by Henry, Sue
Interested in what he had found, an RCMP recruit accompanied him back to the truck. Pausing first by the driver’s door, Alex showed the young man the chaos of the cab and they talked for a minute of the remote possibility of any recoverable fingerprints. With that, he led the way around the back of the truck once more, and stopped cold as he approached the tracks in the snow.
Beside the singular set of prints, coming and going from the vehicle, was a fresh line of disturbed snow. No individual footprints were apparent, but something had been dragged from the street to the truck. It let to the passenger door, but, except for one short space, did not cover the tracks he had previously examined, almost as if the perpetrator had purposely avoided them.
The two men followed the mark, which continued through the gate and stopped at the street. A piece of a cardboard box lay discarded in the snow next to the obvious tracks where a snow machine had pulled off the street and parked. In the short time he had been inside the office, someone had approached the truck and returned to a snow machine, destroying the evidence of footprints in the retreat with the cardboard.
His absence had allowed a very narrow window of time, only a few minutes. But of course, if whoever it was had been watching him examine the truck and prints, they might have assumed he would not come back. Why would anyone risk being caught this close to the RCMP office? And why had this person been so careful not to obliterate the first set of prints? The quick answer was that it had been a different person, who had wanted the first to be identified while remaining anonymous himself. Coming to the truck and destroying unavoidable footprints that would identify and implicate implied a reason important enough to negate the risk of discovery. That reason had to be significant.
Jensen stood for a minute, looking up and down the street, though he was sure the snow machine and its rider were long gone, remembering the whine of the engine he had heard as he went into the office earlier. The street was empty, but as he looked the way he thought the sound had gone, he thought he saw something move in the shadow of a spruce a hundred yards away. For a few seconds he gave it close attention, but the suggestion of motion was not repeated. When the lights of a passing car showed only the shape of the tree itself and nothing resembling a human figure, he let it go and turned back to the puzzles at hand.
Slowly, he traced the track back to the truck, followed silently by the recruit, who seemed hesitant to interrupt the American officer’s concentration, but was carefully watching every move he made. Good lad, thought Alex, and was immediately amused at the Canadian phrasing of his thought.
With keys for two new rooms, Alex quickly climbed to the third floor and turned toward the old ones that the constable he had passed on the stairs had assured him were completely photographed and fingerprinted. As he neared the doorway of the one that had been his, a small sound from within arrested his forward motion. Another shadowy figure? The light was on, but had the thief returned? Cautiously, he leaned around the door frame to take a quick look.
“Did a thorough job, didn’t they?” Delafosse commented, looking up from where he was retrieving and refolding his scattered clothes.
“Hey, Del. Thought you were going to be gone till tomorrow.”
“Planned to, but the weather report says there’s more snow on the way that could have grounded me in Whitehorse for an extra day or two. So I took advantage of a short break in the storm to hightail it back up here. We just made it. Pilot wasn’t too happy to be flying at all and isn’t going to be able to get back out of here tonight. Anything missing from this mess?”
“Just that copy of the journal you gave me, unless you’ve got something else gone. Hampton says all his stuff is accounted for. But you’ll be interested in what else I found tonight.”
While they cleared up the confusion of their belongings, Jensen detailed what he had discovered in and around Hampton’s truck, including the obscured track.
Though Delafosse frowned, he also nodded thoughtfully at this revelation, took several printed pages from a pocket, and handed them to Jensen. “Here. The coroner’s report on Warren Russell, and it is strange, to say the least.”
The trooper righted an overturned chair and sat down to read it.
The first page of the coroner’s report of the autopsy on Warren Russell was pretty much as he expected it to be. He flipped to page two, where the information was mainly about the head wound that had caused Russell’s death. Halfway down the page he found what had concerned Delafosse. Russell had indeed been blasted with the shotgun, but the evidence from the autopsy indicated that before that he had been hit with something else, something sharp and heavy enough to penetrate the skull. Beneath the destruction caused by the gun was the shape of what the coroner speculated was most likely an ax or hatchet.
“Damn. So a hatchet was used to kill him. Hampton’s? Explains its not showing up.” He looked quizzically at Delafosse, who was appreciating his reaction from a seat on the mattress he had lifted back onto the bed frame.
“Well…don’t assume. Interesting, yes?”
“Doesn’t make a lot of sense yet.”
“Read on.”
First Jensen turned back to the front page to find the time of death. Allowing for the cold temperatures of the night of Tuesday, September 7, Russell had died sometime between noon and four o’clock in the afternoon.
Back on page two, he found even more confusing and conflicting evidence. Incredibly, both the shotgun blast and the blow from the hatchet-shaped thing had been declared postmortem. A blow had been the cause, but not the hatchet blow. During the autopsy, hidden in the hair, the coroner had located a bruise and resulting hematoma on the front right side of Russell’s brain, the side opposite the shotgun damage, indicating that the blow had been a result of the trauma of his head hitting something, not something hitting his head. The skull was fractured, but split, not depressed as it should be if Russell had been hit with something.
