by Henry, Sue
When it was obvious they were not going to get coherence from him, Jensen got back on his snow machine, and Delafosse lifted the kid to the seat in front of the trooper. They rode back to the trucks with him balanced between Jensen’s arms, the inspector riding behind in case he fell off.
They arrived to find that Willard had already towed Hampton’s pickup from the ditch, jump-started it, and left it running. The cab was barely warm, enough to keep Charlie from further hypothermia and frostbite without prematurely thawing his injuries, so they put him there and went to the radio.
When the helicopter had come, lifted, and carried him off to Dawson, the two officers and Willard stood in the road looking after it. Hampton, recovering rapidly with warmth and food, looked down at them from the cab of the plow truck, having refused to take the quick air trip. He wanted to be sure his truck got back to town okay and would ride in with Jensen.
Helped on with the snowmachine suit Alex had been wearing, he climbed into the passenger seat. Willard, with Delafosse, drove ahead to clear the road one more time and they went down the Top of the World Highway to Dawson in half the time it had taken them to go up.
Chapter Twenty-three
“WE HAVE TERRORIZED TOURISTS. WE have dead politicians and angry sons. We have dirty old men and abused daughters-in-law. We have frostbitten thieves. And we have stubborn Indians. Oh, lordy, do we have Indians.”
Arriving back in Dawson, Jensen and Delafosse had dropped Hampton at the clinic for medical treatment, before going directly to the RCMP office. Though he seemed recovered from his mild frostbite, had full sensation and motion, several of his toes and the tips of two fingers had dark patches that might be more serious than they appeared.
At the office they found what Delafosse could have sworn was the whole Han Athabaskan tribe showing solidarity for their chief in a nonviolent occupation of the building. They had taken over the few available chairs, stood along the walls, and sat on the floor in tenacious, silent immovability. A few crowded the small porch, quietly smoking cigarettes as they watched the two officers climb the front steps to the door. There weren’t actually as many as it seemed, but the front office was fairly small and four or five dozen eyes followed their every move.
Clair McSpadden, unable to convince them to leave and determined to retain some kind of control of the situation, had made and distributed several pots of coffee, then continued to occupy as much of the office as she could, which turned out to be her own desk. Mel, the constable on duty, had tried to move Kabanak to a room in the back of the building, but had given up when all the others began to follow him in. So the chief sat in the most comfortable chair, with his wife in a chair beside him. He looked up calmly at the two officers as they came in and inclined his head in greeting.
Signaling Clair to come along, Delafosse left Mel at the front desk and went to the back room to discuss the situation.
“It could be worse,” Jensen could not resist commenting, in response to the inspector’s half-frustrated, half-amused description of the population of the case. “They may be stubborn, but they seem well behaved and they aren’t wearing warpaint. You okay, Clair?”
“Oh, sure. They came in quietly one or two at a time and sat down to wait. No trouble, they’re very quiet, but they’re rapidly depleting the coffee supply. How’s Hampton?…and that kid, Charlie?”
“It looks like Hampton’s going to be fine. Charlie’s in bad shape. Froze his nose, ears, and both hands and feet wandering around in the snow up there. Doctor’s still working on him.”
“Kabanak say anything else?” Delafosse asked.
“Nope. Just that he was here to confess to Russell’s murder and would be happy to wait till you got back.”
“Just what we need, right, Alex? Before we talk to him, what happened with his son? He was with Sean Russell’s Athabaskan helper, you said?”
“James Hasluk. You remember Eddie couldn’t find him at the village site to double-check his statement, and nobody on the river had seen him?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Mel was in the storeroom by the back door and heard something on the back porch. He went round from the front and caught them both on the porch. When he found out they had the hatchet, he locked them up till you could come back and question them.”
“Where’s the hatchet?”
“In the safe.”
“Take the desk and send Mel back, would you? Tell him to bring it with him.”
In only a minute or two, the tall constable came in, sat down as the inspector waved him to a chair at the table, and laid the incriminating hatchet on the table in an evidence bag. It was plain, the kind that could be purchased almost anywhere. The attention-catching details were the initials burned into the wooden handle: J. H…. James Hampton, without a doubt. But caught between the handle and the head were several gray hairs, stuck in what appeared to be dried blood. This was also smeared on a small part of the blade, though the rest of it seemed to have been wiped or worn clean.
Jensen frowned. It was obviously the hatchet that had been missing from Hampton’s camp on the riverbank. But something about it bothered him.
“How the hell?”
He and Del looked at each other and both spoke at the same time.
“If the…”
“What did…”
With a grin, Jensen leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together behind his head, elbows framing his face. “You talk, boss. It’s your office.”
Delafosse turned his question to Mel.
“What happened? What were they doing with it?”
He repeated the story Clair had told, adding a few details.
“They tried to run, but gave up when I let them know I had recognized them both and they might as well straighten it out now as wait for us to come and find them later.”
