Murder on the Iditarod Trail Read online

  “That’s why, though I understand your wanting me to quit, I have to ignore it and go on with what I need to do. Can you understand that? This race is a thing I need to do for myself. It’s important. Do you see?”

  The anger had left him completely. The frustration remained, but he did see. He was still looking at the race as if it were a game, an event, rather than the culmination, the motive for the dedication she was describing. Although he didn’t feel the way she felt about it, he knew she was right. He wished she wasn’t, because it meant he had to back off and watch her make her own choices.

  He stood and pulled her up to hold her close. This is going to be important, he thought. He put his face against her damp hair and closed his eyes.

  “Yes,” he said, “I do see. I don’t like it, but I see. I know exactly what you’re saying and part of me agrees, but another part’s scared to death and still wants you out of it. This is all happening so fast we’ll just have to trust each other and sort it out later. Just promise me you won’t take any chances, okay?”

  She nodded against his ear.

  The door opened and Emma Holman came in, smiled, and said quickly, “The others are right behind me, if it matters.”

  Although they stepped away from each other as the two troopers followed her in, Alex didn’t feel it really mattered at all.

  19

  Date: Thursday, March 7

  Race Day: Six

  Place: McGrath checkpoint

  Weather: Severe clear, light to no wind

  Temperature: High –2°F, low –14°F

  Time: Late morning

  Alex tossed his gear into the plane, paused to light his pipe and look across the runway toward the store, where Becker had gone for last-minute supplies. Caswell climbed down from the pilot’s seat, where he had been cleaning the inside of the windshield.

  “You’re looking thoughtful again,” he remarked.

  “What did you think of Holman’s information on the mushers last night?”

  “Well, I can understand his feelings, but he might have told us more. I think we could narrow the list a little.”

  Jensen nodded. “Let’s put them in priority order and see what we get. Motive is the thing now. They all had opportunity.”

  Caswell flipped his notepad to a clean sheet. “Go.”

  “Martinson first, then Cranshaw and Ryan. After that, Schuller, but he’s marginal.”

  “Why?”

  “Why Schuller?”

  “No. All of them.”

  “Martinson’s attitude. I think he’s desperate. The fact that he might lose his kennel gives him a damn good motive, and he’ll only make big money if he comes in first, or close. I think he’s got an obsession with winning. He’s also a loner, self-­contained. Didn’t show any concern for the victims at all. Something about him bothers me, a lot.”

  “Could be afraid and covering up, trying to look tough.”

  “True. He’s hiding something. It’s a game of nerves, but I think he’s capable and has had every chance. I still put him first, but not far ahead of Cranshaw.”

  “What’s the motive there?”

  “That’s harder to pin down. Holman said he lost sponsors. If he doesn’t do well he may lose more and knows it. You know how you pick up when somebody’s thinking something different than what he’s saying? That’s Cranshaw. An egotistical son of a bitch. He’s got a mean temper and holds a grudge, I bet. Doesn’t like women in the race, but has learned to cover.

  “Jessie says he’s sorry about Koptak’s death, but here’s the thing, Cas. That doped thermos had the initials G.K. painted on it. George Koptak, right? But the killer may have thought it was Ginny Kline’s. She filled it for George when she did her own in Skwentna. If he killed the wrong person, it should shake him a little.”

  A low whistle was Caswell’s only comment.

  “I want to go on keeping it quiet. And that the stuff in Smith’s dog food was PCP. I told Holman to keep it close.”

  “Which brings us to Ryan and his vet experience?”

  “Right. There isn’t much in terms of a motive, and Holman thinks he’s okay, but I can’t overlook the coincidence. His work with sports medicine would make a perfect cover. We don’t know much about him either. What makes him tick?”

