by Sue Henry
Reaching the fire, he tossed a handful of straw and kindling under the cooker for some light. As he turned to the sled, another dog growled suddenly. The sound of teeth snapping was accompanied by a yelp from a third. Smith whirled to face his team.
He was confronted by Rabbit, one of his largest dogs. His lips were pulled back from his teeth in a savage snarl, and the hair on his neck stood up in an angry ruff. His body was crouched near the snow, ready to spring at the astonished musher. Behind him, three other dogs emitted deep-throated growls. They crept forward, primitive, hostile, pinning him against the fire.
“Rabbit, Jake.” He spoke sharply. “Down. What’s wrong with you? Down, damn it.”
The dogs crawled closer, snarling, drooling, and he realized they had pulled the line from its temporary anchor. He yelled, looking for something to swing. Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he was terrified of his own dogs. Nothing was within reach except the simmering dog food on the fire. As he grabbed for the handle, Rabbit, so named because of his speed and agility, charged. Hitting Smith high on the chest with both front feet, the dog buried his teeth in the man’s parka and shoulder, knocking him back over the fire into the snow. The cooker spilled over the mushers legs.
The rest of the team went crazy. Though he fought with fists and flying boots, they tore his parka and insulated pants to shreds. Sharp teeth, well honed on frozen food and bones, slashed into flesh. Smith screamed. Rabbit sank his teeth into his master’s exposed neck. The musher screamed again as the animal tore his throat, opening the jugular. Two fingers were ripped from his right hand by Chunk, a dog he had raised from a pup. His blood stained the snow around him.
The sound of the frenzy drew mushers from their camps and out of the lodge. Every dog in the area barked and howled, on their feet, straining toward the fight. A checker reached the camp first and was immediately attacked by three dogs that turned at the sound of his shout. He retreated, beating them off as he stumbled back, but not before he was deeply bitten on the forearm he’d flung up to protect his face. One dog held on ferociously until the man flung it against the sled in desperation.
“Son of a bitch!” he shouted. “Get a gun, somebody. They’ve got Steve.”
Another man attempted to pound the dogs with a piece of firewood. He stunned one, but quit when he realized the rest were completely beyond control. He backed out of range, unbitten. The troopers arrived from the lodge and were confronted by a mass of snarling, slashing dogs. Leaving their master unconscious, bleeding to death in the snow, they swung the entire gang line toward the crowd, ready to renew the attack.
Astounded, the mushers stood facing the team, which, just hours before, had been composed of well-behaved, friendly dogs. They were scarcely recognizable now. A pack of wolves would have been less threatening.
“Shoot them,” a voice said loudly but firmly from within the group, “before they tear that line loose.”
Jensen slowly unholstered and raised his revolver and began to drop dogs one after another. After six shots he ejected the shells and clipped on a speed loader for six more. When he had shot these he turned to his partner, but one of the older mushers stepped forward with a .44 from his sled. With tears running down his face, he fired three shots to complete the grisly chore. “Shit,” he said with each one. “Shit. Shit.”
The last dog died still throwing himself repeatedly against the line tethering him to his fallen teammates. In silence they stood staring at the carnage for a long minute as the trooper approached the dead musher.
Down the hill, Mitsie, tied near a fire in front of the vet’s tent, raised her muzzle and howled. Every other dog wailed in response, the sound floating in the frosty air and echoing from the surrounding hills.
7
Date: Monday, March 4
Race Day: Three
Place: Rainy Pass checkpoint
Weather: Overcast and snowing, clearing and lower temperatures predicted for Tuesday
Temperature: High 5°F, low –6°F
Time: Midevening
“What a bitch,” said Becker.
He and Jensen paused to survey the site in the light of a spotlight, borrowed from the lodge and equipped with a small gas generator. The dead dogs were now wrapped in individual plastic garbage bags, and had been moved to the ice of the lake, ready for pickup the next day. The body of Steve Smith, the savaged musher, more heavily bagged, lay near his dogs and sled, which had been repacked and sealed for lab inspection.
“They’re going to have enough sleds and equipment in the crime lab to start their own race,” Becker said. The young trooper looked tired, his brows knit in a frown of concentration as he made sure they hadn’t missed any vital piece of evidence. Even he was growing quiet.
The cooker, filled with chunks of frozen dog food dug out of the snow, had been separately bagged. Jensen doubted there would be much to find when these rations were analyzed, considering it had been the first batch that had fed the dogs. There might be traces, but any significant clue would be retrieved from the bellies of the dogs. Their individual bowls, which might reveal something however well licked, had been sealed and marked for evidence.
Matt Holman, a checkpoint official, and Bill Pete, the musher who had shot the last three dogs, had volunteered to stand guard over the whole collection, leaving the troopers free to complete their job at the site.
Now they stood looking at what little was left. Before moving anything to the lake, they had staked off the area and run pink survey tape to close it off. Then they had gone over it, foot by foot, sifting through the trampled snow for clues. Thoroughly churned by the attack of the dogs, the site offered little.
