Deep in the Alaskan Woods

by Karen Harper

  Josh appeared from somewhere and, like Sam before, frowned down at Quinn guarding the body. Josh called down to him that he’d helped move the curious crowd toward the camp and that Mary had gone back to her house and was resting.

  “And Brent Bayer’s handling Ryker,” Josh added, cupping his hands around his mouth again. “The guy’s flipping out. Wants to see her now. Going nuts to think somebody killed her. He doesn’t think she’d come out here on her own to even have a chance to fall. So,” Josh said, turning to her and lowering his voice, “you got any ideas who might have pushed her, if that’s what happened?” Talk about Ryker losing control—Josh looked and sounded panicked, like a time bomb waiting to go off.

  “Of course not,” Alex said, holding up both hands as if she could calm him. “I’m so sorry this happened. I was looking for Mary and found Val instead. I’m sure they’ll let Ryker see her, say goodbye, when they come.”

  “He was shaking hard—and crying.”

  “Poor Val, like a fish out of water here. But if someone like Ryker—however angry he is—is crying in public...” Her voice broke and she blinked back tears again. Val had meant something to him, even though their lives seemed so different—likes, dislikes, ideas, plans for the future. Or else he regretted their argument today.

  Shortly after Josh hurried away, Brent appeared. He nodded to her, patted her on the back. “I’m here if you or Quinn need me during questioning when the troopers arrive,” he said, then called that offer down to Quinn before he turned back to her. “Quinn’s savvy to stay with the body so no one and nothing tampers with it—with her. A tragedy. I’ve seen too damn many of them.” He shouted to Quinn again. “You want me to come down?”

  “Why don’t you go back to the camp with Sam to wait for the troopers?”

  “Will do.” He looked back to Alex, his eyes narrowed as if to assess her mood. “I hope this doesn’t change things too much around here,” he said, frowning. “Our wilderness ambience is about to be invaded, and we don’t need that, though I suppose, for some, it will make the area and show more intriguing.”

  He turned and jogged away. A big-city lawyer indeed, Alex thought, cold-blooded in a way. The poor woman had been a pain to some, yes, but a deeply unhappy woman. Sad. So sad.

  She pitied Ryker, too. She recalled that, more than once today, she’d seen him go off into the forest to visit different sites and students. Would the troopers take photos for evidence? Would Ryker want to when he came to his senses? Was his shock sincere or had Val come out to continue her argument with Ryker and then...

  And something else Brent had said hit her hard: if this was a murder—and not an accidental fall or a bear attack—even though they were miles from a TV station or newspaper, this place could soon be swarming with reporters. Brent had intimated that, too. Reporters with questions and cameras of their own. Quinn had asked Ryker not to film Alex or any other nonstudents to keep her location secret in case someone she used to know saw the program.

  But she was the one who had found the body. If someone was arrested for murder, she’d be one of the witnesses in court. Damn, her safe and secret spot might soon be public knowledge.

  * * *

  It took nearly two hours before Troopers Reed Hanson and Jim Kurtz arrived with a rescue squad vehicle. Still standing at the brow of the rocky outcrop above Quinn and the body, Alex heard the distant, shrill sirens cut out as the official vehicles came closer and parked at the camp. When she told Quinn they were here, he climbed up to join her. Sam brought both troopers to the scene, and two medics followed carrying a gurney and a tarp. Quinn introduced her and names were exchanged all around.

  Trooper Hanson was stocky with red hair that barely showed under his flat-brimmed, blue hat; Trooper Kurtz was tall with narrow, sharp eyes but a kind face. Kurtz seemed to be the spokesman for the two.

  To Alex’s surprise, Quinn knew the troopers. Kurtz told him, “Good work on that SAR team effort to find the lost kid last fall. Sorry for the tragedy here. We need to go down to the scene, but glad you’ve been guarding it. You discovered the body?” he asked Quinn.

