Degrees of Separation

by Sue Henry

  “Or was,” Hank commented. “Well, back to the groceries. You be at the Other Place for pool Friday, Jess?”

  “Maybe.”

  “See you then—maybe.”

  As he started to turn away, the floor suddenly began to vibrate under their feet.

  As the vibration continued, Stevie’s grin vanished, and she made a lunge for the handle of her grocery cart and clung to it desperately.

  As they waited alertly, the shaking grew slightly and things began to rattle on the shelves around them and someone shrieked in the distance.

  “I think maybe we’d better get out of here,” Hank said, frowning. But just as he suggested retreat, the trembling faded and was gone.

  Stevie took a deep breath and let go of her cart.

  “Damn,” she said nervously. “I just hate those things!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE EARTHQUAKE ACTUALLY HADN’T BEEN THAT BIG, JESSIE REALIZED as she drove home. Aside from a number of people still standing outside their houses along Knik Road, it seemed quite normal. As she drove, she wondered how her dogs had taken it. Probably not much more than howling their dislike.

  Turning off the road into her driveway, she caught sight of a familiar figure bending over a dog in the middle of the yard and recognized Billy Steward, the young man who often helped care for her kennel of dogs. He was learning to drive them, and was, to her way of thinking, developing into a very good musher. Already he had run a few junior races and done well.

  “Hey, Billy. I didn’t expect you today,” she called, climbing out of the pickup and heading his way.

  “Hi, Jessie,” he greeted her with a smile. “I had nothing to do, so I came, thinking maybe you could put me to work. Too bad the snow we had all melted.”

  “Well, there’ll be more sometime soon—I hope. Were you here when that last quake hit?”

  “Yeah. It was interesting, huh? The whole kennel went a little crazy, as usual, but more so, since it lasted a little longer than most of ’em. The mutts are all fine, though. Where were you?”

  She told him the tale of her marketing experience.

  “Wow! A grocery store could be a bad place to be in a big one, couldn’t it?”

  “And I can think of places I’d rather be in anything bigger than that one—like out in the middle of an open field. Coming home it didn’t seem like much, not much more than our usual, medium-sized ones, just went on a little bit longer. Everything here seems to be okay.”

  Before he could agree, several dogs stood up, moved nervously, and began to howl a protest as, a second or two later, a slight tremor briefly shook the ground under their feet, then stopped.

  “Aftershock,” Jessie said, as her dogs quieted. “The dogs feel it, or hear it, before we do.”

  “They do?”

  “Yes. Most animals are more sensitive to it. Have you ever noticed how still it gets just before a quake?”

  Billy shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

  “It’s like all the birds are gone. You can always hear them in the trees here, like background noise you don’t notice much. But you really notice when they stop chirping and aren’t flying around. The ravens disappear just before a quake, like they know it’s coming somehow.”

  “But the dogs didn’t get quiet. They were howling and whining, and jumping around on their tethers like they wanted to run. Some of them crawled into their boxes and lay down. Then the ground started to shake.”

  “Yeah, it’s odd. I guess different animals have different reactions. Some cats can disappear for days. I read somewhere that a woman’s cat carried off and hid all her kittens—didn’t bring them back home for several days. Fish have been seen swimming closer to the surface of the water. Bees may all fly out of their hive just before an earthquake and not come back for ten or fifteen minutes. Snakes have been known to crawl out of their hibernation dens and, being cold-blooded, freeze to death outside after a winter quake. Cows can be knocked off their feet and horses panic.”

  “Wow! Where did you learn all that?”

  “Where do we learn a lot of things these days? Go online and Google ‘predicting quakes from unusual animal behavior.’ There’s an interesting article by a guy named Brown.”

  “Cool. I’ll do that. Now, what have you got for me to do?”

  Jessie smiled and shook her head ruefully.

