by Henry, Sue
Gently, but persistently, with his toe, Delafosse tapped the soles of the feet of a man facedown in a sleeping bag beside the log and near an almost extinguished fire.
“Wake up. Get up, please, Mr. Hampton. We need to ask you a question or two.”
Groggily, the man in the bag began to show signs of waking. He rolled over, groaned, and opened his eyes, but closed them again immediately in the glare of late-morning sunlight.
“Hampton? James Neal Hampton? Denver, Colorado?”
The man in the bag laid an arm across his eyes, cautiously opened them again in its shadow and squinted up. He did not appear to recognize the face that loomed over him, but even out of uniform, it would not have been hard to guess from the attitude of polite authority that this man was definitely from the RCMP.
The two officers watched as Hampton sat up, immediately turned pale, and clutched his abdomen. Scrambling to his knees, he threw himself across the log next to him and emptied his stomach behind it. When it was over, he clung, looking as though he might black out, sweat beading his forehead. Closing his eyes, he held his head between his hands as if afraid it would fly apart. Exploring with his fingers, he pulled the hair aside so that a sizable lump behind his left ear was visible. “Water,” he croaked. “Could I have some water, please?”
It took Jensen only a minute to fill and hand him a small kettle of filled with stream water, cold and clear. Hampton drank a few swallows and splashed most of the rest over his head and face. Pulling himself onto rubber legs, he twisted to sit on the log, panting. Still holding his head with one hand, he drank what was left in the kettle, rinsing his mouth. He looked terribly hung over.
“Have yourself a little too much party last night?” Delafosse asked in a mild tone.
Hampton glanced up with a confused frown. Alex could almost hear him thinking: Party? What the hell’s he talking about?
He set the empty kettle down, then stared at the sleeping bag, still frowning. Next to it lay an empty Canadian Club bottle and its cap. He took it in, but didn’t seem to recognize any of it.
“No party…ah, Constable,” he said hoarsely. “It’s not mine. I don’t drink whiskey. You can see why.”
“Inspector,” the officer corrected him. “Charles Delafosse, RCMP. If the bottle isn’t yours, you evidently drank it anyway. Mr. Russell’s maybe?”
The younger man looked up sharply at the name, catching Jensen’s silent attention.
“Perhaps you spilled most of it on yourself, Mr. Hampton?”
Glancing down, Hampton seemed to realize that much of the pervasive whiskey smell was coming from his own shirt, and that the sleeping bag was just as odiferous. Shaking his head, he opened his mouth as if to say something, but it remained open as he raised his eyes and focused on something beyond Delafosse.
Jensen turned to find what had drawn his interest, and saw that it was a canoe, perhaps twenty feet away on the other side of the fire. Upside down, the part of the canoe that was intact shone bright red in the morning sun, but one whole side of the bow was caved in, with a large piece missing, as if it had hit something extremely hard, crushing the shell.
“Looks like you hit a rock, Mr. Hampton,” said Delafosse. “Lucky to get off the river with a hole like that. In fact, we have already found the one you hit, back upriver a bit. Just made it this far without sinking, from the look of it. Think you might tell me exactly what happened?”
But Hampton was gaping in astonishment at the area around the fire. “It’s all back,” he said in a strangled voice.
Alex watched and considered thoughtfully as the canoeist looked over the area of his camp and a look of total bafflement replaced the surprise on his face. All seemingly in good shape and usefully arranged was a remarkably complete and compact camping rig; metal food box, duffel of clothing, rain slicker and down jacket, cooking gear, all of it looking as if he had taken considerable care to set it out neatly. Even a small tent was pitched and staked down.
Hampton’s gaze suddenly hesitated and locked on the other end of the long log on which he sat. Grinning at him, round and pale, was a carefully balanced, broken skull and, next to it, a dried boot, with a variety of small bones carefully arranged beside it.
“Yes,” Delafosse nodded. “We’d very much like to know about that, too. Wherever you got it, it’s a poor joke, considering the other gentleman. What happened, Mr. Hampton? Wasn’t it enough to steal his gear. Did he resist?”
At that point, with Hampton still speechless in shocked confusion, two constables came out of the brush, following the stream down to the narrow beach, pushing their way through the willow. They carried a stretcher between them, with what was obviously a body under a blanket.
Hampton stood up and stepped forward. “Wha…?”
The inspector took his arm and walked him across to where the constables, headed for the jet boat that had been grounded on the edge of the beach, had paused at his command and set their burden down. He reached to remove the blanket from the top half of it, watching Hampton closely.
“Shotgun,” he said.
Hampton’s face abruptly lost any color it had regained and he swayed slightly, but there was a flash of recognition in his eyes, and both officers took note.
He knows this man, Alex thought. But he didn’t expect to be confronted with a dead body.
The dead man’s face was recognizable, but the back left side of his head was smashed and bloody, though most of it seemed dried and clotted in what was left of his hair. He had, without a doubt, and some hours past, died violently and not by his own hand.
For several minutes Hampton stared and didn’t react at all. Then: “But…yesterday,” the canoeist blurted out. “Yesterday morning. We had coffee. His name is…was Russell. He showed me four fish he had caught.”