Jensen knew that the brain’s protection is the liquid surrounding it inside the bony sheath of the skull. When the cranium hits something, the force throws the brain to the side of the skull farthest from the impact, causing what is called a “contracoup” bruise or injury on that opposite side. On the other hand, when the head is hit with something, it causes what is called a “coup” bruise on the surface of the brain immediately nearest the impact. Though an impact of either kind is not necessarily, or even usually, fatal, Russell’s had been and he had evidently died before either of the other external wounds had been made. Whoever made them must have known that for they had been made quite some time after Russell was dead.
Jensen frowned and leaned back against the bed frame, staring at the ceiling in thought.
“If Russell was already dead, there wouldn’t have been much blood from the shotgun blast, which accounts for our not finding it. But then, why shoot him at all? To cover the hatchet blow? But why? And why hit him with the hatchet? What did he hit his head on? Did he fall somehow? Did whoever killed him push him? What the hell?”
He laid down the report and sat, thinking hard, trying to make sense of what he had just read in terms of what they had seen and found in both locations on the river.
“Three distinctly different head injuries, Del? One on top of the other? Any one of them almost certainly fatal. Whoever hit him with the hatchet and whoever used the shotgun—if it was the same person—had to know he was already dead from whatever his head hit to begin with. The only thing that works at all is a cover-up, but why cover up something that could easily be viewed as accidental death, even if it wasn’t. And why inflict a second cover wound with the shotgun, over the hatchet blow? Either or both would be evidence of violence.”
“Where is the hatchet? Why leave the shotgun and get rid of, or carry away, the hatchet?” Delafosse mused. “And why? To frame Hampton? Who had the opportunity, for that and for the breakin here and at the truck? The same person?”
“Well, who’ve we got? Unless he’s slicker than I think
he is, I can’t imagine Hampton leaving evidence pointing to himself, but he had the chance at the rooms, with us gone up to Wilson’s, and could have gone to the truck—though why trash his own truck?—with me busy here.
“Those tracks in the snow are confusing, and probably meant to be. Either one person made them…but then why not wipe out both sets? Didn’t want it known they came back again? Why come back? Or a second, different person was satisfied to point suspicion at the first, while wiping out their own prints.
“We don’t know where Charlie is—whoever Charlie is—but if he killed Russell, he could have wanted badly to implicate Hampton. He could have done any or all of it, but I don’t understand why he would want the journal copy.
“What about Sean Russell? And how about the boot prints by the truck? I haven’t seen Hampton wearing western boots, and we don’t know about Charlie. Was Sean?”
“Don’t remember, Alex. But I’m beginning to wonder if he was downriver, as he says he can prove. The constable I sent called from Eagle to say he couldn’t locate the native man Sean says can give him an alibi. He wasn’t at the village, or in Eagle.”
“So, that’s three possibles and a whole pile of unexplained details. We’re collecting suspects like flies. Got any more you want to throw in? Who’s next?”
A knock on the door brought an immediate answer to the factitious question.
Chapter Fifteen
OPENING THE DOOR, DELAFOSSE FOUND THE constable he had sent down the river. Looking half frozen, the younger man stood looking in, snow still clinging to his hat and the shoulders of his coat from his walk to the hotel. With him were two native men, both dressed for cold weather in heavy boots and down jackets.
The older man was shorter than anyone in the room, probably in his fifties, though it was difficult to tell, as his face, now watchful and serious, held the lines of a lifetime of the weathering effects of outdoor living. His son was slightly taller and had his father’s dark, intelligent eyes. He seemed more nervous than his father, who maintained an impressive outward dignity and calm.
“Henry,” Delafosse greeted the older of the two with pleased surprise. “Come in. Take off your coats and get warm. Alex, this is Henry Kabanak, leader of the local Han Athabaskan tribal council, and his son, Henry junior. Sergeant Jensen is a trooper from Anchorage, Henry.” As Jensen stepped forward to shake hands, he turned to his constable, “Bill. You find something?”
“Yes. More than you expected, I guess. On the way back from Eagle, when I stopped to talk to Mr. Kabanak, he was pulling a deflated Zodiac out of the river near his fish wheel. I think it may be the one you’re looking for. Let him tell you.”
Delafosse swung around, eyes wide, to Henry Kabanak, who nodded. Neither of the native men had removed his coat, and they stood, somewhat stiffly, waiting for the inspector’s reaction.
“Please,” he said. “Sit down. I will listen.”
They nodded and lowered themselves into the room’s two chairs as he offered them, but only unzipped their coats. Alex leaned against the windowsill. Delafosse sat down on one of the beds.
“Bill, would you phone down for some coffee? I can see you’re all cold. Ask for some brandy while you’re at it. You look like you could use it and even the Royal Navy gets its tot of rum. Now, what happened, Mr. Kabanak? What did you find?”
“The Zodiac boat. As he says, I pulled it out by my fish wheel, where someone had cut it to let the air out, then sunk it with rocks.”
“You know Mr. Russell is dead?”
“Yes, your constable told us.”
“Did you see him this week, Henry?”
“Once in his boat, but not to talk.”
“When?”
He shrugged. “Monday? Noon? After noon? Early sometime,” he said vaguely.
“Tell me about the Zodiac.”
