Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  Easing down on the gas, Hampton gave one thankful thought to the four-wheel drive and the heavy lug tires he had on those four wheels—though he would rather have had snow tires with studs—and drove forward, keeping away from the place where the road ended and Charlie had sunk out of sight the first time. Then, for a long, slow five minutes, he followed as the kid staggered forward through the drifts, hands tucked in his armpits. The truck wheels spun frequently, but somehow they always grabbed and made it.

  When they were almost to where he thought the curves ended, either he or Charlie grew careless and assumed the road straightened faster than it did. With a sick sense of inevitability, he suddenly felt the truck, moving without his guidance, drop the right front wheel, then the rear, over the edge of the road. Desperately, he swung at the steering wheel, trying to pull it back on the roadbed, to no avail. Slowly the pickup canted to the right, slid, and came to a tilted rest, irrevocably sunk in the ditch. He knew instantly that there wasn’t a chance they could get it out without a tow.

  Charlie came floundering through the snow, back to the door on the driver’s side, which he wrenched open in a paroxysm of rage.

  “You bastard,” he shouted. “You silly son of a bitch. Now you’ve done for yourself. Did it on purpose, didn’t you? Well, get out of there. I’m gonna do you, I swear I am.” Then, with a wail of contradiction, “What are we gonna do now?”

  He pulled the gun from his jacket pocket and tried to point it at Hampton, but his hands were so cold he dropped it in the snow, where it disappeared under the truck. Throwing himself on his belly, he scrabbled after it, found it, and, getting up, put it resignedly back in his pocket.

  Hampton leaned forward, resting his head on the steering wheel, and said nothing. It was hard to keep himself from sliding down into the passenger side on the steep pitch of the seat. In a second or two, he raised his head and looked at the kid, covered with snow, stomping his feet and wringing his hands.

  “Check to be sure the exhaust isn’t buried in the snow, so we don’t die of carbon monoxide, and get in, Charlie, before you freeze to death.”

  Surprisingly, without a word, the kid did as he was told, pawing snow away from the exhaust pipe and muffler with numb hands, then climbing into the tipped truck through the driver’s door, where Hampton allowed his tired body to slide slowly down to rest against the passenger door to make room. The door shut, they sat in silence, listening to the wind howl outside and the tiny, whispery sound of grains of snow hitting the windows.

  Hampton felt there was little to say that was not self-evident about their predicament. It was likely to be a considerable amount of time before anyone found them…if anyone did. They had enough gas to run the truck, off and on, to keep from freezing for quite a long time, if they were careful. But they had absolutely nothing to eat or drink, nothing to melt snow in, and nothing but what they wore for protection against the cold. He wished for his heavy boots.

  “Better start the engine and get it as warm in here as possible for a little while,” he said to Charlie, who followed his instructions without comment. The sound of its running decreased the empty, isolated whine of the wind a little. The truck still vibrated in the Arctic blasts that howled over the ridges, almost as if it were angry at not being able to reach them with its bitter breath.

  Charlie clung to the steering wheel, trying to avoid sliding down across the seat into Hampton.

  “You can’t sit that way for any length of time,” he told the kid. “Turn your feet down here across my legs and brace yourself against the door, but kick the snow off your boots first.”

  With one side of the truck buried in a snowbank, less wind found its way into the cab to steal their precious heat. As Hampton watched, snow began to drift across the windshield, covering more of the exposed surface of the truck. It would be some insulation, he realized, slightly amused that every obstacle seemed to hold at least one positive, encouraging element.

  In ten minutes, when they could once again feel their fingers and toes, and most of the snow had melted off Charlie’s clothes, leaving him damp but warmer, Hampton turned off the engine and the storm’s howling seemed to increase again. He pulled the collar of his jacket up around his ears, put his gloved hands in his pockets and slumped down in the seat, knees against the dash.

