Murder on the Iditarod Trail

by Sue Henry

  Could I catch Tim and tell him? I can try. But although she saw him in the distance off and on for the rest of the way to the checkpoint, she couldn’t catch him.

  She glimpsed Martinson for the last time when they reached the final summit and began the long descent to the coast. She figured that she wouldn’t have time at the checkpoint to exptain it all to either Jensen or Martinson, or Cranshaw would catch her. The wind picked up, but sunlight filled the afternoon sky for the first time in days. By six o’clock, she was traveling along the beach, with Safety little more than an hour away and Martinson nowhere in sight.

  Looking behind her, she could see two tiny figures on sleds following her tracks along the shoreline.

  32

  Date: Wednesday, March 13

  Race Day: Twelve

  Place: Nome and Safety checkpoints

  Weather: Clear skies, light wind

  Temperature: High –13°F, low –19°F

  Time: Early afternoon

  Matt Holman finally made it to Nome just after noon on the last day of the race. With much on his mind, he went immediately to find Jensen.

  He found the three troopers waiting for him at Iditarod headquarters. They moved to a far corner of the big room where they could talk without being overheard.

  “You find out anything else?” he asked, hiking himself up on the edge of the auditorium stage. There he perched, working on a cup of coffee. He looked at Alex expectantly.

  “Damned less than we’d like and not enough. You?”

  “Same. Harvey’s okay. Still doesn’t remember a thing.”

  “Well, if we assume Harvey’s injury was an accident, that still tells us nothing.”

  “Any word on Jessie’s gun?” Holman asked.

  “Still missing,” Jensen answered.

  “Anyone could have had it,” Caswell said. “If they got rid of it on the trail between here and McGrath, it’s gone for good. Seven hundred and fifty miles of wilderness trail. It might be on the river ice, which turns to water in a couple of months.”

  Holman nodded.

  “I feel inclined to talk to some of these people again,” Jensen told him.

  “Well, you can’t right now. Leaders are out of White Mountain and on their way to Safety. They’ll only stop long enough in Safety to drop dogs and gear for the last twenty-two-mile sprint.”

  “What exactly do they leave in Safety besides dogs?”

  “Everything that isn’t required. It all goes out, to lighten the sled and give the dogs as little as possible to pull.”

  “In that case, one thing we could do is go through it all one more time. Maybe our man will get careless.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “I don’t know. Anything to connect anyone to this mess in some way. A sort of know-it-when-you-see-it thing. I don’t know what else to do, and I’m goddamned tired of sitting in Nome.”

  “If you find anything and break up the race in Safety, there’ll be a lot of angry people, not just mushers. You won’t be able to get answers from anyone until they get here and finish the race.”

  The leaders were getting to Nome as fast as they could. All four of them had stopped to feed their dogs before they reached Safety. There would be no more real rests for anyone, only the long path.

  Martinson went through Safety, hardly bothering to slow down. It took him just seven minutes to check in, drop two dogs, throw all but his required gear out of his sled, and check out. The checker made him stand still long enough to put on the numbered bib he had worn out of Anchorage on the first day of the race.

  Ten minutes later at seven twenty-five, it was Jessie’s turn. Not dropping any dogs, she accomplished the stop in five, gaining two precious minutes on him.

  Eight and ten minutes after her arrival, Cranshaw and Schuller went through, having made up a half­hour between the two checkpoints. They were in and out in six and seven minutes, respectively. The checkpoint, surrounded by planes, snow machines, and people watching the action, now retained a pile of abandoned gear and six dogs, with more on the way.

  The heat was on. It was anybody’s race, even with twenty minutes between Martinson and Schuller. It was a margin that had been overcome in the past. Nobody’s dogs had refused to pass Safety.

  The short trip from Nome to Safety in Caswell’s plane brought the troopers in just before the arrival of Cranshaw and Schuller. Holman had driven them to the airport late in the afternoon, then gone to continue his duties as race marshall.

