Deadfall Read online

  “Makes sense. Could Nicky have dug it up from some old trap line, maybe?”

  “Was there any sign of digging?”

  He had to admit there wasn’t. And he had gone over all the nearby ground he could examine with a flashlight in the dark.

  Now, looking at the bloody trap in the light, he saw something he had not noticed before. A cardboard tag hung from one hinge of it on a short piece of string. He pulled it toward him to examine what appeared to be words written in block letters beneath a smear of blood. Aside from the reddish brown smear, the tag appeared to be new and deliberately attached, as if the trap had been labeled. The letters had been written in pencil. Bending closer, he was able to make it out: “Happy Birthday Jessie.”

  “What is it?” Jessie asked.

  “Something’s written on this tag,” he told her, and hesitated, knowing it would disturb her. “I think someone put this trap out there on purpose, Jess.”

  She came swiftly back to the table, horrified.

  “Why would anyone set a trap that near a dog? Knowing what it would do—what it could mean? I hate them—always have. Nasty, evil things. Besides, no animal a trapper might want would come anywhere near a kennel.”

  Alex frowned, looking across the table with concern.

  “It’s not the trap that’s evil, Jess,” he told her. “Distasteful, maybe. But it’s whoever set the thing that deserves the accusation of evil. The trap is just a horror doing what it’s made to do.”

  She stopped to stare at him, dumfounded, eyes widening with appalled comprehension.

  “You really think someone did this intentionally?”

  He showed her what was written on the tag, closely watching her reaction.

  Her body went completely rigid. “What does it mean? Why would someone do such a thing?” she asked, still struggling with the idea.

  He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know, Jess. These things have to be set with a purpose. Yeah—this thing was deliberately brought into your lot and set there. Whoever left it knew exactly what it would do, the mutilation it would cause, and wanted you to know it had been done intentionally—with malice.”

  Jessie started to shake her head, but hesitated as she thought it through.

  “But who?” she breathed. “Why?”

  Her face was pale and her hand trembled enough to slosh tea as she picked up the mug. She clutched the mug close between both hands, elbows supported on the table, and brought it to her mouth.

  “No idea,” Alex replied. “I looked and didn’t find anything. But in the morning I’m going out again, when I have lots of light, and I’ll do another thorough search for signs of anyone coming into the back of the lot.”

  The edge of the cup rattled slightly against her teeth as she stared at him. Slowly, with great care, she lowered it to the table and spoke through stiff lips. Though barely a whisper, her questions sounded loud in the quiet room.

  “It’s not over, is it? You think whoever did this will come back, don’t you?”

  3

  Effective as an alarm clock, the telephone woke them later that morning. Thinking it might be the veterinarian, Jessie was quick to answer it, but again found no one to answer her yawning “Hello.” Once more, she heard only the same short burst of complicated sound as the caller hung up.

  “Another wrong number,” she informed Alex with irritation, and headed for the shower.

  Though it made her shudder to think about the events of the night before, Jessie insisted on accompanying Alex when he went back out to the dog lot after breakfast to make a more thorough search for clues. As they walked again between the dog boxes, she noticed that the temperature, as Alex had predicted, had fallen below freezing during the night and a thin layer of ice covered the surface of each dog’s water pan. Nicky’s blood had also frozen on the ground and straw in and around her overturned box, retaining more bright red color than it would have if it had dried in warmer weather.

  In spite of the fact that Jessie was no stranger to cuts and injuries to her dogs, as well as herself, in the running and training of a dog team—the sport of sled dog racing was well-known for its hazards and accidents—this had been no misadventure. The wounding of Nicky had been accomplished with purpose and malicious intent that was aimed at Jessie as well. She stood looking down at the carnage on the ground for a long minute before swallowing some of the anger she felt rising again in her throat and chest, and turning to help Alex carefully go over the area foot by foot.

  “Watch where you step,” he cautioned. “I don’t want to screw up prints or marks—if there are any—or confuse them with ours, though we already contaminated the scene last night.”

