Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  “What have you got, Gene?” Delafosse asked.

  “More than we expected,” the tallest young constable, who held the bag, told him with a grin.

  “We think we found where they took her,” the shorter one with a mustache added.

  “Where?”

  Leland was on his feet. “You found—”

  “No we didn’t find her—”

  The two constables interrupted each other in their eagerness to tell what they knew.

  “They must have moved her again soon after…but look at these.”

  In the middle of Delafosse’s living room carpet, carefully, the constable set down the bag and they spread it open to display the contents. Several candy wrappers and a greasy sandwich bag containing a few crumbs lay inside, along with an empty red plastic gasoline can, a black ballpoint pen, a piece of cord with a couple of knots in it, about a dozen cigarette butts, and an empty book of matches, partly burned. There were also some charred scraps of white paper, one of which had clearly had something written on it, for the edges of a few partial letters remained unscorched.

  Leland reached to pick up something, but Caswell caught his arm.

  “Don’t touch anything that might have fingerprints, Jake.”

  Jake nodded agreement and pointed instead. “That,” he said. “That’s Debbie’s.”

  “What?”

  “That knotted cord. It’s the cord from the parka her mother made for her. I’d know it anywhere. She was always practicing those knots. See—that’s a running eight and the other one’s an end loop—the two she was concentrating on just before the race.”

  “They were not too concerned with cleaning up after themselves, were they? Where did you find this?” Delafosse demanded of his men.

  “Tucked down next to the log wall, where it could have been overlooked. If she left it, she tried to hide it from her captors.”

  “But where? You didn’t just find this by the side of the road somewhere.”

  “O-o-oh no. We found it in an abandoned cabin in Minto.”

  “Minto? What the hell were you doing in Minto? There was never anything that would have directed us to Minto.”

  “Yes, I know, but after we searched the murder site again and found nothing, then took the snowmachines out to Mandana Lake and still found nothing new at all, we started trying to think of someplace that would be easy to hide her in a hurry and still be accessible to the highway—somewhere nobody would be likely to accidentally stumble onto them. Most of the communities along the road between here and Whitehorse are involved in the race, but no one lives in Minto and it seemed to fill the requirements, so we went to take a look—just to check it out on the way back—and there was…this stuff.”

  “Where and what is Minto?” Cas asked, unfamiliar with the area, except for the race route.

  “Abandoned—a ghost town,” Delafosse explained. “It’s a little way off the highway between Carmacks and Pelly Crossing and used to be a village that cut wood for riverboats, back when they were still running the Yukon on steam. It’s close to, but not on, the Yukon Quest route. There used to be a government campground there, but they closed it four, maybe five years ago. There’s an RV park on the highway a little ways away, but nobody’s lived in the old Minto village area since…”

  He paused and gave Jake Leland a quick, apprehensive look, as if considering what his reaction might be.

  “Since what?” Don Graham asked, speaking up for the first time since the constables had made their entrance.

  “Ah, since…Minto is actually a pretty notorious place. Most people stay clear of it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s known as the murder capital of the Yukon.”

  Leland sat up a little straighter. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Well…during the gold rush three people were killed at Hoochekoo Bluff, not far from Minto. Then, back in the 1960s, three more people died in the village itself, apparently a murder-suicide, but no one could ever figure out a cause of death for two of them, so it was never really solved. Supposedly everyone involved was dead, but about six months later, the woman who had found the three bodies was murdered—shot. After that, the few people that were still living out there packed up everything they owned and left. It’s been gradually falling apart ever since, with no one in residence.”

  “But there’s still empty cabins?”

  “Yes, some derelict buildings and an emergency air strip. That’s about all.”

  Jake Leland was sitting very still, staring at the items in the black plastic bag. He looked up as Delafosse finished his account.

  “And you found these things in one of the cabins?”

  “Yes, sir. There was the remains of a fire in an old wood stove, and what you see was scattered around the one room.”

  “Well, this tells me that Debbie was there. Is there anything here that can identify who took her, Inspector? You’re the expert.”

  “We need forensics.” Delafosse visually inspected the collection. “There could be fingerprints on the candy wrappers, the sandwich bag, the gas can, and the pen—maybe on the paper scraps. We might get some saliva to establish a DNA identity from the cigarette butts, but that would have to come from Vancouver and would take too long to help us now. Might be useful later. Even if we got something usable, we’d also have to have a print or DNA for comparison.

  “What interests me now are those few partial bits of writing on the paper scraps and that empty matchbook.”

  He picked up the pencil he’d been using and turned the matchbook over.

  “Braeburn Lodge. That’s on the race route. If one of these guys was there before they took Debbie, we might be able to get someone down there to remember who picked it up, or was asking for matches. It’s a long shot, but at least it’s something.

  “All of this does need to go to a local lab for testing—fast,” Delafosse continued. “They’ll see if that pen is the one that wrote the letters on the scraps and if they match the ransom notes you got, Leland. They should also be able to tell us what was in the sandwich bag. Not that that’s important, probably, but you never know.”

  “Smells like ham and cheese, sir,” the mustached constable spoke up.

