Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (8 page)

“Got a suspect?”

“Hah. You got your nose in the air like a wolf picking up the scent of a cariboo. I hear you left the force. Want to talk about it?”

Bart always did have a way of getting right to the heart of things. Hunter had frequently had the impression that Bart saw, or sensed, things that normal people had no access to. Did he really possess some spiritual or psychic connection? Hunter couldn’t explain it, but sometimes he almost felt that Bart disappeared from his body. He’d be standing in front of you with his eyes wide open, but he would be gone. It would only last seconds – maybe half a minute – at a time, and when he came back, he would often seem to have received a new insight into their investigation. Where did that come from? Hunter didn’t know, and he found it a little spooky.

Hunter inhaled and held it, then let his breath out slowly. If it were anyone else, he probably wouldn’t talk about it, but he almost got the sense that Bart knew anyway. “You heard about Ken?”

Bart nodded, his face solemn. “Not your fault,” he said.

Hunter just stared. He had never told anyone. He barely acknowledged it to himself. After his wife asked for a divorce, Hunter lost his patience with Ken, with Ken’s drinking, with Ken’s depression. Hunter was preoccupied with his own problems and stopped commiserating with his best friend. Soon after, Ken had killed himself. Officially, it had been labelled an accidental death, but Hunter had been haunted by guilt ever since. How did Bart know?

“I mean it. Ken chose his path. You were not meant to stop him from following it to the end.”

Hunter looked into Bart’s eyes. “How do you do that?” he asked, then shook his head. He didn’t really want to know. “Back to your murder. Any suspects?”

“Everyone’s a suspect, remember? We do have two persons of interest. The bartender there – the place was called ‘Lost Mine’; no ‘The’, which leads me to believe the reference was to virginity and not a gold claim – said there were a couple of guys he’d never seen before in the club earlier that evening. He didn’t know who they were, but seemed to be someone from Colin’s past. He said Colin wasn’t exactly happy to see them.”

“Colin been around long?”

“Showed up in town about ten years ago with enough money to buy the club. Except for the fact that he made his living off of liquor and naked girls, he seemed to be a nice enough guy. He married a local girl and they had two young boys. She was pretty much a basket case when I told her.”

Hunter could picture it. He’d had to do enough next-of-kin notifications himself, and it was always the worst part of the job. It reminded him that it wasn’t his job to hunt down killers any more. “I have faith in you, chief. I have no doubt you’ll find the killer.”

“Even without your help?”

“Even without my help.”

“Maybe.” Bart smiled one of his spooky smiles. “Or maybe not. So tell me, what are you doing now?”

Hunter almost laughed. So the shaman’s son didn’t know everything about him after all. “I’m a long haul trucker,” he said. “I drive an eighteen-wheeler – up and down the west coast, mostly. BC to California and back, but sometimes across Canada and elsewhere in the States.”

“Good on you, man. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do myself. Did you drive up here? Where’s your truck?”

They spent another ten minutes catching up, with lots more yet to say. Bart’s phone buzzed, and he told the caller he’d get back to them in a few minutes, so Hunter took that as his cue to ask if Bart knew anyone with a spare vehicle he could borrow for a couple of days.

Bart leaned back and tapped his lips with a forefinger. “Not mine, but my wife’s brother took his new girlfriend to Las Vegas for a week. I’ll see if I can reach him and get back to you.”

Hunter met up with Sorry back at the Tim Horton’s at noon.

“Where’d you go?” he asked the biker.

“I did some exploring. Somebody sent me to Miles Canyon, another guy said I should maybe go see Takhini Hot Springs. I didn’t want to leave my bike and gear where I couldn’t keep an eye on it so it was mostly just a fuckin’ road tour. I saw some guys on bikes stopped at a gas station further up the highway there, so pulled in to shoot the shit and ask about where’s good to ride. They said there’s so fuckin’ much road construction, and unless you stay on the main drag, most of the roads are dirt or gravel. The dirt roads are a real bitch if it rains. One of the guys blew a tire, another one trashed his rear sprocket and had to have his bike loaded on a flatbed to get it back to Whitehorse.”

