He’d started out early, before the sun melted the thin film of snow off the road and turned it into a playground slide. He felt the tires gain traction on the road surface.
Time was running out. A few more days of this intense sun, and the Ice Road wouldn’t be safe anymore. But that wasn’t the most driving force. Valerie Blaine had booked a return flight for her group—he had exactly two days left.
Sometimes you needed that kind of pressure to force yourself into making a decision. The events of the past few days had accelerated everything. He couldn’t avoid it any longer: fate had caught up with him.
After deciding to take the plunge, his mind was more at ease, completely sharp. He was at peace with himself and his resolution. Nervous, but ready to go.
He saw the pingos looming up on the horizon, and the radar towers on the DEW line a little farther on.
He parked his truck near the ice house. He’d pictured this moment time and again in the hours and days before. Now everything was occurring like in a dream. After all, he did know the place well. He unlocked the door, lifted the lid, and tied the rope to the post by the entrance. Then he tied the other end around his upper body. His headlamp cast a comforting beam over his surroundings. He’d brought along a small pickax that dangled from his belt.
Caution was his number-one rule. Even if somebody shut the lid and closed the door—as had happened to Christine Preston—he’d be able to get himself out by hacking through the wood. He slowly descended the icy rungs, one after the other. Had he ever guessed he’d be back here so soon? Maybe subconsciously. It wasn’t Christine Preston’s terrible experience but Sedna Mahrer’s death that had forced him to face the consequences of that long-past tragedy.
It couldn’t continue. All of a sudden, it became crystal clear.
No more dead bodies.
He knew what he had to do.
He felt his way forward in the headlamp beam. He knew the number on the chamber door. He knew it was empty but for a barrel of seal oil. Behind it he found the ice-encrusted object.
He pulled out the ax and hacked the iced-over clump away from the ground. Then he took a plastic bag from his jacket pocket and put it inside.
He couldn’t wait to see her face when he handed her what he’d just cut out from the ice.
CHAPTER 39
Valerie couldn’t believe how long Jordan and Faye were sticking it out in minus-twenty-two-degree weather. From the warm Chevy bus, she watched them conferring. Jordan and his camera were set up on the Ice Road; Faye held the tripod. They wanted to be ready to shoot the end of the dogsled race. Jordan had to cope without Glenn. What was going on inside him? And inside Glenn?
She felt for Glenn in spite of the threat Sedna’s brother could pose to her family. He not only had to deal with the legal jam he was in but with Sedna’s death as well. There was hardly a minute in the day that Valerie didn’t think of her, but it had hit Glenn all the harder.
She stuck on her hat and was out of the car in a second.
“Don’t you want to get in? It’ll be another half hour or more. The race is fifty miles long!”
She felt the ice-cold air immediately stick to her skin and eat its way through her clothing. She retreated into the bus. Faye and Jordan came tramping back too.
Valerie understood Jordan’s plan. The dogs would quite suddenly appear out of nowhere. Maybe there’d be a fight for first place just before the finish line. Jordan would certainly want to capture that on film, but without Glenn’s help all sorts of things could go wrong.
She wished for nothing more fervently than for Alana to win. She’d seen the musher just before the start, hugged her, and wished her luck. She knew what the race meant to her, especially since everything else in her life was beginning to wobble. Duncan was nowhere to be seen around the starting line. But Valerie did bump into Clem. The intimacy of the previous night made them both a bit sheepish.
They exchanged stolen glances and tried to keep people from noticing. Conversations were virtually impossible anyway because of the dogs’ frenzied yapping. Faye was discreet; she didn’t ask questions. She also didn’t disclose anything to Valerie about how her night with Jordan had gone.
Marjorie Tama was there to start the race off. Pihuk Bart appeared. Valerie automatically recalled that he’d predicted beauty and terror for her this year. She could only hope that the terror half of it was history and that only the beautiful part lay ahead.
In calmer moments, she consoled herself with the knowledge that her group seemed to be eminently satisfied with the trip. True, the news of Sedna’s death had shocked them all even though they didn’t know her, and they felt sorry for Glenn and his agonizing loss. They all thought Sedna and Christine Preston were foolish to travel by themselves. They were reminded every day of how risky a sojourn in the Arctic was.
With Faye’s help, Valerie poured hot chocolate from thermoses for the rest of her troops, who also came for the race. When she turned her head, she saw a man standing outside the driver’s side window. She opened the window a crack.
“May I speak to you for a minute?” Franklin Edwards asked.
Valerie looked at Faye, zipped up her jacket, pulled her hood down tight, and stepped out.
“You’re not in uniform today?”
He seemed older and stockier than he had in his police uniform.
“No, it’s my day off. If it’s all right with you, shall we sit in my car?”
Valerie had an uneasy feeling. Can he be doing police work on his day off?
She got into Edwards’s pickup. He reached into a door pocket for a small object wrapped in a cloth and handed it to her.
“This belongs to you.”
She looked at him, unsure of herself.
“Open it.”
Oh, no, not another gold nugget!
She took off her gloves and unwrapped the cloth.
Inside was an antique chain holding a round medallion with a filigree metal lid. It looked like an old-fashioned pendant.