  Would anyone follow them? he wondered. Could they? Would anyone even know, or figure out, where they had gone? Would Delafosse and Jensen have found the clue he had left on the check? Slim chance. It would be suicidal to try anything but wait here in the truck and hope. Thirty miles in any blizzard, let alone this one, made any thought of walking out ridiculous. He remembered Riser’s journal. How he must have tried to walk the river from Dawson to Forty Mile. Riser hadn’t made it. Neither could they. If they were lucky, someone would find them here. If not, when they ran out of gas and grew cold enough, they would just go to sleep, as he probably had. The only difference was a metal shell of protection and a little comforting heat to hoard and use infrequently.

  Charlie shifted slightly and Hampton looked up to find him watching with frightened eyes. He cleared his throat and snuffled again.

  “Are we going to die?” he asked in an uncharacteristically small voice.

  Hampton hesitated for a minute, deciding what to say. That this kid knew nothing about wilderness or extreme weather conditions was unmistakably plain. He panicked at things that should be mere irritations, brazened his foolish way into real dangers. “I don’t know,” he said, finally. “I hope not.”

  Charlie really looked like a little kid, he thought somewhat sympathetically, then, with a start, remembered that this was the same shit who had helped Will rob him on the river, almost killed him. Who had kidnapped him at gunpoint—well, gun-in-pocket-point—from the bar in Dawson and forced him to drive his truck, run the ferry to get them across the river, and drive to this godforsaken snow-buried location on the roof of the world where they could, with very little trouble, freeze to death…who had set him up to take the blame for Russell’s murder and probably killed Will.

  He looked at Charlie, who looked back.

  “Why,” he asked, “did you bring my gear back, almost destroy my canoe, and set me up for Russell’s murder?”

  The kid frowned. “Back?”

  “Yeah. Why set me up like that?”

  “How? Look. I’m sorry Will shot your canoe. Sorry we took your stuff, too. It was stupid. Okay?”

  “Then why set me up?”

  “Whaddaya mean? We never set you up. We just took your stuff.”

  “Oh, come on, kid. It’s a little late in the game now. I’d just like to know, why me? It didn’t really work, you know. Didn’t take them long to decide I probably hadn’t had anything to do with it. They’re looking for you because of Russell.”

  “Who’s Russell? I didn’t have nothing to do with any Russell. Never saw him, don’t know him. Ask Duck.”

  “You mean you and Will never brought my camping gear back to where I camped after you took it? Never set it up and left Russell’s body in the brush, so it looked like I killed him? Never bashed up the end of my canoe with a rock? I’m supposed to believe that?”

  Total confusion filled Charlie’s face. “No. Shit no. Why’d we bring your stuff back? We was gonna sell it.” He frowned and shook his head in absolute denial.

  Hampton stared at him, thoughts whirling.

  If Charlie was telling the truth, who had set him up? And who had killed Russell…and Will, for that matter? But the chance he was telling the truth was certainly slim.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “SAYS SHE HASN’T HEARD FROM HIM SINCE last weekend and has been worried since she heard about Warren Russell. He didn’t even call to tell her his father was dead.”

  Early the next morning, Delafosse had telephoned Sean Russell’s wife, Marilyn, in the small mining town of Chicken, Alaska, where she and Sean ran a small gold-dredging operation when he wasn’t doing research and photography on the Canadian
Yukon. Though their main objective of the day was to locate and retrieve Hampton and the kid, the inspector had agreed with Jensen that it wouldn’t hurt to look a little closer at the other suspects on their list.

  The snow had stopped sometime before dawn, but on the ridges of the Top of the World the wind was still blowing too strongly to allow the safe flight of the helicopter Delafosse had put on notice the night before.

  “Let’s give it an hour or two,” he suggested. “It’s supposed to calm down soon. Then, if we still can’t fly, we can fire up the big plow truck.”

  While they waited, he and Jensen had both made phone calls.

  “Evidently Warren Russell stopped by their place last Saturday on his way here to fish,” the inspector continued. “Marilyn says he left in a temper when he and Sean had another confrontation over the subsistence issue and his son’s lifestyle. He had evidently promised to help Sean buy a new boat that he badly needs, but slammed out swearing that Sean, or anyone else who would use his money to fight for a cause he disagreed with, wouldn’t get—and I quote Marilyn, quoting him—‘even enough of it in change to rub between two fingers.’ She says he called Sean worthless and told him again that he was wasting his life, when he should be doing something respectable.”