  They stood near the Safety checker and watched as Bomber stopped his dogs and began to rearrange his team. He pulled one dog from the middle of the line, leaving him with eleven for the run to Nome. Schuller came in while this was taking place and took three of his out of harness. He was now down to nine.

  Alex watched in amazement as both men then began to unload everything they could possibly leave behind. The checker tabulated the mandatory gear as they put it back in the sled: sleeping bag, ax, snowshoes, one day’s food for each dog, a day’s food for the musher, dog booties, and the plastic container of trail mail. They left a confusion of clothes, cookers, flashlights, food, batteries, extra boots, medicine, tools, harness, and personal items, dumped into trash bags.

  When they had gone, Jensen stepped up to the checker and held out a hand. “Hamilton, right?” he asked. “What are you doing here? You were in Finger Lake.”

  “That’s right. When they’d all gone through, Holman sent me up here to man another checkpoint. A lot of the volunteers do double duty at times. The ham operator here was in Rainy Pass. There are several trailbreakers helping set up the finish in Nome.”

  Glad to see someone he knew, Jensen told Hamilton why he was there and asked for an estimate of when the next six or seven racers would come through.

  “It’ll be at least three hours before Solomon gets here. He’s passed Murray again and seems to be pulling out in front to stay. They’re both over halfway from White Mountain, but Murray will probably be an extra twenty minutes to a half-hour getting in. I expect Solomon at about ten-thirty, Murray about eleven.”

  Knowing the race would be over in less than three hours, Alex knew they couldn’t stay that long.

  “I want you to bag everything the next twelve mushers leave here from their sled bags,” he told the checker. “If there is a place, lock it up; if not, have someone watch to make sure it isn’t disturbed. Don’t release it until you have permission from me.”

  “Hey, no one will touch it. I guarantee it. You want me to start with this?” He indicated the pile of gear by the door.

  “Anyone touch that?”

  “Nope. I’ve been right here.”

  “We’ll go through it first. Then you can keep it with the rest.”

  Inside the checkpoint building, away from prying eyes, they went through everything left by the first four mushers, moving items one at a time into new bags. No drugs stronger than cold remedies were found. When he came across Martinson’s rifle and ammunition, Jensen decided to impound any guns and take them to Nome.

  In the middle of Cranshaw’s belongings, Caswell found the musher’s gun, in a holster with the initials B.C. tooled into the leather. Wrapped into a down vest next to it were two boxes of ammunition, one of which rattled, half-full. Jensen broke off searching Martinson’s gear and went to look.

  Opening the rattling box, he checked the shells it contained and started to close it up, when an anomaly at the bottom caught his eye. One of the shells was different from the others. Picking it out of the box, he inspected it carefully and frowned.

  “What?” Caswell questioned.

  “Look.” He held it out. “This won’t fit Cranshaw’s gun. It’s a forty-four shell. What’s it doing in here?”

  They looked at each other, catching Becker’s attention. He came over to see.

  “Jessie’s
?” Becker asked.

  “That would explain it,” Cas nodded.

  “And Cranshaw is . . .”

  “Unreachable, till he makes Nome,” Jensen finished. “The son of a bitch is right behind her. And, if he left his gun, he may still have hers. Let’s get out of here.”

  In an hour from the time they arrived, they were in the air, headed back to Nome.

  33

  Date: Wednesday, March 13

  Race Day: Twelve

  Place: Nome checkpoint

  Weather: Clear skies, light wind

  Temperature: High –13°F, low –19°F

  Time: Midevening

  The last twenty-two miles of the Iditarod Trail lie along the sea ice around Cape Nome, an extension of land to the east of town. In the 1880s, when maps were made of this area, the cartographer could find no designation for the cape. Next to it on the rough draft he scrawled, “Name?” meaning someone should find out what it was called. Later, when the map was published, it showed up as Cape Nome. The name stuck and eventually became the name of the gold-rush town that grew up on its beaches.