  Half an hour later, when they had found not a print or sign of any intruder to the yard—nothing to follow—Jessie swore under her breath.

  “Hey,” Alex told her. “Don’t let it get to you. I didn’t really expect to find anything. It would be unusual if anyone clever enough to leave that trap would be dumb enough to give us anything to identify them. Pulling this kind of a stunt wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. Someone put a considerable amount of thought into it ahead of time.”

  “I guess,” Jessie admitted, still frowning. “I just hoped…The bastard. Wish I had a trap of my own to spring on his paw…let him see what it feels like.”

  As they headed back to the cabin, he put an arm around her.

  “It isn’t necessarily a he,” he reminded her. “Most women are strong enough to set that kind of trap.”

  She nodded and grimaced.

  “I just can’t get hold of the idea that someone could dislike me that much. What could I have possibly done to anyone to make them feel like that? It’s horrible.”

  “Careful, Jess,” he cautioned, halting in the middle of the dog lot to turn her toward him, hands on her upper arms. “Don’t assume things we don’t know yet. You are not responsible for this. So don’t start thinking that way.”

  They looked at each other for a silent space, before she agreed.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Some nut, maybe.”

  “Maybe. We’ll do what we can to find out.”

  Climbing the front steps of the cabin, he gave her shoulders a squeeze, glancing at the diamond studs still in her ears.

  “Hey…anyway. Happy birthday. It’s not all bad.”

  “Thanks,” she smiled—the first he had seen since the night before.

  “I’ve got to make a quick run into the Palmer office this morning. You want to come along?”

  “No, think I’ll stay here—get that mess taken care of. But let’s get some breakfast first.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  A phone call to the vet assured Jessie that Nicky was resting and doing well, her leg still attached to her body.

  “It looks pretty good,” the vet told her. “Wasn’t quite as bad as I thought. Took almost two hours, but I got most of the damage repaired. She’s going to be a bit lame, but she won’t lose it unless some infection sets in. She’ll need to stay here a few days till I’m sure.”

  Jessie agreed, relieved, and spent the next hour cleaning the dog lot, especially the area around Nicky’s box. In the field beyond it, she built a small fire in a barrel and burned the blood-soaked straw. Several other dogs had straw that needed changing, so she dragged it out of their boxes and carried it to the fire. There was a rake in the shed near the cabin, but she knelt and used her hands to collect the straw. There were only a few boxes she wanted to clean, after all.

  Three spaces from Nicky’s box, she waffled, undecided on replacing the straw belonging to Darryl, a playful three-year-old she had included in her last Iditarod team. He and another male in the box next to him had come from the same litter and had been named for the brothers on Newhart: “My brother, Darryl, and my other brother, Darryl.” Now they were simply Darryl One and Darryl Two, and had matured from their clownish behavior as puppies into solid dependable team members—two of her best—who also had sired good pups
with sweet temperaments. This year she intended to train them together to run last in a team, closest to her racing sled. They were so much alike they seemed almost telepathic at times and would make a good pair of wheel dogs.

  As Jessie assessed the straw in Darryl Two’s box, wondering if it could be left for another week or so, she bent to greet the two with pats and affectionate rubbing of ears and backs.

  “Good boys. What good dogs you are. Shall I give you new beds, or have you got the stuff arranged just the way you want it?”

  They crowded closer, pleased with the attention, returning her caresses with much wagging of tails. Darryl Two lifted his muzzle to give her a sloppy lick on the nose.

  “Hey, give me a break. I already washed my face once this morning.”

  Deciding to replace the straw, since she already had the fire going, Jessie stood up, wiped dog kisses off her nose onto a jacket sleeve, and moved to Darryl Two’s box, where she pulled out the straw and walked across to toss it on the fire. On her knees in the door, she was reaching to pull straw from Darryl One’s box when some instinct stopped her. For a second or two she froze, scarcely breathing, then cautiously drew back her hands, releasing the straw as she did so, and sat back on her heels. There had been a glint of metal from somewhere deep within the box.