  “Pretty strong stuff,” Jensen said. “Had he ever completely disinherited Sean before?”

  “Every other week, from the sound of it. Sean has tried for years to please Warren and still live his own life. They’ve always had conflict, but it wasn’t so bad while the mother was alive. Marilyn was upset over this one, though. Seems Sean was more than usually depressed and angry. She hasn’t seen or heard from either of them since, but Sean didn’t leave for his village photography site until the day after Warren had gone—Sunday. I told her if I saw him I’d tell him to call her.”

  “Not much of a recommendation of innocence, is it?”

  Delafosse shook his head. “Still, it’s not exactly new information—more like old news.”

  “Well, here’s another piece of news, old and new, that may interest you.”

  Jensen shuffled notes he had made while talking on the other telephone line. He had followed up on a couple of calls to the Denver police to find out more about Jim Hampton, with an unexpected result—Hampton had a record. Approximately ten years earlier, he had been arrested for assault in the aftermath of a brawl in a bar, but the charge was later dropped. The man he fought with had ended up in the hospital with a broken arm and jaw. The arresting officers had both left Colorado and no one presently on duty remembered the incident.

  A second startling, and perhaps more damning, item, however, was that another assault charge was currently pending against him. The officer who had investigated informed Jensen that Hampton had punched out a fellow workman on a construction job in late July, knocking him against a cement truck and giving him a concussion.

  “Some sort of disagreement over quality of work,” he told Jensen. “We weren’t even on the scene. The guy came in to file charges after it was all over and he’d seen a doctor. Said Hampton attacked him for no reason at all. I’d take that under consideration, since the supposedly injured party’s a troublemaker, with a record himself. The contractor has slapped a lawsuit on his company for substandard materials and breach of the subcontract.”

  “Was Hampton dismissed?”

  “No. I’m sure he wasn’t. But he must be a hothead, and strong. He’s got some shoulders on him. Shouldn’t hit people.”

  In the RCMP office, the two officers looked at each other in silence, both thinking hard. Finally, Jensen spoke, thoughtfully.

  “Well, getting in a fight doesn’t mean much without other evidence, but it’s no wonder he didn’t want to charge Sean with assault.”

  “What if he and Charlie knew each other and took off together on purpose. It could be just their bad luck and lack of knowledge that they drove right into more trouble, instead of a getaway.”

  “There’s no indication they knew each other.”

  “I’m just playing what if with all the possibilities.”

  “He’d have to be a pretty good actor.”

  “Yes.”

  “Something’s just not right about the idea, Del.”

  “Something’s not right about all of it. Maybe—to make another bad pun—we have too many chiefs and not enough Indians—or too many suspects.”

  Delafosse had already sent the jet boat upriver with two constables to bring in Duck Wilson. Cherlyn had signed a complaint and he would be arrested as a result, as well as on suspicion of the vehicle theft, until they could put the evidence together.

  Another assault charge, Jensen thought. Why did people insist on doing physical damage to each other? It seemed so senseless. If Charlie had forced Hampton to leave town with him, he hoped the canoeist was safe and unharmed. It would have been a cold and uncomfortably dangerous night wherever they were up there. He went over to the window to see what the weather was doing and found that the sun had come out through a dissipating layer of cloud and the crystals of new snow sparkled in its thin, tentative light. He thought of Jessie Arnold and her honest delight in the run she had made yesterday with her dogs. Less frustrated, he turned back to Delafosse, still seated at the desk.

  “At least Duck Wilson won’t be beating on anyone again soon. Can’t we get going?”

  The phone rang, commanding Delafosse’s attention. After a brief conversation consisting mainly of single syllables on his part, he laid the receiver down and rubbed his ear thoughtfully, frowning.

  “What?”

