Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  “Help yourself,” she told him. “This’s almost done.”

  Carefully laying the dry side of the slicker over the bench cushion, Severson sat down and started hungrily on the soup.

  By the time he had finished eating everything but the apple, thanking her more than once, and was working on a second cup of tea, Jessie knew all about his planned trip. But she wasn’t surprised when the hot food and the warmth of the motor home began to make him sleepy.

  “Sorry,” he said after a particularly large yawn. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Come for some hot coffee in the morning,” she invited him, as he pulled the slicker back on and stepped out the door.

  “Thanks again,” he told her. “I won’t say no to that, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  Back in the tent, Severson shed his clothes, wriggled into the clammy bag with a shiver as its chill came in contact with his skin, and turned off the flashlight. His body heat slowly warmed the bag as he drowsily considered tomorrow’s ride, which with a little luck would take him to Wonowon, maybe farther. In three days he would be in Fort Nelson, where he and his friend Leo would reconsider the wisdom of such an early trip to Alaska. Yes, they certainly would.

  Rolling onto one side, he rubbed at his aching neck, moved his feet into the warmer corner of the bag, and gradually slid off into sleep.

  The rain had all but stopped again when a thunderous pounding on the door of the Winnebago woke Jessie from a dream of desert country. Zipping jeans on under the oversized T-shirt she turned on the galley light and padded barefoot to join an already alert Tank at the door.

  “Who is it?” she asked cautiously, considering the pepper spray.

  “Severson,” his familiar voice called in a decidedly desperate tone. “Do you have a cell phone? There’s a guy badly hurt under the bridge.”

  Flipping on the exterior light, Jessie opened the door to find the cyclist, once again in his yellow slicker, eyes full of anxiety. She motioned him in.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Somebody fell off the bridge and he’s on the rocks down there—hurt real bad. Do you have a cell phone? There’s an RCMP detachment in Dawson Creek and they gotta get somebody out here.”

  Astonished and horrified at the thought of anyone taking such a fall, Jessie shook her head. She had considered bringing her cell phone but knew that for most of the wilderness parts of the trip it would be out of range and unusable. Close to any town it was doubtful that she’d need it anyway.

  “Even if I had one, it wouldn’t work down here in the gorge, would it?” she asked. “The campground people should have a phone—you know, that cabin up nearer the bridge?”

  “Where? It was dark when I came in.” So agitated and upset he could hardly stand still, he started back out the door. “Where is it? Tell me.”

  “It’s easier to show you.” Grabbing her raincoat and stuffing her feet into running shoes, Jessie tied them quickly, jumped outside, leaving Tank behind, and headed off at a run, Severson trotting at her side.

  “What happened? How could someone fall off in the middle of the night?” she asked him between deep breaths of cool damp air.

  “Don’t know. Might have been drunk, I guess. But—”

  “What was he doing up there?”

  “Don’t know. I was going to the head when I heard a car on the bridge and then he fell—or jumped. I guess he could have jumped. I didn’t see it—just heard…Dammit, I heard him hit…the rocks. I saw…” Severson stammered, shuddering as he remembered.

  “You went down to look?”

  “Yeah—kept hoping it might be garbage someone had tossed off—but I knew it wasn’t. He made a sound on the way down. Garbage doesn’t scream. Oh God.” Without warning, Severson turned aside, stopped, and bent over to vomit into the brush by the road. “He’s dead,” he managed to get out between convulsions. “I saw.”

  He was—very. If he had fallen in the river, shallow but running fairly high from late thaw and rain, he might have had a chance. But the body lay on the rocky bank under the northern end of the bridge, and there was no doubt at all that he had died instantly, his head horribly crushed, face first, against one of the large rounded boulders that lay half buried in the muddy bank. Jessie’s stomach contracted in nausea, but she swallowed hard at the taste of acid in her throat and managed to keep from losing it by walking a few steps away, while she, Severson, and the couple that were caretakers for the campground waited for the authorities to arrive.

  What gave her the sick shakes was finding that there was no chance this person had made a suicidal leap or fallen accidentally. His wrists and ankles were tightly bound with duct tape. Someone had intentionally dropped him over the bridge railing, for he could not have climbed it himself.

  After cursorily checking the body for any sign of life, the caretakers went back up to the road to await and direct the police, but Jessie and the cyclist stayed near the body in an unspoken agreement that, whoever he was, he shouldn’t be left alone, even—perhaps especially—in death. Jessie stayed partly because she didn’t want Severson, distressed and shivering, to be alone either.

  Neither of them said much as they waited. He didn’t seem to want to talk, and the details of what he had heard, then found could wait for the police. Jessie sat near him on a log a dozen feet from the body, backs turned to death, keeping silent company while he nervously, and uncharacteristically for a cyclist, smoked cigarette after cigarette, carefully depositing the scorched filters in his slicker pocket, shivered, and stared out blindly across the dark waters of the river.