“You still want to ride to Dawson?”

“You comin’?”

“Not on your bike, I’m not. I think I’ve found a car, though.”

Sorry sighed; his mouth worked beneath his blond moustache. “I really want to ride.”

Hunter shrugged. “No guarantee we can find – or afford – a hotel room wherever we go. At least with a car, we’ve got somewhere to sleep.” He saw Sorry’s eyes widen and knew that was something he hadn’t considered. “I don’t know about you, but I’m too old to sleep under the stars without even a ground sheet or a sleeping bag.”

“Right,” said Sorry. “So when do you get this car?”

Late that afternoon, they parked the Harley in Bart’s garage and he handed over the keys to his brother-in-law’s 1978 Chevy Blazer. The aging SUV was a dark brown or red with one grey front fender on the passenger side and a badly dented rear bumper. “You can see why he was willing to lend his car to a complete stranger. He’s hoping you total it so he can make you buy him a new one,” said Bart. “Where do you plan on going?”

“Dawson City,” said Hunter, opening the hatch above the tailgate to throw in their gear. The space behind the back seat was strewn with belongings, including unidentifiable articles of clothing, mud-caked boots, a red metal gas can and pair of snow shoes. It smelled of motor oil. He briefly considered asking Bart if they could dump everything from the back of the Blazer in his garage, but decided against it.

“Alaska,” said Sorry.

As usual, Bart seemed to read Hunter’s mind. “Here. Unload all that stuff out of the back. It’ll be okay here in the garage ‘til you get back.”

Sorry pulled everything out of the SUV while Hunter piled it as neatly as possible beside a stack of winter tires.

“If you’re heading for the border,” said Bart, “keep an eye out for those persons of interest I was telling you about. One’s an old guy with a grey beard in an ancient Ford truck.” He smiled as he scratched his belly and Hunter noticed that he’d put on a little weight, like most men Hunter knew who had entered their forties. “The other one’s a younger man, looks like a native, maybe thirty-five or so. He had longish hair, scrawny beard, with grease under his fingernails.”

“Those descriptions apply to five out of every ten men up here,” said Hunter.

“Very funny. Evidently the older man was overheard saying something about heading to Alaska. We’ve asked the Troopers to watch for him as well. The two may or may not be travelling together. The witness said the younger one sounded like a local, but the old guy had some kind of English accent.”

Sorry snorted. “So if we see these guys, then what? My buddy the ex-cop here is supposed to arrest them?” He poked Hunter in the shoulder. “You getting paid for this, Hunter? We’re just being tourists for a couple days, right?”

Hunter shot him a look. “Sure,” he said to Bart. “Got a couple of your business cards handy?”

Sorry shook his head and tossed his gear into the back of the Blazer, then slammed the back shut. “You driving?”

Hunter thought about it. He’d had almost no sleep since Fort Nelson at lunch time the day before. It was about three hundred miles from Whitehorse to Dawson.

“I’m bagged. I’d rather find a place to stay here in Whitehorse for the night and leave for Dawson in the morning. I could show you around town and we could get a good meal before we call it a night.”  He turned to Bart. “Any suggestions on a clean, cheap place to get a room?”

“It’s my wife’s quilting club night,” he said. “How about I join you for dinner instead of eating leftovers out of the fridge, then you can both come back here for the night. There’s a pull-out in the den and a nice big sofa in the living room.”

Hunter looked at Sorry, who shrugged as if to say, “Why not?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Hunter. “I’ll take my friend here to see the S.S. Klondike and tour the town a bit more, then we could meet in the restaurant at the Klondike Inn at, say, seven o’clock?” He had thought about suggesting the restaurant he and Ken used to frequent at the Edgewater, but something stopped him. Just in case. “We can catch up some more,” he added, nodding in Bart’s direction.

He caught Sorry rolling his eyes, and figured listening to two cops catch up wasn’t high on the biker’s list of favorite ways to spend time.