He turned away and staggered to the water’s edge, where he threw up the water he had just swallowed. When he was finished, he couldn’t seem to stop the contractions of his sour stomach and crouched, retching and trembling. He dipped his hands in the cold water and held his head between them. Slowly the retching eased.
“Please…” He stumbled toward Inspector Delafosse, who stood waiting, a repelled and calculating look on his face. “Antacid and aspirin in my first-aid kit.”
Once again Jensen filled his request, and when he had swallowed the tablets, he went back to the log, slumped to a seat, and shivered, staring at the ground.
The two officers waited, attentively. Inspector Delafosse rekindled the smoldering fire and added the kettle filled with water. Then they sat, one on either side of Hampton, while water heated for the cup of tea he agreed he might be able to keep down. The constables who had carried the body were busy investigating the camp and beyond it, obviously looking for clues, taking pictures here and there.
The inspector calmly and formally cautioned Hampton with the usual rights, adding that he didn’t have to talk at all, if he didn’t want to.
They waited while he considered seriously, then listened as, with a few hesitations, he began, slowly, to relate a series of events he said had happened to him the day before. For over half an hour he carefully told everything he said he could remember and the order in which it had happened. He described a heavy, bearded man and a kid in detail; itemized their ages, height, weight, coloring, clothing, and the boat they drove; related his icy swim and the efforts he had made to survive.
Jensen listened intently without speaking as the inspector allowed Hampton to tell it in his own way, interrupting only once or twice during the narrative. When they were all sipping hot tea, including the constables, who were carefully going through Hampton’s every possession, Delafosse asked a few more questions.
“If they took your equipment, how can it be here, Mr. Hampton?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do admit meeting Warren Russell late yesterday morning, but say you had nothing to do with him later?”
“Right. I liked him…had coffee with him. But why would
I kill him, or take his gear? I have my own. Except for half an hour of casual conversation, I didn’t even know him. It’s crazy.”
Delafosse showed him Russell’s gear piled in the tent, some of it damp but not as though it had been drenched when the canoe hit a rock. He considered it.
“You know,” he said. “All of his stuff and mine would never fit in one canoe. How could I have got it here?”
A hesitation, then, “The empty boat was found, Mr. Hampton. Almost to Forty-Mile. A native fisherman on his way from Eagle brought it on up to Dawson and started us looking for an accident, but we didn’t expect a murder. I agree you couldn’t have transported his stuff, and your own, and his body, all at the same time in the canoe. But you could have used his boat and let it go after you had gone back for your canoe, or towed it. We don’t know yet when he died, do we? But perhaps you do…and where you found and killed him along the river.”
“I didn’t…Then how did I bash that huge hole in my canoe? I didn’t hit any rock, whatever you found. I barely made it here with a hole this big.”
As Hampton lifted his hands to illustrate, Jensen pushed back his western hat, gave half a nod, and leaned forward as if he were about to speak. But he hesitated and sat back, keeping the comment or question to himself, letting the inspector continue.
“About these two men you say attacked you and took your gear yesterday. I have to tell you, Mr. Hampton, there is no trace of them here. No tracks or evidence to identify anyone but yourself.
“We have only your word that you don’t drink whiskey, that you ate only survival food last night because you had nothing else, though there seems to be plenty around, or that you didn’t carry Russell’s body up the stream and cover it with brush, where we found it.”
They wouldn’t have left tracks on the rocky beach, Hampton said. “And there was a hole from the shotgun in my canoe. They must have run it against a rock to break that part out. Can I look at it?”
Delafosse considered. “Yes, it’s already been printed and photographed.”
They walked across to the slender shell that still lay overturned on the narrow beach. Hampton dropped to his knees beside it and carefully examined the crushed section.
It was scarred and torn, and the damage could have been inflicted with nothing lighter than a rock. There wasn’t a sign of a shotgun blast, not so much as a dent from a discharge. In or out of the water it could have happened the way they surmised…or someone could have run it hard or repeatedly into, or hit it with, a sharp rock, ripping off incriminating pieces, taking care to erase every trace of the pellets that had hit it. It looked as Delafosse had said, as if Hampton had slammed into the rock, then managed somehow to reach shore.
He shook his head and leaned it mournfully forward against the side of the canoe. As he blinked in discouragement and anger, something caught his eye. With one finger, he pointed, and Jensen, who was closest, leaned forward to see. Wedged between the hull and the wooden gunwale strip was a single shotgun pellet.
Delafosse thoughtfully extracted it with his knife and dropped it into a plastic bag, which Jensen witnessed. Though Alex supposed it was ridiculous to be grateful for one shotgun pellet, Hampton seemed to feel a personal vindication in finding the small object.
One of the constables, who were now slowly and carefully loading everything from the camp into the jet boat, called a question and the inspector went over to answer. Jensen walked Hampton back to the log by the fire. Before they sat, he laid a hand on the canoeist’s arm and spoke directly to him for the first time. “Let me see that bump on your head.”
Hampton turned his back and allowed inspection of the injury, which was handled with careful fingers.