  “Really?” Delafosse’s tone, widened eyes, and carefully controlled lips held a hint of suppressed humor.

  “Yeah. Cheddar. My favorite. May also have had some mustard.”

  “Oh.” His grin broke through. “Well, there’s your expert, Jake. Good work, you two. I want you to take this all to the Whitehorse lab, please. Tell them I said to put a rush on it. Then, on your way back tomorrow morning, I want you to go to Braeburn and see if you can find out anything useful about that book of matches. Yes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They collected the bag with its contents and were out the door before Claire could offer them food.

  “Just as well,” Delafosse teased her, gesturing at the empty plate on the table. “I think we’ve just eaten all the ham and cheese in the house, with or without mustard.”

  The group adjourned shortly thereafter, Caswell to retrieve a change of clothes from the camper and move into Delafosse’s spare bedroom. The rest of Jessie’s support crew was anxious to get on their way to Fairbanks.

  “All we can really do now is wait to hear from Jessie when she arrives in Eagle,” the inspector told them. “Aside from keeping a lookout for anyone who appears to be following you, Jake, it’s mostly a waiting game. If you see anyone suspicious, let me know immediately. I’d like to catch one of them before he could warn the others—there are clearly several involved. He might help answer some questions for us. It’s too stormy on the summit to fly up there, and only Jessie will know where she delivered the ransom, when she does. She may then have some idea where they could be headed with it. That may tell us something, but we’ve got hours to wait for word. Meanwhile, we’ll get started on help from Alaskan law enforcement.”

  “I’ll check in with you when I g
et to Eagle tomorrow,” Ned Bishop told him as he shrugged into his parka and headed out the door. “We’re going to fly low to make it up the river. I’ll be watching for Jessie and will see what she has to say. Catching these idiots and getting Debbie back would be great, if we can do it somehow. And we’d sure like to get the race’s prize money back.”

  “I’m sure you would—as Jake would like to have what he put up. But Debbie and Jessie have to be the focus now. Having Jessie alone out there with all that cash doesn’t do much to build my confidence in human nature. Have you got any ideas at all about who this might be, Ned? You know most of these racers, and past racers, pretty well from several years of race managing. Jessie had an idea that it could be someone connected with the race somehow.”

  Bishop shook his head regretfully. “I’ve thought about it till I’m going gray-headed, but nothing—well, no one—comes to mind.”

  “Keep in touch,” Delafosse told him. “Especially if you think of anything….”

  “You bet I will.”

  17

  “Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land.”

  —Jack London, White Fang

  DON’T TAKE YOUR BREAKS OR REST STOPS WITH OTHER MUSHERS. STOP BY YOURSELF. YOU WILL BE CONTACTED.

  THE DAMP NOTE IN HER HAND POINTEDLY CONFIRMED WHAT Jessie had wondered about camping with other racers after stopping to rest with Ryan. That it did not say where she would be contacted was frustrating, but it did let her know that somehow, someone was watching at least part of the time, and she had no way of knowing which part.

  The person who wrote this has got to be a musher, she thought, or someone who knows sled dog racing very well. Everything they’ve written sounds like it somehow. She still thought the writer was American, not Canadian. She didn’t know exactly how she knew, but she’d have been willing to bet on it.

  “Who gave this to you?” she asked John Noble, the musher she had helped pull out of the hole in the ice.

  “Some kid handed it to me in Dawson as I left town. When I said I didn’t know if I’d see you, he said the man said to give it to you if I saw you. I didn’t ask who the man was.”

  “But you got it in Dawson?”

  “Right. Just before I pulled away from the gate.”

  Then how did they know she had stopped with Ryan the night before? Jessie wondered. Maybe they didn’t. They might just be covering their bases and making sure she was alone so they could find her with no one else around. It made some kind of odd sense, but was also scary.

  “Thanks,” she told Noble, and went to get her team ready to travel.

  Waiting. It was all waiting for something to happen—somewhere—sometime. She wished it would be soon so she could get it over with, and grew more and more tense as time wore on.

  It was a relief to be off the Yukon and onto a smaller river for a change, where the channel was narrower and not so wide open to the wind, which had begun to build into a solid blow by the time Jessie left Forty Mile. It was not snowing, but, from the look of the blank white sky, soon could be. The sharp, clean smell of approaching snow was on the air. It would make little difference whether it snowed or not on the summit, however, where the howling wind would stir up enough from the ground to severely punish any racer daring its heights, sharp icy grains would grind away at any exposed flesh, and the icy fingers of the cold would brush pale patches of frostbite onto the cheeks and noses of the unwary. She did not look forward to the crossing at all.

  Going up the Forty Mile River, however, was a pleasure that she let herself enjoy in spite of the wind, pushing her concern out of her mind. After the blind darkness of the night before, it was a relief to run up the small scenic stream with its rocky outcroppings and be able to see it. It had character, was much narrower than the broad expanse of the big river, and the spruce on the hillsides seemed inclined to lean together, almost supporting each other in holding their ground and not slipping off the steep slopes. Running in the tight winding channel through hilly country did not allow her to see out of the drainage, but every bend and turn brought some new and interesting view. Infrequently there was a small homestead or some old mining sheds huddled along the river’s edge, some still occupied.

