Murder on the Yukon Quest Read online

  SUE HENRY

  MURDER

  ON THE

  YUKON

  QUEST

  AN ALASKA MYSTERY

  “A health to the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire.”

  — Jack London, “To the Man on the Trail”

  For Dominick Abel

  Absolute treasure of an agent.

  No one does his job better, or

  with more style.

  Contents

  Epigraph

  ii

  Map

  ix

  1

  JESSIE ARNOLD HALTED HER TEAM AND

  STOMPED IN THE SNOW…

  1

  2

  JESSIE WAS FRANTIC THE NEXT MORNING

  WHEN SHE FOUND two…

  13

  3

  FOR ANYONE WHO DID NOT CARE FOR

  CROWDS, FIRST AVENUE…

  28

  4

  IN FEBRUARY, A MONTH AND A HALF PAST

  THE WINTER…

  41

  5

  JESSIE TRULY LOVED HER DOGS. THEY WERE

  A LARGE PART…

  46

  6

  NOT LONG AFTER HER MEETING WITH DEBBIE

  TODD, JESSIE pulled…

  56

  7

  IT WAS DARK AGAIN ON MONDAY BY THE

  TIME JESSIE…

  71

  8

  JESSIE LEFT CARMACKS AT THE FIRST HINT OF

  APPROACHING dawn,…

  84

  9

  AS SHE PARKED HER DOGS AND SLED IN THE

  FENCED…

  94

  10

  JESSIE WAS VERY CAREFUL—SO CAREFUL

  THAT SHE ALMOST, but…

  104

  11

  STEWART RIVER, LIKE STEPPING STONE, WAS

  NOT AN OFFICIAL checkpoint,…

  121

  12

  MUCH LATER, JESSIE SLOWLY BECAME AWARE

  OF A PILLOW under…

  132

  13

  UNACCOMPANIED, JESSIE SLIPPED BACK INTO

  THE HOTEL much as she…

  145

  14

  JESSIE DID NOT TALK AGAIN TO ALEX BEFORE

  DEPARTING from…

  152

  15

  DAWSON CITY WAS LOCATED AT THE

  CONFLUENCE OF THE Yukon…

  164

  16

  AS SOON AS JESSIE WAS WELL AWAY FROM

  DAWSON CITY…

  176

  17

  THE DAMP NOTE IN HER HAND POINTEDLY

  CONFIRMED WHAT Jessie…

  185

  18

  THERE IS NOTHING TO JUSTIFY THE

  ASSUMPTION THAT MEN make…

  194

  19

  WHILE JESSIE WAS GRAPPLING WITH HER

  TORTUROUS DECISION on American…

  202

  20

  EVEN DRIVING ONE STRING OF DOGS AND

  LEADING ANOTHER, it…

  210

  21

  JESSIE HEARD THE ENGINE OF THE

  SNOWMACHINE BEFORE SHE saw…

  219

  22

  ALONE IN THE SNOW AND THE DARK, JESSIE

  HAD FEW…

  228

  23

  AT THE TOP OF AMERICAN SUMMIT, JESSIE’S

  LEAD DOG, Tank,…

  235

  24

  THERE WAS A SOFT PILLOW AND SHE WAS

  WARM AND…

  241

  25

  A SIZABLE FIRE WAS BURNING IN THE STONE

  FIREPLACE OF…

  250

  26

  THE REMAINING FIFTY MILES TO EAGLE TOOK

  THE TWO TEAMS…

  258

  27

  “SO FRANZ HILDEBRAND DREAMED THIS

  ALL UP. AMAZING,” Jessie said…

  270

  28

  WELL BEFORE DAYLIGHT THE NEXT

  MORNING, THE FOUR MUSHERS were…

  278

  29

  HAVING CROSSED OVER HILLS AND LONG

  VALLEYS, ROSEBUD Summit, a…

  286

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Sue Henry

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  1

  “It was clear and cold. The aurora borealis painted palpitat-ing color revels on the sky. Rosy waves of cold brilliancy swept across the zenith, while great coruscating bars of greenish white blotted out the stars.”