  The image of what she had seen would not leave her mind. After a while she got up and walked back to shine her flashlight on the still form spread-eagled on the rocks, to make sure of what she thought she had seen and to prove or disprove a horrible suspicion that was slowly growing. In the beam of light she could see that the dead man was wearing jeans, hiking boots, and a black windbreaker jacket. The hood of the jacket had flopped forward over the uncrushed back of the head. Heart pounding, she hunkered down next to the body, cautiously reached, and slowly, holding her breath with anxiety and dread, lifted the edge of the hood just enough to see the color of the hair it covered.

  Brown. Oh, thank God, it was brown—not the red she had been terrified she would find. It was not Patrick Cutler. A gasp of relief escaped her, and tears flooded her eyes till everything blurred as she released the fabric and stumbled back to her feet.

  “What?” Severson asked without turning.

  “Nothing.” She started to turn and walk back to where he sat, but something new caught her eye.

  Separate from all the bright blood that had run down over the wet rock and soaked into the damp sandy ground, on the collar of the black windbreaker was another bit of brilliant red—a tiny maple leaf pin. Hand to her throat as it contracted, she stared at it.

  This person wasn’t Patrick, was it? But he was not just clad in similar clothes—the jacket on the body was Patrick’s. The realization was so appalling that she couldn’t mentally process it, could do nothing but gape at the pin in confusion and disbelief. When she couldn’t look anymore, she sat back down next to Severson and tried her best to think rationally.

  It didn’t make sense. How could Patrick’s windbreaker be on some stranger? And why? He was supposedly traveling alone. Could this be one of the men who had been looking for him? Would they have switched jackets? No, not only jackets—weren’t the boots also similar to Patrick’s? The combination was too close to be a coincidence, wasn’t it? And the pin was the clincher. She could not imagine a circumstance that would explain it, but there were a lot of things she didn’t understand and that she was beginning to question.

  Had Patrick really been who he said he was? A driver’s license could be faked or stolen. What was she going to do with the disjointed pieces of information that were churning out more questions than answers? None of it sounded credible, even to her. How c
ould Patrick Cutler be involved with this death? This murder—she made herself call it what it was. Could this cyclist, Craig Severson, who said he had found the body, be involved somehow? She didn’t think so, but if the dead man had screamed loud enough to be heard on the campground road, why hadn’t the caretakers heard it, too? Maybe they had been asleep, as she had been. That was possible, of course—especially since their house was higher on the hill and thickly surrounded by trees. Or could they be involved? Suddenly everyone was suspect. It all went round in a confusing mix of thoughts that made her stomach turn over again.

  Jessie rested her head in her hands, elbows on her knees, and gave up, trying not to think about any of it but not succeeding. For a long time she and Severson sat, still and silent, until at last she heard the faint wail of a siren and raised her head to listen, thankfully.

  It was beginning to grow light in the east, and the hint of dawn was just enough to reflect from the ripples and eddies and make the river visible, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived with an ambulance close behind. Five men came clambering hurriedly from the dark shadows between the trees of the campground and down to the river’s edge, two of them bearing a stretcher and medical cases, which Jessie knew they wouldn’t need.

  While the two RCMP constables with flashlights examined the body, the area around it, and the top of the bridge for clues, Jessie sat listening to the inspector in charge, one William Webster. A small, clear-eyed, watchful man wearing a dark raincoat, he took Severson through an account of what he had witnessed and made brief jottings in a small notebook that the growing daylight just allowed him to make out.

  “You didn’t see anyone—just heard them?”

  Severson nodded numbly. “Right. I was going to the head when I heard the car—”

  “How do you know it was a car?”

  “Well, an engine then. From where I was hearing it—down on the campground road—it might have been a pickup, but it wasn’t a heavy engine. I can tell because I hear a lot of different kinds on the road as they pass me on my bike.”

  Inspector Webster scribbled in his notebook, then looked up and asked attentively. “Then what happened?”

  “I could hear the rumble of the tires on the planks go part of the way across the bridge—then it stopped, but the motor was still running. There was nothing for a minute or two, then I heard…” His voice thickened and he sat up straighter as if to brace himself for the rest. “I heard him scream as he fell. It was awful. It startled me so much I stopped walking to listen, and then—then I heard him hit the rocks.”

  “Did you hear the vehicle leave?”

  “Yeah—it went on across the bridge and up the north access road till I couldn’t hear it anymore. I went down to the river under the bridge. You know—to see if I could do anything, but…” He waved a hand toward the body in mute explanation.

  There was a moment of silence while Webster jotted in the notebook.

  “You didn’t touch or move him?”

  “No. It was obvious there wouldn’t be—ah—a pulse. His head was all…broken. I went back up—for help—to find a phone.”

  “Did you know this man? Had you ever seen him before?”

  “No, I don’t think so. You can’t…really tell, can you?”

  “But you didn’t recognize anything about him?”

  “No.”

  “How about you, miss? Did you recognize him?” Webster turned to Jessie, who was glad to be honestly able to say no as well. Just answer what he asks you, she told herself, remembering past advice. Don’t volunteer. Still, not telling him that she had recognized the coat bothered her. She would have told an Alaska state trooper, but this wasn’t a trooper, or Alaska. However close to Alaska, or the Lower Forty-Eight, it was a foreign country, and she didn’t know this man—or whether she could trust him.

