by Henry, Sue
Chief Kabanak had come in time to hear most of their story and take them both home.
“Yes, it was good to be able to let them go with Henry.” Del smiled and sat up from where he had been leaning with both elbows on the table. “Well…it’s over and the questions are mostly answered. I’m also glad to know Sean didn’t mean to kill Warren.”
“But he did mean to murder Will.”
“Yeah. Too bad. If Charlie hadn’t accidentally shot Will, it might have ended up differently.”
“Lot of ifs in this one. If they hadn’t stolen Jim’s gear, for instance, Sean wouldn’t have used it to set him up.”
“Just chance that he saw Hampton’s camp the night before from the Zodiac and recognized the canoe and those waterproof equipment bags.”
“If Will and Charlie hadn’t stolen that old man’s RV, he wouldn’t have died, and they wouldn’t have come home to hide.”
“And started stealing boats and stuff, getting Will killed by walking into Sean’s attempt to hide his dad’s body.”
“If Duck hadn’t beat up on Charlie, he wouldn’t have tried to force Hampton to take him over the pass and frozen his face, hands, and feet.”
“And Willard wouldn’t have offered to teach you to spit tobacco.”
“True. Now there’s a real loss, but I think I’ll stick to my pipe. Jess says she can put up with that—likes the smell of it, even.”
Jensen stretched his long arms behind his head and yawned. The back of his neck ached from bending over the paperwork he had stayed to help the inspector complete. “We almost done here?”
“The important stuff. The rest can wait till tomorrow. I’ll clean it up and get it sent down to Whitehorse.”
“Good. I won’t fight you on that. Well over an hour of interrogating Russell and at least that long shuffling paper. About time we got some of that potent Canadian whiskey you keep pushing. It’s probably going bad in the bottle as we speak. Needs somebody to drink it before it’s completely spoiled.”
“My thoughts exactly. Let’s get out of here. Clair’s invited us all to dinner.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
AGAINST A HILL JUST SOUTH OF DAWSON, Clair McSpadden’s small, well-built log cabin sat among trees, spilling a warm golden glow from its windows into the dark and highlighting the feather-large snowflakes that fell close enough to be caught in the light. Smoke from a wood fire rose from its stone chimney, dispersing a hint of evergreen and something deliciously redolent of onions and garlic into the air.
Though ravens fly back to communal roosts at night and do not usually remain near human habitation after dark, one cantankerous old bird with a damaged wing muttered and complained momentarily from high in the branches of a spruce, before settling into silence again, with a ruffle of ebony feathers over its feet. Between the tree and back door was a covered feeding platform fastened to a stump, where Clair made sure the old fellow could help himself to tasty items separated from her garbage: stale bread, scraps of fat, meat and vegetables.
The boots of several people had worn a path in the snow, which led to the front door, and the sound of voices, background music, and kitchen noises could be heard coming from inside, where most of those involved in the case had gathered at Clair’s wonderful handmade house for dinner. It was a snug four rooms full of comfortable furniture, brightly colored curtains, books, and currently, six people enjoying each other’s relaxed company. A fire crackled invitingly in the stone fireplace, filling the air with the scent of a handful of spice she had tossed in.
“Hey, this is really well made,” Hampton commented from his seat on the raised hearth, as he examined a small, handcrafted model of a birchbark canoe he had found on the mantel.
“Like to build one like that full-size?” Alex asked, from a place on the sofa next to Jessie, who sat with her feet curled under her, leaning against him affectionately and sipping from a glass of white wine. The turtleneck of a white sweater covered the scratches on her throat and her honey-colored curls shone in the light from the fire. With frequent glances and a more than usual inclination to stay in physical contact, he realized that he was still just a little uneasy from Sean Russell’s threat to her. The continuing warmth of her thigh against his revealed her similar need.
“Think I’ll repair the one I have first,” Jim grinned. “Now that you guys’ll let me take it home.”
Watching him turn the canoe over in his hands, Jensen remembered the clean, careful lines and finish work on the remains of the smashed canoe, and decided that any furniture Hampton made was probably put together with a great deal of skill and pleasure.
“How’re you feeling, Cherlyn?” Del asked, coming in from the kitchen to set a basket of corn chips and a container of salsa on the old trunk that doubled as a coffee table. “More wine?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
She smiled crookedly up at him from a cross-legged position on the floor across from Jim. The bruises on her face were still deep purple, and she was carefully sipping from the side of her mouth, avoiding the pair of stitches the doctor had put into her lip. Still, she looked happily at ease in a pair of Clair’s jeans and a bright blue blouse that contrasted pleasantly with her blond hair.
“Glad to hear it,” he told her, and disappeared back into the kitchen, where he was helping Clair with dinner.
Though the others had offered assistance, she had turned down all but Del, and Alex had already resigned himself to the idea that if the meal took longer to prepare as a result, the developing relationship would certainly benefit. He was also perfectly contented with his second Canadian whiskey and the handful of chips he took from the basket and began to crunch one at a time.
