Murder on the Yukon Quest Read online

  “You won’t have to, Jess. Caswell’s already on his way here.

  I didn’t know for sure when you’d be home, so I called him as soon as I’d made the reservations. Don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so I’ve got to stop by the office and get the paperwork on my cases in some kind of order to turn over to Becker. He and Ivan are meeting me there.”

  Jessie knew that if Ivan Swift, the post commander, was showing up, it definitely meant Alex might be gone for quite some time. Jessie, typically, swung into action mode.

  “Okay. What else can I do? Have you had dinner?”

  “Yeah, I ate a little, but I’m not really hungry. There’s a roast chicken keeping warm for you in the oven. You could make me a couple of sandwiches to take on the plane—mayo, mustard, maybe some of that sharp cheddar. I can’t eat that plastic food.”

  “You’ve got it. What else?”

  “An orange? Maybe a couple of your Snickers.” He smiled, knowing Jessie bought Snickers by the box as high-energy trail food and that they both ate oranges for the vitamin C.

  “There’s a load of laundry in the drier. You could fold it when it’s dry. I’ll need to pack some of it. Socks. Long underwear.

  Won’t be any warmer there than here.”

  MURDER ON THE YUKON QUEST / 9

  “Sure.”

  In less than an hour fellow trooper Ben Caswell had come hurrying into the cabin, said, “No, thanks,” to a drumstick, and efficiently swept up Jensen and his duffel.

  “I’ll call you when I get there,” Alex told her at the door. “As soon as I know…whatever.”

  “Let me know if you need anything. Give your mom my love.”

  “You know I will.”

  Looking up at his face after he kissed her good-bye, she assessed the distraction in his eyes, the lines of concern that framed the mouth below his handlebar mustache, and laid a palm on his cheek.

  “I’ll be here. Better call me late. I’ll be running the mutts almost every day.”

  His focus shifted to her and he smiled. “Do good work, musher. That race is coming up fast. I love you.”

  She nodded. “Too.”

  He turned, clattered down the front steps, and climbed into his friend’s waiting pickup, which was quickly swallowed up in the dark as it turned onto the road from the long driveway. Red taillights flashed momentarily between distant tree trunks and he was gone.

  Jessie had closed the door, enveloped by a silence that seemed loud after the clamor of unexpected departure.

  On this late evening in January, when Alex had been in Idaho almost three weeks, Jessie changed her mind and went into her empty cabin as soon as she arrived. She pulled up by the front steps, stomped in the snow hook, and dashed inside, where she added wood to the still-glowing coals in the stove and left it to warm the house while she went back out to the yard to take care of her team.

  More than an hour later she took a long steaming shower, ate a cold tuna sandwich with a hot bowl of canned tomato soup, went directly to bed, and slept for eight hours, uninterrupted, except once when she woke to hear several of her dogs barking in the yard.

  10 / Sue Henry

  For several nights a moose had wandered close to the cabin, exciting the dogs and provoking them to vocalize loudly at what their tethers prevented them from chasing. Jessie had grinned to herself at the tracks she found in the snow, for the huge ungu-late seemed to exhibit a sense of humor in coming exactly close enough to cause a ruckus without actually challenging so many canines. Its passing had left large divided hoofprints at the bottom of holes in the deep snow as it moved easily around the circumference of the yard on long gangly legs, munching on the willows that grew by the drive, even lying down to rest in a stand of birch and spruce to the north, pointedly ignoring the protests of the restless dogs.

  Now, as she heard them barking again, Jessie smiled drowsily, rolled onto her left side, and drifted back to sleep in the middle of the big brass bed she usually shared with Alex. There would undoubtedly be more tracks to be found in the morning, but they were really nothing to worry about. A bear might have been different, for some bears would kill and eat dogs, especially those that could not escape. But, thankfully, all the bears, plump from a long summer banquet, were elsewhere, tucked up securely into their dens, keeping warm in their heavy fur, contentedly slum-bering the winter away.

