Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (9 page)

“Starting to. It wasn’t a case that I got actively involved in, but I can recall hearing about it. Was there a vehicle belonging to one of them?”

“No vehicle found at the scene, or nearby, which was suspicious in itself. The road to the cabin was almost non-existent, so it’s entirely possible that a vehicle could have been parked off site for the winter, but none was ever reported. A British Columbia driver’s license was found in Blake’s belongings, but it was a fake. Klimmer thought he’d seen Blake driving a Ford truck, but we found no record of any vehicles registered in the name of Martin Blake in British Columbia or the Yukon. April was known to have had a 1964 Volkswagen.” Hunter took a long pull on his beer. “It was white, with flowers painted on it. A hippie car.” He pictured April and her hippie clothing: loose, flowing dresses and tunics, bell-bottom pants, leather sandals, colorful bandanas.

“Maybe Blake drove off in her car?”

“No reported sightings of the Volkswagen since then, as far as I know.”

“No tracks?” Sorry must have been finding the discussion more interesting than he’d expected.

“Fresh snow since it happened. No sign of tracks except for Fred Klimmer’s from his first time on the scene before he called it in.”

“Maybe the woman killed Martin and took off in her own car. Women do kill. It’s been known to happen.”

“You can’t rule that out. We contacted the girl’s family in Michigan – she’d held a job in Whitehorse that summer and had given her employer information on her next of kin – and talked to her father. It wasn’t a notification, since there was no way to really say she was dead. All we had to go on was her picture on the wall and Klimmer’s word for it that she had even been living there – so we just asked if anyone had heard from her. Her father basically told us to take a hike, that she’d been dead to them – his word – since she ran off with a ‘damned hippie’ a few years before. All we could do was request that he contact us if he ever heard from her. Might be worth looking for her again, or checking to see if her family ever did report her missing.”

Bart leaned forward, centered his beer glass on its coaster, his face thoughtful. “Then again,” he said, “at that time of year especially, it could be the grizzly, or grizzlies – could be a mother and yearling cub trying to fatten up before denning – broke into the cabin while they were sleeping and killed them both before they could get to a rifle. Grizzlies drag their kill off and bury them in leaves and dirt.”

Hunter nodded slowly. “Of course, we considered that. We searched the adjacent land, with no success. But if neither one of them left the cabin alive, what happened to April’s car? Or Blake’s truck, if there was one?”

“If there was one,” repeated Bart.

Sorry took a slug of beer, wiped drops off his moustache with the back of his hand. “Maybe the fucker hid the car on her so she couldn’t leave him, if he was the asshole that trapper guy thought he was.”

“Also possible.”

“When was that again?”

“1972. Early November, I think. Around the first snowfall.”

“So we’re talkin’ almost twenty-five years ago. What’re the chances you’d ever solve this now?” When neither Hunter nor Bart answered, Sorry continued. “Would there still be blood for testing? They can test the DNA now, can’t they?”

Hunter shrugged. He thought it unlikely.

“If the girl was living there, wouldn’t there have been clothes and stuff. You know, female stuff left behind?” asked Sorry. “Or ID? A wallet?”

“No ID or wallet. There was some women’s clothing. We assumed it belonged to April, but there was no way to prove it.”

“Was there a rifle left at the scene?” asked Bart.

“Under the bed. Loaded.”

“Just one?”

“Just the one.”

“Loaded for bear?” Sorry laughed at his own suggestion. Hunter half smiled.

Bart didn’t smile at all. “Not like a trapper or hunter to have just one, but always possible. Lends a little weight to the theory that Blake killed the girl, took his other gun – or guns – and went on the run.”

“Plus, if it had been a murder-suicide, the rifle would have been out in the open,” Hunter said.

“Any reason why you’d suspect a murder-suicide?”

Hunter shrugged. “Looking at all the possibilities, the usual suspects.”

“How about the guy who called it in?” asked Sorry.

“If he did it, there was no reason for him to call it in. Killers do that if there’s a reason for suspicion to fall on them, in order to divert suspicion elsewhere. He had no prior record, neither here nor in Manitoba where he was from. Also he had no obvious motive and there’s no way we would ever have connected him to it if he hadn’t called us.”

“Were there any forensic clues?”

“Bears eat everything they can get that time of year,” said Bart. “What they don’t finish, the wolverines will clean up, bones and all. Pretty safe there wouldn’t be much left to autopsy, even if we’d found some remains.” He shrugged. “If Fred Klimmer hadn’t called it in, and the bears hadn’t been there, could be no one would’ve found the bodies for months.”

