Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  The level of the river had fallen dramatically when Lake George emptied itself and drained away, leaving a tangle of braided channels to once again define sandbars in the headwaters of the Knik River, though their pattern was new. Glacier ice still melted and trickled into them, but the music of streams and waterfalls on the steep hillsides had hushed as temperatures began to fall below freezing on the high peaks of the surrounding Chugach Mountains. Soon the last of them would dry up entirely, watery voices silenced until spring.

  On the isolated eastern side of the valley, where Friday Creek ran into the river, a brown bear sat on his fat bottom in the bushes, gobbling berries for dessert after a summer of foraging. Though he would remain while the sweetness lasted, lately he had begun to think of wandering back into the hills toward a warm, comfortable den he vaguely remembered was waiting somewhere up there.

  Farther downstream, a moose and her calf waded along the swampy shore of Swan Lake, submerging their heads where the sedges grew thick and could be ripped, roots and all, from the mud. Water streaming from their jaws, they chewed placidly—the mother flicking an ear and turning a slow head to investigate the splash of a Canadian goose landing for a rest stop at the beginning of a long migration.

  In the trees that lined the western bank, a squad of squirrels was leaping branch to branch, industriously gathering cones from the spruce and stashing them away for snacks between cold-weather naps. Soon, in snug nests, they would curl together for warmth and snooze away the worst of the approaching cold. A few tenuous birch leaves drifted down from branches that quivered as a result of their acrobatic passage along daredevil routes.

  A group of foxes could be well designated a conceit, rather than a skulk, for they exhibit a certain arrogance of spirit and a confidence in the superior cunning of their kind. The fox that came trotting from the woods at one end of a narrow curve of riverbank was a prime example, bright as brass in the glow of the afternoon sun, which hung lower in the sky than it had in June. Swift and graceful, assuredly tidy from rigorous grooming, it traversed the sandy space and paused to lap daintily from the swirl of an eddy on the edge of the river.

  When something rustled the brush on the hill, the fox raised its head and cocked an ear, alert to the possible need for flight, but the disturbance was not repeated, so it hesitated by the river for a moment to investigate a thing that had attracted its attention. As it had lowered its head to drink, there had been a sudden gleam from something shiny in the dark line the water made to mark its level on the sand.

  Cautiously, it sniffed at the half-buried object and sneezed at its cold metallic scent. Here was nothing threatening, it seemed, so the fox extended a forepaw to nudge the curious thing it had discovered. A bit of dry sand slipped and was whisked away in the whirl of the eddy’s flow, revealing a small circle of braided silver in a Celtic pattern foreign to the natural setting in which it lay.

  Sniffing again, the fox established that the object was not edible, but before losing interest it gently nudged the curiosity in the edge of the water once more. The remaining sand that held it gave way, carrying the silver circle with it. Tumbling down, cleansed of sand that was swept away in fine grains, it came to rest on the bottom of the eddy and vanished, covered by another fall of sand the water greedily teased from the bank.

  With no reason to delay, the fox continued its journey along the curve of the river’s bank, leaving a trail of neat and regular paw prints in the sand until, with a quick, graceful bound over a fallen log, it disappeared into a yellowing stand of birch.

  Author’s Note

  Though this mystery is a work of fiction, the Robert Hansen case that is mentioned was real. He was Alaska’s most horrific serial killer and one of the first to be profiled by the FBI.

  Two books were written about Hansen: Butcher, Baker: A True Account of a Serial Murderer by Walter Gilmour and Leland E. Hale (Onyx, a division of Penguin Books USA, 1991) and Fair Game by Bernard DuClos (St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

  Cover blurb from Fair Game: “The young and beautiful were his prey. Young and naïve, they flocked to boomtown Anchorage chasing dreams of easy riches. They thought they’d hit the jackpot when they met soft-spoken Robert Hansen. A businessman with plenty of money, he baited his trap with the promise of a joyride in his private plane. They landed into a nightmare. The twisted big-game hunter would fly them deep into the remote Alaskan wilderness. There the savage hunter took over. He terrorized his hapless prey, then raped and murdered them.

  “After snaring his quarry and gunning them down, Hansen would bury them in shallow graves on the frozen tundra. For ten years, he carried out his depraved sport undetected, until one of his terrified victims managed to run far enough and fast enough to escape.

  “Here is the shocking true story of Alaska’s most notorious serial killer, and how a group of determined detectives brought him to capture with the assistance of VICAP, the FBI unit made famous in The Silence of the Lambs.”

  —10 Death Trap (2004)

  DEATH TRAP. Copyright © 2003 by Sue Henry. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Microsoft Reader March 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-136817-2

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With sincere thanks to:

  Everyone who works hard, year-round and during its end-of-summer run, to make the annual Alaska State Fair happen smoothly and well in Palmer—especially to Pam Troutman for answering many questions.

  The security staff and EMTs who were generous with information and ideas.

  The staff of The Sluice Box pub for information, good humor, and beer.

  The lumberjacks for a great show.

  Becky Lundqvist for sharing her medical expertise and for editorial assistance.

  My son Eric of Art Forge Unlimited for designing the maps.

