The Stranger on the Ice

by Bernadette Calonego

“You did it! That’s the floor,” he said from above.

  She felt solid ground beneath her boots. And a simultaneous crippling cold that made breathing difficult.

  Of course. What did she expect? This cellar was supposed to be just like a freezer.

  If a cold hell exists, then it would have to be here, she thought, with a shudder. A labyrinth of dread. It wouldn’t be out of place in a thriller.

  Best for them to get the job done quickly.

  “I’m going to untie myself from the rope,” she shouted. “Please don’t forget my backpack.”

  She heard him tramping around above her. The rope flew upward, and its grating sounds died away. A light still shone from above. He must have placed his headlamp on the edge of the opening.

  She ventured a couple of steps toward the main corridor, which was sugared over with ice crystals.

  It crossed her mind that her cell phone was also in the backpack. How stupid of her. He definitely would not steal it, she thought. She felt for the two chocolate bars in her jacket pocket, one for herself and one for him, and found the warming pads as well.

  She thought she heard his voice in the distance. Then crunching and tramping once again.

  “Hello?” she yelled.

  At that instant the hatch lid above her slammed shut. With a single stroke, it became dark all around her.

  She waited a few seconds for the lid to be opened up again. For him to say he was sorry about the slipup.

  “Hello! Hello!” she repeated.

  She heard a dull thud as if somebody had slammed a door shut. Then absolute silence.

  She shouted his name. Over and over. In growing desperation.

  She tried to find the ladder in the dark. But her hands only felt the little pointed teeth on the wall of the icy grave.

  The ladder must be here, right here!

  The farther she fumbled her way along, the less she knew where she was.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Well, this calls for a celebration!”

  Carol hoisted a large bottle of Baileys up in the air. They’d crossed the Arctic Circle. The group applauded enthusiastically and stood for photographs beside the marker indicating the sixty-sixth parallel. Valerie had been on this wooden platform with Sedna last summer and snapped the mountains that the snow changed so radically now in April.

  While they were clinking glasses, a dark SUV turned into the parking area. The little group stared at the bundled-up occupants as they got out.

  “Have you seen any caribou?” Faye shouted at them.

  “Sorry, not yet, but we’re still hoping!” A woman’s voice.

  Valerie pushed everybody to get a move on.

  “At your service, madam,” Faye said, as Valerie shepherded the group into the Chevy. It was meant to be funny, but she gave Faye a dirty look.

  When they were in their seats, Valerie thought to remind the group that they’d be crossing the border between the Yukon and the Northwest Territories in about an hour. “Don’t forget that it’s illegal to bring alcohol into the Territories, so be sure you don’t have any on you then.”

  They drove into Richardson Mountains territory; the range extended almost to the Arctic Ocean. The winds could be brutal here, strong enough to blow a truck off the road. Truckers actually called it Hurricane Alley. Only on the lee side of the valleys did trees have any chance of growing. And nothing grew on the mountainsides, with their menacing, rocky, snow-covered tentacles that stretched down to the highway.

  A stark moon landscape, that’s how Valerie saw it—a bulky white mass against a delicately painted sky-blue. In her view, the surrounding landscape seemed like a high mountain region, although the bus’s altimeter read only 2,790 feet above sea level. Sometimes the rocky giants loomed so close that she compared them to sleeping polar bears suddenly stretching up to their full height.

  Trish spoke up from the back seat. “Do you people know what this reminds me of?” she exclaimed in her enthusiasm. “Those boulders on the white slopes look like silver decorations on the frosting of a white cake.”

  “You hit the nail on the head,” Faye responded. Valerie noticed she was in very high spirits.

  Valerie hadn’t told Faye about her night with Clem, because there was nothing exciting to report. Maybe that’s why she was feeling impatient and a bit irritated today.

  The fantastic one a.m. northern lights display had been the major topic of conversation among the group at breakfast that morning. But Valerie had missed the lights, as well as the morning meal. The physical proximity of Clem Hardeven in her room had kept her awake much of the night, and when morning finally arrived, she simply overslept. When she did wake up, his bed was empty. Just a little note: “See you in Inuvik.” She had tucked the piece of paper into her notebook.