  — Jack London, “A Daughter of the Aurora”

  JESSIE ARNOLD HALTED HER TEAM AND STOMPED IN THE SNOW

  hook to secure the sled, though as far as they had come and this late on a chill mid-January night there was little chance that her dogs would proceed without an encouraging word from their driver. They had traveled almost two hundred miles in two days and nights of regular alternating stages—four hours of travel, four hours of rest—with one longer, six-hour camp and a few short pauses. With an important distance race—the Yukon Quest, from Whitehorse, Yukon, to Fairbanks, Alaska—coming up the next month, she was scheduling her training to adjust both the dogs and herself to the extended rotations of running that would be required.

  The Yukon Quest was Alaska’s second most important distance race and Jessie had decided to try it for the first time, forgoing her usual participation in the Iditarod, for the two were very close together on the calendar and it would have been difficult to run them both.

  She was looking forward to testing herself on a new race, and the Quest had established a reputation as the 1

  2 / Sue Henry

  toughest sled dog race in the world, because of the extremes in temperature and terrain experienced by its participants. The route would take Jessie and the rest of the racers over more than a thousand miles of the most remote, inhospitable region of North America in the heart of winter, measuring their ability, raw courage, and sheer will with temperatures that often fell between-30° and-50°.

  Jessie was particularly interested in traveling this race route because the relentless, demanding trail would trace the same trails used during the Alaskan and Yukon gold rushes, which had been natural and vital links for mail and freight mushers between communities during this era. The race would also be a challenge because the participants were only allowed to use one sled for the trip, like the mushers who had traveled the early mail routes and repaired their own sleds, if damaged. The Quest would therefore also test the self-sufficiency of each modern musher, leaving some cursing the unrepairable fragments and splinters of their transportation, often nursing their own injuries.

  The trail Jessie and her team would run passed through fewer checkpoints than the Iditarod, with greater distances between them, and would include long stretches on the unforgiving Yukon River, the “Highway of the North,” its icy surface often repeatedly broken and refrozen into a jumble of ice blocks the size of boxcars as it settled into winter immobility. Three extreme summits higher than any on the Iditarod would have to be crossed, and as she paused with her team on this training run, she was thinking about confronting the physical and mental challenges of this new race.

  From his place at the front of the team, Tank, her lead dog, looked back as if wondering why they were stopping so close to home, then lay down in the snow. Two of the young dogs in the team remained on their feet for a minute or two, but, like the veterans, soon relaxed in their places, taking advantage of the pause to rest.

  They’re adapting fast, Jessie thought, gene
rally pleased

  MURDER ON THE YUKON QUEST / 3

  with the response of these twelve huskies to the extended training run they were about to complete. Opening the sled bag, she retrieved a large insulated container of warm water mixed with vitamins, electrolytes, and the food scraps left from a feeding at the last four-hour rest stop. When each dog had been given a metal pan of this tempting liquid, she watched to be sure they were all drinking thirstily, then took a bag of high-energy dog snacks and moved along the line to give some to each, along with a minute or two of individual attention.

  “Good dog, Bliss. Good girl. Hey, Sunny. You hungry, Wart?

  Oh…just want that magic spot behind your ears scratched, yes?

  Okay. All right, Darryl, I’m coming. How about your other brother, Darryl? Here you go, pups.”

  The two wheel dogs, who ran closest to the sled, were littermates named for the pair of Darryls on the old Bob Newhart television show, and were often referred to simply as One and Two. They looked so much alike it was hard to tell which was which, though Jessie knew that Darryl Two had darker ears and was more inclined to wolf his food. Very much a people dog, he greeted her with an affectionate lick on the hand as she presented his snack.

  “Kisses for the pack leader? Thanks. Good job today, guys.

  Good dogs.”