  Though the dogs barked once or twice after that, Jessie did not wake again. She was unaware that, after the cabin had been dark for over an hour, a dark figure had slipped stealthily into the dog yard from between two large spruce trees; that he had watched Jessie come home from her training run, care for her dogs, and go inside. Walking slowly between the straw-filled dog boxes, he picked one, knelt, and silenced the dog by petting its head, rubbing its ears, and speaking in a low voice.

  When he stood up and moved on to another, the first dog followed to where its tether should have stopped it, but found that it was unexpectedly free of restraint. It stopped, not used to being without impediment, then moved on, pursuing the man.

  When it found a running

  MURDER ON THE YUKON QUEST / 11

  mate was also loose, the two decided it was time to play, and enthusiastically accompanied the provider of their liberty as he quietly made his way out of the yard and down the long driveway to Knik Road. Reaching the truck he had parked a bend or two away, they willingly jumped up into the cab at his invitation and rode away with him into the night.

  “No. I won’t do that. Who do you think you’re talking to?

  And they would find out—somehow. I have to sign the papers that say those dogs can…”

  “You’ll do it. I’ll destroy you if you don’t…and here’s how.”

  The voice behind the threat was low, but sharp, cold, and as full of menace as the handsome face of the man who made it.

  The grin that bared his perfect teeth held no hint of humor as he flipped a yellowed newspaper clipping onto the desk behind which his victim sat angrily protesting.

  The sight of the headline and picture included in the article caught the man for whom it was intended like a blow. His anger leaked away like the air from a punctured balloon, leaving him pale and sweaty, feeling as if something slimy had landed on the desk in front of him.

  “Oh, Jesus. Where the hell—”

  “Shut it, dummy, and listen up. The goddamned things move—don’t they?”

  Almost beyond listening, the seated man had recoiled in his chair and was glancing desperately around the room for an escape that didn’t exist, mentally scrabbling for safety.

  “Don’t they?”

  The ominous tone of the question yanked him back to the edge of panic. He shrank into the chair, focused his horror on the yellowing scrap of newsprint, and panted out an answer without looking up.

  “Yes. They can, if they’re not placed right.”

  “So, they’ll just think this one moved when they can’t find it.

  They won’t know the difference. Pretty good

  12 / Sue Henry

  chance of that, huh? Still, they’ll be unwilling to let it slide through, right? Now, be a good boy.”

  “Yes…they’ll expect some of them to move, so they’ll look thoroughly—carefully. If they can’t find it anywhere, they’ll have to…Where…how did you get this?”

  The shaking finger he pointed at the clipping and its accompanying photograph was ignored by his assailant, who placed both hands on the desk, leaned forward until his face was less than a foot away, and hissed, “And you’ll fix it so you do the searching when necessary, won’t you? Then you can find it. You can report it. By the time somebody else takes a look, it’ll be too damn late, won’t it?”

  “But how—”

  “Goddammit, you son of a bitch, I don’t care how. You’ll just do it, right?”

  “But why? And why me?”

  “You don’t need to know why. And it’s you because I have…this, you pervert. Because I say so. Right?”
br />   “Right.”

  Strangled by frustration and fear, his resignation was expelled on a breath, barely above a whisper.

  “Louder.”

  “Right.”

  “If you screw up—”

  “I won’t.” It was almost a sob, as he covered his face with both hands.

  There was silence, the soft sound of a door closing gently, and when he looked up the office was empty. The repugnant newspaper clipping lay where it had been tossed on the desk.

  He did not look at it directly again, but after a minute or two struck a match taken from a desk drawer and held it to one corner of the paper. Obsessed with the burning, he watched it blacken and curl until it scorched his fingers, forcing him to stomp out the last scrap where it had fallen to the floor, leaving a narrow black scorch on his office carpet.

  2

  “They had dropped out of the world…. They had come and gone, some said this way, and some that, and still others that they had gone to the country of the Yukon.”

