by Henry, Sue
As they looked more closely, Jensen noticed that the Yukon River was drawn farther than Dawson on the map. At the extreme north, or top of what was recorded, Forty-Mile Camp was clearly labeled. So, Riser had tried to go on to Forty-Mile, or at least known it was there.
There was a small, separate sketch at the bottom of the second page: a detailed drawing, with streets and buildings, of Dawson, with a number of claims marked outside of town, including the most famous one, Bonanza, to the west. What a great thing Addison had done, leaving a picture of what it had looked like to him in 1897. And there, on what seemed to have been a vacant lot, was an X for the spot he had hidden the gold.
Looking at the detail of Dawson, Hampton unfolded the modern map he had found at the Visitors Center and compared the two.
“They didn’t have one old enough to see the way it used to be,” he told the others. “Nothing quite fits with this new one. From Riser’s map, the mark he made to indicate where he buried the gold could be anywhere in about a four-block area. How can you tell?”
It was true. Streets had been moved, buildings were marked where none currently stood, and new ones had been added that had not existed during the gold rush.
Alex glanced back and forth between the two maps and shook his head.
“Why don’t you take this with you to the museum and show it to Fitzgerald. If anyone could make sense of it, he could.”
“Yes,” Hampton agreed, enthusiastically.
“I’ll bet he could figure this out with some of the old maps he has over there. Worth a try, at least. I’ll give him a call and see if he can take a look at it.” Delafosse went to the telephone and soon had an affirmative invitation from the curator. “He said to bring it on over. He’ll look at it as soon as you get there. You can take the journal for him to look at too.”
They all stood grinning at each other for a moment.
“How many people find an authentic treasure map?” Hampton crowed.
“Not many,” Delafosse agreed, then cautioned, “but don’t get your hopes up too high. The gold is probably gone long ago.”
“It might still be there,” Jessie threw in. “There’s a chance.”
“Oh, sure, a chance. If this was the only map, and if he buried it deep enough, and if nobody dug a basement there, and if…Who knows?”
The glow of even partially solving the Riser mystery could not be doused by Del’s cool splash of reason. Hampton and Jessie, with the journal and map, headed for the door, excited and pleased with themselves.
“It may take some time,” the inspector cautioned them. “Things’ve changed a lot in almost a hundred years. Roads have moved, buildings come and gone. He may have to look for a while to be accurate.”
Hampton nodded. “Well, it may not be there anyway. But it will be fun to find out where he left it back then. If it’s gone, someone might know who found it.”
Delafosse nodded and disappeared once more into the back of the building to see if the attorney was ready to be let out of Wilson’s cell. Hampton and Jessie went eagerly out the door, anxious to get to the museum. They had been gone only a few minutes, however, when Jessie came back.
“Shall we meet you here for lunch?” Jessie asked Alex. “You and Del plan to eat, don’t you? We can all go, if that’s all right with you.”
“Sure, sounds…” he hesitated at the sound of the front door opening again and turned to find Sean Russell coming in.
“Where’s Delafosse?” he demanded.
“In a meeting with an attorney.”
“Said he wanted to see me, and I want to see him.”
Jessie stood where she was, watching. There was something uneasy, almost disturbed in Russell’s voice, and it was the first time she had seen Senator Russell’s son.
“He should be out in just a few minutes,” Alex told him, waving a hand at an empty chair. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Russell’s beige appearance was relieved this time by a blue jacket. It looked strangely as if it should have been worn by someone else, the hue an interesting contrast to his washed-out coloring and the rest of his clothes.
Russell frowned and walked past the chair toward Clair’s desk. “Na-aw. I’ll stand. Just have a question or two.” He turned and paced back across the room to look out the windows on the west side, but not stopping there either, turned and walked back.
“Is it something important? Can I help?” Jensen asked.
He shook his head. “Nope. I’ll wait to see Delafosse. What’s he want anyway? I understand he has my assistant up. Why? What’s going on? He the one that killed my father?”
