Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  Webster stood up, pocketed the notebook, and stretched his shoulders, which were slightly stiff from his all but motionless stint on the cold rock. As he started back toward the body under the bridge, he felt the first few drops on his face and, glancing toward the river, saw small splashes in the smooth water of an eddy near the shore. Shrugging his collar up around his neck, he trudged on along the rocky bank, pigeonholing his thoughts about Jessie Arnold for later examination, returning his focus to the gruesome reality of the responsibility at hand.

  12

  FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A LONG WHILE JESSIE BROKE A personal rule and invited someone she didn’t know well to ride with her. It was 250 miles to Fort Nelson, rain was once again hammering on the roof of the Winnebago, Craig Severson’s state of withdrawal was worrisome, and she felt uneasy leaving him alone. What he had heard and seen during the night had evidently hit him hard and he seemed to be still struggling to come to terms with it. Perhaps, she thought, they could both use the company, having shared the rest of the dreadful experience. She still felt a nagging sense of guilt over what she had not shared with the inspector, on which she didn’t want to dwell. Conversation would make that easier.

  Exhausted and withdrawn, Severson accepted her offer without argument and packed up his gear while she cooked breakfast for them both. The familiar work seemed to return him to a more positive mood. Still, he pushed eggs and sausage around the plate with his fork, not eating much, then seemed to realize what he was doing, rapidly cleaned his plate, and looked up with a twisted half-grin.

  “Thanks for this and for dinner last night. You’ve no idea how much I wanted something hot.” He told her about his debate with himself over the can of soup.

  “Well, there’s plenty of hot water,” Jessie told him generously. “Take a shower if you want.”

  “You really wouldn’t mind?”

  She wouldn’t, so he did, even shaved off three days of stubble, and emerged from the back of the rig wearing his last T-shirt, cleanest cycling pants, and a pair of crew socks she had offered him, seeing that he was about to put on dirty ones. An almost shy, grateful smile had replaced most of the introspective look that still haunted his gray eyes.

  “I owe you big time, Jessie Arnold.” He hesitated and she watched recognition dawn on his face. “Arnold? Jessie Arnold the Iditarod musher?”

  “Guilty,” she admitted, and the word jolted her conscience.

  “Hey, I bet you know the Streepers from Fort Nelson.”

  “Sure.” Jessie was glad to see some enthusiasm on his face. “Everybody who races dogs knows them.”

  “My friend Leo is one of their handlers sometimes.”

  She wasn’t surprised to find that they almost had an acquaintance in common. Many racing people traveled from Canada or the Lower Forty-Eight to events in Alaska or the Yukon. Alaskan mushers sometimes drove the other direction to races—the Minnesota Bear Grease, for instance, or the Rocky Mountain Stage Stop—finding the long highway trip less expensive than air freight for their sleds and dog teams. The world of top-level sled dog racing was a fairly small one, and the races and racers were few enough to be known to each other, at least by name and reputation.

  Shutting off the propane at the tank and getting the rest of the motor home ready to roll, Jessie put Tank’s rug on the floor between the driver’s and passenger seats. He would have to forego his view of the landscape for the day, his seat preempted by her human passenger.

  Together she and Severson loaded his gear, the bicycle, and the trailer into the coach of the motor home, where it took up most of the available space and stood dripping on a blue plastic tarp he had unfolded and spread on the floor. He wiped it all down with paper towels till most of the rainwater was gone, then hopped out at the garbage bins on their way out of the campground to leave the soaked paper with the rest of Jessie’s trash.

  Making a right turn at the entrance to the campground, Jessie noted that the police had gone, undoubtedly taking the body of the dead man with them. Driving across the wooden bridge again, she saw Severson glance down into the gorge. She was relieved that because of the railing and the angle, it was impossible to see the spot where the man had landed and died. She followed the road up a hill on the other side and was soon stopping the Winnebago at the highway, where a trucker had pulled over and had the back doors open on the trailer behind his Peterbilt tractor to adjust his load. She looked both ways, swung out around him, and headed north toward Fort Nelson.