  As they drove on, Paula was holding forth, as predictable as the evening news.

  “There’s the tundra again. If we have any luck, we’ll see Dall sheep and grizzlies.”

  “Grizzlies? Not in winter, my dear,” Anika interjected. “They’re hibernating.”

  “But there are gyrfalcons to make up for it,” Jordan chimed in.

  Just then, Glenn shouted, “Photo op!”

  He had spotted a caribou by the side of the road, torn to shreds. When they got out, they found wolf tracks in the snow. A few in the group took pictures of the scene.

  It was too cold and windy to stand outside for long, so they soon piled back in the Chevy and continued on their trip. They were getting near the Rock River campground, which was sheltered from the wind. Valerie had just turned around to announce a coffee break when Faye slammed on the brakes.

  “Holy . . . !” she yelled.

  They stared spellbound at something a hundred yards down the road. A stream of white-brown, thin-legged bodies pouring across the road.

  Caribou. Thousands of them.

  Valerie sat there as if turned to stone. She couldn’t believe it. Every year she’d hoped to see migrating caribou. And now, when she’d least expected it, her dream was coming true.

  Anika was the first to find her voice again. “OmiGod! OmiGod! OmiGod!”

  Soon the whole minibus was buzzing with chaotic excitement.

  Valerie silenced them all with a hand motion.

  “Please, no noise, especially when you go outside. This is the chance of a lifetime, so we don’t want to scare them!”

  In the next half hour, the tour group split up and, one by one, moved along the road, in slow motion and almost total silence. They behaved like tardy churchgoers tiptoeing into the chapel. The only sound in the air was the thud of hooves and an occasional plaintive murmur. Mothers gave muted bleats to keep the young by their side. The shape of this vast sea of animals—a heaving, vibrating parade of slim, forward-moving bodies—constantly morphed, like a river that spread out and then narrowed. Valerie was completely transfixed. She’d stopped taking pictures; she just wanted to look.

  This must be the Porcupine herd Clem had told her about. The caribou were en route from their winter feeding grounds to open tundra. Their antlers pierced the air like thin little arms, stretched up to heaven as if the animals were pleading for something from above. Perhaps a safe pilgrimage to the plains where they hoped food was abundant.

  Suddenly, Valerie recalled something Pihuk Bart had said to her two winters ago. He’d shared with her a prophecy: “In the year that you witness the caribou migrating, the secret of an involuntary death will be revealed to you. It will be a year of terror and beauty. The caribou will carry the souls of your descendants between their warm flanks.”

  She gave a start. Somebody had stepped up beside her.

  “I’ll never forget this moment as long as I live,” Faye whispered.

  She’d stopped snapping pictures too. Some living, breathing images had to be taken in and burned into one’s memory forever.

  The tail end of the herd increasingly thinned out.

  “Where are your friends, the caribou aficionados?” Va
lerie whispered back.

  “They’re not my friends. You and me are friends.”

  She turned around and saw the dark SUV several feet behind the Chevy. The couple was standing on the hood. In her surprise, she waved at the two of them, and they gave her a thumbs-up sign.

  When they got back on the road, Carol distributed the remainder of the Baileys.

  The SUV followed them over the Mount Richardson Pass, which opened up onto a view of the Peel River and the Mackenzie Delta. Valerie decided they’d stop at Fort McPherson later, on the way back, to look for the graves of the Lost Patrol. They drove on instead to Tsiigehtchic, a Gwich’in village also called Arctic Red River. They made a brief stop at the post office and at the trapper store with a sign depicting a dogsled above its door. A lone husky, tied up on a short chain, watched Valerie. She had to look away; she couldn’t get used to the fact that many sled dogs led a miserable life. She’d heard about one in Inuvik two years ago whose body had literally frozen to the floor of its hut. When it was discovered, it was barely alive.

