summer. Well, parts of it.”
Delafosse was quietly listening to the developing conversation and slowly sipping his drink. Alex knew that Del appreciated and was impressed with the casual, more easygoing manner most Alaskan law enforcement officers exhibited. There was something about Jensen that made people want to please him, an artlessness that encouraged trust. He meant what he had said about the temporary truce in the conversation, for he avoided reference to the incidents on the river, channeling the conversation onto topics anyone newly acquainted might discuss.
Del had told him more than once that he wished he could cultivate a similar attitude himself and be more outgoing, less correct. Part of what he enjoyed about working with Alex was that the Alaskan trooper made it easier for him to be less formal. Though Alex was never pushy or familiar, he could somehow manage to be totally unthreatening, unless he consciously chose to be otherwise.
Americans were simply more informal. Canadians were harder to get to know. Alex and Del had had enough prior contact to erase the barriers between them. But Hampton was a new equation. In this instance it was easier for Jensen to initiate a friendly conversation with him than it would have been for Delafosse.
Alex knew that Del did not feel excluded; that he was watching and listening closely, gradually gathering an impression of Hampton that he would balance with the canoeist’s account of the past two days. By the time their dinners arrived, and the discussion of Rocky Mountain rivers and their canoeing potential flagged before their hunger, he was amused that the Canadian had still not ventured a word into the discourse.
He also knew that Hampton was not unaware that it was intended to put him at ease, and was grateful for the consideration. He had glanced a few times at the comfortably silent Canadian officer but had soon lost some of his uneasiness in that direction also. When coffee arrived, along with three slices of homemade apple pie with ice cream, Jensen was pleased that Hampton had relaxed enough to bring up the issue of Russell’s death himself.
“You know, I keep wondering if there might be anything at the spot where I met him yesterday to help find out who killed him. If he wasn’t killed where I camped…and it seems to me you don’t think so…that’s the next most possible spot, isn’t it?”
Delafosse raised his eyes from the bite of pie he was about to lift onto his fork, glanced at Jensen, then nodded. “Thought we might go back down in the morning and take a look. Would you be willing to go along and help us locate that place, Mr. Hampton?”
“Sure. It’ll be pretty easy to find. I stopped there just after I passed a fish wheel, about half an hour after the Zodiac passed me. There’s a rocky bluff just around the corner above that flat space that you can see for a long ways.”
“Zodiac?” Alex asked. “How many boats did you pass on the river yesterday?”
Hampton frowned, concentrating. “Only three, I think, not counting the one that attacked me. One—an aluminum hull—zipped by right after I left camp in the morning. The Zodiac about ten o’clock, because it was before I stopped and had coffee with Russell. While I was reading Riser’s journal and eating lunch, another aluminum boat went by. The last one—the guys that came back and stole my gear—went by, going upriver, just as I was pushing off after lunch, about one.”
“Anyone on board the first three you’d recognize again?”
“The first boat had a blue canopy and whoever was driving wor
e a baseball cap and sunglasses. The Zodiac had two, both native, a man and a woman. The one at noon wore some kind of hat. I don’t remember what. He also had sunglasses…”—he paused a second, then continued—“…tan vest over a green plaid shirt. All of them friendly, waved as they went by.”
Jensen turned to the inspector. “Sound like anyone you know, Del?”
“The blue canopy sounds like Rickie Taylor. She helps run the Yukon Queen for tourists between here and Eagle all summer, but has her own boat for extra trips now and then. Was she going fast?”
Hampton nodded. “Fastest I saw, but I couldn’t tell if it was a woman.”
“Bet it was Rickie. The Queen takes four hours downstream and six hours up, but she can make it a lot quicker on her own, and does. Any number of the native fishermen have Zodiacs…and wives. Couldn’t say on that, or the other…noon…boat. Most of the boats on the river are aluminum look-alikes.”
Happily full of pie, Alex yawned and pushed his chair back from the table. “I’m for an early night,” he said. “Think I’ll take a quick walk, then bag it for the day. What time do you want to go tomorrow, Del?”
“Eight’ll give us time for breakfast. Eat here at seven?” As he shrugged on his coat, Delafosse stopped to take a handful of paper from its pocket. He handed half to each of the other men. “Here’re copies of that journal of Riser’s you wanted. Something to read yourselves to sleep.”
He and Hampton headed for the Midnight Sun Hotel a few steps down the street. Jensen, pipe in his teeth, hands in his pockets, walked slowly in the opposite direction, assessing the antiquity of the buildings he could see in the streetlights. When he reached the riverbank he stopped and stood watching the dark gleam of wide water moving past almost silently in the night. Something crunched under his boot. Glancing down, he noticed that along the edge, among the pebbles of the shore, a rime of frost and ice was collecting like lace against the dark water.
Abruptly, he thought again of Jessie having dinner with Ryan in her compact log cabin in Knik. Though he was aware that there was a space for Ryan’s sleeping bag on the floor near the large wood stove, and that Jessie would retreat alone to her big brass bed in the only other room, he couldn’t stop his thoughts. Damn, he told himself. You have no reason to think there’s anything to worry about on that score. Right? Right! Still…