Hunter had to concede that he was right. Who knows how long it could have been before anyone else had happened by the cabin.

“You said there were dogs. Wouldn’t bears stay away with a bunch of dogs around?” Sorry asked.

“Sled dogs are kept chained up. I’ve known a bear to kill a chained dog and make a meal of it. They can yank them right off their chains and drag them away. Besides, there was no question that a bear had been there. I saw the scene myself, remember?” He paused before musing, “If it had been Fred Klimmer, he might’ve called it in for the sake of the dogs. Funny how some men think nothing of killing a fellow human, but don’t like to see an animal suffer.”

Bart countered with, “If that were the case, he could have just taken the dogs. No one would’ve been the wiser.”

Hunter saw the scene again in his mind: the blood on the bed and the floor, the scratches and destruction throughout the cabin, and April’s photograph on the wall. And he recalled how he and his colleague and friend, Ken, had shared similar discussions over and over again that winter and for years afterward. The last time they’d rehashed the case was in the year before Ken’s death. Ken remembered seeing Blake in Whitehorse previously. Ken’s theory had always been that April couldn’t have been living with a ‘loser’ like Blake, at least not for long. “Wouldn’t matter to her more than a week or two that he was a good fuck, if that’s what attracted her in the first place. The guy was probably looking for a drudge to cook and clean for him, as well as keep his bed warm. April was a free bird, remember? She never would’ve stood for it.”

Hunter had found part of Ken’s speculation offensive, but still fervently hoped that he was right. It had been an intriguing case, but was now as cold as a January night in Old Crow, and Hunter had accepted that he would never know the answer.

Before they’d left this morning, Bart had made them coffee and seen them off. “So you keep an eye out for my person of interest, and I’ll see what I can do about finding the Martin Blake file,” he’d said. “The case is so cold it’s probably iced over, but you never know.”

Hunter had smiled sadly and shook his head. “I’m not holding out much hope.”

Bart just smiled that spooky smile, as if he knew something Hunter didn’t.

“You never know,” he said again.

– – – – – SEVEN

Betty took pains not to wake Goldie, walking as quietly as she could from the alcove that contained her bed across the cabin floor. She opened the cabin door and stepped outside. The air was crisp and imbued with smells of spring: the subtle spice of new growth and the earthy smell of newly turned soil. She heard a raven croak in the distance. She could see around the corner of the cabin to where her visitor had tied a canvas tarp between two trees at the edge of the clearing, making a lean-to shelter from wind and damp. The bulk to the sleeping bag told her that Orville was still asleep, or at least still stretched out on the ground under the tarp. She watched until she could make out the slight swell of his torso with each breath.

There was a movement beside him, and she recognized the grey mound as her dog. Hootie raised his head to look at her but made no move to get up. Betty tried to be annoyed, but found herself more amused by the fact that Hootie had chosen to sleep beside the stranger instead of at his usual post near the cabin door. Her smile lingered as she made a quick trip to the outhouse, up a well-worn dirt path on the opposite side of the cabin. By the time she returned to the kitchen, Hootie had joined her and settled down in his customary spot outside the door. Leaving the solid door open to the early morning sun with the screen door closed against mosquitoes, she took a couple of sticks from the kindling pile and lay them on top of the embers in the woodstove.

Once the sticks had caught, she gently laid a couple of splits across and left the damper wide open while she went outside again. She had a dozen eggs or more stored in the cold room, but fresher was better, and she always liked to check the chicken coop first thing. It was solidly built and the hens were locked in at night, but foxes and weasels were clever, sneaky creatures and Hootie was sleeping more soundly these days, so she liked to reassure herself that her flock was intact. They were. Cradling half a dozen eggs in a shirt-tail sling, she headed back to the cabin to check the fire and heat up the kettle for morning tea. By the time the kettle boiled, she had begun preparations for breakfast.

“You opened the bacon?”

It was Goldie; pushing aside the curtain, she stopped just outside the alcove that passed for her bedroom to tuck in her tee shirt and fasten her jeans. She raised her nose and sniffed enthusiastically. “Smells great. What’s the occasion?”

Betty just shrugged.

“Trying to impress your gentleman friend?” Goldie’s voice held a smile.

Betty could feel herself begin to blush. “That would be stupid,” she said. “We don’t get many visitors. I don’t like to open a whole can of bacon for just you and me, so I thought we should take advantage of another mouth to feed.”