  For almost an hour they rode without talking and enjoyed a collection of Celtic harp music that Jessie had picked out in Coeur d’Alene to replace a favorite that had been destroyed in the fire. The music was soothing and they listened in a companionable silence until it ended and the only rhythm was again that of the windshield wipers.

  “I only saw one other dead person before,” Severson said after a while. “My grandfather—at his funeral. But that wasn’t so…” He hesitated, searching for a way to express many feelings at once.

  “Shocking—brutal,” Jessie supplied. Inadequate, but it might help.

  “Yes, and violent and horrifying, among others. Sickening—intolerable—outrageous. There isn’t one word, is there?”

  “No.” She shook her head, remembering a man she had met and liked, who had washed up on an island beach in Kachemak Bay. But that death had been a drowning, clean and lacking the abomination of the purposeful bloody ruin of a human being. She recalled one of her dogs caught in the sharp, tearing teeth of a steel trap and her sense of violation and panic on its behalf and her own. “Not one word. Every death needs different ones, I think. But this one just about used all mine up.”

  “I can’t stop thinking how he must have felt as he fell—knowing he was going to die.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know.” She tried to hope it was true.

  “He knew. He screamed,” Severson reminded her. “I keep hearing that sound.”

  Jessie felt her skin contract in goose bumps and was selfishly glad she didn’t have that cry permanently recorded in her brain—that he had heard it, and she hadn’t. It reminded her of what she knew about the dead man’s clothing, but she didn’t want to consider that again at the moment.

  “Tell me about distance cycling,” she suggested, abruptly trying to change the subject. “People think sled dog racing is a punishing sport, but cycling in this kind of weather? I’ll stick to my mutts and sled, thank you.”

  But Severson wasn’t ready to give it up. Once started, he couldn’t seem to stop talking, and all Jessie could do was listen as whatever came into his mind tumbled out in words.

  “My cycling buddy in Fort Nelson? Leo—the guy that’s going to do the highway with me? His father was RCMP and got shot by some drug pusher in Prince George—while we were still in school. It broke Leo up pretty bad. I can sort of see now why he wouldn’t talk about it. I never really thought about how awful it must have been—all that blood and…I mean he didn’t see that, of course—but somebody did. I couldn’t do that paramedic stuff. How the hell do they stand it? You ever see anyone dead before?”

  Jessie had, and briefly related who and how. She had also been shot once, and told him about that.

  “Good lord! And I’m whining over seeing what happened back there?” He was quiet for a minute or two, then, as requested, started talking about various bicycle trips he had taken in the United States and Canada.

  Jessie watched the rain pouring onto the highway and was glad to be driving. Besides being inside, dry and warm, it gave her something to do—and she needed something to do. She listened and asked a few questions to keep him going, but soon Severson’s words became a sort of background to her thoughts, and she didn’t notice they had stopped until she glanced over and saw that he had fallen asleep, exhausted by the events and upheaval of the night at Kiskatinaw. He had leaned up against the door in an uncomfortable-looking position, but she didn’t wake him, deciding that a stiff neck was probably little to pay for a few moments of ob
livion.

  She drove on through the morning, aware of how both her mood and the weather had changed since the first two days of this trip. Though still enthusiastic about traveling, her delight had been markedly diminished in ways she didn’t want to consider. The even, well-paved road and the attention required to drive a big rig were soothing to her nerves, and as mile after mile rolled by with very little to see, she began to feel that she was standing still and everything was moving around her like an old black-and-white film. She relaxed and let it be, and when her thoughts began to slip back to what they had found beneath the bridge at Kiskatinaw, or the puzzle of Patrick, quietly told herself stories, sang songs, or recited humorous poems without waking her passenger.

  Tank snoozed between the two seats, rousing periodically but not for long, used to sleeping in his box in the kennel when it rained.