“You can open the medallion.”
He showed her how and gave it back to her.
She raised the lid. And froze.
She recognized the photograph. Three children’s faces. Valerie, James, and Kosta. The twins were eight years old at the time; she was just two. There was a copy of the picture in her personal photo album. A blowup in a silver frame had graced her parents’ living room table for many years.
“This pendant was your mother’s. She was wearing it when it happened.”
When it happened.
She looked him straight in the eye.
“Did the RCMP have this in storage until today?”
“No, somebody else took the medallion.”
“Who?”
“I’m not sure exactly. But I found out where it was ultimately hidden. Roy Stevens knew where. Probably someone in his family hid it there.”
He stared through the windshield, lost in thought.
“You see, it was chaotic right after it happened. Two families from Aklavik were nearby and helped tie your mother to a sled. And they packed up a second sled with your parents’ tent and belongings. The bush plane they called for landed some distance away. Everyone was in shock; it all happened so fast. Somebody must have removed the chain from your mother’s neck. Not to steal it, but to examine the bullet wound, I’m guessing. And then they packed it away somewhere.”
“How come you know so much about what happened?”
“Because I was there. With your parents.”
“You . . . you were with the families from Aklavik?”
He shook his head.
“No, I accompanied your parents.”
“But that was Roy Stevens. His name was Siqiniq Anaqiina at the time.”
“No, Roy wasn’t there. Originally, he was supposed to go with your parents because they explicitly wanted to see the caribou herd. But he took sick. His father and older brother had already gone out on the caribou hunt. The Anaqiinas didn’t want to disappoint your
parents, so they asked me to go in his place.”
“So you were the boy who was with my parents?”
Edwards nodded.
“Roy sometimes plays fast and loose with the facts. He loves to tell fanciful stories about himself . . . he loves the effect they have. Especially on tourists. Otherwise—I mean in his work—he’s a reliable guy. He just sort of likes to be seen in the best light. He’d like to be regarded as a hero.”
Valerie was spellbound.
“So the story isn’t true, that my mother wanted to show Roy she was a good shot and the bullet ricocheted off a tree and killed her? That’s what he told Christine Preston. But I thought even then that something didn’t add up.”
“Did he say that? Typical Roy.” Edwards shook his head. “No, that’s not at all how it played out. Roy was telling a real tall tale there.”
Valerie hoped she’d finally learn what had really happened.
“Please tell me everything, very precisely,” she asked, her voice hoarse.
Edwards turned down the noisy heater in the truck.
“I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about going with your parents. I really wanted to go hunting with my father. He’d left a few days before with my brother and cousin to get the winter camp ready. But the Anaqiinas told me that Peter Hurdy-Blaine was a famous hockey player and I’d get to be in a film.”
“What film?”
“Your mother made some films.”
One more thing her father had concealed. Where were those films?
“Your parents thought I was Roy, who, as you said, called himself Siqiniq back then. I didn’t tell them my real name for a long time because I was scared they’d send me back. Because in the end, I did want to go. Your father didn’t find out until after . . . after the tragedy who I really was.”
Valerie was mesmerized.
“Everything went well the first few days—no storms and only a little snow. Your father was very friendly; he showed me his equipment and how it all worked. I liked that. I was also allowed to drive a snowmobile; I didn’t have one of my own so your parents managed to find one for me. Your mother . . . she kept a notebook. And made some drawings. Sketches. She gave me caramel candies as a present. They were frozen but turned soft in my mouth. I spotted caribou on the fourth day. I was happy because that meant I’d soon see my father and brother. We’d already made it to their winter camp that morning, but nobody was there. Your parents were very excited about the caribou. They wanted to shoot some films and then go on alone after leaving me with Dad.”
Edwards cleared his throat. Valerie couldn’t look at him. Who else had he told this to? Probably very few people over the years. And he would certainly never in a million years have imagined that he’d be telling it to Mary-Ann Strong’s daughter someday.
“I saw the herd coming from some distance off, on an angle to us. I had my hunting rifle with me. I felt the thrill of the hunt. Caribou are very important for my people. They give us so much: meat, hide, leather, sinews, bones, antlers. They are our lifeblood. Your mother had gotten everything set up for her film shoot. Somehow I didn’t really fully appreciate what all that meant. I wanted to prove to my dad that I could kill a caribou. I was fourteen, but I wanted to be a real hunter. So I crept up toward the herd, my rifle at the ready.”
He paused to take a deep breath.
“Suddenly, she jumped on me. She tried to take away my rifle. I didn’t understand what was happening. I held on to my gun tight. It was my gun. I was proud of it. I didn’t know what she wanted. I heard your father shouting at her, ‘Mary-Ann! Mary-Ann!’ Then a shot.”
Valerie saw her group pouring out of the Chevy and moving toward the racetrack. The dogsled race felt miles away now. She was in the snow-covered tundra, with three people, one of them fatally struck by a bullet.
“She didn’t die right away. We carried her into the tent, and your father attempted to give her first aid. She tried to say something but couldn’t. It was too late. I knew before he did that she had died.”
His voice cracked.