“Better let him tell you.”
They watched him fidget and move nervously around the room, looking at pictures and out windows. Something about the disease of the man caught and held Jensen’s attention. Russell couldn’t seem to keep his hands still; touching things he passed, fussing with the fringe on a flag in one corner, rubbing at a spot on a windowpane.
“What’s taking so long?” he asked, once again walking up to Clair’s desk.
“He won’t be much longer,” she told him.
He picked up and put down the square stone penholder she had been close to using for protection several days before.
“They released my father’s body yet?”
“I don’t know, but the inspector will be able to find out for you, I’m sure.”
She watched Russell straighten a pile of paperwork in a basket on her desk. Jessie walked across the room and sat down in a chair next to the door. While Alex watched Russell, she was paying close attention to him. Her alert expression said clearly that she was aware that something subtle was going on that she didn’t understand.
“Let me tell the inspector that you’re here waiting for him,” Clair said, and started to rise from her chair.
“Hey,” said Russell, when she was only halfway up. He reached across her desk to the items on the evidence bag. “My pen. How’d that get here? I must have dropped it in here the other day, huh? Wondered where I lost it.”
He turned from the desk, holding the green pen in one hand, a pleased expression on his face.
Jessie sensed that Alex had grown very still. Clair, a startled look on her face, sat back down in her chair and pushed away from the desk with both hands. There was a moment of silence, then the sound of the door to the interview room opening.
“Mel will let you in to see Mr. Wilson whenever you want,” they heard Delafosse tell the attorney.
“What makes you think it’s yours?” Alex asked Russell, with elaborate casualness. “Lots of green pens.” He made a small “hold it” motion with one hand to Delafosse, who appeared alone in the doorway.
“Not like this one,” Russell enthused, examining the pen. “You can’t get them here. I special-order them from the East Coast because they will write even in the rain, on wet paper. Great for outdoor stuff at the site. This is the last one I had and I didn’t know where…”
He looked up, noticed the look on Jensen’s face, and hesitated. “What?”
Delafosse stepped carefully into the room. “Sean. That pen’s yours?”
The pleased expression faded slowly from Russell’s face and a subtle, calculated cunning took its place. “Is it?”
“You said so.”
Russell glanced nervously around at the four people staring at him. “It…it must not be mine. I’ve made a mistake.”
“A bad one, I’m afraid. That pen is evidence. We found it at the place on the river where your father was murdered. You said you were never there.”
Comprehension widened Sean Russell’s eyes as he almost threw the offending pen back on Clair’s desk. Panic replaced it. With one swift motion, he snatched a half-full bottle of soda from the desk and almost leaped toward the door. Before Jessie could move, he smashed the bottle against the wall, breaking the top of it and spilling its contents. Grabbing her from behind he positioned what was left of the splintered bottom of it just under her chin,
sharp spears threatening her throat. Breaking the bottle had cut him, and blood dripped slowly from the fingers of his tense right hand onto the front of her light green sweater.
“Alex?” she said, in a small, whispery, disbelieving voice.
“Shut up,” Russell told her, gripping her shoulder with the other hand. “Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.”
She followed his directions, freezing in the chair. Only her eyes moved, first to Clair, who sat with both hands over her mouth, then to Delafosse, who half crouched just in front of the doorway, ready for anything, and finally to Jensen, where they met and clung to his, recognizing and sharing the fear that her life…their life…could be gone in a second.
His face was white, his lips stiff as he spoke, slowly and quietly, “Do exactly what he says, Jess. Don’t move.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
NO ONE MOVED FOR ANOTHER LONG MINUTE.
“Stand up—very, very slowly,” Russell told Jessie and began to guide her to her feet with his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t!” he said to Jensen, who had involuntarily taken a step forward.
When he and Arnold stood to one side of the chair, he stopped and looked across at Delafosse. “Give me the keys to your truck.”