  “No, Alex did. She lives and works at the lodge down the road. She was here as an observer today, was looking for Mary Spruce, who works with us, and stumbled on the body. Since then, we’ve learned Mary isn’t feeling well and is back at our camp.”

  Trooper Kurtz turned to her. “How about you and Quinn come down to the scene with us, Ms. Collister? We’ll start with learning what you saw and did, then take photos. When the scene’s secure, the medics will remove the body to the morgue for an autopsy.”

  “Yes,” Alex said. “Anything I can do. I didn’t know her well, but I did give her a ride here from the lodge today. Her—her friend Ryker would like to see her before these men take her away.”

  “Okay, all that in due time. Hopefully he can tell us next-of-kin information. We want him to know we are deeply sorry for his loss.”

  Alex dared to wonder if there was any way that Ryker could have already seen Val’s body. They had been arguing, and not for the first time. Had Val really stayed behind, or had she dared to come out to harass Ryker? No, Alex told herself, she had to let these troopers—and poor Quinn, who didn’t need this terrible publicity—settle all that. She had enough to worry about with her name and picture perhaps going public. Surely she and Quinn could make a plea with these troopers for her privacy, or was this all now just a matter of public record?

  “Let’s go,” Trooper Kurtz said. “Quinn, lead the way.”

  Off they went down the path Alex had already traveled twice today.

  * * *

  Quinn could not believe this terrible turn of events—this tragedy. And he’d bet everything that a bear had not killed Valerie Chambers, even if she had changed her mind about coming out of the compound. Sadly, it had been long ago seared in his brain what claw marks from a bear mauling looked like. And he was just as sure the marks outside Alex’s bedroom were ones not attached to a bear.

  Not only did Val’s gruesome death make him sick to his stomach, but he hated that Alex had found the body. He thought the inevitable autopsy would show broken bones from a fall, but maybe not. Someone could have killed her by the stream or carried her body there. But she’d seemed so hesitant about being in the woods—and alone?

  It scared him that Sam had seemed so nervous about protecting Mary, but surely he didn’t think she could be involved. He well knew both Sam and Mary fervently wished Val was gone.

  But he was still convinced a bear had nothing to do with Val’s death. So what or who did?

  18

  Alex trembled as she approached the murder site again, even though the troopers and two EMTs carrying the gurney and tarp were with her. She completely understood why Quinn had refused to leave Val’s body. The murderer could have returned or someone might tamper with evidence.

  Surely Val could have made the same descent down the crooked path they took now, but had she been killed here? Or thrown from above—or even hiked in from the compound, since the stream flowed from near there to Falls Lake?

  The two EMTs stayed back as the troopers split up, each going around a different way to converge at the body. They bent over it—her. Quinn put an arm around Alex’s shoulders. Muted daylight flickered as the tree branches shifted and the stream seemed to scold.

  Trooper Hanson said, “Looks like a bear attack to me, but an autopsy will be the last word. You say that wasn’t the cause of death, Quinn, I believe you.”

  They came back the long way around again. Quinn removed his arm from her.

  “Ms. Collister,” Trooper Kurtz said, taking out a small notebook, “I’m sure you’re pretty shaky, but let me take a few notes of what you recall seeing when you first found her. You were looking for someone else?”

  She explained about Sam looking for Mary, who was pregnant and feeling ill. “So I had just seen wher
e Mary went—I thought so, anyway. Of course, she could have cut off, back to camp toward their house where she is now and not come clear out here at all.”

  “Please just stick to what happened,” the trooper said.

  “Oh, right. I thought I heard a voice, but I guess it could have been the stream—like a murmur.”

  She realized she had just given an opinion again, but this all seemed so unreal. “So I hurried closer to this outcrop and came farther and looked down to the stream. I could only see her legs and feet, or I would have seen that—that she was blond and not reddish-haired, but her head was back and drooped down and foliage partly obscured my view.”

  She knew she was nervous. Was she babbling?