He was still thinking about the Edgewater as they drove away, asking himself ‘just in case’ of what? In case it hurt to remember being there with Ken? In case someone there recognized him and asked about Ken? Buck up, he told himself. You’re a grown man, an ex-police officer, a trucker, for God’s sake. Your friend’s dead but you’re not. Life goes on.

The next morning they were on the road before seven thirty. The sleeping accommodations at Bart’s hadn’t been the best – the pull-out in the den was too hard for Sorry, and the sofa in the living room was too soft for Hunter – but the price was right, the shower was decent, and the morning coffee was fresh, hot and free.

“So what’s the plan, boss?” Sorry had lit up a cigarette and was slouched comfortably in the passenger seat.

Hunter waved the smoke away.

“Wha-a-a-t,” said Sorry. “Dude here’s a smoker. He won’t give a shit. Look at the fuckin’ ashtray.” He’d already rolled down his window, but now positioned his cigarette closer to it.

Hunter rolled his own window down. “The plan was to drive to Dawson, wasn’t it?”

“How far is that?”

“About three hundred and fifty miles, give or take, heading north on the Klondike Highway. Eight hours or so, depending on stops.”

“What stops?”

“There aren’t many, that I know of. Braeburn Lodge for a coffee refill and one of their big cinnamon buns. Carmacks is maybe an hour or so further. There’s a hotel there with a restaurant, if I’m not mistaken. Then not much until we reach Dawson.”

“So we’ll eat before we get out of town, won’t we, Hunter?”

And they did. They were back on the road again after a big breakfast, with a couple of fresh coffees to go. Sorry’s coffee cooled in the cupholder as he nodded off just outside of Whitehorse. Hunter was happy to have some time without the distraction of Sorry’s running commentary on the scenery and other drivers, so he could continue contemplating the case he’d discussed with Bartholomew Sam the night before.

In spite of how tired he’d been, Hunter had lain awake much of the night thinking about the conversation he’d had with Bart over dinner, and having flashbacks to his years in Whitehorse as a young Mountie. He’d asked his old colleague about the case of the blood-smeared trapper’s cabin he’d worked his first year in the RCMP, whether they’d ever found a body, or whether they’d ever concluded there was foul play involved.

“Refresh my memory,” Bart had said.

“A man named Fred Klimmer called it in.” Hunter paused, recalling details he hadn’t thought about for years. “Klimmer was a trapper with a concession close to the missing man’s, roughly north of Johnson’s Crossing on the Teslin River. I didn’t like the man – Klimmer, I mean. What bugged me the most was how he seemed to be lusting after the man’s girlfriend, April. What was the man’s name?” With the objectivity of the elapsed twenty-odd years he suspected that his own feelings for April had fostered that dislike. He looked up at the ceiling, searching his memory. “Blake. Martin Blake. Although his name might as well have been John Doe, as it turned out.”

Bartholomew Sam was leaning back in his chair, his beer almost untouched, his eyes never leaving Hunter’s face. Perhaps in spite of himself, Sorry seemed to be listening with interest. He had ordered a pint of draft beer – averting his eyes from Hunter as he did so – and drank half of it the first time he put the glass to his lips, then pushed it away as if to keep himself from drinking it all at once.

“It was late October or early November. The cabin door was open, snow drifting in. The missing man kept a trap line and had a dog team. The dogs hadn’t been fed for days, so Klimmer brought some fish for them.” Hunter described the blood, damage and scratches that made it clear there had been violence, probably death, possibly the work of a grizzly. “Evidently a young woman from Michigan named April Corbett had been living there with Blake for several months. According to Fred Klimmer, Blake wasn’t such a nice guy and he didn’t know why she stayed with him. There was no sign of either one of them, alive or dead, except the blood.”

“So what was the theory?”

“In spite of the grizzly, there was no way to rule out murder or murder-suicide. We were looking for evidence, either way.”

“Was it a woman’s blood or a man’s or both?” asked Sorry.

“Back in the 70’s, all we had was ABO testing. All the lab could tell us was blood type, which was type A. Given almost half the population was type A and almost half was type B, it wasn’t much help.” Hunter turned to his former colleague. “Ring any bells yet?”