  My talented editor, Sarah Durand.

  My dependable agent, Dominick Abel.

  This one’s long overdue for

  The Friday Night Adoption Society

  Alice

  Gretchen

  Becky

  Phoebe

  Don

  Melissa

  Vern

  Findlay

  Meg

  Robert

  and

  all the rest

  Map

  CHAPTER 1

  I wasn’t here then,” he reminded her. “So now that it’s all over, will you please explain to me just what you were doing by yourself in that dog yard at Nancy Lake.”

  Jessie Arnold frowned at the trooper’s question, narrowed her gray eyes, and a curl of honey-blond hair fell over her forehead as she shook her head, remembering. As all eyes turned toward her, she shifted a bit self-consciously in her place on the big sofa that had been a housewarming gift for her new cabin. She glanced around the group of people that had gathered for dinner and now sat companionably in her living room, drinking coffee or beer and discussing the circumstances in which they had all, in one way or another, found themselves involved in the preceding few days.

  Two were finishing a second slice of pie, and one had lit an aromatic pipe, adding a faint fruity scent to the pleasant smell of the fire in the potbellied iron stove. The fire crackled suddenly in the ensuing silence, which was broken again as Alaska State Trooper Phil Becker set his bottle of Killian’s on its stone hearth with a clink. Crossing his arms on the back of the straight chair he straddled, he rested his chin on them and looked across at Jessie, waiting to see what she would say and attempting, though not very
hard, to hide the I-told-you-so grin that twitched his lips.

  “Better answer the question,” he suggested finally.

  “Oh, cut it out, Phil,” she told him, attempting to look severe and failing. “We all know you think I shouldn’t have gone off on my own, and you’re probably right. But I was worried and angry, and it seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do at the time. How was I to know…” She let the sentence trail off thoughtfully.

  He shrugged, waiting for her to finish her defensive justification, but quit trying to control the grin and allowed it to spread across his face.

  “I was looking for Tank,” she began, turning to her questioner and ignoring Phil’s expression.

  At the sound of his name, Jessie’s lead dog, Tank, sat up from where he was curled next to young Danny Tabor on the braided rug at her feet, all his attention focused on her face. She leaned forward and took the dog’s face between both her hands and smiled as she spoke to him.

  “Yes, I was looking for you. And found you, thank God, though it got us both into a lot of trouble.”

  He leaned blissfully into her caresses and gave her arm a lick, returning the affection.

  “Lie down, good boy,” she told him, and waited to continue her explanation till he had done so and laid his muzzle on Danny’s knee.

  “First, Maxie McNabb stopped by on her way to Colorado and—”

  “Who’s Maxie McNabb?” Danny asked.

  Jessie sighed. Explaining everything that had happened was obviously not going to be easy.

  “Maxie is a friend of mine who lives in Homer, but she travels to warmer places in her motor home during the winter. I met her when I drove a Winnebago up the Alaska Highway last May for Vic Prentice, the contractor who built this new cabin for me. She was coming back to Homer for the summer, and we ran into each other in a Canadian campground. We kept in touch, then in August she stopped here for a visit she had promised me on her way back to the Lower Forty-eight. It was a short visit, but our conversation gave me the idea of searching local dog yards, so that’s where I went.

  “I had gone to the fair, you see…” she continued, remembering what had transpired on her visit to one particular and unpleasant dog yard, and the situation in which she had found herself as a result.

  The grin faded from Phil Becker’s face. He listened intently, along with the circle of old and new friends who made up Jessie’s audience, for there were details of what had happened that he had not yet heard and a few questions of his own to be answered.

  Except for her voice and some gentle Celtic harp music from her sound system in the background, it was quiet in the room as the story began to unfold. Remembering how events had occurred, Jessie began to take herself back to that particular day and where she had found herself—and Tank.

  CHAPTER 2

  H ow did you get separated from Tank in the first place? He usually goes everywhere you do.”

  “Yes, he does,” Jessie agreed. “But we were at the fair for the second day, and I wanted to take a look at the animals in the barn. I knew they wouldn’t want a dog in there, so I left him with Joanne at the Iditarod booth for an hour. When I came back he was gone, and she was frantic. Then we searched everywhere, but—”

  “You haven’t said how you wound up at the fair in the first place,” Becker interrupted. “Why don’t you go back to when it all first began—when Joanne asked you to help.”

  Jessie nodded, visualizing the morning of the phone call. “Okay. I had just come back from a walk when she called. I couldn’t work with my mutts—doctor’s orders—and I’d been thinking I’d go crazy if I didn’t find something to keep me busy.”

  She grew quiet for a minute, allowing events to order themselves in her mind. It had started so innocently—with a reasonable response to the plea of a good friend for assistance and the anticipation of a few days of enjoyable interaction with old and new sled dog racing fans.