  “I went through the shed earlier and there’s really nothing much to do. You can help me water the guys, if you want. Then we could go in and use my computer to find that article. You could help me make an inroad on some cocoa. Then I’ve got to make a meat loaf for dinner tonight.”

  Billy readily agreed to this suggestion, reminding her that he was “remarkably skilled in predicting the merits of cocoa based on the number of marshmallows floating in it.”

  She assured him that she had marshmallows. “It’s not the same without ’em.”

  They watered the dogs together and went indoors, taking Tank with them, and Bliss, a female soon to have a litter of his pups.

  Inside, there was nothing to indicate there had been an earthquake any larger than the usual small tremors Jessie was used to and had learned to expect in living close to Alaska’s maze of numerous fault lines. The potbellied wood stove was secure on its stone hearth, its tall stovepipe standing solid and straight up to the high ceiling. A drinking glass set too close to the edge had fallen into the kitchen sink and broken, but everything in the refrigerator was fine, if slightly rearranged. She was glad she had chosen hardware for the kitchen cupboards that held them closed and allowed nothing to fall out. A picture or two were crooked on the living room walls and a pile of books had spread itself out on the floor in front of the bookcase.

  “Oh, good,” she said, as she replaced all but one. “There’s the new Margaret Maron mystery I was going to read and couldn’t find after Alex removed them from the floor next to the sofa.”

  She was once again glad that she had elected to build another log house in place of the old one, as logs, which overlap and lock into place at the intersections, tend to flex and move in most earthquakes, rather than being pulled apart and tumbling down.

  After putting the kettle on to heat water for cocoa, she glanced around in appreciation for the place in which she loved to live and noticed that her answering machine was blinking commandingly.

  Alex! she thought, and hurried to call him back.

  “Where have you been?” Alex asked when Jessie reached him on his cell phone. “I’ve called, but no answer.”

  “I saw it on the machine,” she answered. “Until a few minutes ago I was in the yard with Billy. Before that, I ran into Hank and Stevie at the grocery. There was another earthquake. Did you feel it?”

  “Yeah, one a little bigger than usual. Are you okay?”

  “Sure. Where are you?”

  “At Fred Meyer. We sent a forklift driver to the hospital with a broken arm and head injuries after the lift tipped over and the stack of crates he was moving up a ramp fell on him. But it wasn’t quake-related. He was inexperienced and just drove it crooked—turned it over.”

  “Well, Billy’s here and we’re making cocoa.”

  “Tell him hi for me. I’ll probably be late getting home, and just to be safe, you should check the propane connections to make sure they’re tight.”

  “I’ll do that. I picked up meat loaf ingredients at the grocery store. That okay for dinner?” Jessie asked, knowing it would be.

  “You bet. I’ll bring home some Killian’s. We’re about out. Now I gotta get going. There’s an accident out near that gravel pit by the fairground. Couple of guys ran into each other and one’s off the road. See you when I see you, I guess. Bake a couple of potatoes to go with the meat loaf?”

  “I can do that.”

  An hour later Billy was leaving, clutching a copy of the article Jessie had mentioned about animal behavior before and during earthquakes. Tank walked him to the door.

  “Hey, buddy,” Billy said, tucking the pag
es under his arm and stopping to give the dog a pat or two before leaving. “Next time you start to howl before a quake, I’ll pay attention, okay?”

  “See you for sure as soon as it snows again,” Jessie had called after him as the door was closing.

  She picked up the mystery she wanted to read and sat for a moment on the sofa, but found herself feeling confined indoors and put it down unopened.

  Probably a result of our grocery store experience, she thought, and decided to go outside instead.

  “Let’s take a walk,” she said to Tank, then turned to Bliss, who was sprawled on the rug by the stove. “You, however, are so fat you can barely waddle. We’ll have puppies in a few days and I bet you’ll be glad. I read somewhere that an earthquake could inspire an early delivery, so for now I’ll put you in the puppy pen, just in case.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DROPPING HER CELL PHONE IN A POCKET AND TAKING THE TRAIL behind the house that eventually turned up the hill through the forest, Jessie went slowly, appreciating the scents and colors of fall.