“How did you get this?”
Hampton hesitated, then looked up.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It wasn’t there when I went to sleep last night.”
The other man returned his straight look with a thoughtful one.
“Well, there’s no break in the skin, but you’d better have it looked at in Dawson,” he commented. “You probably have a mild concussion. Having any double vision? Any symptom besides the headache?”
Hampton shook his head, plainly and immediately wishing he hadn’t. But he seemed to find it less painful than before and said his nausea only whispered at him now.
“You don’t sound Canadian,” he said to Jensen.
The tall man smiled. “Because I’m not. State Trooper. Sergeant Alex Jensen from Palmer, Alaska.”
He put out a hand that Hampton automatically shook with a grip that was firm and solid, but felt clammy and cold. The sweat of fear or guilt could account for it, Alex thought, but so could shock and illness. He looked damp and feverish, and his stomach still cramped, from the way he clutched an arm across it periodically.
Jensen went on. “I’m here sort of by accident, not official. Since you’re an American, and I’m here on another case, they invited me along. We work together sometimes, but the inspector’s in charge. He’ll ask most of the questions.”
They sat back down on the log.
Delafosse came back across the open space and halted in front of Hampton. His attitude was impossible to read from the lack of expression on his face, but his glance was cold. He carried a shotgun, which he lifted to show Hampton. “It was under the body,” he said and waited.
Hampton shook his head and stared back. “It isn’t mine,” he said miserably. “I’ve never owned a shotgun.” When the inspector’s appraisal did not waiver, he sighed heavily but remained sitting straight with his head held high, his face white and stiff.
Raising his eyebrows at Jensen, who shrugged, Delafosse took the gun back across to the jet boat, where he handed it to one of the officers.
Jensen frowned, looking down the log at the skull, which still sat facing them.
“Will you tell us about that old boot and the bones?” he asked, as the Canadian came back.
Hampton brought the items and obligingly told them both about tripping over the boot and finding the journal and the skull. The excitement of his discovery overcame some of his misery, enhancing the account, and was noted by both men as they listened. He pulled the tin box from under the log where he had stashed it the night before and showed them the fragile old book and the photograph of Riser’s wife and two children. Carefully exhibiting the fragments of the leather pouch, he displayed the gold nuggets. Jensen was interested in all of it, handling the items with extreme care and handing them back when he finished examining them.
“I’d like to read that journal sometime,” he said.
“Can I keep it?” Hampton asked. “I haven’t finished it yet.”
“We’ll have to hold it while we check, but we could perhaps make you a copy,” the inspector told him, with a manner quite departed from that of his inquisition. “You might want to consider the historical significance. The museum in Dawson would like to see it. I can’t see that it had anything to do with this case, but we’ll have to establish that for certain.”
The journal and pouch were returned to the tin and, with the bones and boot, went into a plastic evidence bag that Delafosse provided.
At this point, Jensen leaned forward, at the inspector’s nod, to ask one question.
“How did you chop the wood?”
“What?”
“The firewood. How did you cut it?”
“I didn’t cut it. My hatchet was in the bag with my gear. All I had last night was the wire saw on the log over there, but I didn’t have to use it. There was plenty of burnable stuff already.”
Around the perimeter of the fire were several fragments left of the logs that had been burned. Two or three of them bore the definite, fresh marks of an ax, not a saw.
“I suppose you think I carried my wood, too, along with all this other stuff,” he said, a bit bitterly. “Or pitched my hatchet in the river for no reason at all.”
“No,” Inspector Delafosse responded. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think
that. It’s obvious that Russell was killed with a shotgun, and I can’t think of any reason you’d have tossed such an essential piece of equipment into the river. But there’s no hatchet anywhere here, though you say the rest of the gear is what they stole and returned sometime in the night.”
Hampton shuddered, visualizing the shattered head of the friendly fisherman.
“And you really think I did that?”
“It’s possible. The gun was there. We’ll check. But he…” Thinking better of the comment he had been about to make, he broke it off. Alex knew he was thinking it might be important that Russell hadn’t died at this location and would keep a discussion of it till later.
Hampton sat very still, concentrating.
Jensen observed with close attention as the younger man thought the situation through without speaking. It was obvious that he knew he was the prime suspect and that they were dubious of his denials and professed lack of knowledge. If the gear, as he said, had been stolen by the two men he said had been in the boat yesterday, then, for whatever reason, they had brought it back and set it up so it appeared it had never been gone. Why? They could have hit Hampton in the head as he slept, dumped whiskey over him, and somehow destroyed any evidence that they had been there. The stones and sand would leave no identifiable tracks.
As an attempt to blame the crime on Hampton, it would make his tales of theft and assault seem like defensive attempts to clear himself by accusing someone else. He could not prove that anyone had attacked him the previous afternoon. They might not have done a perfect job. There was the pellet from the canoe and they hadn’t returned his hatched and might still have it.
There were a few other small things he had mentioned; the way the tent was set up differently from the way he would have pitched it, for instance. But only he could know that. Pretty thin and he couldn’t prove it. Someone in Colorado who was acquainted with him might know that whiskey made him sick.