He and Del had invited Hasluk and the Kabanaks, but the chief had thanked them and refused. His son’s mother, he said, was anxious to have him back at home.
Hampton stood up to set the miniature canoe back in its place and picked up his bottle of beer instead, casting a look of anticipation toward the kitchen. “The smell of whatever they’re cooking is driving me crazy,” he said. “Hope there’s more cooking than kissing going on in there.”
“I heard that!” Clair called, as Del came back in, ferrying a huge bowl of green salad to a large, round dining table on the other side of the room.
“Come and get it,” he announced. “Spaghetti’s ready, and the garlic bread’s hot. There’s more wine.”
In five minutes they were cheerfully settled around the table, making satisfied sounds and wiping clam sauce from their faces. By the time chocolate cake, ice cream, and coffee were served, they had all overeaten, but conversation had reestablished itself.
Hampton shook his head when Cherlyn asked a question about Sean Russell.
“What a combination of contradictions he seems to be,” he said to Jensen. “I can’t imagine what kind of anger or fear it would take to kill someone…especially your own father.”
Jessie and Alex quietly held hands on the table between them, each satisfied for the moment with knowing the other was within reach. Alex leaned forward, an elbow on the table, pipe cupped in his other hand, to comment.
“Sean killed Will, all right, but he never meant to kill his father. In fact, he really didn’t, but…” he glanced at Del, who was whispering something to Clair, sitting beside him, proudly making no secret of the fact that she was exactly where she wanted to be. “Let the inspector tell you. It’s his case.”
But Del shook his head.
“I’m tired of being in charge. I’m going to come to work in your detachment, where you’ll have to make the decisions. You know as much as I do, go ahead.”
Alex laughed. “Fair enough. Well, to begin with, Jim, Sean stole the Zodiac in Eagle because his own boat was useless and he badly wanted to have what he saw as a last chance to talk to his father. When he couldn’t locate Warren’s camp after dark, he decided to wait till the next day and camped alone.
“When he met Warren, just after noon the next day, they
got into another argument. Russell refused again to help him buy a new boat. Sean started to leave, angry and frustrated. Warren reached out a hand to stop him and Sean shoved it away. A rock turned under Warren’s foot and the older man lost his balance and fell, hitting his head on a rock on the beach.
“When Sean realized Warren was dead, he panicked. He had just gone up the bank into the brush to look for a place to hide the body when Will and Charlie showed up and got out of their boat. Warren’s body was just out of sight behind the tent, and Sean knew if they came any farther they’d see it. He had a gun he carried for bear at the village site. He shot, not to hit but to scare them, but they didn’t know that.
“They shot back. Will got in the way. Charlie hit him and escaped in Warren’s boat, leaving theirs and what he thought was Will’s body on the beach. He didn’t know Will wasn’t dead.”
“What a run of bad luck,” Hampton commented. “No matter what Sean did, it looked bad, didn’t it?”
“Sure did and worse. But if he’d come to us then, we could have straightened the whole thing out. He might have been convicted of manslaughter, but not much else.”
“But he didn’t. He set me up?”
“Right. Now he was—he thought—left with two dead men, neither of whom he was responsible for. But he had stolen the Zodiac, and after all the disagreements with Warren, he was terrified that no one would believe he hadn’t meant to kill him. He didn’t care about Will, but he decided the best thing would be to get everything of Warren’s off that beach and hidden somewhere else, where, hopefully, no one would ever connect it to him. And where?”
“My camp.”
“Not yet. He was headed for the place he was most familiar with and could hide things easily—the village site down the river. He knew that Charlie had shot Will and, assuming he was dead, went down to see if he could drag him up into the brush and leave him out of sight. But Will came to with Sean looking down at him.
“Now he’d been seen. If he wanted to get away without anyone knowing he had been there, he couldn’t leave Will alive. He questioned him and found out they had stolen your gear. Will offered it to him if he’d leave him alone—told Sean all about taking your stuff and shooting you. He assumed if he hadn’t killed you, you’d drowned.
“Sean shot Will again, killing him this time, and dragged him into the brush, where he covered and left him. He then loaded Warren and his gear into Will’s boat, finding all of yours in the process, including the hatchet. He used it to cut enough wood to take along to start a fire, in case he needed to burn anything incriminating. But he used it later, as we figured, to light your campsite as he set it up.
“Towing the Zodiac, he started down the river after dark, heading for the village site, where he thought he could get rid of the evidence and body.
“From the river, he saw your fire and thought it might be Charlie. He tied up and slipped along the shore to see. When he found you asleep and saw the condition of your camp, he realized you were the one whose gear Will and Charlie had stolen, the tourist they thought they had killed. Since it was easy to tell which was yours—those bags with your name on them—he decided to leave your gear—it would be easier than hiding it—figuring you’d be glad to get it back and might not go to the police over what was no longer stolen. He crept up and hit you over the head, so he could put it back without your knowing who had brought it. He hoped you would assume it was, for some reason, the thieves and, at the least, wouldn’t be able to prove it was ever missing.