  It rained all day—through Fort Saint John and Wonowon (Historical Mile 101), past far-off Pink Mountain (hidden in the mist), down into and up out of the deep canyon that held Sikanni Chief, stopping for gas and lunch at the Buckinghorse River Lodge. The strip of road with its yellow center line that could at times be seen for miles across long rolling rises (more or less following the north-flowing Prophet River) finally led into Fort Nelson, the last of the flatland communities on the highway.

  After their lunch stop, Jessie had talked Severson—who kept drifting off to sleep in a combination, she thought, of weariness and denial—into taking a real nap on the bed in the back of the motor home, knowing it was illegal not to be wearing a seat belt but feeling his obvious need for physical and emotional rest was more important than official safety regulations. Tank had immediately reclaimed the passenger seat, though there was not much to see from the window. The cyclist had slept all afternoon, waking when she slowed the Winnebago to accommodate the speed limit on Fort Nelson’s long main street. Then he maneuvered past his bicycle and equipment to stand behind the passenger seat and direct her to the house of his friend.

  “He’s at work, but there’s a key. He’s not expecting me for another day or two.”

  “Are you going on up the road?” she asked as she helped him unload his gear in the empty driveway of the cottage in an eastern residential section of Fort Nelson.

  “Don’t know. Leo’s pretty set on this trip. But we’ll have to see what the weather report says and think about it.”

  “Well,” she told him thoughtfully, “I think you should if you can. Put last night behind you. Maybe we’ll see you somewhere on the road.”

  “Not at the speed we go. You’ll be in Alaska before we make Watson Lake.”

  He returned her socks and thanked her profusely for the ride. Then, without warning, she found herself suddenly engulfed in such a huge hug that she couldn’t decide if he was grateful or clinging.

  “You’re okay, Jessie Arnold. Stay well—and safe.”

  Sweet guy, she thought, and was glad that in her confusion she had not let him know she had wondered if he might possibly be involved in the bridge death.

  He waved again as she turned the corner and headed for the RV park that she knew was somewhere at the northwest end of town, next door to a museum of some kind. Seeing a service station, she stopped to fill the fuel tank, eliminating the need to do it before leaving the next day. She was tired, ready for dinner and an early bedtime, but also anxious to see if Maxie and Stretch had arrived from Prince George.

  They had not. The Westend RV park was less than half full of campers and motor homes when Jessie checked in, and Maxie’s Jayco was not among them. The parking spaces were arranged in two concentric wheels with an access road around the perimeter of each. By taking the outer road Jessie was able to pull the Winnebago directly into one of the spaces without having to back up and would be able to pull out into the inner one when she was ready to leave the next day. She chose a space as far as she could get from the traffic of the entrance, though it was also farthest from the laundry and restrooms, and asked to have the empty space on one side of her held for Maxie, hoping she would show up soon.

  After hooking up to water and electricity and turning on the propane, she donned her raincoat and took Tank for a quick walk. Towel-drying him so he wouldn’t drip water on everything, she locked him in and hurried off to take a quick shower and wash her hair. But the hot water felt so good that she fed the meter extra quarters and spent almost half an hour shampooing and scrubbing away what felt like a week of travel grime which she knew had a lot to do with the psychological foulness of last night’s murder and the contamination she was feeling from her involuntary involvement. Glad to be clean and to put on fresh clothes from the skin out, she used her towel to partially dry her hair, brushed it into its usual waves and curls, and trotted back through the rain to her house on wheels.

  As she was unlocking the door, tires rattled gravel behind her and she turned to watch Maxie park the Jayco next door. It was so good to see her new friend that she found she was almost in tears and realized that her own shock at the Kiskatinaw incident had gone deeper than she thought, had been diverted in her concern for Severson.

  “Come over for a drink,” she told Maxie through the open driver’s window, before the older woman could even get out. “I have a lot to tell you.”

  “And I have some interesting things to tell you!” Maxie said, with an intent and questioning examination of Jessie’s white face. “Let me walk Stretch and I’ll be right there.”