  Caswell pulled a notebook from his pocket. “This is the press book they put out every year.” He thumbed through it. “‘James Ryan, veterinarian from North Pole, Alaska. Raised in Minnesota, where he learned to raise, train, and race his own teams. Moved to Alaska in nineteen eighty-one and first ran the Iditarod in nineteen eighty-seven. Was a volunteer veterinarian from nineteen eighty-three to nineteen eighty-six at various checkpoints. Now working in sports medicine, this quiet, thirty-eight-year-old musher enjoys country-western music, traveling, and spending time with his partner, Patty Jakes.’ Sounds pretty ordinary, Alex.”

  “Yeah, so ordinary you might forget he was there. Is he covering? But Jessie’s confident of him. She’s glad to run with him and seems pretty good at people.”

  “Alex . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  Caswell looked at him, waiting.

  “Yeah, I know. I can’t forget him just because she likes him. But I don’t want to suspect him because he’s running with her either.”

  “Make up your own mind.”

  “Indulge my intuition. Leave him third, then, and let’s see what we can find out about him.”

  “Who else?”

  “Schuller and Murray we have to keep because of that damn bottle. Murray’s okay, I think, no motive. But Schuller found it, and he slipped out of Rohn without seeing me.

  “We can put the out-of-state people off the list for now—Ellis, Johnson, and Talburgen. Pete, Pilch, Grasle, and Harvey just don’t show any motive. And Arnold,” he said deliberately. “It may be intuition again, but that’s as objective as I can be, Cas.”

  “I agree. Don’t get defensive. That leaves Banks and Solomon. I put them with your last bunch. Pollitt’s out of it.”

  He drew heavy lines under the first three names, then, hesitantly, under the fourth on the list. “Martinson, Cranshaw, Ryan, and Schuller. Right?”

  “For now. From here on I want to know where they are, who they’re with, when they eat and sleep. If they spit, I want to know it, but I’m not sure how. We can’t be out there with them. I want all the information we can get from Anchorage. Call headquarters and have them get Fairbanks going on Schuller and Ryan. Palmer can check out Martinson, and we’ll have to take care of Cranshaw. Here comes Becker. Let’s get going.”

  The younger trooper came up in a hurry and dumped a sack of groceries into the open door of the plane.

  “We may have a problem, Alex. Holman says Bomber Cranshaw pulled out a while ago in an awful hurry.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah. Matt went through his equipment, down to the last toggle, but he didn’t have Jessie’s gun. Just his own, not a forty-four. It had been fired twice, he said, to scare a moose, just before he got here.”

  “That’s right. Ryan with Jessie?”

  “Yeah. I think you better talk to them. Something went down.”

  Crossing the strip, they found the two packing the last of their equipment.

  “What happened? Becker says Cranshaw took off without you guys.”

  Ryan nodded and went on packing. Jessie stepped away from the teams to answer him.

  “He took off, all right. Becker said we’d better tell you before we left. Bomber went by himself because he’s mad at me.”

  “Tell me.”

  She nodded. “When he brought his dogs back down to where Ryan and I were camped, he was already mad. The checker had told him to get ready for a sled search and he didn’t like it.”

  “What do you mean, when he brought his dogs back down? Wasn�
�t he camped with you guys?”

  “No. He lives here, so when we checked in, he went home to his cabin, on the edge of town someplace.”

  “Why didn’t you and Ryan go with him?”

  “Well, he did ask if we wanted to come, but it didn’t seem like he was too hot on the idea. I figured he wanted some time to himself and we didn’t really want to go anyway. Bomber has been a pain since Rohn, so we weren’t sorry to split up for a while. Besides, I wanted to talk to you about the gun.”

  “And when he came back?”

  “Like I said, he was mad. He stomped around, complaining that we weren’t ready to go, even though it was earlier than we had planned. He bitched about the sled check, troopers, and unnecessary delays, until I finally got fed up and told him why.

  “He really exploded and accused me of telling you it was him or Jim. I told him I hadn’t, but he said . . . Well, he got nasty. Jim told him he was out of line, but that just made him madder. He said I lost my damn gun, that a spacey bitch wouldn’t remember. Then he said he wasn’t going to run with a couple of idiots and took off.”

  “I bet his sled check was a disaster.”