The inspector hesitated, glancing at Jensen before reaching into his pocket for the keys.
Russell released Jessie’s shoulder and grabbed a handful of the hair on the back of her head. Pulling her head back, he bared her throat and laid the broken glass against it. Carefully he applied pressure until a thin line of red appeared against the white of her skin.
Jessie’s eyes widened and she bit her lower lip, but otherwise did not physically react to the sudden pain. The room was so still they could all hear her ragged breathing.
“Do it,” he snapped. “Give them to her.”
Delafosse moved toward him slowly and reached out to drop the keys in the hand Jessie raised.
“Back,” Russell told the inspector. “Get back over there.”
The inspector backed away.
“Now,” he said, still holding Jessie by her hair. “You will all move over there by the windows. We are going out…together. If anyone here moves from where I can see them, she loses. Got that?”
“Listen, Sean…” Delafosse started.
Once again, Russell pressed the glass to Arnold’s throat and a fresh line of blood appeared. Still she kept herself from reacting, afraid that if she moved, even a fraction of an inch, more damage would be done.
“GOT THAT?”
The two officers nodded.
“Then move. Over there, behind the desk, and face the windows.”
Delafosse and Jensen moved slowly and carefully across the room to stand with Clair, who had risen from her chair.
Jensen was seething with frustration and apprehension.
“Jessie,” he said tensely. “Do exactly what he says. Move very carefully.”
“SHUT UP,” Russell screamed. “No talking. Turn around and face the parking lot.”
They did.
He began to pull Jessie backward toward the door. She felt cold and as if she couldn’t get enough air. Adrenaline seemed to heighten her senses. She could feel, but not see, that he had moved the bottle enough so that it no longer rested against her neck, but was still close, sharp and deadly. If she grabbed his arm with both hands, could she keep it away long enough for Alex to get across the room? she wondered briefly before discarding the idea. She didn’t know Russell, had no idea how strong or quick he was, but he was obviously desperate. She was just a means of escape to him. He probably wouldn’t hurt her unless he was pressured or forced. If she cooperated, there might be a safer opportunity to get away. Carefully, as Alex had told her, she moved back, step by step, not resisting the steady, hurtful pressure of his grip on her hair.
She heard the rattle of the doorknob as he bumped it.
Jensen started to turn his head toward them and Russell stopped.
“Don’t even consider turning around,” he said. “You’ve seen a sample of what will happen if you do.
“Stand perfectly still,” he told Arnold.
She felt him let go of her hair to open the door and wanted to step away, but the broken bottle remained just under her chin. The knob turned and the door opened with a tiny squeal. It had a closing device that forced him to hold it with one hand to keep it open.
“Step back,” he told her.
She stepped. The glass wavered and touched her.
“Again.”
She took another step and felt the doorsill under her left foot. With care not to lose her balance and accidentally cut herself, she stepped over it. Looking at the back of Alex’s head, she noticed a strand or two that stuck up from a cowlick and wondered if she was seeing it for the last time. If he cut her, could they get help fast enough to keep her from bleeding to death? Stop it, she thought, taking a deep breath. I won’t pay attention to that now. She forced herself to focus on where her feet were going and what Russell was doing behind her. Two more steps and she was clear of the door, both feet on the porch.
Then, behind her, Russell made an odd, soft sound of air expelled and, suddenly, the glass was gone from her throat.
“Move away, fast,” a voice told her, calmly.
Arnold lunged forward and whirled to see Russell struggling in Hampton’s muscular grip. One arm, strong from driving canoe paddles through the heavy water of many rivers, was around the beige man’s neck in a choke hold that almost lifted him from the floor. The other, like a vise, held his right wrist out to the side, the broken bottle still clutched in his fingers. With his free hand, Russell clawed ineffectively at the arm that restricted his breathing. The two of them looked almost as if they were dancing against the heavy door.
“Ugh,” Russell grunted, his face turning red.