  “Coroner. Found about what we expected with Will Wilson. It was the head shot that killed him. The odd thing is that he was shot with two different guns. The head shot from a thirty-eight at fairly close range—there was some carbon tattooing—and the other, the one in his back, probably a forty-four from a distance, tore him up pretty good. Took out a kidney and damaged his spleen. He bled a lot inside, but quite slowly.

  “Damn it, Alex, how many people killed these two guys? Three types of injury to Russell’s head. Now two different guns used on Wilson. One killed, then shot later. The other shot, then killed later.”

  “You ever read a book called Murder on the Orient Express?”

  “Wasn’t there a movie?”

  “Yeah. In the end, every suspect turns out to have taken a whack at the victim. They were all in it together.”

  “You don’t think that’s what’s going on here?”

  “No, but it makes you think. We’ve got motives for more than one. More than one seem to have had opportunity. There’s something we’re not getting hold of, though.”

  “Well…whatever it is, we’d better be thinking about getting to those two at the top of the hill. Let’s check the weather again. Maybe we can get that bird off the ground and find out where they are. I think we’d better pack a bag of survival gear to drop to them. It’s more than likely we won’t be able to land if the wind is blowing a ground blizzard the way it does for days sometimes. We could at least drop them enough so they can eat and stay warm enough to last till we can plow our way in there. Better pack two or three liters of water. They’ll dehydrate pretty fast up there.”

  “How about a couple of snow machines?” Alex remembered the amount of ground he had covered on one the previous spring to investigate two deaths during the Iditarod.

  “We could take a couple in the back of the plow truck, with a ramp to get them down, but it’ll be easier and warmer to ride inside and clear the road as we go, so we can bring Hampton’s truck back. If we need to, we can use them off road when we get there, but they won’t be stupid enough to try to walk out, I hope.”

  It had grown light, but the two at the top of the hill, in the cab of the now all-but-buried truck, were both half asleep in the gloom of the snow-covered cab. The wind had died from what it had been at its worst, though it still shrieked across the barren landscape, but the snow, drifted and packed around the truck, shielded them from most of i
t. It was difficult to tell if the flakes that still flew on the wind were coming from the ground or the sky, but the temperature had not risen.

  Through the night that never seemed to end, they had dozed off and on, waking, as the confined space grew progressively colder, to run the engine and heater. Hampton had twice cleared snow from around the exhaust and emptied the extra can of gas into the tank not long before it began to grow light. So far neither of them had frozen fingers or toes, but it would not have taken much.

  He had traded places with Charlie, partly because whenever the kid went to sleep he relaxed, his knees buckled, and he slipped down the seat until he was piled up against Hampton, mashing him against the door. Now curled up in the tightest ball he could make of his lanky body, he had both knees under his chin, head against the passenger window, and was snoring with his mouth open.

  The kid was having trouble breathing. The last time he woke, his face was flushed and his eyes feverish. He had shivered uncontrollably as he moved. When he spoke, his voice was raspy and thick with a sore throat.

  Hampton calculated fatalistically that if they got out of this predicament there was probably no way he could keep from catching whatever it was Charlie had. The cab of the truck must be full of a million germs, all looking for a home, and he was an unavoidably convenient virus hotel.

  There was no way to be comfortable in the limited space. Whatever position Hampton assumed, part of him quickly grew numb or cramped, and most of him was cold. He lay for the moment on his back, head on the seat below the steering wheel, wiggling his fingers inside his pockets, boots propped up beyond and over Charlie, braced on the top of the window, trying to straighten his legs for a change. Not quite asleep, he was thinking of Judy Rematto, that he should have called her, and what he would have said if he had. Now that he couldn’t, and had time to think about it, the issue loomed significantly in his mind.

  More than anything he could imagine, he also wished he had a lot of hot coffee—along with an enormous breakfast: steak, eggs, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, grapefruit juice. He particularly liked the clean tanginess of grapefruit juice in contrast to the flavor of fried eggs and hash browns, which he liked to mix together, especially if the yolks were slightly runny. He was mentally adding salt and pepper to his imaginary feast when he became aware of a muffled, rhythmic thumping sound.