  Becket agreed, with a disgusted expression. “I understand he was not a happy camper.”

  “And they found nothing?”

  “Nope. His gun had been fired, but we know the reason.”

  “How did Ryan take it when he heard you had talked to me?” Alex asked her, lowering his voice and walking her away from the rest.

  “Okay. I told him I didn’t think it was him. He asked a few questions after Bomber left, but he thought the search was a good idea and seemed worried my gun was gone.”

  “What do you want to do, Jess?”

  The frown left her face. “I want to go, of course.”

  “With Ryan? Is there someone else?”

  “Not if we want to go now. Why? Alex, you don’t think . . . ?”

  “I don’t trust anyone, Jessie. I don’t know. Let’s just say I’d feel better if there were more than two of you.”

  She thought about it, then shook her head. “This is one of the necessary chances, Alex. It’s time to go.”

  “Then go give it your best shot.”

  The smile lit up her face. “Come on, Ryan,” she called, heading for the sled. “We’re out of here.”

  As the two sleds disappeared over the riverbank, Jensen turned to Becker. “Where’s Holman?” he asked. “I want a look at Cranshaw’s place. It’s time to take this apart.”

  Back on the runners, following Ryan on toward Takotna and Ophir, Jessie felt better about going on. Alex had thoroughly shaken her, as he had meant to, with his concern that she might be in danger. But his trust of her judgment and her own determination was substantial enough to override her nerves and get her out of McGrath. Once on the trail, feeling the exhilaration of motion, her anxiety fell away.

  Thinking of Alex, she could almost feel the warmth of him against her. Maybe he could trim his mustache just a little. How unexpected, in the middle of the race, with dogs, other mushers, and the trail demanding most of her attention to find herself thinking of him so often.

  The quiet shush of runners on the snow, and the live movement of the sled as it flexed over irregularities in the trail, were soothing. Jim looked back and waved as he went down the bank of a small creek and round a turn. The dogs were running enthusiastically after their long rest, and it was good to be moving.

  A couple of miles from McGrath, they were winding their way from marker to marker, in the maze of tracks and trails, through creek beds and stands of willow that filled the river basin. Half the residents of McGrath supplemented their incomes with subsistence hunting and trapping, and they made new trails all winter as they came and went on sleds and snow machines.

  Around another turn, she found Ryan pulled over. “Got to switch a dog,” he yelled as she approached. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”

  She drove by without stopping and went up the bank of a creek. The willows thickened near creek banks, and the trail twisted to accommodate them. In half a mile, over the subtle sounds of the team and sled runners and between her own sparse commands to the dogs, she was vaguely aware of the whine of a snow machine in the distance, growing louder. Glancing back, she saw no sign of Ryan behind her.

  Attentive to the team once more, she saw the ears of her leader suddenly come up as he slowed, then stopped. Damn snow machine, she thought. Should know better than to run the marked trail against dog teams. Tank began to bark and lunge; before she could react, a moose scrambled out of the willows to the right of the trail in front of her dogs.

  It was huge, a full-grown bull, over eighteen hundred pounds of unpredictable stubbornness. It halted on the packed snow of the trail, perhaps twenty feet directly ahead of Tank, who, with the rest of the team, was now hysterically lunging and barking.

  Quickly, Jessie threw the snow hook and stomped it down. “Tank! Shut up. Hey, stop that! Quiet,” she called, but they ignored her. Snorting, the moose assessed the threat before it with angry eyes, pawed the snow with one large, sharp hoof, and lowered its head. Then, with no more warning, it charged the dogs.

  Jessie heard snarls and yelps as the animal flailed through her team, kicking and stomping. Instinctively she thrust a hand into the sled bag for her gun. Frantically realizing her mistake, she threw herself and the sled over to the right, away from the threat of the slashing hooves. The moose passed over her, one long, bony leg thrusting its hoof into the snow beside her shoulder, as she lay curled in the partial shelter of the sled.