The straw had been bagged and marked. On one clump of it they had found a smaller dog, apparently dead from something besides a bullet. There were vomit and feces in the straw, and the animal lay in an odd, convulsed position. Jensen marked the bag for this dog as a priority and included the straw and excretions, the only known connection between a specific dog and its meal.
“What the hell you think this is all about?” Becker asked as they began to break down the spotlight equipment. It had begun to snow again, gradually erasing what remained of the bloody battle.
Alex paused, rested one booted foot on the generator, removed his mittens, and pulled his pipe and tobacco from a jacket pocket. He packed the pipe and lit it. Puffing a cloud of richly scented smoke into the snowflakes, he considered the facts he had to back up his answer.
Time and experience had taught him to rely on his intuition to a cautious and calculated extent. His subconscious gathering of many bits of information created a total impression that was often accurate, but difficult to defend.
“I think someone is either trying to stop this race or is heavily invested in its outcome,” he said slowly. “These are not random accidents. The traces of coffee left in Koptak’s thermos and the tests on his stomach contents and blood showed secobarbital. Someone had doped his coffee in Skwentna. Probably the same someone who came on to Finger Lake and cut Kline’s gang line, then found a chance to dump whatever it was into the food Smith gave his dogs.
“What I can’t decide is if these mushers were picked specifically, or if the setups were made as opportunity presented itself, with no particular target in mind. The secobarbital that went into the coffee is not the same substance that turned these dogs into a killer pack. However they were selected, these incidents were premeditated.”
Becker nodded his agreement. “What do you want to do now?”
“Just now,” said Alex, tapping his pipe on the generator to remove the dottle, “I want a quart of hot coffee and something to eat. Then I want to talk to a number of people. The first thing is to find out who was at Skwentna, Finger Lake, and here—who had the opportunity to cause all three incidents. Then, who had a reason and what that reason was. After that I want three or four hours of sleep, if I can
get it. I have a bad feeling about this one, Phil. Most of this race is still ahead. For now let’s haul this thing back to the lodge.”
Minutes later, Jensen started down the hill to see Matt Holman. Between the lodge and the frozen lake several mushers had a communal fire, and he could see figures silhouetted against the flames. Concentrating on the rough path, he almost ran into someone who had stopped on the way up and stood facing him. In the dark he did not realize it was a woman until, lifting his flashlight to her face, he recognized her from Finger Lake.
Her eyes were wide and gray, her hair a short honey-blond tumble of waves and curls. The cold air had brought a blush to her cheeks and nose. She looked at him directly and did not flinch as the light passed over her face, but she waited until it dropped before she moved.
“Jessie Arnold,” she said, pulling a hand from her parka pocket. It was warm and strong in his. “Can we talk for a minute?”
He hesitated. “Sure. Let’s walk.”
They moved off toward the lake, along a side path.
“You were in the cabin at Finger Lake,” he said. “A friend of Turner’s?”
“More of an acquaintance. Most of us know each other. He’s just a kid, and he seemed so broken. George was a friend of mine from a long time back. He helped me get started. It was like doing something for him to be there for Bill.”
He said nothing, waiting for her to go on.
She stopped abruptly and turned to face him. The glow from the fire by the lake barely touched her serious face. He could see tiny reflections of the light in her eyes. She looked at him for a long moment, seeming to assess him as a person as well as a trooper. He wondered briefly what influenced her judgment.
“Look,” she said. “Let’s be up-front. What the hell is going on? There’s a lot of talk, and folks are more worried than they will admit. These aren’t really accidents, are they? One I could buy. George. It’s possible for anyone to run off the trail for some reason. This race has never killed anyone, but it’s crazy sometimes. They say Ginny’s line was cut, more than once, and now Steve’s dead in a way that just doesn’t make sense. Dogs don’t do that. I’ve seen sick or nasty ones. A few people still mistreat their dogs, enough to make them vicious, but not a whole team.”
She didn’t take her eyes off his face. “There was something in the food, wasn’t there?”
He didn’t answer immediately, but stood looking down at her, considering. She was asking a lot of questions, but so, he supposed, were most of them at this point. She was asking straight, important questions, anticipating the same kind of answers, and he had a hunch she could probably handle them.
Most people were wary of the law. They automatically hedged or told you only what they thought you wanted to know. A basic fear or resentment of authority made them pseudorespectful. You wondered what they really thought and said about you behind your back. Sometimes you knew because they said it to your face.
This woman stood her ground, said what she thought, and asked what she wanted to know. She was treating him as an equal, not awed by his authority, but not disrespectful either. It made him want to answer her candidly. The impulse was tempting, but it conflicted with his training.
“Wasn’t there?” she asked again.
Throwing his head back and taking a deep breath, he reached into his pocket for his pipe. She watched him fill and light it, waiting.
“I don’t know,” he said finally, puffing smoke. “It will have to go to the lab for tests.”
An amused expression took the edge from her next comment. “That’s some smoke screen you’ve got.”