“What the hell were they doing on the back porch?”
“Said they were leaving the hatchet. That they were turning it in—leaving it for us to find.”
“Why? How did they get it?”
“I don’t know. They won’t either one say anything else. You know how closemouthed Athabaskans can be when they want. They both just sat and stubbornly refused to say anything other than their names and that they were giving the hatchet to us. I gave up and put them both in a cell. An hour later, Henry Kabanak senior came in and said he wanted to confess to you.”
“Has he seen his son?”
“No. I thought I’d better keep them apart till you decided what to do about the whole thing.”
The inspector turned to Alex.
“What do you think?”
“May give us a handle to know why he wants to confess.”
“True. We’d better talk to him first, I think. Ask him back here, will you, Mel? Alone. But put this hatchet away first, please.”
“I don’t believe he’s the scalping kind, Del,” Alex joked, when the door had shut behind the constable. “But I think it’s considerate not to confront him with it.”
When Chief Kabanak was sitting at the table in the small room, across from the two officers, Delafosse leaned forward.
“You’d better tell us what you want to say, Henry.”
Kabanak nodded, laid his hands on the table, and sat up straight in his chair. His expression was totally impassive, revealing nothing of what he felt.
“I killed Warren Russell. I confess it. That is all.”
Delafosse looked hard at him and pursed his lips, then shook his head.
“No. That’s not all, Henry. Where and when do you say you killed him? And how? We must know it all…especially why.”
Kabanak frowned. “Monday. I killed him on Monday, on the beach where he was fishing in our river.”
“Because he was fishing again?”
“Yes.”
“What time did you kill him?”
The chief hesitated slightly, considering. “Not long after two o’clock sometime.”
“How then? Tell me exa
ctly how you murdered him in cold blood on that beach.” The tone of his voice gave away his frustrated skepticism.
There was a longer pause this time while Kabanak thought, glanced at Jensen, then at the floor.
“I shot him.”
“Where?”
“In the chest.”
“With what?”
“With this gun. You can see it has been fired.”
He reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a handgun, bringing both officers automatically to their feet. But he held it by the barrel toward Delafosse. “It is not loaded.”
“Put it on the table,” the inspector told him. “Lay it down.”
Kabanak did as he was told and sat back again as Delafosse quickly checked to be sure it wasn’t loaded.
It lay there between them, an old gun that had plainly, from the scratches and wear, been around a long time.
“This looks like one of the thirty-eights that Smith and Wesson made back in the seventies,” Jensen commented. “Where’d you get it, Mr. Kabanak?”
“It belonged to my father,” he said.
“And you say you shot Russell with it?”
“Yes. I shot him.”
There was a long silence until Delafosse spoke gently.
“Henry, Russell was not shot with a handgun. He died from a blow on the head and was only shot after he died…with a shotgun…and never in the chest with any gun.”
The Athabaskan chief sat completely still for a moment, but his eyes slid back and forth between the officers, seeking validation of the statement. There was a long silence. Then he sat up straight in the chair and stared at Delafosse. “You say a shotgun?”
“Yes.”
“No one in my family has a shotgun…not since my cousin lost mine out of the boat last year.”
“So you couldn’t have killed Russell. Why did you say you did?”
For the first time they saw emotion on Kabanak’s face—relief.
“I thought my son…”
“I figured as much. Why?”
“To you he said three men. Then again later to me, he said he saw only two: Will and the other one, his friend.”
“Charlie. Will and Charlie.”
“Yes. I didn’t believe him. I was afraid…when he said he saw…Charlie…shoot Will. Then you put him in jail.”
“You saw Charlie shoot Will Wilson?”
“Yes. From across the river.”
“Tell me.”
Chief Kabanak now sat quietly next to his son at the table, listening while the young man told the inspector what he knew about the murders.
“I don’t know what time it was. I left my watch at home that morning. But it was after noon when I saw Will and…the other man, that Charlie, coming upriver in the boat.”
“Just the two of them?”
“Yes. Only two. I went to check the wheel for my father. I saw that part of it was coming loose, so I sat down behind the box to fix it with wire. I was working there when I heard the loud voices. I looked up and saw them go by. They did not see me, but I wondered what they were doing when they made a turn in the river and went back down, going slower.
“So I got up and ran along the bank and heard the motor as they went around a turn and in to the shore. I went far enough to see them stop where Russell had his camp. I knew it was there. I watched him the night before. We know when he comes.”
“Always?”
“Someone sees and comes to tell my father.”
He continued. “They were out of their boat on the bank, walking toward the tent. Then someone shot from behind the willows on the high bank. Will had a shotgun and that Charlie had a handgun, but they couldn’t see what to shoot back at. The one doing the shooting didn’t seem to try to hit them, just to scare them away. They started back toward the boat, but ducked behind the tent. Then that Charlie ran for Russell’s boat, got in, and yelled for Will to come on and they’d take Russell’s boat, since they couldn’t get to theirs.