  Instantly she rolled to her knees and, reaching under her parka, snatched Holman’s handgun from its holster. Raising herself to peer over the sled, she braced the gun on a stanchion with both hands, ready, but the moose was gone. For whatever reason, it hadn’t turned to renew the attack, disappearing instead down the trail toward McGrath. The sound of the snow machine seemed to have passed somewhere to the southwest and could now be faintly heard, dying away.

  Heart pounding, light-headed with adrenaline, Jessie sank back, gulping great lungfuls of air. Keeping the pistol in her hand, she stumbled to her feet and went, full of apprehension, to see the havoc that had been wreaked on her team.

  The barking had stopped, but she could hear whining and panting as she came up to the tangle of harness and dogs. Most were on their feet, and Tank stood in the middle of the pack, where he had chased the moose halfway back to the sled. Having dragged his teammates along, he had thoroughly snarled the lines. Two dogs were down, one licking a grazed flank, the other a cut foreleg.

  Replacing the gun, Jessie knelt and carefully examined the injuries, relieved to find that neither was serious. Years of experience allowed her knowledgeable fingers to determine that there were no broken bones or hidden hurts as she untangled the lines and examined each dog in turn. With a little first aid, all could continue the race. Had the moose turned to fight, the story would have been different for the dogs, who could not escape or defend themselves in harness.

  When deep snow makes it difficult for the long-legged giants to reach their willow browse, they are hungry and aggressive. A starving moose is mean and dangerous. Lacking sufficient food, its body burns fat and, after that, protein, which increases irritability and causes hallucinations. This also happens in humans, as many mushers, deprived of sleep and not careful to include enough fat in their racing diets, will attest.

  Jessie, hardly believing her luck, wondered why the moose had run on without stopping. Opening her sled bag to get salve for the two injured dogs, she was again conscious of the distant whine of a snow­machine engine. Good God, they were everywhere. Dying away to the north, it suddenly stopped, as if it had been turned off.

  She hoped the moose had not run headlong into Ryan’s team behind her. Where was Ryan? He should have caught up with her by now. Carefully she spread the salve over the abrasi
ons on her hurt dogs, petted and loved them all a little, and rechecked the harness, straightening out a couple of last-minute kinks. Still no Ryan. Should she go back to see? What if the moose had taken out its anger on his team? Yes, she would head back. Too narrow to turn there, she would first have to go on to a wider spot. “Come on. Let’s move, guys.”

  Around two corners, a wide spot appeared at a split in the trail. As she approached she noticed there were no pink tape markers to indicate which fork to take. Strange, but she turned around anyway. “Come haw, Tank. Come haw. Let’s go back now.” Obediently he came around, leading the rest of the team back past the sled, and soon they were headed back over their own tracks.

  A quarter of a mile later, Jessie realized the markers had once again disappeared. Not one waved at her from twigs or laths at intersections with other trails. What the hell was going on? She stopped and walked to the front of the team, where she could see farther. Except for her own runner marks in the trail, there was nothing to guide her at all. All she could do was go slowly, watch carefully, and trust Tank’s nose to get them out of this tangle.

  And where the hell was Ryan?

  20

  Date: Thursday, March 7

  Race Day: Six

  Place: McGrath checkpoint

  Weather: Severe clear, light to no wind

  Temperature: High –2°F, low –14°F

  Time: Late morning

  Cranshaw’s cabin lay half a mile north of McGrath in a slightly wooded area, out of sight and sound of any other residence. A sign on the unlocked door read “Make yourself at home, but leave it the way you found it.” Jensen elected to take Bomber at his word. He’d make sure they put it back together after they took it apart.

  Nothing in the one big room was left unexamined, but nothing they found told them much. A note on the table instructed “Jim—Make sure they get plenty of water. Thanks, B.” This was clearly meant for the person feeding the twenty dogs who lived in individual houses behind the cabin. Their frantic barking had greeted the four men on arrival. The stove was still barely warm, and a skillet, bowl, and spoon, wiped rather than washed, sat on the table beside the note.