“If you say so.” Goldie shot her a worried look – feigned or not, Betty wasn’t sure – as she passed by on her way out the door. “And potatoes, too?” she added over her shoulder. “What a treat.”

Betty huffed, but she had to admit she was enjoying the pleasures she had just begun to allow herself, and looking forward to Orville’s reaction when he sat down to breakfast. She wasn’t surprised that Goldie seemed concerned. This was a departure from her usual frugal summer breakfasts of fried bread and eggs, and even more of a departure from her usual attitude toward extravagance, not to mention her attitude toward visitors. The sudden change in her outlook was a source of confusion even for her. Lately she’d been feeling increasingly irritable about Goldie’s threatened defection, and now in a total about-face, she felt herself beginning to not care. In fact, she felt herself sliding down a slippery slope towards some kind of carefree self-indulgence.

Was it just the arrival of that man?

Betty picked out two potatoes and began to peel them with a small paring knife. It was difficult to hold the skinny handle of the knife with her arthritic fingers, so it took her longer than it used to. As she worked, she wondered: what was happening to her? She pictured an ice jam on the Yukon River. After the first ice floes blocked the river from bank to bank, pushed relentlessly from upstream, the mass of ice built up one frozen chunk at a time, ice piling on ice in a jagged patchwork until it blocked the river. The river built itself up behind it, only a fraction of its mass moving beneath and around the jammed ice, the dammed water rising higher and wider. When the ice began to thaw and weaken, with the relentless water pressure, small chunks would start to give way, then bigger ones, and before you knew it, all the jammed ice would start to shift and bob, and soon there would be a mighty flood of ice and water rushing downstream, sweeping away everything in its path.

Had she created an ice jam in her life, in her very soul? Had Orville’s arrival been what finally breached the dam and started the flood? Would it be impossible for her to go back to the simple, ascetic life she’d been living ever since–. Ever since what? What had started this ice jam in her soul?

Betty’s life had always been about hard work and self-sacrifice and making do. No one had ever given her anything; no one had ever volunteered to make her life easier or more pleasant. Even her mother had been too preoccupied with her own survival to give Bitty (as her mother called her) more than basic care, except for an occasional brief glimpse of tenderness when her father was out of sight. Betty had learned to work at her mother’s side as soon as she could walk. Except for the gifts that nature bestows on all her creatures – gifts like the warmth of the sun, the freshness of a breeze, a cool swallow of clear water from the creek , the smell of newly picked herbs and the taste of wild blueberries – pleasure to Betty and her mother was nothing more than the absence of pain, usually just the oblivion of sleep. Her father had worked her Athapascan mother into an early grave, then worked his daughter just as hard until he traded Betty to a fellow trapper for a new rifle when she was only fourteen.

Her first husband, if you could call him that, was a taciturn, grey haired French Canadian with a cabin near Hootalinqua who had treated her much like he did his sled dogs. She was told to call him 'patron', which she assumed was his name. He took care of her because she was useful to him, but there was no tenderness or affection. He came to her bed frequently at first, and she was grateful that sex for him was primitive and quick; the less fondling there was, the faster it was over, the sooner he left her alone. She had been with him for two years when she became pregnant. He scowled and grunted when he realized in May that her belly had begun to grow. Soon after, he took her on a three day journey on foot, and left her sitting on a log with her few possessions and a small bundle of tea and dried moose meat at her feet beside the Yukon River. Betty sat on that log for hours, before it sank in that he had no intention of coming back for her. 

Up to that day, Betty had spent her lifetime living in what could be considered the Yukon wilderness. She had often gone hunting small game, setting rabbit snares or picking herbs and berries, sometimes walking for many miles alone in the vicinity of her camp or cabin. Her trapper father and her husband had often left her for days and weeks at a time as they checked their traps or took their skins to sell, so being alone was not unusual or uncomfortable for her. What was different that time on the bank of the Yukon was the knowledge that her future was hers alone to decide, her path hers alone to choose. No one was waiting for her to return, and no one would come looking for her if she didn't. She knew that she didn't want to go back to where she'd come from, but she had no idea where to go or how to get somewhere she would be safe.

Once she had accepted and begun to relish the thought that she was now in control of her life, her first instinct was to move a good distance from where Patron had left her, in case he did come back for her. She took care not to leave a trail as she made her way along the bank, following the flow of the river downstream. After walking for two hours or more, she made herself a bed of tree boughs and sat there, her back against the rough bark of the sturdy spruce that had provided most of them. She felt as if she were hidden, yet she could still see the roiling brown surface of the river, swollen with spring runoff, from where she sat.