  In less than ten minutes she was climbing into Jessie’s Winnebago, wriggling travel companion under one arm. The dachshund, much relieved by his short, rainy walk, greeted Tank with enthusiasm. His mistress sank into a seat at the table, drank off half the shot of Jameson’s that Jessie had already poured for her, and smiled wearily at the glass.

  “Ah—you fair beauty,” she told it with a grateful sigh. “Thanks, Jessie.”

  Then reaching for a cracker and a slice of the summer sausage Jessie had also put on the table, she asked, “What’s wrong? Bad drive in the rain?”

  Jessie was reminded of Severson’s earlier jumble of thoughts and words as she tried and failed to shape her tale of the last twenty-four hours into some kind of reasonable form. Feelings she was only now beginning to identify kept getting in the way, and she had to go back and fill in details several times in her effort not to leave anything out.

  Maxie listened carefully, but a frown had deeply creased her forehead by the time the flow of words slowed. When they stopped, she asked an obvious question.

  “Didn’t this dead man have a wallet with identification?”

  Openmouthed, Jessie stared across the table at her. It was such a glaring oversight on her part that she couldn’t understand why it hadn’t occurred to her on the riverbank. Though she wouldn’t have searched the body for it, she might have asked Inspector Webster.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, feeling foolish. “I only checked to see if his hair was red.”

  Maxie stared out the window for a minute in silence, thinking. Her frown relaxed, but an uncertain and worried expression took its place.

  “It might have been helpful to know who he was,” she said finally. “Last night, while I was asleep in my friend’s house, someone broke into the Jayco. Now these two things may not be connected, but if they are, I think we just might have inadvertently gotten ourselves tangled in something very unpleasant. At the very least it makes me uneasy and glad to be a good way up the road from both places.”

  Her story of the breakin was quickly told. The driver’s door of her motor home had been jimmied sometime during the night and the inside trashed in a thorough search, though nothing seemed to be missing. She had been late leaving Prince George because she had to put her motor home to rights and make a report to the police, who had been less than encouraging about the possibility of finding the criminal.

  “They left black fingerprint powder all over the place, but all they found were mine, Patrick’s, yours, and a few they couldn’t identify that could ha
ve been left by friends in New Mexico before I left.”

  “How’d they know which were mine—and Patrick’s?”

  “The glasses we used for drinks in Jasper were still in the sink and your prints were on one of them. The one that wasn’t mine had to be yours. Patrick’s were mixed with Stretch’s nose and paw prints on the passenger door.” She couldn’t suppress a quick smile, remembering that they’d had no trouble telling which were human. “Maybe whoever broke in wore gloves. If so, they’ll never make an arrest. I’m just glad nothing was damaged or stolen—but bugger if I know what it was all about. They were looking for something they evidently didn’t find. Odd.”

  There wasn’t much more to be said and too many unanswered questions to even begin to understand either incident. Neither woman felt like cooking, and Maxie’s rig was not yet hooked up to power and water, so they used it to drive six blocks back into Fort Nelson and had dinner at a hotel near the other end of town. On the way back they made a quick stop for groceries and gasoline for the Jayco.

  “Thanks, Maxie,” Jessie said when they were back in the RV park and had finished the hooking-up process for the Jayco. Since both were physically tired after a long day of driving in bad weather and mentally tired from their separate traumas, Maxie suggested that they go to bed and meet for breakfast.

  Jessie willingly agreed. “I’m going to sleep like the dead tonight,” she said with a sigh and immediately wished she had phrased it any other way.

  13

  AFTER FILLING THE WATER TANK AND EMPTYING THE holding tanks in a drizzle of rain, Jessie drove the Winnebago from the Fort Nelson campground and made a left turn onto the highway, with Maxie right behind her. In less than a mile she was flagged down by an RCMP constable in a broad-brimmed rain hat and slicker, who was stopping northbound traffic on the edge of town. For the minute or two that she waited while he talked to the driver of another car, her heart was in her throat. But the trouble she was soon apprised of was of a completely different nature than what she feared.