by Henry, Sue
Jensen curtailed his automatic analysis as Hampton turned to the RCMP inspector, who was also watching him so closely it would not have been surprising if he had already guessed Hampton’s thoughts. Quietly and without defensiveness he spoke.
“I did not kill Russell. The only time I saw him was on the river yesterday. I talked to him, had coffee with him. We talked for close to half an hour, but I did not kill him.”
They looked at each other and there was a long pause before Delafosse frowned and gave back his own truth.
“I’d say that there’s at least as much possibility that you didn’t kill him as that you did. There are odd things about this, but let’s just say I’m reserving judgment…for the moment.”
“Are you arresting me?”
“Not now. We will take everything here as evidence, so you’ll be better off coming back to Dawson with us than staying here with no equipment or transportation. I’m offering you a ride. And, if you didn’t do this, I’m asking your cooperation and assistance. I’d also like you to stay in Dawson a day or two.”
“I have a ride waiting at Clinton Creek.”
“We’ll take care of it.”
By midafternoon they were headed upriver toward Dawson in the jet boat. With little or no expression on his face, Hampton ignored the officers and watched the river’s gold-splashed banks as they passed. Russell’s body, a constant reminder of the man with whom he said he had enjoyed a few minutes of conversation, lay in a body bag inside a plain, utilitarian metal box. Surrounding it, beside the partially burned logs from his fire, were the two sets of camping and personal gear, including four fish in a plastic cooler that the old man might have exhibited with pride to a passing canoeist the day before.
Jensen thought it somehow interesting that Hampton had known exactly how many fish that cooler contained.
Chapter Five
DAWSON CITY LIES AT THE UPPER EDGE OF the Yukon Plateau, at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers. The Yukon was once a much smaller river, with headwaters near Dawson, that drained southward into the Gulf of Alaska. Two million years ago, when the St. Elias Mountains and others rose between the interior and the coast, the whole drainage pattern tilted inland. The glaciers of the Pleistocene Era blocked the southern canyons with ice, and smaller rivers were diverted north to the Yukon River drainage where, instead of running two hundred miles to the coast, they ran into the Yukon, swelling its volume. Also unable to reach the nearest ocean, the much-increased river created a new bed for itself, wandering in wide, meandering loops, fifteen hundred miles across what would become Alaska, finally emptying into the Bering Sea.
For centuries the area where the Klondike joins the Yukon was a seasonal fish camp for the group of Athabaskans called Han, People of the River. Most modern Han now live in Dawson City, where education is available for their children, but once they ranged over a much larger area that encompassed all the tributaries of the Yukon from the mouth of the Kandik to that of the Stewart. For at least part of the year, a few still live, or have subsistence fish camps, along the river between Dawson and Eagle, Alaska. The largest tribe in the area, the Han once had a well-deserved warlike reputation, but they were decimated by epidemic diseases brought into the country by fur traders, explorers, missionaries, and prospectors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
With the discovery of gold, Dawson City quickly became a boomtown with an itinerant population of almost thirty thousand, the largest city north of San Francisco and west of Winnipeg, if less stable. Unlike some other gold-rush communities, however, it did not become a ghost town, but survived, though on a much smaller scale, with continuing gold mining and a thriving tourist industry. Since it was a supply, service, and entertainment center for the surrounding mining area, only commercial buildings were originally built to last. The rest, made mostly of logs chinked with mud, were hastily erected, temporary shelter for miners who intended to leave as soon as they got their fortunes, and leave they eventually did, fortune or not, casually abandoning their shelters, which almost immediately disintegrated or were torn apart, the wood reused or burned.
After the rush, in the early 1900s, when profits from gold continued to come in at a steady if less substantial rate, more permanent buildings were constructed around the few remaining stampede landmarks, and Dawson became a settled community.
“Hey, Del, what’s that?” Alex Jensen asked, twisting in his seat to get a better look at a large wooden building they were passing on a Dawson street. Over the double front door was a sign: GASLIGHT FOLLIES. Two more stories rose above it, with bay windows that extended enough to make small balconies with low railings. The edifice was impressive and made an unusual appearance with its dark, diagonal planking.
Delafosse smiled. “That is an oldie. The Palace Grand Theatre, in all its enormous restored glory.”
“Gold rush?”
“Yes, and almost got torn down in the 1960s, but the Klondike Visitors Association saved it and National Historic Parks returned it to its original 1899 splendor. During the last of the rush it was the biggest opera house in the north, used for everything from Wild West shows to operas. Guy named Arizona Charley Meadows built it by tearing apart a couple of beached sternwheelers for lumber. Now the Gaslight Follies pull in the tourists with dance-hall girls, cancan, melodrama, and all.”
The two law enforcement officers rode together in Delafosse’s pickup, heading through the historic town toward the Dawson RCMP Detachment Office. They had left Hampton on the dock, to be escorted along for a statement by the pair of constables who were also responsible for the gear and evidence they had collected at the site, and Russell’s body, which would be flown to Whitehorse the following morning, destined for the Coroner’s Office.
“What’s your take on Hampton, Alex?”