  “I guess I called out Mary’s name again,” she went on, “then knew I had to go down to the stream on that path we just took. I ran to her—and saw it was Val—and those horrible bear claw scratches, at least that’s what I thought they were.” She darted a look at Quinn. She wanted to throw herself in his arms, to have him hold her. “I didn’t see her bag then, but Quinn did—later. Of course, a bear wouldn’t take it.”

  She continued. “I—I was horrified, but thought about the scratch marks outside my room at the lodge, too. Oh, sorry, I know you’re not asking about that.”

  “Marks like that?” Trooper Kurtz asked. He stopped writing and looked at Quinn.

  He nodded and said, “Back at camp, I have photos Alex took, and printed for me at my request. I saw that scene, too, but it was at night, and the tracks were too scuffed to ID or follow—and here, with the stream and the stone...”

  “Right. Ms. Collister, we’ll talk to you more about the victim back at Quinn’s camp where we will question everyone else, so you’re dismissed right now. Quinn, you’ve never been on the payroll but volunteered on our searches, and that makes you semiofficial, so hang around a bit, okay? We’ll have you examine the area with us a little more, then we’ll let the victim’s fiancé see her before we take the body and—”

  “They weren’t engaged,” Quinn said. “They were together, but not engaged.”

  “I see,” Trooper Hanson said, as if he really saw a possible problem there. Wait until he learned, Alex thought, that Ryker and Val had just argued. But for that matter, wait until he heard that not many people here liked Val or wanted her around at all. Her stomach cramped. She would hate for Mary or Sam—even Josh—to be suspected.

  “Before I help you case the area,” Quinn said, “let me get Alex back to the camp to wait in my office until we’re done here, or she’ll be besieged by the students, and she doesn’t need that right now. I’m the one who should explain to them. I’ll be right back,” he added without giving them a chance to say no. He took her wrist and pulled her gently away.

  “I’m so sorry,” she told him as they climbed the now-familiar path. “For Val, for Ryker, for you and your plans today.”

  “And I’m sorry you found her like that. Sam should have gone looking for Mary himself, not sent you.”

  “I offered, because I haven’t been sure I was much more welcome by them than Val was here.”

  “Of course you are.”

  They saw Brent Bayer, and Quinn gestured to him. “Brent, would you walk Alex to my office where she can rest until we’re done here? Brent’s been staying in my guest room,” he told her. “I suggested the lodge, but he wanted to be close. The troopers need me, and I should get back to them, but Alex came first.”

  “Sure, I’ll walk her there,” Brent said. “Do you need a lawyer while you or the staff answer their questions? I’ve seen officers manage to misquote a suspect—not that I’m calling you or your staff suspects.”

  Alex stiffened and nearly gasped. Quinn a suspect? No, she knew where he’d been the whole time they’d been out here in the woods. She could vouch for that. But as for Mary, but especially Sam, Josh, even Ryker, who knew? And what about this man Quinn was entrusting her to? He was, no doubt, here to take care of any problems. Had he seen Val as someone who might lure away Quinn’s videographer? He surely wanted Ryker to stay in his job, dedicated, not distracted.

  And worse, did Val’s horrid, bloody scratches, which resembled those outside Alex’s bedroom, mean someone saw her as enough of a distraction, too—not for a cameraman but for the star of the show?

  * * *

  Quinn hurried back to help the troopers check around the body for any tracks besides his, Alex’s—and now the two officers’.

  “You know,” he told them, standing up straight at last after crouching to study Val’s sprawled corpse again, “she said she wouldn’t leave the compound, but she obviously did. Rather than coming on the paths, maybe she followed the stream from behind the camp property to here, but the obvious deduction is that she fell from the outcrop. Still—those bear claw marks. I’ll bet she got scratched up after or when she was dying, because her hands don’t look bloody or messed up—no defensive wounds,” he said, frowning. He didn’t say so right now, but he hoped no one had forced her out of the compound. She and Ryker had been arguing.