  — Jack London, “An Odyssey of the North”

  JESSIE WAS FRANTIC THE NEXT MORNING WHEN SHE FOUND two of her dogs, Bliss and Pete, missing from the yard; she had been planning to use both of them in the upcoming race. She wondered if, tired from the long run, she could have somehow missed securing them to the chains attached to the top of the metal posts planted firmly in the ground beside their boxes. The tethers lay slack, with no sign of damaged links in the chains or broken swivels.

  Pete was a reliable older dog. She could even turn him loose when they ended a run, for he always went straight to his box and lay down in the straw to wait for food and water. She might have forgotten to clip his collar to the tether, but would not have expected him to leave the yard or get himself in trouble with the others.

  Bliss was another question. A bit skittish and inclined to squabble over food, she might roam, given the opportunity, so Jessie was always careful to keep tight hold of her collar, walk her across the yard to her place, and assure herself that this dog was well fastened. Even though, hungry and glad to be home, she had been running on automatic pilot the night before, she was convinced she had

  13

  14 / Sue Henry

  fastened Bliss as usual. So where was she? And where was Pete?

  It was impossible to follow tracks. The dog yard was full of them, the snow flattened by thousands of canine prints and those of Jessie and her handlers. She called and whistled down several trails that led out of the yard into the surrounding woods, but neither of them responded.

  While she worried about finding them, she set about feeding and watering the rest of the dogs. She had just finished with this chore when a bark drew her attention to the trees just south of the cabin and Pete came trotting into the yard. Going directly to his own box, he immediately thrust his nose into the water pan she had just hopefully filled.

  Jessie crossed to where he was drinking thirstily and set down the bucket that still held a little food.

  “Pete, you good old mutt. Where have you been?”

  She rubbed his head and shoulders affectionately and he looked into her face, tongue hanging out, panting as if he had been running hard for a long ways. He flopped down in a little straw that was scattered in front of his box and sighed as he laid his head down on his front paws, slowly wagging his tail as she examined his collar to see if it might be the problem, but it was fine.

  “Hey, buddy. How’d you get loose? Why’d you take off?

  Where’s Bliss? You two been chasing that moose?”

  I must have forgotten to tether him, Jessie thought, frowning at her mistake. Got to be more careful.

  At least now she would only have to find Bliss. And if Bliss had gone with Pete, she might still come back on her own. Jessie decided to wait awhile to see. If not, after a planned trip to the vet, Jessie decided she would take a few dogs and the sled, and make a quick search of the surrounding area, before expanding the hunt to kennels up and down Knik Road.

  She fed Pete and gave him more water, both of which he consumed in record time before going to sleep, and went into the cabin to get her own breakfast, keeping an

  MURDER ON THE YUKON QUEST / 15

  eye on the dog yard from the large window that faced in that direction.

  Still watching for Bliss, Jessie enjoyed a third cup of her favorite morning coffee and considered names for the puppies she had brought inside for a bit of socialization. It was important to establish relationships with puppies while they were still young and imprintable. Becoming a positive, normal part of their lives as early as possible made their training easier and helped them develop skills for working with people and other dogs as a team.

  Since dogs, like wolves, are naturally members of a pack, she made herself the alpha leader of her pack, automatically accepted by them all as dominant—the boss.

  On the braided rug on the floor before the sofa lay Rosie, a young first-time mother, with four pups of her almost month-new litter. Three of these were attentively enjoying a liquid breakfast provided by their patiently reclining mom. The other, darkest and most active of the gang, had climbed to her shoulder and was licking one of her ears. Jessie had named her Daisy for the single white spot that surrounded one eye like a flower. A fifth, a miniature edition of his father, Tank, wriggled in Jessie’s lap as she scratched his round, milk-taut belly and smiled at his baby growls and repeated attempts to gnaw her fingers.