  A little more than two and a half hours after the leaders left the Safety checkpoint, at ten-fourteen, the siren in Nome went off, sending its wail across the town to tell the waiting fans that the winning musher had passed the Fort Davis Roadhouse, two miles out of Nome, was in sight and about to come up over the snow-covered sea wall onto Front Street.

  In the dark, no one watching at the edge of town could tell who was behind the bobbing light of the driver’s headlamp. But the first musher was coming in, and they would know soon enough.

  Over the noise of the crowd in the Breakers Bar, no one was aware that the siren had sounded until the door flew open and an excited voice shouted, “Musher coming in!” It took only minutes for over a hundred people to empty out onto the street. The same was true in homes, restaurants, and hotels all over town.

  “Who is it? Who’s coming in?”

  They could see the light on the police escort car that waited for the musher at the other end of Front Street. They all watched for the racer to come off the ice into the lights of the long, two-lane street, then into the brighter lights around the Iditarod arch at the finish line. The next few minutes seemed to take forever for those who had been waiting for days. Some climbed to the top of trucks and cars parked along the street. Others had staked out positions on the roofs of nearby buildings. Everyone pushed forward to the best possible vantage point. A thousand voices speculated on the results of the race.

  Jensen, Becker, and Caswell stood anxiously beside the race marshall inside the snow fence by the arch, watching the crowd quickly grow by hundreds to line the street, forming a solid wall of people around the chute. The entrance was guarded by a public safety officer and two husky trailbreakers, who would swing away a section of the fence to give the musher access to the finish line. They would then swing it back to keep the crowd from following, give the press room for interviews and pictures, and let the checker do his job of confirming that the mandatory items were on the sled.

  The press was everywhere. Video cameramen turned on their glaring lights, making the area bright as day. One television crew was raised high overhead on the lift of a utility truck. Others waited with a dozen microphones near the finish line.

  Jensen felt his own excitement with everyone else’s. It was contagious, Iditarod fever, but did not obscure his primary objective. He still had to contend with Cranshaw.

  He had wanted to go out after the musher, but Holman had begged him not to interrupt the race at the last minute.

  “What if you’re wrong? If you make him lose his place and he’s not the one, there’ll be holy hell to pay. Please. Just wait till he hits the line, that’s all.”

  Against his better judgment, Alex had reluctantly agreed to wait that long. He didn’t think Cranshaw would try anything so close to Nome, with so many potential witnesses. There were dozens of snow-machine riders speeding back and forth along the trail, plus spectators who had driven out to the Davis Roadhouse. Frustrated or not, he would accommodate Holman and do it his way. But only until Bomber crossed the line.

  Every time he reviewed the desperate actions he was now convinced Bomber had committed, he felt angry and sick. Jessie was out there, alone, racing against him, and there was no way to reach her quickly.

  He glanced around for Becker and found the younger trooper standing on a barrel that supported the snow fence, peering over the crowd. The police escort was now halfway down the street in front of the grocery store, moving steadily. Running beside it, on the west side of the street, Alex could make out the figure of a musher. As they passed under a streetlight, he got his first good look. At the same time, the crowd at the gate began to shout, “Martinson! It’s Tim Martinson. Yeah, Tim. Welcome to Nome.”

  There was no mistaking the tall, powerful man by the sled. If he had been gloomy and hostile on the trail, it was gone now. A wide grin broadcast his pleasure in the trip down Front Street. He waved as he saw friends in the crowd and encouraged his dogs.

  “Hike, Josie. Okay, Butch. Go, gee. Gee. Whoa, now. Whoa.”

  Nearing the end of the chute, he directed the leader toward it and stopped his team. At the front of the team, he grabbed the harness to guide his lead dog between the two rows of cheering race fans and up the slight incline to the arch. Only the nose of the leader of the team had to cross the finish line to win. As they crossed it together, the media closed in. A hundred flash explosions lit up the night.