“He was calm, composed. He said we had to get her to a hospital. He called for help on his satellite phone. He didn’t break down until he saw that any attempt to save her would be hopeless.
“Before the plane landed, my father and some other hunters and their families joined us. Your father told them that it was an accident. Nobody was to blame. If anybody was, he was, he said. He told the police that as well.”
Valerie tried to thread her way through his story, to make some sense of it.
“My mother was about to shoot her film, and she knew your shots would frighten the caribou off. She couldn’t shout that to you because the caribou would have heard her. So she tried to take your gun away from you instead.”
“That’s how your father saw it, too.”
“And you?”
“Everything was incomprehensible to me at the time. And everything that came afterward was, too.”
“The police investigation?”
“Yes. And your father helping our family out. And paying for my education. He wasn’t mad at me, even though his wife was dead.”
“Did you want to move away from Aklavik?”
“My parents did. There was a conflict brewing with some relatives that was making life difficult for them. I’d rather not talk about it—I’m sure you’ll understand. I wasn’t thrilled with the move at first. It’s hard for a fourteen-year-old to leave his friends and home. But look at me now: I’m doing well; I have a job and a family I love. And it was good for my parents and brothers and sisters.”
Valerie studied the photo in the medallion.
“How did you know where this pendant was hidden?”
“From Roy, indirectly. He’d gotten it from a relative who was there when your mother was taken away. They’d given it to him as a consolation, since Roy was sick and couldn’t go on the trek. Crazy, eh? But after Roy was attacked, he finally told his father about it; his dad thought it was best to go straight to the headquarters in the capital, so he contacted the Yellowknife police. My colleagues passed the information on to me because that’s my department.”
“Does anybody else know who you are? Sedna Mahrer—did she know? Or people in Inuvik?”
“No. My father Anglicized our family name. He wanted nothing more to do with those relatives or Aklavik. They treated him . . . rather badly.”
He got out a tissue and noisily wiped his nose.
“Nobody recognized me here. No wonder—the whole thing took place thirty years ago.”
“May I pass this information on to my two brothers?”
“Yes. And if you publish anything, then please change my name. I wouldn’t want my identity revealed. Promise?”
Valerie stopped to think. Edwards had taken a big risk by confessing everything to her. At the same time, he wanted to offer her certainty. Certainty about her mother’s fate.
“Yes, I promise. That’s what my father would have wanted. He wanted to protect you. And my mother probably would have, too.”
Outside, she heard yelling and loud cheers. Valerie saw a dogsled flit by. Then another. A purple jacket caught her eye. Alana.
She rewrapped the medallion in the cloth.
“Thank you, thank you for everything. I hope we’ll keep in touch.”
“Of course. Here’s my card with my home address. Just a minute . . .” He took a plastic bag from between the seats and laid it in her lap.
“No way I should forget this.”
She took the bag with her somewhat clammy fingers. It contained a narrow cardboard box; inside was a leather-bound book.
She opened it. Diary entries and sketches. All in pencil. She turned toward Edwards, puzzled.
“Your mother’s travel diary,” he explained. “I found it in the police archives. It’s just been declassified. It had been packed onto a sled along with your mother’s other things, but the police confiscated it. Maybe because of rumors that she’d been an American inf
ormant. I’m glad her daughter has it now.”
He placed both hands on the steering wheel.
“I think somebody’s looking for you.”
“I . . . don’t know what to say.” Valerie’s throat tightened and tears came to her eyes.
In a husky voice, he said, “You can get in touch with me anytime.”
Valerie saw Faye nearing the truck. She stuffed the plastic bag and the book under her jacket and slipped outside with a curt good-bye. The cold hit her with brutal force.
“C’mon, we’ve got to celebrate!” Faye called. “Alana came in second!” She linked arms with Valerie and whispered, “Everything OK?”
“Yes,” she said. “A-OK.”
Alana was surrounded at the finish line by a good number of spectators offering congratulations. Valerie came across Clem holding a bottle of champagne. She worked her way over to him and shouted, “Don’t I get some, too?”
His face morphed into a happy grin.
“Do we have something to celebrate?” he joked.
Poppy Dixon came up behind him with plastic cups.
“If you don’t drink it soon, you’ll have ice instead of champagne!”
Clem didn’t have to be told twice. He filled the cups, emptying the bottle in next to no time.
He bent down close to her.
“Come on,” he said. “I have to let Meteor out of the truck. He gets to celebrate, too.”
As they walked over to the pickup, Valerie said, “I heard you were one of the winners.”
Clem stopped and stared at her. Then he got it.
“We both won, Val,” he corrected her. “The two of us.”
CHAPTER 40
Vancouver Times: Valerie Blaine, your book, In the Arctic’s Magic Circle, has been a sensation. It’s been on the best-seller list for weeks. Did this enormous interest in your parents’ story surprise you?
Valerie Blaine: Yes and no. My father was idolized across the country back in the eighties and even later on. And not only in the sports world. But yes, I suppose it does surprise me somewhat that he still has a place in people’s hearts after all these years.
Your mother and her tragic death are central to the book. Was it difficult to reprocess these events?
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