  “I took my morning coffee outside,” she told the assembled group. “It was the first time I’d been able to smell fall in the air—a hint of cool air and dry leaves. You know. I stood there looking out at the yard where my dogs usually are, feeling frustrated. Then…”

  W ith care not to slosh the hot coffee she carried in a blue pottery mug, Jessie stepped onto the porch of her new log cabin, closed the door behind her, and stood assessing the clearing that held her home and dog yard just off Knik Road a few miles west of Wasilla, Alaska. The last Saturday in August had dawned bright and clear at just before seven that morning, with a coolness in the air and the scent of drying grasses, reminding her that the ground in the nearby birch grove would soon be littered with leaves of gold. The drop in temperature raised a little steam from the coffee, which tickled her nose as she sipped it, cupping both hands around the mug, appreciating its warmth.

  Except for the twitter of a small bird or two, it was quiet, an unusual state, as she was ordinarily greeted by barks and yelps from the occupants of her kennel, and one that left her with a restless sense of disquiet as she looked out at the almost empty yard. It seemed inexplicable that only a few of the more than forty dogs she owned were currently occupying their boxes; that the whole yard was not full of active, enthusiastic canines ready to continue fall training as soon as snow fell and grew deep enough to support a sled. But the majority of them had been taken to spend the winter with Lynn Ehlers, a friend who would add them to his own teams for training runs and races. It left Jessie with little to do at a time of year that was usually filled with preparation that raised her spirits in anticipation of the racing season.

  Irritated with the situation and her enforced idleness, she swung too quickly toward the rocking chair where she intended to sit and felt a twinge of pain in the knee she had injured two months earlier in a fall down the steep side of a mountain. The tendon she had torn enough to require surgery was healing well, and she was no longer wearing a brace, but the doctor had cautioned against sled dog racing.

  “If you’re wise,” he had solemnly advised her, with a penetrating look over the rims of his glasses, “you’ll give it a rest this year, Jessie. If you don’t compromise now, you’ll be able to race next year without it bothering you unduly. I can’t promise that if you don’t. So no training runs or heavy kennel work, okay? And don’t overdo the therapy.”

  She reluctantly agreed and had conscientiously kept to her prescribed regimen of physical exercise. But she had not realized how much her frustration level would rise when the leaves began to gild the birches of her woods. When the wind had delivered the first chill hint of fall and the nights grew longer and darker, and especially when the sky was swept with northern lights, she had found herself pacing the confines of her cabin, yearning to be out and about, preparing for a winter filled with swift teams of dogs and runs through the hushed and frozen wilds of her adopted state. Though she knew the situation was temporary, it was still an agonizing one that was difficult to accept and overcome.

  Good thing I live alone, she thought, bending to rub at the knee with her knuckles. No one else could put up with me right now.

  Hearing her slight intake of breath at the complaint in her knee, Tank, who had followed her out the door, pricked his ears attentively.

  “Hey, boy.”

  Crossing the porch, she eased into the chair and, as he came to sit beside her, reached to massage his neck and shoulders. He laid his head on her good knee and leaned into the attention of her affectionate fingers.

  “I should have sent you off with Lynn and the rest of my guys. You’re getting as out of shape and lazy as I am.”

  But she knew they were a pair. He might need more activity than he would get this winter, but neither of them would benefit from a separation, so she had elected to keep him at home. The bond between them was strong and had been established through much more than the thousands of miles of running they had done together over the years.

  “Well,” she told him, more brightly than she felt, “we can at least take a walk, ca
n’t we?”

  At the word, he wheeled and headed for the steps that led down to the yard. Looking back over his shoulder, he gave her such an eager doggy grin that she had to chuckle as she stood up and opened the cabin door to grab a sweater and shrug it on.

  As they went down the front steps together, the few dogs left in the yard raised their heads or sat up where they had been resting in or near their boxes. Lack of activity had dulled their usual optimistic expectation of exercise, and they exhibited a decided lack of enthusiasm, though they had been interested enough in the food and water she had provided for them earlier.

  They don’t expect me to take them out, Jessie realized sadly, or they’d be tugging at their tethers and yelping for attention.

  Only one of the older dogs, who like Jessie was nursing an almost healed injury, responded to the appearance of woman and lead dog by pacing toward them and attentively watching Jessie’s face with longing in his eyes.

  “Good old Pete.”

  She walked across to lean down, rub his ears, and unfasten his tether. “You want to come with us? Why not?”

  She stood for a moment looking toward Knik Road

  , which ran past the end of her long driveway, then frowned and headed for the woods behind her cabin instead. On a day as full of approaching fall as this, with the bite of cooler temperatures in the air to inspire them, other mushers would be out with their teams on training runs. Until there was snow and it grew deep enough to fill the woodland trails, they would drive their dogs ahead of four-wheel ATVs on trails that paralleled Knik Road

  , and she had no desire to meet them and to see the sympathy in their eyes and voices at finding her afoot, still limping slightly.

  Circling the cabin, she led Pete and Tank to a narrow cut in the trees that would lead eventually to a whole network of training trails that ran for miles in all directions, maintained by the sled dog racers who had created them and used them every winter. Without snow to cover the tangles of ground-cover, stumps of small trees and bushes had been hacked off and removed, along with the summer’s growth of weeds. It was a path too rough for training but suitable for walking if she watched her footing and took care not to stumble. She could stroll at a comfortable pace, accommodate the limitations of her injury, and enjoy her two mutts’ delight in freedom from leash or harness.