  They crossed the frozen Mackenzie and stopped at the spot where the road aimed straight as an arrow toward the horizon for twenty miles. Valerie had calculated the distance after a customer on her first tour wanted to know. They then crossed the taiga with its tree growth, unlike the tundra. The landscape along the highway grew less dramatic, and Valerie saw that almost everybody was snoozing. A string of trucks came toward them.

  Without warning Faye called out, “We’ve got to stop. Police.”

  Valerie saw the patrol car behind them. When they’d come to a full stop, an officer stepped out and came over to them. He poked his head through Faye’s open window.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  Valerie didn’t know him. He must be one of the RCMP posted to the area.

  “To Inuvik. We’re a tour group.”

  The officer nodded and scanned the bus’s passengers.

  “Could you open up the back please?”

  Valerie got out and went to the rear of the Chevy with the policeman. She helped him unload the baggage. He opened some of it and searched through a backpack. She hoped everyone had heeded her warning and no one was hiding any alcohol. After several anxious minutes, the officer heaved the baggage back into the vehicle and closed the door.

  “Are you going to Tuktoyaktuk?” he asked.

  Valerie nodded. “We’re going to see the ice cellar, or the ice house, as they call it there.”

  “There was an incident in the community. A man was beaten up. I’m sure you’ll hear all about it when you get there. But we arrested the perp, so nothing to worry about. Have a good trip!”

  “Thank you,” Valerie replied, perplexed, as she watched him get in the patrol car.

  Her head began to spin. A man beaten up. In Tuktoyaktuk. There was always a row whenever alcohol was involved. But so much had happened in the past few weeks already. Gisèle’s death. The attack on Clem. Sedna’s disappearance and mysterious reappearance. The gold nugget. The police in Eagle Plains. Valerie blinked at the blinding setting sun. She felt a bit dizzy.

  Glenn Bliss was standing outside, shaking with cold and trying to smile. His mustache trembled.

  “Gotta go,” he said.

  Valerie nodded. “I’ll tell the others.”

  She climbed into the Chevy and asked Jordan to go with Glenn. She said to Faye, “I think Glenn’s got motion sickness. He’s pale as a sheet.”

  Faye’s expression was inscrutable.

  “Well, well,” was all she uttered.

  CHAPTER 24

  Clem stumbled into the bar of the Great Polar Hotel. He’d spent the whole ride from Eagle Plains to Inuvik in the bunk behind the driver’s seat in Reg Mason’s eighteen-wheeler. Reg brought vegetables and fruit from British Columbia to Inuvik every three weeks; people bought them off the shelf in his truck. Clem’s head felt like an overripe plum ready to burst. Reg had listened to a trucker’s program the whole way, “Trucker Tunes,” at a volume that made restful slumber impossible. But it would have been a far greater torture for Clem to drive the 225 miles himself.

  “At last,” Phil Niditichie shouted. “Where the hell were you? Doing a disappearing act like Helvin?”

  “You guys could booze it up enough without me,” Clem grumbled as he ordered a White Russian.

  “Jesus! You look like your grandmother peeled you and threw you on the barbecue,” Johnny Redbeard Wills needled him.

  “Leave him alone,” Poppy Dixon shouted. “If somebody had bashed your head in, you wouldn’t exactly look like Miss Universe.”

  Johnny didn’t let go.

  “Compared to Roy, this guy here got off real light.”

  Clem suddenly felt that all eyes were on him.

  “What? What are you guys gawking at?”

  Nobody said anything for a few seconds. Then Poppy burst out, almost in a stutter, “You have heard about Roy Stevens, the ranger out of Tuktoyaktuk?”

  “What am I supposed to have heard?”

  One of the men whistled softly through his teeth.

  “He’s in the hospital. Somebody bashed his skull in,” Poppy said.

  Clem stared at Poppy in disbelief.

  “You’re kidding, Poppy, aren’t you?”

  But the men’s faces told him that it was true.

  Johnny piped up again.

  “For crying out loud, Clem, that’s what happens when you leave your cell phone off.”

  Clem felt a surge of anger.

  “Isn’t anybody gonna tell me what happened, or are you all gonna just sit there like bumps on a log?”