  Replacing the supplies, she pulled the big fur mittens that reached almost to her elbows over a thinner pair of wool gloves that protected her fingers when the mittens weren’t on. Nothing was as warm as fur, and they hung on an idiot string around the neck of her parka, where they would not be accidentally, disastrously lost. With the dark, which came in midafternoon this time of year, the temperature had dropped below zero and was still falling. Jessie was extremely careful to keep her hands warm, exposing them as little as necessary, but much of the work of caring for the dogs and herself could not be done in the clumsy mitts. Wiggling her fingers to encourage circulation, she left the team and turned to look around her.

  The headlamp she wore revealed a trail well packed by

  4 / Sue Henry

  the many mushers in the Knik area who used it for training, all of whom did their part to keep it groomed. Beyond her light the ghostly white trunks of the tall birches that lined the trail faded into the dark on either side, branches bereft of leaves until spring.

  Pushing back the hood of the heavy down parka that hung to her knees, Jessie took a deep breath of the cold night air and sighed, placed her hands on the small of her back, and stretched to ease the weary ache between her shoulders. She knew a couple of mushers who had back problems and wondered how they stood the jouncing of the sled for over a thousand miles during a race, or the hundreds of everyday training miles, for that matter. Almost immediately she forgot her minor physical discomforts as she became aware of a spectacular light show above.

  Reaching up, she switched off the headlamp and waited for her night vision to return.

  Low on the horizon she could see the glow of the city of Anchorage, but overhead was a completely different story. In the subzero temperature and clear air, hundreds of stars sparkled bright as diamonds against the inky blackness of the sky. Across them, swirling, shimmering curtains of the aurora borealis appeared to have snared their brilliance in a gauzy net, the brightest of the greenish white bands so vivid they almost obscured the glittering points of light beyond them. Along the northern edges of the aurora were pale hints of rose that pulsed, grew, and spread, only to wane and slowly vanish as another part of the moving splendor increased in intensity.

  Silent and motionless, Jessie stood gazing attentively upward as she almost held her breath in wonder. How many hundred times have I seen the northern lights? she mused. And I am still arrested and awed by them—enthralled as a child at a fireworks show.

  Watching the ribbons undulate and gradually elongate across the dark sky, she remembered seeing photographs from space probes of the rings of similar auroras above the poles of Jupiter and Saturn. It made her feel somehow

  MURDER ON THE YUKON QUEST / 5

  closer to and more accepting of the two distant planets to know that they shared such extraordinary and inexplicable phenomena.

  Time to go, she told herself. With one last look at the splendor of the heavens, she turned and went to fasten the sled bag and whistle up her team. When they were trotting rhythmically along the trail again, the reflective tape on their harnesses winking as it caught the light from her headlamp, Jessie was glad to be almost home and began to consider what awaited her back at the cabin on Knik Road.

  Her snug log cabin would be empty, but not cold, for Billy Steward, the dependable young handler who cared for the rest of her kennel in her absence, would have maintained at least a small fire in the potbellied stove to keep the house from freezing.

  A couple of chunks of wood would soon have its cast iron cheerfully glowing and would quickly spread comfortable warmth through the small living space. In the refrigerator she had left enough of a large kettle of stew for one meal, knowing she would be tired and in no mood to cook when she returned. The rest of the stew had gone with her on the training run, but after eating it for two days, she now found that the idea of more did not appeal in the slightest to her growing appetite. Another lesson relearned, she realized, and began to mentally revise the menu she would prepare and have shipped to checkpoints for her first attempt at the Yukon Quest in February.

  From several years of running Alaska’s most famous distance race, the Iditarod, between Anchorage and Nome, she had noticed that having a variety of foods perked up her appetite and gave her something to satisfy the hunger produced in the strenuous physical requirements of a thousand-mile race. Long days of racing with little rest drained mushers and exhausted their bodily reserves, necessitating a calorie-rich, high-energy diet. But an exhausted musher could lose all desire for food, or crave certain things she had forgotten to include in her supplies.