Almost methodically, Hampton began to pound Russell’s right hand forward against the door frame. Three, four times he hit it, till the bottle fell, breaking on the hard wooden porch. When the hand was empty, Hampton half carried, half marched his choking captive forward into the office, leaving the door to close itself behind them.
Jensen and Delafosse both moved quickly to help, but before they could get around the desk and cross the room, Jessie acted first. Stepping forward, she whipped her fist into Russell’s diaphragm in a punch that would have doubled him over without Hampton’s unwelcome support.
“You bastard!” she spit at him. “You pitiful coward.”
She hit him again with the other fist, then stepped back, ruefully shaking both hands, and turned to meet Alex.
“He deserved it,” she said.
While Delafosse assisted Hampton, Jensen gathered her into his arms, where she was glad to stay, shaking slightly as the adrenaline rush and fear subsided.
In a minute, she looked up from the embrace to see a combination of love, relief, and humor on his face.
“Couldn’t you just watch for a change?” he asked.
Clair, who noticed that Jessie’s injured neck was bleeding on his shirt, went for the first-aid kit.
“That green pen. And we hadn’t even had it checked for fingerprints.” Delafosse shook his head regretfully and examined the pen in question, now in a new evidence bag.
“We did have a few more promising leads, you have to admit,” Jensen reminded him. “Trash from the beach would have been a long shot and we automatically prioritize the most important stuff first. It was due to go down to the lab.”
“I know, but…”
“And if you had sent it already, it wouldn’t have been here for him to find and pick up. His alibi might have kept us guessing for some time—and looking at Charlie’s lies.”
“You’re right, of course. Still…”
“Forget it, Del. Least said…Where was Mel while all that went on? I kept expecting him to walk in on it.”
“In the back, keeping an eye on Duck Wilson, who wasn’t too pleased with the representation the court sent him. We wanted t
o make sure he didn’t decide to express his displeasure physically, so I told Mel to stick around. He didn’t hear a thing. It was actually pretty quiet.”
“I remember it as screaming loud.”
“Well, you would. It was your Jessie, after all.” He grinned. “Those were quite some punches she threw. Ever consider recruiting her?”
“Not a chance. One of us in the game is enough.”
“Where is she?”
“I sent her back to the hotel for lunch and a nap. She said she was exhausted from standing in for police officers who did nothing but look out windows.”
“She did, did she? You picked a good one, Jensen. That’s where Clair went, too, I guess, home for a rest. I told her to take the afternoon off.”
“Yeah, and Hampton walked over with them.”
“What shoulders on that guy. If paddling a canoe builds that kind of strength, I think in a few months I’ll get the whole post out on the river for spring training.”
“Pretty impressive, all right. Sure glad to have him on our side. He took hold and hung on like Russell was a rag doll, thank God. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.”
“You were not alone, my friend. I could hardly tolerate standing there, listening to him take Jessie out the door.”
“You happy with the way things turned out for the Kabanaks?”
“Very.”
Sean Russell had replaced Hasluk and Kabanak junior in the cell. Knowing he had been caught was all it had taken to have them fall over themselves to tell what they knew.
After Sean left for Dawson, Hasluk, troubled that he had been told to lie or lose his job, had searched the village site and found where Sean had sunk the stolen boat and, hidden in the brush, the motor and the hatchet with Hampton’s initials. Afraid that his word against Sean’s wouldn’t be believed, he had recruited Henry junior to help him make sure the hatchet got to the police in Dawson, hoping that it would be enough to incriminate Sean. They had followed Alex around town, trying to leave it where he would be sure to find it. Kabanak junior was the figure he had seen coming out of the hotel. They had made the tracks to the truck from the snow machine but, finding it ransacked already, decided to leave the hatchet on the back porch of the RCMP office. Unexpectedly confronted by Mel, they had maintained silence: Hasluk, afraid of being charged with Russell’s murder; Kabanak, out of respect and fear for his friend.