  “Congratulations, Tim,” the familiar sound of the announcer’s voice boomed from the speakers. “You did it again. How does it feel to be in Nome?”

  “Pretty good,” Martinson answered. “Pretty damn good. I’m tired.” And for the next five minutes he answered questions and posed with his dogs for pictures.

  As it became more crowded around the finish line, Jensen found himself, with Caswell, moving closer in order to see around the reporters. Martinson saw him and a slight frown passed over his face.

  Damn, thought Alex. He’s still mad.

  But the big musher raised a hand and motioned him closer. When the crowd prevented this, he left the spotlight, stepped between two journalists, and leaned over a third to be heard.

  “Cranshaw and Arnold aren’t far behind me,” he said. “You better go make sure she’s okay. I could see their lights most of the way but lost them maybe four miles out. Something’s fuckin’ weird with Cranshaw. He’s determined not to let her beat him and he’s acting real funny. He gets mean when he’s mad.”

  Jensen whirled, caught Caswell by one arm, and half-dragged him around the outside of the arch next to the snow fence.

  “Becker!” he barked at the trooper on the observation barrel.

  The authority and immediacy in his voice, a tone Becker seldom heard, brought the younger man quickly to the ground.

  “What did he say to you, Alex?” Caswell asked as Jensen pushed forward through the crowd toward the entrance to the chute.

  “Cranshaw’s after Jessie. I’m not waiting any longer.”

  “What?”

  At that moment Holman stopped him. Standing beside him was a panting runner from Iditarod headquarters.

  “Phone call from the Davis Roadhouse says they spotted two more mushers, but something’s wrong out there. After the roadhouse they run into no-man’s­land, where they can pass each other anytime, but the one in front doesn’t have to move over. But it looked from the headlamps like they ran into each other. Then the lights went out, and a few minutes later they caught a team without a driver as it headed for town. Say there was a shot. Want to know should they go out.”

  “Whose team was it? Damn it man, whose?”

  “They don’t know.”

  Becker was headed for the police escort car, but Jensen knew he couldn’t get out on the trail with it
.

  “Snow machines!”

  Several of the iron dogs were parked, idling, near the finish lines. They had been driven up the street during the excitement, accompanying Martinson to the line. Alex and Caswell sprinted to commandeer the closest two, all but dumping startled riders from their seats. One after the other they took off down the street toward the seawall, leaving Holman and Becker in the process of liberating another pair to follow them.

  “Damn it. Damn it. Get out of the way. Move. Move!” Alex shouted as people scattered from the street in front of him. Swerving around a pickup, double-parked in front of the Board of Trade, he gave the machine as much gas as it would handle. Another snow machine whipped out of a side street ahead. As the driver fought to avoid collision the machine rolled, throwing him into a snowbank.

  Then the buildings ended and Alex was free of most of the traffic. Slowing before he turned down the ramp from the seawall to the ice, he heard the whine of Caswell’s machine coming up behind him. The headlight of his snow machine began to pick up the slat and tripod trail markers with their flutter of pink tape. He cranked the accelerator as high as he could on the uneven ice and snow of the trail.

  Three miles out, hurt, angry, and determined, Jessie crouched behind a snow-covered block of sea ice and tried to force herself to think and listen carefully in the face of panic.

  When he left Safety nine minutes behind her, Cranshaw had driven his dogs relentlessly, a man obsessed. Gradually, he gained until he could see her ahead of him. Just as gradually, Schuller had dropped behind him until, finally, his light disappeared.

  Halfway to Nome, when Jessie noticed the light gaining on her, there was never a question in her mind who it was. Schuller would never push his dogs so hard and risk burning them out so close to the finish. The fanaticism of it shook her. She pushed her team as fast as she dared, a sliver of fear cold in her throat.