  An old man with hair and beard that matched the snow came to the door of his cabin to watch as she passed, unmistakably glad to see some other human in the isolating depths of winter.

  “Hello-o-o,” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth.

  “Hello-o-o,” Jessie called back, and waved, tempted to stop and give him a little company, share the coffee she was sure he must be keeping hot on the stove. But her conscience and the wish to get on with her unpleasant errand sent her on up the river until she caught sight of the bridge she had been told to expect. Going up the bank, she crossed it and knew that she was now in Alaska.

  Well, if I have to use the handgun, she thought, it will please Ned Bishop to know I’ve crossed the line and am legal. She patted the pocket of her parka and felt the shape of the weapon she carried.

  Just off the Forty Mile she stopped to take a break, knowing she would soon need all her strength and that of the dogs in her team. She fed them a good meal and gave them all the water they would drink, then let them rest while she took her own nap, though it was hard to sleep with the wind howling past and she started up at every sound to see if it was someone who had come for the ransom she carried. If it was blowing this badly where she was, she knew it would be a terror on the summit. She thought about staying put and waiting to see if it would die down in late afternoon, but knew that this kind of storm was more likely to continue or get worse and that, whatever the weather, she’d better go on while she could see and get across to Eagle, where she could take a good, long rest indoors at the official checkpoint.

  Besides, no one had contacted her, though she had expected it on the Yukon. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that the contact would come somewhere on the summit she was about to cross, where it would be easy for them to pick up the ransom and get away in a number of directions. She also thought they must use a snowmachine, the only form of transportation that made sense, for the roads were closed tightly until spring, and a snowmachine could travel without roads, moving much faster than a dog team through snow-locked country.

  From the top, whoever picked up the package of money, in its black plastic and red tape, would be able to go back into Canada by following the general route of the closed and drifted Top of the World Highway, head back to Dawson, where he could easily disappear into the crowd of race officials, mushers, residents, and handlers, and the cheerful midwinter celebration that was going on there. He might alternatively elect to go into Alaska, escaping over the longer distance of the Taylor Highway, which, also closed, ran west until it reached the Alaska Highway at Tetlin Junction. It would also be possible to travel down past Eagle and leave the area by the race route, which went on down the Yukon River to Circle, where he could pick up a plowed winter road that ran to Fairbanks, though this was improbable with a race in progress, for dozens of people might see and be able to identify him later.

  Would the kidnappers bring Debbie to the drop point? Jessie thought not. In fact, she agreed with Delafosse that they had probably taken Debbie completely away from the race area, fearing some kind of search. Though there were many hiding places in gold rush country, most of the shelters were near the rivers in this broad historic mining region. Because most of the gold had been found in the valleys, washed down from above, and because water was necessary to wash the dust from out of the earth that carried it, its seekers had built their wooden tents close to their work. Much of the transportation was also there, along the river highway—water in summer, ice in winter. So, cabins and outbuildings to be found beside the rivers and streams were the
easiest and most obvious place to search. For that reason, the kidnappers probably would not use them, inhabited or not.

  But the girl could be anywhere. There had been plenty of time for the kidnappers to spirit her away in the days since she had disappeared. It was doubtful that they would bother to transport her to the drop site. “Take the money and run” would probably be more their style. Then, Jessie hoped, they would leave her somewhere else to be found, or to get herself out, unless…Jessie stopped her thoughts. There was no reason to start on the unlesses. She was nervous enough without them, and things would go better if she maintained a positive outlook.

  So, she positively got up from her catnap, put new booties on the feet of all her dogs and jackets with belly covers on three of those with the shortest hair, for the exposed and unprotected skin of a dog can freeze almost as easily as that of a human. Putting on her warmest and most windproof clothing, tucking her face mask into a pocket and her sleeves carefully into her big mittens, she snapped the front flap of her parka tight over the zipper, raised her fur-lined hood, and got back on the trail, anxious to put the summit, and the ransom drop she had convinced herself would be made somewhere on it, behind her.

  Running past half a dozen cabins, she drove the team up toward American Summit. For a little more than an hour they ran through trees, passing O’Brien Creek, and stopped once again, just before they reached the tree line. For the last time before the hardest part of the climb, Jessie gave her dogs water and a snack, then they headed up into the stark landscape of the heights.

  Just above that clear line where the shelter of the trees ended, a strong side wind hit, howling defiantly down upon them, making the dogs instinctively turn away from its fury. It was like walking into a wall of flying snow that instantly searched out every small opening in Jessie’s warm clothing, sifting freezing crystals of snow, like fine sand, under the cuffs of her mittens onto her wrists, into the narrow gap between her face and parka hood, and down her neck, finding even the small holes for laces in her boots. In seconds her eyelashes were full of ice and frost that clung and stuck them together when she blinked. Her dogs had all but halted in their traces, tails between their legs, bodies hunched against the icy onslaught.