  It was too easy to concentrate on planning just the right food for the dogs

  6 / Sue Henry

  and ignore the human athlete in the equation. A well-balanced, successful team required both.

  So…what do I want for dinner tonight? The thought made her tired, knowing that caring for her team would continue to demand her undivided attention when they reached the dog yard. Ready for a long rest, the dogs must still be watered and fed before they settled for the night. With the handler gone home for the night, it would be up to Jessie to feed and carefully check each animal for small injuries or strains, though this would also give her the opportunity to pet and congratulate each on a job well done. But with these chores ahead it would be at least an hour before she even went through the door of the cabin.

  She wished that someone else would be there when she arrived. Not to care for the dogs—she liked doing that herself—but someone who had already put wood in the stove, someone with dinner waiting. More than anything, she wanted a shower and not to have to make decisions. It would be wonderful to have a plate—of anything but stew—put in front of her on the table when she was clean. How nice it would be to curl up warm and stationary on the big sofa by the stove, wrapped in a cozy afghan, with a mug of hot peppermint tea that someone else had made for her. However much she loved running with her dogs, she also loved coming home and relaxing into the comfortable fatigue that resulted from long, successful days on the trail.

  “Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?” she sang out.

  The dogs pricked up their ears at the sound of her voice and trotted a little faster down the trail.

  Alex, where are you when I want you? she thought, feeling, not for the first time, the absence of her friend, housemate, and lover, Alaska State Trooper Alex Jensen, and wondering again just how long he would be away.

  It had been after eight o’clock, at the end of a training run much like this, when she had arrived at home to find him tossing clothes hurriedly into a suitcase. Just a week before Christmas.

  MURDER ON THE YUKON QUEST
/ 7

  “Hey, trooper, where’re you off to?”

  Tall and rawboned, he turned from his packing, handlebar mustache askew, light hair with just a touch of silver at the temples standing up from where he had run his fingers through it, a grin replacing the frown on his face. Gathering her into a hug, he kissed each of her wind-burned cheeks and her chapped lips, tousled her short honey-blond curls, and looked down into her wide gray questioning eyes.

  “You’re home, but you’re still cold. Must have been a lot of flying snow today,” he said.

  “Yeah, it was blowing a bit and piling up drifts out there.

  Where’re you going? Out-of-town case?”

  He stepped back to hold her at arm’s length, his expression once again serious.

  “Not this time. My mom called an hour ago, Jess. Dad had a stroke last night. He’s in the hospital and I have to go down.”

  “Oh, no, Alex. How bad was it? Is he going to be all right?”

  Jessie had never met Alex’s parents, who lived on a ranch a few miles outside Salmon, Idaho, but she had grown quite fond of Keara Lacey Jensen through frequent letters and phone calls.

  For Alex’s father she felt a warmth and respect, gleaned mainly from his son’s affectionate comments, for, after a reserved greeting, the reticent Nels Jensen invariably passed the phone to his more loquacious wife.

  “It was evidently pretty bad. They medevaced him up to the big hospital in Missoula and the doctors say they won’t know much for a few days yet. For now it’s one of those wait-and-see things.”

  “How’s your mom?”

  “Mom’s doing okay, I guess, considering, but she sounded frightened and sort of fragile. I’ve never heard her sound like she was just barely hanging on. Wish it wouldn’t take me till sometime tomorrow to get there.”

  “Shall I come with you?”

  8 / Sue Henry

  “There just isn’t time, Jess. Besides, you need to be here to take care of the dogs and get ready for the race. I’ll see how things are and let you know, okay?”

  “Sure. Whatever works best. I could come later, if you need me.”

  “Right.”

  “What can I do to help, then? When does your plane leave?”

  “I have a reservation on the red-eye to Seattle, where I can catch a Horizon flight to Missoula at six-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll drive you in. Just let me grab a shower and something to eat. There’s time, right?”