The trooper hesitated thoughtfully, pulled a briar pipe from his pocket, and went about the ritual of filling it with a fragrant tobacco blend and lighting it with a kitchen match before he puffed smoke out the half-open window.
Well aware that the inspector was in charge and content to have it so, Jensen still found it unusual to defer to someone else. On Alaskan home territory, he was almost always the responsible officer on a homicide case. Several times on the riverbank he had all but bitten his tongue to remind himself that he must watch and listen until he had a chance to discuss the situation with the Canadian.
Del Delafosse was more than competent. Most of Jensen’s questions had been answered, if not in the order he might have asked them himself. There were, however, enough nagging inconsistencies to lower his brows in a frown as he considered the strange circumstances in which they had found Hampton. The inspector’s question was, he knew and appreciated, designed as much to invite him to participate as it was to solicit his ideas and opinions.
“Well,” he said slowly, “it’s not a particularly open-and-shut case, is it? Lot of contradictions.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for one, I can’t understand why a man who supposedly just hauled a stiff down the river, dragged it up a stream, and covered it with brush would set up an extremely organized camp right beside it, cook and eat dinner, and then proceed to get so drunk he didn’t even hear your jet boat. Slept through almost an hour of investigation by the four of us. Of course, your Canuck whiskey may be more potent than ours, but I think it had more to do with that bump on his head. Somebody hit him pretty hard with something that didn’t break the skin. Sap, maybe?”
“It’s not that potent.” Delafosse grinned briefly before becoming serious again. “It’s been too long to know how much, if any, he ingested last night. That bump on the head could account for his somnolent state. If this was done by the two he suspects, and if they hit him while he slept, he wouldn’t remember a thing. From where it was placed, it would have been hard for him to inflict it himself. What’d you sort out of the rest of it?”
“Well, it’s your case, Del, of course, but I got as many questions as answers,
just like you did. There any reason, other than the possibility it’s a setup like he says, to think he’s telling the truth? Any other robberies or suspicious deaths on the river this summer?”
“Nothing significant…the average tourist accidents. A drowning when a boat hit a rock, tipped over, and floated off. One stolen camper and a missing trailer, but the sergeant here in Dawson says it’s been quiet downriver to the border. Our biggest problem has been those stolen vehicles. Along with the others stolen farther south—two trucks, one commercial, one rental, and a large RV between here and Whitehorse, but nothing on the river, no boats or gear reported.”
Jensen had come to the Yukon from Alaska a few days earlier to coordinate investigations with the RCMP on a series of vehicle thefts that had occurred on both sides of the Alaska-Canada border. It was believed that these had been stolen by a ring of thieves and drivers, and run south on the Alaska or the Cassiar highway into the more populated areas of the provinces or lower forty-eight states. By comparing cases and working together they hoped to gather enough evidence to stop the game, especially since two of the latest had resulted in the homicides of the drivers: one a long-distance Canadian trucker, the other a retired American tourist on his way to catch a ferry in Haines, Alaska, in a brand-new recreational vehicle. The tourist had evidently suffered a heart attack as the result of rough handling, but the trucker had been shot. Not that it mattered. Both deaths were still murder on the books.
The two killings had brought Jensen into the cooperative effort. A homicide detective from Detachment G in Palmer, forty miles east of Anchorage, he was not unhappy with the assignment, since he was already friends with Inspector Delafosse of the RCMP General Investigation Section, or GIS, acquainted from past professional and social events. They had come to Dawson from Whitehorse to check the background on one of the missing trucks. Delafosse would stay to fill in for the officer in charge, who had gone to Toronto where his wife was to have surgery. With their work complete, the case at a standstill, Jensen had been prepared to return to Alaska. He had changed his plans when Delafosse asked if he would like to come along on the trip down the Yukon River.
An apparently abandoned boat had been towed into Dawson the evening before, inspiring the idea that its owner was in some trouble, possibly drowned. Early the next morning, as it grew light, they had sped down the Yukon’s bends in the jet boat, easily locating and stopping at Hampton’s camp, where they found Russell’s body not far from the sleeping canoeist. The boat had turned out to be Russell’s.
“There’s something off center about the whole thing,” Alex commented, as he turned again to look with interest at a turn-of-the-century building on a corner in the middle of town. “Is that hotel authentic?”
“Well…sort of. It was built just after the gold rush, but burned sometime in the twenties and was put back up exactly like the original.
“Yeah, off center is a good way to put it. We still don’t know where Russell died either. It wasn’t where he was found. Not half enough blood there for a shotgun wound and the lividity says the body’s been moved.”
Jensen knew that when a dead body lies for hours in one position, the blood drains to the lowest possible level, causing purple bruiselike marks under the skin. Shift a corpse from that original position, the marks remain. Examination of Russell’s body showed he had evidently fallen and remained on his face after he was killed, but he was found curled in a fetal position under the brush above Hampton’s camp. The lividity staining the front of his body said that he had died elsewhere and been moved. Or, Alex, had mused, he had been killed and immediately put into the boat facedown. It was just possible. He frowned again, considering. Neither the boat, nor Hampton’s canoe, had exhibited any sign of blood. It would have been easily washed out, however.