  “We’ll probably need to have you testify in court, my man,” Trooper Kurtz told him. “So someone wanted it to look like a bear attack, so they...what? Used an unattached bear’s paw to scratch her up?”

  “Though bears have been in these woods, there are no tracks around here lately. I saw a few almost a week ago—a single, old bear, not near here and not since.”

  “But,” Hanson said, “it would make sense a bear might be here to drink from the stream.”

  “Of course,” Quinn countered, “but they seem to prefer the lake.”

  Trooper Kurtz cut in. “We’d like to see those photos of the scratch marks near where Ms. Collister lives.”

  “Actually, outside her bedroom window. You can see the real thing if you want, or you can see the photos.”

  “We’ll be busy here for now, questioning everyone, starting with Valerie Chambers’s boyfriend, but yeah, soon. We’ll be here late, check things out. Guys, thanks for your patience,” he called to the men with the gurney. “Once you get her up to the compound, I’m gonna let Mr. Ryker have a couple of minutes with her before you take her, but make sure he doesn’t touch the body. We’ll wait here, too. And we’ll bag that purse of hers for forensics.”

  Before he turned away, Quinn told them, “I’ll send him in if he’s come back out from camp—or send for him. This won’t do my class this week any good. Or my camp, or the Falls Lake area.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” Trooper Hanson called after him. “This weird phantom bear attack gets out, you’ll get some TV reporters from Anchorage, maybe beyond, behind every bush.”

  To Quinn’s surprise, he ran almost immediately into Brent on the path and told him, “I’ve heard Geoff calls you his fixer. Wish you could fix this. You got Alex back to camp?”

  “Safe and sound.”

  “Don’t I wish.”

  * * *

  Alex was drained and exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep. She sat in Quinn’s desk chair for a while, then paced around his office. It was a small area in comparison to the big building that held the dining hall, but his house was compact and neat inside. And it somehow reeked of masculinity.

  The only touch of domesticity in this room was a leather sofa that definitely looked slept on. It was probably long enough to accommodate his height, sunken a bit to the shape of a body, with a bed pillow at one end. A quilt was tossed on the back of it.

  His desk, however, was perfectly organized and looked all business. A laptop was open and a yellow legal pad lay there with notes. Perhaps he wrote his tracking books here.

  The house had two bedrooms, probably as small as this room. There was a bathroom, a galley kitchen with two stools to eat at a breakfast bar and a small living room with another fireplace. She’d barely glimpsed a little screened porch outside.

  She walked over again to
the fireplace mantel and studied the covers of the paperback books he’d written, then the photos he had lined up there. One was of an attractive woman somewhere in her sixties who must be his mother. Love you, always, the neat writing in the bottom corner read, but the photo wasn’t signed. No other pictures of adoring women, though she felt she might almost qualify for the role. Next to that, the picture of the man who was—had surely been—his father, since Quinn resembled him. No photo of Quinn as a boy with his little Scottie dog.

  Also a photo of Sam and Quinn, both maybe in their late teens or early twenties, and a tall man between them, pointing down a path at something. Trapper Jake was printed below.

  On the opposite wall of shelves were rows of more books and a few great photos of the area. If she ever wanted to give Quinn a gift to thank him for his kindness, she’d give him one of Suze’s paintings. Yes, she’d do that soon.

  And a large photo between two pictures of Falls Lake with the mountains beyond was of a stream that looked like the site of the—the murder. Did that place mean something to him, something happy, which would surely be ruined now?

  She jumped when Quinn came in, knocking quietly on his own door.

  “I should have told you to use the bathroom and or the kitchen,” he told her.

  “I did use the first, not the second. I—I don’t think I could eat.”

  “Me neither.” He came straight for her and pulled her into his embrace. She linked her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his chest. They stood there, just breathing, just being together for a moment.

  “Poor Val,” he said. “And what happened to her makes me even more upset about those claw marks outside your window. When your cousins hear about this, maybe they can switch your room.”