He shrugged and smiled, admitting it.
“But you know there was something. And there was something wrong with George too, wasn’t there?”
“Why do you think so?”
“Oh, questions with questions.” A bit of exasperation showed now. “Because it makes sense. I’m not a trooper, but I’m not stupid, and neither are the others. I guess what I’m thinking is there will probably be someone else, won’t there? If this race goes on there could be several someone elses. Somebody is killing mushers.
“What I want to know is what we’re going to do about it. It scares the hell out of me. I’ve never been around anything like this and I don’t like it. But we have a race to run. There’s a lot at stake: money, time, reputations. But none of it’s worth lives. What are we going to do?”
We. She kept saying “we” as if she were a part of finding out who was responsible. And maybe she was. Maybe they all were.
“How many times have you run this race?” he asked.
“Five.”
“How have you finished?”
“My best was last year. Sixth.”
“What makes you suspect there will be more?”
“Because there doesn’t seem to be anything but the race as a connection. None of the people who’ve died were particularly close. None trained together or had borrowed or rented dogs from each other. Is someone trying to shut it down? Has one of those Humane Society nuts finally gone too far, trying to make us stop what they think is cruelty to dogs? What is it?”
Alex looked at her, surprised. Vaguely he remembered a controversy a few years back involving the Humane Society. Some of its members refused to believe that a dog might be run in a racing team without damage or trauma to the animal. They had generated enough negative publicity to make race officials, vets, and mushers generally uncomfortable and resentful. He recalled thinking the whole thing a little ridiculous, but also wondering if a thousand-mile race wasn’t pushing the dogs too far. Now he was beginning to realize that the main stress lay on the musher. Some of the dogs, he was told, actually gained weight during the race and loved to run, as they did in training every winter day. Abused dogs would never win a race and the mushers knew it. Reason, however, would not change the mind of an obsessed animal-rights advocate.
Another possibility he had toyed with was that someone had a big bet going. There had to be thousands of dollars riding on this race in illegal wagers. He wondered how much and where. All sports were subjects for gambling and vulnerable to attempts to influence their outcomes. Greed as a motive might make more sense.
These options opened up the case to include things that could not be investigated from an Iditarod checkpoint, but he was convinced that the solution was to be found here on the trail. Only someone familiar with the race could have known Koptak’s habits, the stress on a line in Happy Valley, Smith’s probable feeding schedule. Since he wasn’t a musher, he knew he couldn’t anticipate the killer’s thinking, didn’t know enough firsthand.
“Miss . . . ,” he started.
“Jessie,” she said.
“Jessie.”
He went on, thinking out loud. “I have several problems here. First, I have to find out what’s going on. Second, I don’t know enough about dogs, racing, mushers, equipment, attitudes, or any of it to know what I don’t know. You just mentioned a possibility that would have taken me days to dig out. There are a few troopers who have helped with this race off and on, and I’m going to get one of them up here in a hurry. But even that won’t give us the inside story. You and other mushers know each other and the sport as we never will. Would you be willing to share some of that? To work with me, give me the benefit of your experience?”
She waited a minute or two, assessing him again.
“You,” she said, “are not what I expected in a trooper.”
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head slightly, silent for a while before she spoke. “I hope you’re not asking me to spy on other people. I won’t do that.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking for a snitch. I’m interested in a coach. And I don’t mean to depend on just you. That’s not how this sort of thing is handled. But there are a lot of things you could help me with.
For instance, was Ginny Kline married? There were pictures in her wallet of two little boys, maybe six or eight years old. Are they hers?”
“She wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids. They’re probably her nephews. Her sister from Fairbanks was at last year’s finish, and I heard them talk about her children.”
Jensen was about to ask another question when he heard Becker’s shout. “Anyone seen Sergeant Jensen?”
“Here,” Alex called.
“Anchorage,” Becker yelled. “On the radio.”
“I have to take that call,” he told her. “Can we talk later?”
“What’s your first name?” she asked him.
“Alex.”
“Good.” She smiled. “I like to know the people I work with.”
8
Date: Monday, March 4
Race Day: Three
Place: Rainy Pass checkpoint
Weather: Overcast and snowing, clearing and lower temperatures predicted for Tuesday
Temperature: High 5°F, low –6°F
Time: Late evening
It was more than an hour before Alex had a chance to sit down. The radio call from Anchorage, patched through two ham operators and full of weather-induced static, relayed information that confirmed his suspicions concerning the death of Ginny Kline. The gang line on her sled had definitely been cut, and whatever had sliced it had been exceptionally sharp.
The autopsy revealed no chemical substances, only many broken bones, a ruptured spleen, and an artery severed by the jagged end of a rib. Internal bleeding would have killed her had it not been for the broken neck, which the coroner had determined was the principal cause of death.
From the radio, Jensen had gone directly down to the lake to speak with Matt Holman. Reviewing the situation as clearly as he could, Jensen got to the crux of the problem as he saw it.
