Murder on the Iditarod Trail Read online

  Heading back toward the cabin, Jensen passed a sled and team camped around a small fire. On the sled sat the woman who had spoken to Turner. She was straightening out a tangled mass of harness that was spread over her knees. Alex nodded to her, then paused as she spoke.

  “Bill okay?”

  Her voice, low-pitched and resonant, caught his attention. Her face was tanned from sunshine and wind. She looked fit, attractive, and concerned.

  “Seems to be, considering,” he said

  “Let me know when you’re through, will you? I don’t like him sitting there alone. We’ll make sure he gets some support until they fly him out.”

  “Sure,” Jensen promised. “Get some food down him too, if you can. Bet he hasn’t eaten much.”

  Preoccupied with the thermos, he went on up the hill. Not, until reaching the cabin did he realize he had neglected to ask her name.

  Jessie Arnold watched him disappear into the cabin. He seemed to her more like a race official or reporter than a trooper. Even under his heavy winter clothing, she could tell he was well built and strong. He reminded her of a Viking, especially with the mustache.

  For two years, since she bought land near Knik and, with the help of a few friends, built a sturdy two-room cabin, she had lived alone, four miles from her nearest neighbor. She liked it that way. The healthy noise of her kennel bothered no one, and training the dogs kept her so busy she seldom felt a lack of human companionship. She didn’t spend much time in town, preferring her own small log cabin and the company of her forty-three dogs.

  Once in a long while, an evening would come along when restlessness infected her, and she would drop into the small local tavern for a beer or two and an hour of conversation or a game of pool. Since it was a place mushers frequented, she felt comfortable. Usually this happened in midwinter, when the daylight lasted less than six hours and she grew tired of driving her teams in the dark. It was nice to be answered in words instead of barks or whines.

  The man she watched walk away was interesting, but she shrugged her shoulders and turned back to the snarled harness. Right now she didn’t have time to find out.

  Back in the cabin, Alex was just sitting down with Turner when the ham radio in the corner crackled to life. The operator, a girl with an Iditarod identification button on one of her red suspenders, stretched the headphones over her braids to answer the call. Something in the straightening of her shoulders caught his attention before she swung around to call to him across the room. “I think you better take this,” she said, her eyes wide. “There’s been another accident. In Happy Valley.”

  4

  Date: Monday, March 4

  Race Day: Three

  Place: Between Finger Lake and Rainy Pass checkpoints (thirty miles)

  Weather: Increasingly cloudy, light to no wind, snow predicted

  Temperature: High 5°F, low –4°F

  Time: Midmorning

  Anchorage, where the Iditarod race begins each year, stands at sea level, facing west over Cook Inlet. In the first two hundred miles to Finger Lake, the trail gains only a thousand feet in elevation. In the succeeding thirty miles, the track rises to thirty­four hundred feet at Rainy Pass, the highest point on the trip to Nome.

  Gently undulating flats turn into rolling hills and, finally, become an awesome, majestic sweep of mountains overwhelming in their enormous silence. It is almost unimaginable that a route could be found through them in the warmest months of the northern year, let alone in winter. That the Iditarod is able to thread its way through Rainy Pass is due to the coordinated effort of a virtual army of volunteers. The only other possible route bears the name Hell’s Gate and is used only when ice makes the canyons of Rainy impossible to cross.

  Trailbreakers on snow machines, or “iron dogs,” wrestle their way through ahead of the sled-dog racers, carving out the suggestion of a track, which may remain only a few hours before it is obliterated by new snow or blown away by the shrill winds that haunt the heights. At times the trail must be broken more than once to allow the front-runners to pass through. But the race committee has no obligation to maintain the trail-breaking effort, making the trip through the mountains a far greater test of endurance for those mushers following even a day or two behind the leaders.