  “Did you hear him fall?”

  “No,” again. “I was asleep.”

  She told him about waking up to Severson’s frantic pounding on her door, their trip to the caretaker’s cabin and from there to the riverbank. Still conflicted, she hesitated about the coat and the pin. Then it seemed too late. She knew she would have trouble trying to explain what she knew and how she knew it—that it would complicate everything and might not help—so she kept her knowledge to herself, wondering if she would regret it.

  “Did you two know each other before this?”

  They shook their heads, and Severson explained that they were camping in spaces across from each other.

  “So neither of you has any idea who this might be?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Anything else you can tell me?” He gave each of them a level, searching look, one that lingered a second or two on Jessie.

  “No? Well then…”

  The inspector took both their names, checked their identification, and asked detailed questions about where they were going and how long they would be in Canada, before sending them back to the campground. Letting them know that he could locate them by notifying the RCMP on up the highway, he said he would not delay their travel, then asked them both to check with a post in a day or two, in case he needed more information.

  But when Jessie glanced back as she left the rocky part of the riverbank and went into the trees, she saw Inspector William Webster still sitting on a rock next to the log, staring after them thoughtfully, with his notebook on his knee.

  At the Winnebago she found she had neglected to lock the door, but hadn’t the mental energy to be concerned, knowing that Tank would have repelled any intruder with barks and growls. He had never bitten anyone in his life, but no stranger would know that.

  At her suggestion Craig Severson followed her inside and sat slumped, staring wordlessly at the table, while she turned on the furnace to warm the place up and quickly made a pot of coffee. Filling two mugs, she sugared them liberally and poured a stiff slug of brandy into each before sitting down across from him.

  They drank the first mug in silence. Jessie was beginning to be concerned about him when, accepting a refill, he finally looked up with an inquisitive expression.

  “You saw something you recognized down there, didn’t you? What?”

  “Nothing,” Jessie told him. “For a minute I thought it might have been someone I knew—but it wasn’t.”

  “Why did you think it was?”

  “Just a mistake in the dark.” If she hadn’t told the inspector what she knew, she certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone else, especially a stranger.

  Inspector William Webster remained sitting on the rock by the river for a long time after he sent the two witnesses back to the campground, writing once or twice in his notebook, mentally organizing his impressions of the interviews. Focused on his own deliberations, he scarcely noticed the flashlight beams of his men, on the bridge and around the body below it, as they grew paler and less distinct in the increasing dawn light, though as usual he was aware of everything around him and recorded it for later reference. The watery rush of the river beside him covered any sounds his men made and left him alone with his thoughts.

  His efficient second in command eventually came down from the bridge to report scuff marks on the railing that could have come from the boot soles of the victim. Placed as they were, they indicated that a struggle had probably taken place—resistance that could prove he had been alive when he was lifted over and dropped. These marks would have to be retrieved and held as evidence, and Webster assigned him the responsibility.

  “Tire marks?”

  “Nothing identifiable.”

  “Anything to identify the vic?”

  “Nothing in his pockets. No wallet. Nothing on the body or clothing. The labels might make him American—western shirt—green.”

  But they both knew that many Canadians crossed the border periodically on shopping trips to the United States, and American-made clothing was also sold in Canadian stores.

  “Age?”

  “Young—eighteen to twenty. Have to
wait for the doc’s report.”

  “Well—keep at it.”

  “There’s an Alaska-bound trucker pulled over to sleep at the south end of the access road. Too far away to have seen or heard anything, but he might have noticed the vehicle coming down.”

  “Wake him up and check. Get some identification.”

  The constable left, and Webster went back to his interview analysis. It wasn’t totally impossible, but he doubted that the cyclist, Severson, was in any way involved. His shocked state and the fact that he had reported the death and stayed to tell what little he knew made that possibility very slight. Hard to fake that kind of emotional upset.

  But the woman, Arnold, held his attention. It was not in what she had told him, for he thought she had told exactly what happened, as she knew it—but something in what she didn’t say. Something had moved behind her eyes when he asked her if she recognized the dead man. Perhaps he should have rephrased the question and asked it again. Either she had been holding something back and hadn’t been completely comfortable with it, or she was uneasy being caught up in the thing at all—perhaps both. She had not been as disturbed by the situation as Severson, but that in itself meant little. People responded with different intensity to murder, and with different timing. She might be one of those who maintained calm during an event, whose emotional reaction came afterward. But he had a feeling she was simply stronger than Severson when confronted with violent death and wondered what in her background had prepared her.

  He briefly considered following her back to her motor home in the campground and pushing a little to see if he could come closer to deciphering her reticence but decided to let it go for the moment, doubting that the result would be different or positive. She had for some reason decided to keep her thoughts to herself. In time she might change her mind. He knew where she was going and could always find her later. Right now he needed to make his own examination of the scene, for his impressions of that were even more important. With more rain on the agenda soon, they would have little time before vital clues could be washed away.