  Darryl One took her stillness as an invitation for more petting and bumped against her, pushing his nose against her wrist. She thrust him back with a sweep of her arm.

  “No, Darryl. Back. Sit.”

  Both well-trained dogs obediently sat and waited, blinking in confusion at the oddly harsh tone of her voice. This was not enough for Jessie, however, who, feeling sick and incredulous, rose and unfastened them from their tethers. Gripping their collars tightly, she moved them to two empty boxes several yards away from their own.

  She made a quick trip across the lot to collect the rake from the shed, then dropped back to her knees in front of the box and began to remove the straw with it, delicately, a layer at a time, taking care to avoid the metal she had glimpsed in the back—knowing already what she would find. As the space inside was emptied, the shape of the thing she dreaded became clear: another trap—this one’s jaws still yawning wide and threatening. Her arms suddenly weakened, her hand trembled, and the rake inadvertently dipped into the circle of the gaping trap. With a sharp crack, it all but leaped from its resting place and clamped tightly to the tines of the tool, almost jerking it from her hands.

  From a slightly fuzzy-headed, floaty feeling, Jessie knew she was hyperventilating. She forced herself to stop, and consciously brought her breathing under control. The knees of her jeans were wet and cold from contact with the icy dampness of the ground on which she knelt, staring horrified at the wicked thing in the box. She looked down and realized she was chafing her hands together, massaging them against each other protectively. She held them still and scrutinized them in minute, critical detail, as if they belonged to someone else. There was not a scratch—not a mark—nothing to show that only a fraction of an inch closer and this trap could have closed on her hand the way the other had crushed Nicky’s leg the night before. Twice she curled her fingers into tense claws, then relaxed and straightened them, before she stood up, walked into the autumn dryness of the field behind the dog lot, and threw up her breakfast into the weeds.

  When Alex parked his truck in front of the cabin an hour later, he was perplexed and troubled to see every dog box overturned and the straw they had contained scattered around the bases of them, as if a cyclone had hit the yard while he was away. Jessie was nowhere to be seen, though her truck stood where it had when he’d left.

  Grabbing the mail he had retrieved from the large box at the outer end of the long driveway—a package and several envelopes—he climbed hurriedly from his pickup and up the steps to the cabin.

  “Jess? Jessie? Where are you?”

  At the door he reached for the knob to twist it open as usual. Solidly locked, it refused him. Frustrated and concerned, he pounded on it with his fist.

  “Jessie! Are you in there? Open the door. It’s me.”

  The deadbolt was turned and the door opened to reveal a white-faced Jessie, her eyes wide and anxious, a few bits of straw in her tangled hair, a knitted afghan around her shoulders. Tank stood silently alert beside her, as if he were on guard.

  “What’s wrong? What’s been going on?”

  Jessie turned and walked back across the room to the sofa—where she had evidently been sitting—pulled her stockinged feet up under her, and curled up against a pile of pillows, wrapping the afghan tight around herself and staring up at him.

  Something was terribly wrong. This was not the confident, self-sufficient woman he was used to.

  “There was another one,” she said through stiff lips. She gestured toward the dog lot, most of which was visible through the large window in the northwest corner of the room. It was obvious that she had been keeping a close watch over her dogs from this seat on the sofa. Jensen’s shotgun leaned against the arm of the sofa, within easy reach, barrels pointed toward the ceiling.

  “Another trap, you mean?”

  She nodded.

  “Where?”

  He dropped the mail on the opposite end of the sofa and sat next to her, intently awaiting an answer.