  The snow machine drivers, dressed in layers of outerwear to repel the worst the Arctic can deliver, may cover the full thousand miles without a good night’s sleep and with few hot meals. A bed becomes something they dreamed of once; a hot shower, only a memory. They develop shoulders the envy of linebackers. But when they try to explain the pale, empty nights on the ice of Norton Sound, or the northern lights so bright they reflect off the snow in the Farewell Burn, wistful looks come over their wind- and sunburned faces and they drift into silence or stammering attempts at description. Many come back year after year, addicted to the trail.

  Leaving Finger Lake, heading into the mountain pass, Virginia Kline drove the winding, tree-lined trail that rose gently until it broke out into the clearing on the cliffs above the ill-named Happy River Valley. Hundreds of feet below she caught glimpses of the curving pattern of its small river, a white, snow-covered ribbon winding through the brush that lined its banks.

  In the summer, river water roiled through the twisting valley, fed by the glaciers of some of the highest mountains in North America. In winter it froze slowly, treacherous with overflow, creating deep crust-covered holes and unstable ice bridges that might collapse under a single dog or bear the weight of a two-hundred-pound sled, remaining deceptively solid for the next musher in line. The abrupt and unexpected collapse of such a bridge could dump a whole team into the icy water, drenching musher and gear, sometimes drowning or strangling dogs tangled in their harness.

  Happy Valley was not the favorite ground of veteran mushers, and it was the terror of those on their first trip over the Iditarod Trail.

  Although she had driven this trail twice before, it was heart-stopping for Ginny to look down, knowing that in a few short minutes she would have to take sled and team not only down into it, but up the other side, to reach the next checkpoint.

  Everything was deeply covered with snow carried in by Saturday’s storm. The trail had been packed by those traveling ahead of her, but off to the side it was chest-deep. The day was overcast, but it wasn’t snowing, though the weather forecast predicted snow before nightfall. Flat light made irregularities in the trail difficult to make out. The few trees she passed cast no shadows, and the ruts left by sled runners frequently threw her off balance.

  As the sled gradually followed the hillside it began to sideslip, requiring Kline to lean heavily uphill to keep it on the trail. Earlier in the day she had fallen while carrying a bucket of water to the dogs and had pulled a muscle in her right shoulder. With every jolt of the heavy sled she was reminded of the accident by twinges of pain.

  The trail continued on along the cliff for approximately a quarter of a mile, then swung far enough away to alleviate some of her tension. The dogs were running well, though a little faster than she might have liked.

  Relaxing a bit, she thought again of Bill Turner as she had seen him come into the Finger Lake cabin last night, sick and shaken. Seeing him so devastated and hearing his story had frightened her enough to make her consider scratching from the race. She had leaned against the wall near the stove and watched the other mushers as they discussed the accident, shadows of tension in their faces. That all the experienced mushers intended to continue encouraged her to go on to Rainy Pass as well. Then, after an overnight rest, if she could make it down the Dalzell Gorge and into Rohn, she thought she could probably finish. One checkpoint at a time; for now, just to make it through Happy Valley would make her day.

  With no more than the flutter of pink survey tape as a warning, the trail made a sudden left turn and they were headed down. Kline stood hard on the brake, hoping it would hold, and shouted at her do
gs. “Whoa! Whoa! Sally, Bones! Stop, you mutts.” The team reacted to her voice, but the snowbank on her right was a blur. Two trees came up fast on the downhill side of the trail. They flashed by as she struggled to keep the sled upright.

  Savagely she jammed in the brake and dragged her left foot, trying to slow the sled. There was no time for fright, only for strength and control. Her shoulder ached with the strain of supporting the sled. Rambo, the left wheel dog, tucked his tail between his legs and leaped forward as the brush bow grazed his flank.

  Just as she began to feel more solid on the runners, she was astonished to see dogs coming back at her on an oblique angle from the right. After an incredulous moment, she realized they were her own. She passed them and the trail began a steep swing uphill to the right. The trailbreakers, having no room for a regular switchback, had looped the trail around a couple of trees and back over itself to make a turn. Frantically, she worked to ride it through, feeling the centrifugal force pulling her and the sled like a carnival ride. The sled straightened out to another traverse as steep as the first. She had no breath to shout at the dogs; she could only wrestle the sled and hang on.