Although she was hungry and tempted to eat the moose jerky, she remembered stories her Gwich'in mother had told her as they worked side by side, and decided to fast and ask for a sign to guide her path. She realized that the direction she chose could determine not only her happiness, but her very survival, and she did not want to let fear rush her into a decision she might regret. Perhaps her mother's spirit would know of her plight and send her a sign. She tried to clear her mind of idle thoughts and leave it free for some kind of message, but her stomach growled and she began to think about what she could eat. She pushed those thoughts away, but then found herself thinking about the point of a spruce twig that was pricking the skin of her thigh. Emptying her mind was not so easy. It was no wonder that she had never been able to receive messages from her mother before.

When darkness finally fell, the night was clear and cold. She moved closer to the river so her head and heart were open to the night sky and the stars strewn across its surface, shining like the silver scales of a big salmon. Her hunger had passed. The cold almost numbed her cheeks. She pulled a worn wool blanket from her bundle and wrapped it around her, then made herself small, huddling against the root end of a tree that had been deposited by the ice jam after breakup. Again she tried to clear her mind. Instead she fell asleep.

When Betty was sixteen, the Yukon River was still the only highway between Whitehorse and Dawson City, and when the sun woke her a few hours later, she saw a plume of smoke and heard the chug of a massive engine from upriver. Was this the sign she had been waiting for? Or should she gather her belongings and slip into the trees to hide? Her fear of the noisy, smoking machine dissipated as a great sense of peace came over her, and she knew that she was meant to wait here on the shore. Soon a massive white boat appeared from behind the bend.

Betty walked to the bank of the river and raised a hand to shield her eyes against the sun as she watched the boat draw closer. She could make out someone on the deck gesturing toward her and heard men’s voices, raised to carry over the noise of the engines. The sound of the engine changed and the sternwheeler seemed to almost float in place as a small boat was launched from its side. The motorboat headed slightly upriver to come ashore just twenty feet from where she stood quietly waiting. The next day she was in Dawson City at the home of a couple who had befriended her on the boat and so began more years on a path that was not of her own choosing, more seasons of ice packed into her soul.

Betty’s wonderings were interrupted by the sound of voices outside the cabin.

“Am I in heaven?”

“If you are, then Gran and I must be in heaven, too.”

“Last time I woke up to the smell of bacon frying must be twenty years ago or more.” Orville scuffed his boots on the mat outside and stepped into the cabin. “Good morning, my fair Elizabeth,” he said, “and what a lovely morning it is.” His grin was so big she could almost see his teeth under the grey bush of his moustache.

After one brief glance at her visitor, Betty turned her back to him and busied herself at the stove. Her lips quivered with the effort of holding back a smile, and she was surprised how light her heart felt. She felt years melting off her age and thought that she surely must be ill. Perhaps she was experiencing a stroke, or had accidentally included some strange herb in yesterday’s tea.

“Fix Orville and yourself some tea,” she said sternly to Goldie, who had appeared at her elbow.

She felt Goldie’s arms slip around her shoulders from behind, and the girl gave her a quick hug and glancing kiss on her cheek, like a hit and run, before Betty had a chance to protest. “Are we in heaven, Gran?” she heard her whisper.

Betty’s only answer was a smile.

Without consulting his travelling companion, Hunter took a right off the Klondike Highway and drove the borrowed Chevy down a gravel road. They weren’t much more than half an hour out of Whitehorse.

“There are strange things done in the midnight sun, by the men who moil for gold,”
he recited. Hunter paused, momentarily at a loss for the next line, then, lowering his voice, resumed with
“The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, when I cremated Sam McGee.”

“I didn’t know you were a poet.” Sorry punched Hunter on his right shoulder.

Hunter frowned at him as he pulled into a gravel lot beside a vacant campground picnic area and put the gear shift into park. “It’s a Robert Service poem, dummy. I can’t help thinking of it every time I pass Lake Laberge.”

The big lake, a widening of the Yukon River, lay in front of them. The poem was probably more famous than the lake itself, but looking out over a natural body of water always held an attraction for Hunter, no matter whether the lake was glassy and quiet or lashed with white capped waves.

“Okay, let’s hear the rest of it.” Sorry had already rolled down the window and lit a fresh cigarette.

“I don’t know more than one or two other verses.” Hunter frowned, then cleared his throat. “
I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict hulk there lay. It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the ‘Alice May.’ And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum, then ‘Here,’ said I, with a sudden cry, ‘is my cre-ma-tor-eum.’