  “What a clown you are,” she told him. “If you’ve inherited any of your daddy’s dignity, it doesn’t show yet. Maybe you’ve got his smarts—make another good leader someday.”

  When the phone rang she put him back on the floor with a pat and a push in Rosie’s direction and went to the desk.

  “Arnold Kennels.”

  “Jess? It’s me.”

  “Hi, you! How’s everything down there? How’s your dad doing? I just got back from two days out with the guys. Made it almost to Skwentna before—”

  “I tried to call last night.”

  “You didn’t leave a message so I could call you back.”

  16 / Sue Henry

  “I wanted to talk to you, not that blasted machine.”

  There was something in his voice that warned her, a tension she recognized—stiff upper lip sound.

  “What’s wrong, Alex?”

  But she already knew what he would say.

  “My dad…died…night before last.”

  For a minute she couldn’t answer. “When?”

  Dumb, she thought…stupid, unfeeling question, then realized the word was an attempt to keep him talking while she regained her balance.

  “About two in the morning. He just went…while he was asleep. Breathing…everything…got slower and slower…and he was gone. It took a minute before I knew he wasn’t there anymore.”

  A deep breath. Then, “Oh, Alex. I’m so sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Your mom?”

  “Not so good. She was expecting to have to spend a long time nursing him, but not…She’s in shock, Jess. Needs time. This really turns her safe world upside down.”

  “Was she there with you when…?”

  “No. We—my brother, Ned, Mom, and I—have been…had been…taking turns staying with him, so he…wasn’t alone. I had to call the motel and wake them up. She’ll be okay in a while, but this makes everything different…hard for her.”

  The thick sound of his voice, the pauses in what he was saying, told her more than his words.

  “And you?”

  Focused on the voice in her ear, she tried to ignore Tank’s small double as he dauntlessly followed her across the room to attack the tempting dangle of her boot laces.

  Jeep. I think I’ll call him Jeep, Jessie thought. That works.

  “I’m…okay for now. You know. There’s a lot to do. We’ll take him home…to Salmon…tomorrow.

  MURDER ON THE YUKON QUEST / 17

  Back on the ranch it’ll be better, I think…for m
om…for all of us. The funeral’s Tuesday.”

  “Alex…I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  The race? A year of planning? Were they really so important?

  She knew they shouldn’t be, but…Was she actually holding her breath?

  “Ah…Jess. You’re good to offer, but no…I don’t think so.

  There’s all the…arrangements…Mom…Ned. The whole community in Salmon to…I just can’t divide myself right now…”

  Divide himself? What the hell did that mean? How—and when—had she become a division to him?

  Disconcerted, she moved her foot abruptly and the pup scampered back to his mother, where he flopped down with his littermates.

  “…If you’d ever been here—knew people…ah…” He sputtered into an embarrassed pause. “I’m sorry, Jessie. I didn’t mean that the way it came out. Can you understand? You know that feeling of going home that makes everything else seem unreal…?”

  Unreal?

  For a moment she hesitated, awash in and trying to rid herself of a combination of exasperation and guilty relief—a small silence to which he immediately applied his own interpretation.

  “Oh, shit…Jess. I’ve said it all wrong. It’s just that—”

  She interrupted, speaking too fast, heard the tense falseness in her voice, and couldn’t explain guilt born of feeling hurt and…guilty.

  “It’s all right, Alex. I understand. You’ve got a lot to take care of now. You should do what is best for yourself…and your…family. It’s okay.”

  There was an awkward, uncomfortable stillness filled with misplaced feelings of fault and contrition on both sides.

  “I think maybe we—at least I—should go back and start over,”

  Alex said, finally.

  18 / Sue Henry

  “No, really. You don’t need this kind of hassle at the moment.

  Believe me when I tell you that it is okay—it’ll be fine. I understand and you’re right. We’ll talk about it later…or not.”

  Grateful that her voice sounded somewhat close to normal, sincere and sympathetic, she heard him sigh.

  “Thanks, Jess. I miss you.”