  Some mushers, she knew, turned their dogs loose and rode the sled down without them. It was tempting but technically illegal. Others dragged chains and weights to slow the sled.

  A quarter of a mile later, she was ready for a second loop turn. Alert this time, she saw the lead dogs disappear to the left and rode the brake into the tight curve.

  Between the dog and the heavy sled, the gang line, holding the team to the load, suddenly snapped with a report that rang in the air like a shot, sending vibrations back through the sled to the handlebars. The dogs, abruptly relieved of weight, ran faster down the steep slope. The sled was flung out and over the edge of the cliff by the violence of the parting. Kline had only a breath to realize she was airborne as the sled left the trail and fell, tumbling down the side of the hill, toward the icy river six hundred feet below.

  The deep new snow made an unstable covering for the steep grade and concealed the huge outcroppings of rock that formed the shoulders of the canyon. Over and over rolled the musher, still accompanied by two hundred pounds of sled and gear. She made no sound as she fell, the breath beaten from her lungs as the sled crushed her against the rocks. A thin tree broke off as the sled careered into it. The frozen trunk swept around to catch Kline hard under the chin. When the sled crashed into the last rock at the base of the cliff, she was under it. There was only a dull thump as both rebounded into the deep snow.

  The sound barely caught the attention of another racer, who was working hard to keep his team from sliding into a series of holes in the river ice. He looked up in time to see the sled disappear below the surface of the snow and to watch in disbelief as a small avalanche filled in the depression.

  Two other mushers, pausing to rest and melt snow to water their dogs, caught Ginny’s sledless team as it ran through the lower part of the canyon.

  5

  Date: Monday, March 4

  Race Day: Three

  Place: Between Finger Lake and Rainy Pass checkpoints (thirty miles)

  Weather: Overcast, light to no wind, snow predicted

  Temperature: High 5°F, low –4°F

  Time: Midafternoon

  The whine and growl of snow-machine engines rose and fell over the uneven features of the trail between Finger Lake and the Happy Valley gorge. Though the sun had broken through briefly before noon, clouds now covered it, erasing trail-­defining shadows.

  Sergeant Jensen drove fast but cautiously as he followed Tom Farnell, making time toward the new accident site. He was glad to have a guide, for half his concentration was focused on the unlikely odds of two fatalities within less than a day in a race that had had none in the almost twenty years of its existence.

  Between crackling bursts of static, the excited ham operator in Rainy Pass had been able to tell him little except that there had been a second death. Virginia Kline had fallen with her sled from a switchback about halfway down. She had hit the rocks, rebounded into deep snow, and now lay partially buried under the sled and a small avalanche. A musher had reached her and uncovered enough snow to ascertain her death, then had gone back to the trail for help. A second racer had carried the news to the Rainy Pass Lodge.

  Before leaving Finger Lake, Jensen had sent Becker back along the trail to inspect the site of the Koptak death and had radioed for the helicopter to return from Anchorage. With a storm due to blow in from the coast in the late afternoon, he knew they must recover the body and sled as quickly as possible, before wind and weather conspired to cover it. He glanced uneasily at the sky and almost ran into Farnell’s snow machine as it slowed ahead of him.

  “The trail goes down here,” Tom shouted back over the sound of his engine. “Keep close and take it easy. It’s a devil of a pitch.”

  Slowly he advanced, then suddenly he disappeared from view. Creeping up, Alex found an abrupt plunge as the trail went over the edge. With a rush of adrenaline he saw the gorge yawn open below him. The heavy machine slid forward against all the braking power at his disposal. Ahead he glimpsed Farnell wrestling his way around a curve, one booted foot braced against a tree on the downhill side.