“I think I’d be looking for evidence of homicide at some other location, starting with the spot Hampton says he had coffee with Russell. Who is Russell, anyway? You sounded earlier as if you knew him.”
Frowning, Delafosse shook his head. “I don’t know him, really, just of him. He hasn’t made himself too popular with the native community along the river lately.”
“Canadian?”
“No. A retired Alaska senator from Fairbanks. He’s an avid sport fisherman, who drives over infrequently during the salmon run every year. The problem is that he has some political clout and campaigns actively and hard that subsistence fishing should be limited, or done away with, in Alaska and the Yukon, and sport fishing more solidly supported, especially when the runs are minimal, as they have been in the last few years. He believes there’s no need for a subsistence lifestyle these days and other ways for those who adhere to it to make a living. Since the local Han Athabaskans, and others, feel the fishing is their historical right and use what they catch, his attitude doesn’t sit too well, particularly when he comes to do his own recreational fishing in this area. There’s been a clash or two. He’s a feisty old man.”
“Why doesn’t he fish somewhere else?”
“He does, but he insists on coming here once or twice a year. Stubborn, I guess.”
“I recognize the name, from the Anchorage news, but I haven’t paid much attention. The murder of a retired legislator will get some press, you know.”
“I anticipate that. Have to get a release ready, and get the investigation’s wheels turning.”
“Maybe I can help some with the Alaska press.”
“That would be appreciated all right, but we’ve done enough for now. As soon as we get Hampton’s statement we’ll give it a rest for the day, eh?” Delafosse asked. “I renewed our reservation at the Midnight Sun and we can get a good dinner on the next corner at the Downtown Hotel, which should satisfy your interest in historical preservation, by the way. They might even have a shot or two of that potent Canadian whiskey.”
Jensen chuckled. “Isn’t all this downtown?” he asked. “Dawson isn’t big enough to have anything else.”
“Well, you’re right, of course. But you should see it in July, packed full of tourists and Winnebagos. Not a room to be had and you wait in line for any kind of food. I try to stay in Whitehorse, though it’s not much better.” He turned a corner of the neat, even city blocks which indicated that someone long ago had had the intelligence to line up wide streets in an orderly fashion.
Jensen swept an interested gaze over what he could see of the variety of structures that comprised a small community in a constant state of flux over almost a hundred years. Though independence of thought and materials was evident, most of the buildings, new or old, looked as if they had been built with nineteenth-century plans, displaying frontier interpretations of the original Victorian influence, meant to fit in and attract the summer tourist crowd on which most of the local economy now depended. A modern service station they passed looked decidedly out of place among the boxy false-fronted frames.
“That sounds like another good chance to see the inside of some history. I need to clean up and make a phone call or two before dinner, too.”
“Make them from the office.” Delafosse glanced across and raised an eyebrow. “May I assume that you might be checking in with someone besides your dispatcher at this time of day?”
Alex chuckled and nodded. “Yep, told Jessie I’d let her know when I was headed home. I’d better remind her I’m not there yet and may be a while longer.”
At the Detachment Office, the inspector shut down the engine and turned to Jensen before getting out.
“I think I’ll call the hotel for another room for Hampton. We could keep an eye on him, take him with us to dinner, if he’ll come, see if he’ll volunteer anything useful. Okay with you?”
The idea startled Alex a little, coming from Delafosse. All day he had been careful to remain in the background, allowing and observing the inspector’s right of investigation on the case. His methods interested and slightly amused Jensen with their reticence and a low-key style of interrogation. It was not the first time he had studied the
Canadian differences. Though they were far from the stiffness of the English, and would probably have been considered rough at the edges by them, there was still a subtly polite tone to their procedures that could only be termed civilized. In Delafosse’s case, it disguised a steel focus and effectiveness that often got results in less time than a more heavy-handed and impatient method.
Jensen liked Del Delafosse and was pleased to be working with him. A friendship based on respect for each other had grown over several years’ acquaintance. He was comfortable with the Canadian’s quiet sense of humor and appreciated his commitment to his profession. Their differences were mostly a matter of style, for they were much alike in their concentrated problem-solving approach to homicide.
The suggestion of a more than usually informal way of relating to a suspect was unexpected, but might be more effective than formal questioning. He nodded, thoughtfully, and Del continued.
“You know, Alex, I’ve got a nasty feeling about this one. I can’t tell you exactly what, but Hampton’s story of those two guys on the river is ringing faint bells. Trouble is, the particular bell I think I recognize is supposedly locked up tight for a robbery he pulled four or five years ago. He could be out by now, I guess, and I keep thinking that he pretty well fits Hampton’s description of the bearded one.
“If you haven’t got too much waiting for you back in Palmer, how’d you like to stick around for another couple of days and help me feel it out? With both victim and suspect Alaskans, I think it’s warranted. Also, Hampton might be more willing to talk to another American.”
Jensen rolled down the window to knock the dottle from his pipe before slipping it into a shirt pocket. “I’ll have to check,” he cautioned, “but I don’t think there’s anything that can’t wait. I’d like to take another look at this. There’s something almost out of focus about it. I’d also like a copy of that journal Hampton found. Can you make me a copy when you make him one?”