“Then, while he was unloading your equipment, he realized that he could set you up for his father’s death just as easily. Since you were an unknown, from somewhere else, and not familiar, he hatched a plan to frame you. But because the bruise on Warren’s head didn’t look enough like violent murder, he used your hatchet to hit his body again. Sometime after that he found the shotgun and decided it would be even better. By now he was exhausted and totally irrational. He blasted Warren’s head with the gun, over the hatchet wound, and placed the gun under the body, which he had carried into the brush above your reestablished camp.
“Making the hatchet wound and shooting Warren almost broke him. He really did love his father, but he hated him too. Miserable situation. He’s going to need some help getting it straight in his mind. A lot of the anger he displayed came out of that, I think.
“He crushed your canoe, dumped booze on you and as much as possible down your unconscious throat, put Warren’s gear in your tent, and left. Going back upriver, on the spur of the moment, he deflated the Zodiac and sank it by Kabanak’s fish wheel. Another suspect wouldn’t hurt—if only of stealing the inflatable boat. He took Will’s stolen boat back to the village site with him, where he hid the motor and the hatchet, and sank the boat in a deep spot in the river. When the investigation that he knew would result died down, he intended to get the boat back, repaint it, and claim he had bought it used somewhere. He bribed his assistant, Hasluk—who didn’t know about the murder, by the way—to give him an alibi, also threatening to fire him if he told anyone Sean hadn’t been there all the time. Then he settled in to wait for someone to bring the news that his father was dead, killed by a stranger, a tourist with a canoe.
“The hatchet he kept, in case he needed an extra piece of evidence that pointed to Hampton, but never got around to using it—forgot and left it at the village site, where Hasluk found it later.”
“So,” Jessie asked, “he might have succeeded, if he hadn’t come to Dawson?”
“Might. I’d like to think we’re better than that and it would just have taken us a little longer. But he couldn’t stand not knowing what was going on. He used waiting for his father’s body to be released as an excuse to stick around. That led to his great mistake of claiming the pen we had picked up in the place Warren was killed.”
“Well, at least it’s over,” Clair said. “It’s good to know what really happened. Sean Russell’s locked up, and Duck Wilson. Old wretch won’t get a chance to know the joy of filth again for a long time. Poor Charlie will be tried as soon as he’s well.” She smiled up at Del. “You got them all, Inspector.”
“We got them all.” He nodded around the table, then smiled wickedly, laying his arm around her shoulders. “You ran the women’s shelter and made coffee and…”
“Hey!”
“Alex did a lot of investigating and learned to appreciate Canuck whiskey”—he lifted his coffee cup in a toast to Jensen—“even Jessie got more involved than she intended—could start classes in pugilism—but Jim actually got him at the last there. Thanks, Jim, for all of us.”
“Especially for me,” Jessie said, leaning to where he sat beside her, to give him a hug. “I…well, you know. Thanks for being there.” She sat back and Alex smiled at the glow on Hampton’s face. She did have that effect on people, he thought.
“Shall we give him a strong-man trophy?” he asked her.
“No.” She smiled. “I think we should invite him, and his friend Judy, to come up next summer. We could show them a lot of good canoeing and fishing spots.”
“That invitation I’ll accept right now,” Hampton said. “I’ll bring both Judy and her daughter, Megan. You’ll like them a lot and I can hardly wait for them to meet you.”
“Good. That’s settled.”
“Oh,” Del remembered, “you can have the journal back, if you want it, and the nuggets are yours. There don’t seem to be any leads to his family.”
“Hey, thanks. Enough money for me to build a new canoe, I bet. But I had a talk with the museum curator and I think I’ll leave the journal here with him. The museum’s where it really belongs, don’t you think?”
“Great idea, Jim,” Alex said.
“I’ve got one more, I think. How would it be, Del, if we buried Addison Riser’s bones back on the riverbank where I found them, and put a small marker there that gives his name and who he was? Would that be okay?”
Del nodded, obviously pleased. “I think that’s the bes
t one yet. If you’ll come back up next summer, I’ll help you do it.”
They all agreed it was exactly right.
“Hey, when are you coming back to Alaska, Del?” Jensen asked. “We could do some fishing in the spring.”
“Sooner than that, I hope. I thought maybe Clair would like to go to Anchorage with me for Fur Rendezvous in February. I was there last year and it’s a lot of fun. What do you think, Clair?”
“I think that could be arranged,” she said. “If the boss’ll let me take the time off.”
Their smiles almost matched the exceptionally pleased one on Jensen’s face.
Jessie poked him in the ribs. “Matchmaker,” she muttered.
“I have very good instincts,” he said with mock dignity.
“And taste,” she reminded him.
“And taste,” he agreed, heartily. “Very good taste.”
“You may deserve, after all.”
As Hampton got up to refill the coffee cups, there was a knock on the front door. Clair opened it to reveal curator Robert Fitzgerald on the porch, thoroughly dusted with snow.
“You’ve got a raven in a tree out here,” he said. “It scolded me with quorks all the way up the path.”
“That’s Swiftwater Bill,” she told him. “He’s got a bum wing. Come on in. You’re just in time for dessert.”