  They fought their way down the trail, negotiating a couple of looping turns. Then the marks of the sled runners they followed veered off to the outer edge and stopped where air began. At this point Jensen paused for a moment, but he couldn’t leave the heavy machine without it leaving him. He could see nothing that might have caused the musher to lose contact with the trail. Down the slope the snow showed deep marks of disturbance, and a small tree had been broken off. The snow-covered rocks and shrubbery made it impossible to see the bottom of the gorge, but Jensen swallowed hard at the thought of leaving the trail to crash down what he estimated to be over five hundred feet of slope. He allowed the snow machine to continue its gravity-encouraged trip down the trail.

  He found Farnell waiting at the foot of the steep switchbacks and stopped beside him to take a few deep breaths of relief.

  “You take a look at the marks on that second turn?” Farnell questioned. “Damn. What the hell do you think happened?”

  “Don’t know,” Jensen answered. “It doesn’t look like she even slowed down. Let’s take a look at her rig. It can’t be far now.”

  They continued along the track, Farnell again in the lead. The small frozen river twisted and roped its way in the narrow channel. They drove over and around holes and open spaces of water and overflow until a musher in a blue parka and snow pack boots rose from beside a small fire to flag them down.

  “Hey” he called. “You the trooper?”

  Jensen pulled off to the side and walked to the fire. “That’s right. Sergeant Alex Jensen. You the guy who saw her fall?”

  “Bomber Cranshaw, McGrath.” The musher was a couple of inches under six feet tall and compactly built. From under a beaver hat, his hair stuck out in spikes over his eyes, and his full brown beard and mustache were rimmed with ice. He nodded and gnawed on his lower lip, then began his account of the accident in a loud, booming voice.

  “Hell, I didn’t see all of it. She didn’t scream, just fell. I heard a crash and looked up as the sled bounced off that hump of rock.” He pointed out the location about fifty feet up the side of the cliff. Alex could see where the snow had been removed, creating a long depression. “She fell the rest of the way, and there was a sort of thump when she hit with the sled on top of her. You can see where the snow came off to bury it. I tied my dogs off, dug out the snowshoes, and hopped on over there to see if I could help.

  “There wasn’t much to dig out. I did it with my hands, but she was dead when I got down to her. Her head’s turned funny. I figured she broke her neck when she hit the rock, or the sled did it landing on her. She wasn’t breathing, and I knew I couldn’t do much. She’s pretty broke up. That’s
a damn lot of weight to be under. You see anything when you came down?”

  Jensen silently assessed the man before him. The musher seemed to have had time to stop reacting and start thinking. His brows were drawn together in a frown, and he gestured widely as he spoke. Bomber was perhaps in his midthirties and, from the look of his sled and gear, not a newcomer to sled-dog racing. Patches from past Iditarod races were stitched to his parka. His memory was keen and his information seemed to be given freely, but there was a watchfulness about him.

  “Who went up to tell them at Rainy?” Farnell asked.

  “Susan Pilch came through just as I got back to the gang here,” he said, waving at his dogs. “Since I was already stopped and they were having a rest, I figured I might as well feed ’em and wait. She went on up to let ’em know.”

  “You cut yourself a pretty big chunk of time, waiting.”

  “Well, some things are more important, although I’d probably get an argument on that from some. I’ll make it up somewhere. These guys are the best I’ve had in years.” He thumbed toward his resting dogs. “It’s still early.”

  “I appreciate your staying,” Alex told him. Then he turned to Farnell. “Let’s go take a look. The chopper should be along any time now, and I’d like to have this wrapped up. We’re going to catch snow before dark; we’d better get her out of here while we can.”

  He and Farnell put on the snowshoes they had carried. The other equipment and supplies would be on the helicopter with Becker.

  Bomber led the way toward the cliff. His dogs were curled into tight balls in the snow, snoozing, but several raised their heads as he left. He had broken a rough trail on his first trip to the site, but they still found it heavy going.

  Ginny Kline lay where Bomber had indicated, partially buried in snow beneath the heavy sled, her neck broken. Her head, one arm, and the upper part of her chest were all they could reach until they moved her rig. In the deep snow it took all three of them working together.