  Most of the birds had taken their music south to escape winter in the far north in favor of a warmer climate, so the forest was quiet. A slight breeze rustled curious fingers through the fallen leaves and whispered secrets to the dry grasses. When snow fell again to stay it would freeze into silence as well.

  Scattered through the pale trunks and bare branches of the birch that surrounded them, the spruce appeared darker green and it was easier to see their shape. The snow had compacted the blanket of leaves on the ground, but their yellow and brown still made a colorful contrast to the white and green above them. Here and there a few blades of grass, still green, showed in bare spots, valiantly attempting to defy the change of season, but that wouldn’t last long. By spring all the grass would be brown and dead, with early new blades coming up through them.

  There was a distinctly different scent to the fall woods, a damp pungency of moist ground and rotting leaves. From some neighbor’s stove or fireplace a hint of wood smoke drifted in to add to the autumn potpourri, causing Jessie to wrinkle her nose and turn her head in search of the source.

  Johnson, she decided. Burning some of that wood he was cutting a few days ago.

  Tank, who had been wandering back and forth across the trail to investigate whatever caught his attention, stopped to look up at a squirrel he had caught on the ground and chased up a tree. Knowing itself safe on a high limb, it paused to chatter resentment down at him for interrupting its single-minded gathering of spruce cones to add to the winter larder. Tank, with dignity, turned away and ignored it.

  In an open space between trees, Jessie spied the dried stalk of a sun-loving chocolate lily, its seed pod unopened. Though it was late in the season, with a folding trowel she had carried along in her fanny pack she carefully dug up the bulb with its ricelike kernels and put it away, with the seeds, in a plastic bag to add to others she had collected and planted near the front steps of her house. Tucking it into a pocket, she walked on and was soon climbing the hill.

  Knowing that not much farther up the rising trail she would reach the spot where she and her team had run over the body of Donny Thompson, she hesitated, wondering for a long minute if she really wanted to go there.

  Tank came to stand beside her and thrust his muzzle into her hand, as if to give her encouragement. Dropping to her knees, she put a hand on either side of his head and spoke seriously, face-to-face with him.

  “You know, this is a trail we use often through the winter and can’t abandon. There’s no one but us here now and it’ll be just the same as it always was—if we reclaim it. Don’t you think we should do that?”

  He licked her nose.

  It made her giggle.

  He did it seldom, seeming to view it as lacking in the dignity a leader should project.

  “You old faker,” Jessie told him, smiling as she stood up. “Come on then.”

  Turning, she started up the trail again, but Tank, attracted by another squirrel he couldn’t resist, this one showing its umbrage from a lower branch, dashed off to stand looking up in hopes it would come down.

  Stopping, Jessie grinned and called out sharply to bring him back. “Tank! Come back here, you. Leave that squirrel alone.”

  A second or two after her voice rang out there was the sudden sound of feet pounding the ground of the trail on the hill above. Someone moved swiftly up to the junction, then west on the upper trail.

  For a moment Jessie hesitated, listening to the sound of running fading into the distance. Then, as Tank returned to her side, she sprang into motion, climbing the hill, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of whoever had been startled into flight by the sound of her voice.

  It was a losing attempt at best, for she was slower going uphill than whomever it had been, and they had now disappeared on the more level ground of that upper trail as it traversed the hillside.

  With Tank trotting behind, she went as swiftly as possible up the last few yards of the trail to the point where it curved and Thompson had lain hidden under the new snow until her sled brake turned him over. There she stopped in surprise.

  Lying to one side of the trail, in clear sight on a pile of leaves that Jensen and Becker had searched from under the new snow before it melted, was a single bright spot of red.