  “They found Roy today bleeding from a head wound,” Phil said, “in Tuk, in front of the ice house. Couldn’t even talk. He’s in the ICU, in an induced coma.”

  Clem’s hands quickly turned clammy.

  “Which hospital?”

  “First here. Then they stabilized him and flew him to Yellowknife. Then they shipped him to Edmonton.”

  “Why . . . Who . . . ?”

  “Wouldn’t we all like to know. First you, then our ranger. This monster’s got to be taken out of circulation fast. What are the police doing anyway?”

  Now they all talked at once.

  Clem’s voice cut through the babble like a drill through ice.

  “John Palmer was in Eagle Plains with the RCMP guy from Yellowknife.”

  “Right, because of drugs.” Poppy shoved his beer glass dangerously near the edge of the bar.

  “Drugs?”

  “The girl from Dawson . . .”

  “That Gisèle woman?”

  “Yeah, she wanted to sell stuff to some people in Eagle Plains.”

  Phil slammed his fist down on the table.

  “The perp sure as hell didn’t go from Eagle Plains to Inuvik. They should be looking for him right here instead. Maybe Roy knew something and now . . . ?”

  His hand slid like a knife across his throat.

  Clem was about to shake his head but caught himself in time. No quick head moves with his concussion.

  “I bet the RCMP knows more than they’re telling,” he said.

  “Well, now, doesn’t that make us feel a whole lot better,” Poppy sneered. “The Yellowknife guy is supposed to be an expert.”

  Clem pulled his hat down over his ears.

  “We should all be scared if they have to fly in somebody like that.”

  Not waiting for the crowd’s reaction, he made for the door.

  The sun was still shining. It seemed an illusion considering the dark events of the preceding days. He thought of Valerie as he got back to driving his truck, against doctor’s orders. She couldn’t have wished for better weather after the winter storms they’d had. But would the awful assault on the ranger have an impact on her tour? Would she cancel her trip if she found out? The thought bugged him more than he liked.

  A mental image took shape: her body’s silhouette under the bedcovers, her long brown hair like tendrils on the white p
illow, her hand pressed against her chin. He wished he could have stayed in Eagle Plains longer. Maybe the quiet peace of the morning hour would have led to something sexier. He wallowed in the scenario of her expected response. His erotic fantasy was quickly supplanted by the thought of Roy and his bleeding head on the snow. Was it the same guy who had attacked Clem?

  He drove south down the highway where Valerie’s minibus would be heading for Inuvik in a matter of hours. No hurry; the sun wouldn’t go down until ten.

  Half a mile after Inuvik, he turned down a wide, snow-covered road. The bush ended after a few hundred yards as Alana and Duncan’s house and dog pens came into view. He had to avoid an oncoming red SUV, which he recognized at once; he waved to the driver. To his surprise Toria West’s car didn’t stop but went past him and out of sight behind the bushes.

  “What the hell . . .” Clem was irritated.

  In the mudroom attached to the house, he found Duncan preparing the dogs’ food.

  “Back from Eagle Plains?”

  “Yep. Did Meteor behave himself?”

  “I’m sure he did. Alana took him along with some tourists to Fowler Lake.”

  “When’ll she be back?”

  “Two hours maybe. She can drop Meteor off at your place this evening.”

  Duncan distributed fresh meat among the dogs’ bowls.

  “For Bolter’s team. The dogs really worked hard today.”

  Clem chose not to beat around the bush.

  “I saw Toria’s car. What was she doing out here?”

  “Toria? She’s thinking about getting a puppy for her kids.”

  “What? You’ve got puppies?”

  Duncan put the bowls on the ledge of a little window.

  “No. And that’s what I told her, too.”

  “Did she mention anything else? Helvin?”

  “Naw. I didn’t ask either. Sorry, I gotta put more wood in the stove. You want to come in for a while?”

  Clem declined. “Gotta go back. Did you hear about Roy Stevens?”

  “Yeah. Ugly business. I hope the snowmobile race won’t be canceled, since he’s the one who organized it. Take care. I’ll see you later.”

  Duncan closed the door to the living quarters behind him.