“Nothing to tell. I saw something dark in the water and pulled it out.”
“I got there just as he was getting it into his boat, Inspector,” the young constable said. “I can vouch for where it came from.”
“Good, and I remember where his wheel is.”
Silence hung in the room for a second or two. Delafosse looked down at the carpet, thinking hard. When he looked back up, he was frowning. He shook his head, but spoke straight to Kabanak, though Jensen could tell he respected him and didn’t like to do it.
“I must ask this, Mr. Kabanak. Did you put it there? Do you know who did? You have been known to say bad things about Mr. Russell. Did you, or anyone you know, have anything to do with his death?”
The eyes of the Athabaskan leader narrowed as he stared at Delafosse without answering. Then he made a sound in the back of his throat that conveyed, better than words, several feelings at once. Resignation was among them, as was a thread of contempt and confirmation, both mixed with disappointment and some anger. When he spoke, his eyes were cold, sad, and full of pride.
“And I must answer you. I have said bad things about Mr. Russell. Yes. I would say them again. He was a fool, with foolish ideas about the way my people should live. But I did not kill him and hide the boat, whatever it has to do with his death. And I do not know anyone who did, or who knows about it. The rubber boat was there, where someone had put it, near my fish wheel. I pulled it out. That is all.”
“Did you see anyone in such a boat on the river Monday?”
“I don’t remember. There are several Zodiacs used by my people and others. There may have been one or more on Monday, or it may have been Sunday, or Tuesday. I come and go from my wheel less than I did when the fish ran heavy in July and pay less attention. Who can remember?”
Another knock on the door announced the coffee and brandy. The constable poured for them all, though Alex refused and lit his pipe instead. He was aware that the confrontation was almost painfully formal and difficult for everyone involved, and was not unimpressed with Delafosse’s handling of it, noting that the inspector left the traditional, polite native silences after each of his questions and did not press for answers. Both native men accepted brandy with their coffee, though the young Athabaskan gave his father a searching look before taking the mug of hot liquid. They sipped in silence for a minute before the conversation resumed. Alex noticed that Delafosse waited, patiently, for Kabanak to speak first.
“You have some reason to think Russell’s death was caused by one of my people?”
“No. Your finding the boat makes it necessary for me to ask you these hard questions. But we are already watching three other men, all white. But you and Russell were not friendly…had threatened each other and spoken in anger in the past. If you had been killed, I would now be asking him, if he found a similar boat.”
Kabanak nodded his understanding without speaking, though he did not seem fully convinced. Jensen thought, not for the first time since coming to live in the north, that it was unfortunate there was no one standard of behavior for everyone. No matter how evenhanded the law was supposed to be, and usually tried to be, suspicion of offense was much more likely when the suspect was nonwhite. The Athabaskan leader’s disgust was come by honestly and he was right not to trust easily.
Del was trying hard to avoid making unfair judgments and to give the benefit of the doubt. But Jensen knew that some natives, and others, were smart and quick enough to use that very reluctance to allow prejudice to be a shield for their misdeeds. He did not know Kabanak. Was he one of them? Could his half smile have more meaning than it seemed to? The chief could be hiding a lot behind his impassive face. He was answering the questions he was asked, but volunteering little else. Something about the way he sat and spoke gave Alex the feeling he wasn’t telling all he knew…keeping something back. What? His refusal or inability to remember when he saw the Zodiac seemed out of character. Jensen shifted slightly on his windowsill perch, and returned his attention to the conversation, which was ending with the two native men setting aside their cups and standing to shake hands with the inspector.
“I will wait t
o hear from you,” Del was telling Kabanak. “We will let you know if we find out who was involved in these murders.”
Kabanak hesitated. “Murders? More than one?”
“Duck Wilson’s grandson, Will, is also dead.”
The two Indians glanced at each other and the son’s eyes narrowed, with concern or fear, when Kabanak nodded to him. “Tell him what you saw on the river.”
The young man spoke quietly, but with assurance.
“I saw that one on the river on Monday, in a boat I did not recognize, with blue plastic over something in the back. He was driving it recklessly in the river with two men that I did not see clearly, but I knew that Wilson. Mean.”
“What time, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Sometime after noon. They came by going too fast and threw a couple of beer cans in the river as they passed. They did not notice me. They were laughing and shouting about something I couldn’t hear.”
“Three men?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure there were three? Not two?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might. Would you swear there were three?”
He hesitated. “I…no, I could not swear. They went by very fast and the glare from the water was in my eyes.”
Delafosse held out a hand. “Thank you.”
He shook hands again with Kabanak.
They left with the constable, who would make sure they got home.
“Jesus! What the hell is this turning into?”
“Well,” Alex grinned, in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, “it seems almost complete. I was waiting for an Indian. We have most of the rest, don’t we?” He quoted, “Rich man—Russell…poor man—his son, Sean…beggar man—Duck Wilson beggars the imagination…thief—Will and Charlie…doctor—I’ll throw in the coroner…lawyer—well…The Indian chief we just got. If we stretch it and look at everyone involved, I guess we still need the lawyer…or, hopefully, someone will.”