“Will started to go, but the hidden person in the willows shot at him and missed again. That Charlie shot at the bank without careful aim and hit Will, but I don’t think he meant to. Will fell down and didn’t get up. Charlie started to go up to him, but the other shots came again and made him go back to the boat. He really hurried getting in, tore his jacket when it got hung up on something, and ripped it loose. Finally got it started and left, went upriver very fast.
“When he was gone, I went back to the wheel. I waited there, not long, to think what to do. I had no boat and was afraid to go across anyway. A white man had been killed…near a man everyone knows we don’t like. Who would believe me? And I was the only one who saw what happened. So I finished fixing the wheel, took the two fish out of the box, and went home.”
“And didn’t say anything to anyone?”
“I told my father and he said we should keep quiet. He said it must have been Russell shooting from the upper bank and to let the white men fight each other. Wilson would be found soon enough, and we would not be blamed. Then he found the Zodiac in the river and found out that Russell was dead too.”
Delafosse turned to look at the chief, who nodded slightly in agreement. Yes, that was the way it was.
“So, Charlie shot Will?”
“Yes.”
“In the chest, or back?”
“In the back. He was facing where the shots had come from, while he tried to protect himself and get to the boat. Charlie shot wild and hit him. He fell down right away.”
“What kind of a gun?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. Too far to see. A handgun.”
“And you thought he was dead?”
A nod. “Yes. He didn’t move after he fell.”
“You didn’t see anyone else?”
“No. But there was someone in the brush on that upper bank. Someone shooting. Russell maybe, I guess.”
“Did you see Hampton? The tourist in a canoe?”
He shook his head.
“How about Sean Russell? See him that day?”
“No.”
“Duck Wilson?”
“No.”
“Why did you say three men?”
“I knew there were three all together: Will, that Charlie, and Russell shooting at them. I just said three before thinking, then couldn’t say two without it sounding…”
“Like you changed your story.”
“Yes.”
Jensen leaned forward and waited for Delafosse’s nodded permission to ask a question.
“Could Charlie have come back and killed Russell?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I went home. I stayed home too.”
Delafosse spoke to Kabanak senior. “And you were willing to say you killed Russell, so your son would not be suspected.”
“He is a good son, but he is young and sometimes quick to act. Who knows if he would be believed? If he had been somehow involved, he might have tried to protect me by not saying so.”
There was a long pause as the inspector collected his thoughts, then turned to Henry junior.
“Now, tell me about the hatchet.”
The cooperative look on the young man’s face changed to one of stubborn determination.
“We brought it here to turn it in.”
“You and James Hasluk?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you bring it to the front door?”
There was no answer. The young man looked him straight in the eye, but his face could have been carved from stone, his lips pressed tightly together.
“Where did you get it?”
No answer. He stared at the floor.
“You know who it belongs to?”
Silence.
“Henry. You must tell us what you know. Otherwise, we may have to assume that you had something to do with either or both of the two murders…that you, or James Hasluk, took it from Hampton’s gear.”
The chief muttered a few words in Athabaskan to his son, who jerked his head around swiftly
to look at his father.
“No!” he said, outrage in his voice.
Another mutter of Athabaskan, but the younger man would not look up again and only shook his head without speaking. At this, clearly a parental command disobeyed, Kabanak senior let his anger show.
“Why?” he demanded in English.
Reluctantly, his son responded. “Not mine to tell,” he said.
“Whose, then?” Delafosse asked.
Again, no answer.
“Hasluk?”
But no matter who asked, or how, the young Kabanak remained determinedly silent.
Finally, Delafosse stood up and looked down at him. “It would be better for everyone if you told us the truth,” he warned. “I cannot let you go until you do.”
Opening the door, he called Mel to return Henry junior to his cell and, when he had gone and the door was closed, turned once more to the father.
“Henry, I’m sorry. Do you understand?”
His face a study in frustration and sadness, the chief nodded.
“Yes. I understand, but he did not kill these men. He is protecting someone else.”
“I would like to think so too, but who, then? James Hasluk?”
The chief looked up at the ceiling, considering. “I think…” he said slowly, “but maybe not. He thinks it is best to tell his own story, not that of someone else. It could be someone else. Who knows?
“You know…” he said to Delafosse, frowning, trying intently to help the inspector grasp something he was finding awkward to put into words. “The law is the law, but it has always been more your law than ours, and is hard to understand. Our ways are different and sometimes it troubles our people to know what to say or do, so they say nothing, do nothing—just be still—and sometimes angry. They are both afraid, I think, that it will be decided that they must be guilty of this crime because they are Indian. Do you see?
“Let it wait a little. He would not speak to me either. Perhaps tomorrow.”
The inspector stood up and held out his hand.
“Well, let him think about it tonight. We’ll take care that no harm comes to him and will see if we can learn anything from James Hasluk. Will you take your people home now?”