  For an instant Jessie thought it was blood left behind when Thompson’s body had been removed. Then, stepping closer, she realized it was something else and completely foreign to anything that grew in the familiar woods. A long-stemmed red rose lay, fresh and perfect, atop and in contrast to the yellow and brown of the leaves that had fallen from the surrounding birch. Someone had evidently carried it up and left it, apparently in remembrance and tribute to the man who had died there, for it was inside a plastic bag that was tied closed around the stem with white ribbon—a thing florists did this time of year to protect their hothouse flowers from the cold.

  Even more startling was the item that lay a few feet beyond it, in the trail. In stark incongruity to the glowing crimson of the single hothouse flower was a revolver, black as sin, as if it had been dropped by accident.

  Like many mushers, Jessie was familiar with all kinds of guns—she usually carried a handgun of her own on training runs and in sled dog races, as defense against the many moose that freely wander the far north and can be extremely dangerous to dog teams and their drivers if confronted. In winter the huge ungulates are often reluctant to leave broken trails for deep snow. Stubbornly, they will sometimes turn aggressive and attack, kicking and stomping their way through a team of dogs that are held together by the harness that makes escape impossible. The driver may also be threatened in defending them and have no alternative but to use a gun, if he, or she, carries one, to put down the menacing animal.

  Many, like Jessie, carry handguns that are easier to retrieve from a bag that hangs on the back of the sled than from the sled bag itself, where a rifle is usually kept.

  With a frown of confusion wrinkling her brow, she stood staring silently down at the handgun she had just discovered and could identify as a Smith & Wesson .38 Special—a black small-frame revolver of a size that could be carried in a pocket or sled bag and, hammerless, wouldn’t snag or hang up on fabric when needed. Fully loaded, she knew it would carry five rounds.

  But what was it doing there? In their careful search for a gun Thompson would have used if he had shot himself, Alex and Phil Becker would surely have found this one. So it had to have been dropped after their search. Who would have brought it there, and could that someone be somehow involved in the death of Donny Thompson?

  There was no indication of the identity of the person who had hurriedly left upon hearing Jessie—no footprints, nothing. How could they have known exactly where to leave it and found this specific spot? She could think of only two possibilities: either someone who had been there when Thompson was shot had returned and left it, or someone else had been given exact directions to the location.

  Whatever, she d
ecided. It wasn’t her business to figure it out and guessing did no good.

  Retrieving her cell phone from her jacket pocket, she called Alex and was glad when he answered after two rings.

  “Hey, lady! Need more groceries?” he questioned, a smile in his voice.

  “No,” she assured him. “But I could officially use a trooper here. I just found something else you’ll want to see.”

  After telling him what she had found and its location, at his suggestion, leaving everything else as she had found it, she extracted a Kleenex from her jacket pocket, used it to carefully pick up the revolver, wrap it, and put it away in the same pocket. She then went a short way back down the trail, to a place where, if she stood up, she could see the area in question above. There, facing downhill, she settled herself on a log to await Jensen’s arrival, ears alert for any sign of the return of the person who had evidently left more than he intended in the place above. Tank followed, lay down at her feet, muzzle on paws, and fell asleep.

  Except for the breeze that rustled the drying leaves that lay around the pair and the usual chattering of squirrels, it was peacefully quiet and, hearing nothing of anyone else around, Jessie was soon drowsy herself.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AT THE BAR IN THE OTHER PLACE, HANKsAND STEVIE SAT SHARING the tale of their escape from the grocery with Oscar that afternoon.

  “Well,” he said, giving Hank a new full bottle and removing his empty one. “Sounds to me like the possibility of an earthquake is a legitimate reason to do your grocery shopping as quick as possible. That’s fine with me. I never liked doing it anyway.”

  “You’re pretty well prepared here,” Stevie commented, looking around and seeing little that would suffer in anything but a major quake.

  Hank grinned.

  “It sounded like you had a xylophone in the cooler when that one happened last Friday night—all those beer bottles clinking together.”