  “In Darryl One’s box—clear at the back, still covered with straw, and…”

  She stopped, clenched her hands into fists in the fabric, swallowed hard, then gagged. In a swift movement, she stood up, the afghan sliding off her shoulders, half ran across the room and into the small bath beyond the bedroom. He could hear the sounds of her retching from where he sat, but did not follow, knowing from experience that Jessie had no patience for anyone foolishly inclined to assist her in being sick.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, pale and shaken, Alex had the kettle on to boil for tea, and a box of saltines lay on the sofa next to the afghan he had retrieved from the floor.

  “Thanks,” she told him, once more cocooning herself.

  In a few minutes he handed her a mug of steaming herbal tea.

  “Hey, it’s cold in here. I’ll put some wood in the stove.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t notice.”

  As soon as the fire had begun to spit and crackle, he sat down with his own mug and watched Jessie nibble crackers.

  “Okay,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”

  He could see the muscles work in her cheeks and neck as she clenched her teeth, and heard the deep breath she took before she spoke.

  “It was in the back of Darryl One’s box. I had a fire in the barrel to burn Nicky’s straw and was reaching in to change Darryl’s when I saw something…part of it…I think. Anyway, I stopped and took my hands out.” She swallowed again and put her fingers to her lips. “I almost touched it, Alex. Another inch or two and it would have closed on my hand. But something made me pull back and take another look.”

  “And it was still set?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why Darryl One didn’t spring it. Most of the dogs slept in their boxes last night, from the look of it. Maybe he didn’t like the smell of it and stayed outside.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “In the shed, with the other one…on the rake. I dropped the rake and sprang it.”

  “You didn’t touch it?”

  “No…and I made sure there weren’t any more.”

  “I noticed.” He grinned, trying to lessen her clear distress, and glanced toward the window, where the chaotic appearance of the lot could be seen. “You clearly left no box unturned.”

  “Well…I was a little desperate, and in a hurry. Then I came in here. I keep throwing up…thinking about it. You know how I feel about hands.”

  Early in their relationship she had explained her phobia about injuries to hands. “I don’t know where it came from, but all my life I haven’t been able to stand the thought of losing fingers or a hand. I’d rather lose a leg. That doesn’t give me the bejeebers.”

 
He knew it was true and that, though she tried to fight it, seldom let it show, she absolutely couldn’t help it. She was a strong person, not easily frightened or intimidated: She stoically watched all the scary parts of the few horror videos they sometimes rented without nightmares or anything more than a surprised flinch—even, at times, got a kick out of snuggling next to him pantomiming apprehension. When he had smashed a couple of fingers in combat with the hood of his truck, she had applied first aid with no more reaction than a stiff upper lip, asking only that he not tell her the details of how it happened. But she hid her eyes when it came to sword slashes that severed hands on film, grew tense and refused to listen if conversations turned to tales of shop accidents or those involving sharp implements. “Please! I don’t want to hear it.” They had left a movie theater in the middle of The Piano— Jessie, caught completely off guard at the critical mutilation scene, in tears, apologizing all the way home. It shamed and upset her even more that she could not control her reaction.

  “So it was meant for Darryl One?”

  “Evidently. And Alex…it had another tag tied onto it—with another ‘Happy Birthday Jessie.’”

  “None of this makes sense, dammit. Oh, Jess, I’m so sorry you had to find this one the way you did—not to mention having to check out the rest of the kennel, feeling the way you do. It was shortsighted of me not to consider that there could be more in the boxes. I assumed they would have been set outside. Nicky’s was probably set inside, too. Maybe she dragged it out trying to get away, then went back in, where, ironically, she felt safest.”

  Jessie sat up straighter, as her focus shifted to the problem of her dogs.

  “I agree. It makes sense that whoever set them wouldn’t want them seen before they did their dirty work.”

  “Well, we know now that there aren’t anymore in the boxes.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin and aimed a significant look toward the dog lot.

  She smiled a little.

  “Yeah. I admit I went through it like Sherman through Georgia. I was scared to death another of the mutts would spring one of the things before I could find it. I’ll have to clean up the mess or my guys won’t have anyplace to sleep tonight.”