by Henry, Sue
“How about the other one—the older one?”
“I didn’t ever see him.”
Alex had been completely silent, feeling that he should let Delafosse run the questioning. Now he couldn’t resist a question.
“You heard him, though, Debbie. Would you recognize his voice if you heard it again?”
“Ah, yes…I think so. He sounded grumpy.”
“Low or high voice?”
“Low. Kind of like he smoked a lot.”
“Did either of them say anything that would give you any idea of where they lived, or what kind of work they did?” Delafosse asked.
“No…well, they knew about driving dogs and the Quest. The older one was angry because he wasn’t racing in it.”
Something rang a bell in Jessie’s mind. Where had she heard that before? Braeburn. The guy in the restaurant in Braeburn.
“‘Hoo-Doo’ Wilson,” she said suddenly.
“What?” Delafosse, along with the others, turned to look at her.
“Cal Wilson. They call him ‘Hoo-Doo.’ I don’t know why. Anyone remember him from racing years ago?”
Ryan nodded. “Don’t know him, but I’ve heard of him—seen a picture. He ran the Iditarod a few times early on, didn’t he?”
Everyone else looked perplexed.
“Right. I heard him complaining in Braeburn about how the races weren’t fair, too expensive, and somebody ought to do something about it. That was Monday, the day after the race started.”
“Same day they took Debbie,” Cas calculated.
“Anyone else see this guy anywhere on the race?” Delafosse asked.
“They wouldn’t know what he looks like,” Alex reminded him.
“But he’s here,” Ryan said. “Or he was a while ago. I saw him in the Trading Company Cafe. At least I think it was him.”
“So—they came here. I sort of thought they would have gone to Dawson.” Jessie straightened attentively.
“I heard him ask about snowmachine repairs,” Ryan said with a sly grin.
“You mean one of these bastards that took my daughter is here in town?” Leland roared.
“Come back here and sit down, Jake,” Delafosse told him. “It looks like he may be—if he is involved—but let’s not go about this wrong. We’ll have to prove it somehow. Debbie, you said you’d know his voice?”
“I think so.”
“Well, if we can find him, let’s find out.” Leland immediately got to his feet again, headed for the door.
“No, Jake,” Delafosse commanded. “I don’t want any trouble and you’d be inclined—with good reason—to punch him out before we could get answers. Besides, if he sees you, he’ll know what’s what, and may refuse to answer anything. You stay here with Debbie. She’s going to need some support in seeing this guy again.”
Jessie was glad he had noticed the apprehension growing on the young woman’s face, and settled back in her chair.
“If we find him, we’ll bring him back here for questioning. Debbie, I want you and Jake to go with Jessie into the next room where you can hear but he won’t see you. If you know his voice—are sure it’s him—let Jessie come in to tell us, okay?”
“Sure.” But Debbie looked decidedly uneasy.
While the rest waited, Del, Cas, and Alex went to see if they could find “Hoo-Doo” Wilson, taking Ryan along to pick him out. It wasn’t long before Lynn Ehlers, who’d been keeping watch from a window, saw them coming back up the street with Wilson in tow. Debbie, Jake, and Jessie left the room as Delafosse had instructed.
“I don’t understand what the hell you want from me,” Wilson was complaining, as they ushered him inside. “I’m just watching the race—and trying to get my snowmachine fixed.”
Delafosse waved a hand at a chair on the side of the table that would put the man’s back to the door into the adjoining room.
“Sit down, Wilson. We just have a few questions—need a little help on something.”
“Who’s that?” He pointed at Ehlers, who had returned to his seat at the table. Ned Bishop was absent, having been called outside to check in another incoming Quest racer.
“Meet Lynn Ehlers from Minnesota—one of the mushers in this race.”
“All the way from Minnesota? Must have cost you a bundle. Think you got your money’s worth?”
He got an ironic half-smile from Ehlers, and a short answer. “I think so, yes.”
“Sit down,” Delafosse reminded him.
Grudgingly, Wilson sat.
“When did you arrive in Eagle?”
“This afternoon. What’s it to you?”
“Where did you come from?”
“Dawson. Why?”
“Down the river, or over the summit?”
“Ah…the river.” Wilson frowned and moved restlessly in his chair. “If you’ve got some reason for this, you’d better tell me what’s going on, or I’m gone.”
Delafosse looked up to see Jessie standing in the doorway, nodding confirmation that Debbie had recognized Wilson’s voice. He smiled slightly, leaned back in his chair, and gave the man a long critical look before responding in a tone that showed him to be all RCMP inspector, a tone that grew sharper as he continued.
“I don’t think you came from Dawson, Mr. Wilson. I think you came from the other side of the summit on your snowmachine—the Alaskan side. I think you came with another, younger man, and that the two of you left Debbie Todd alone in an abandoned cabin below the summit, with no food or water, without the means to keep herself from freezing—”
“Hey. What the hell? I never…You got the wrong guy here and—” Wilson tried to interrupt, but was overridden by Delafosse’s steady flow of accusations.
“—and all this happened because you and your friends kidnapped her from Mandana Lake, took her first to Minto, where you mistreated her, drugged her, transported her across the summit, and finally left her to die. In between you killed B. J. Lowery, who saw something he wasn’t meant to, and left his body near where you left Debbie’s dogs, by the highway. Then one of you got a large amount of ransom money from Jessie Arnold and left her out in the middle of a storm with no transportation or hope of making it to safety. You are in deep trouble, Wilson.”
As Delafosse paused to take a breath, Wilson once again began to whine his denials and sputter hollow-sounding alibis.
“Not me. I was in Dawson. You can ask…I never had anything to do with…You can’t—”
“Might as well give it up, Wilson. It’s not gonna wash,” Caswell commented dryly.
“It’s over,” Delafosse said. “You were part of it and we can prove it. Show us your hands.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Show us your hands.”
As Jessie had noticed in Braeburn, he had no little finger on his right hand. From the doorway, she could now see that part of the ring finger was missing as well, but didn’t understand its significance yet.
Delafosse nodded and made a beckoning gesture to Jessie.
“Aw…that don’t prove nothing,” Wilson insisted.
“It will,” Delafosse told him. “We have your prints on the gas can you forgot in Minto.”
“You can’t, because I wasn’t…”
His voice choked to a halt as Debbie walked across the room to stand at the head of the table, where he could see her plainly.
“Yes,” she said, indignation and fury in her voice, “I’m here, you bastard. I’d know that voice anywhere. How could I ever forget? You scared me half to death, then left me to die—alone.”
Recovered from her first apprehension, she confronted him like a young Valkyrie, wisps of her auburn hair fairly cracking with static that matched her voice.
At her stance and statement, “Hoo-Doo” Wilson lost it and began to give up his contradictory claims of innocence. Instead, he frantically began to blame his pretty young partner for everything—betrayed him easily and willingly in a vain attempt to present himself as a blameless dupe.
> “Franz Hildebrand was tossed out of racing back in 1984 for doping his dogs,” Ryan volunteered, hearing the name of the ringleader. “He said then that he’d get even.”
“I saw him at the start in Whitehorse,” Jake said, suddenly remembering. “Wondered at the time why he was there. He’s kept clear of races ever since the incident with drugs that got him barred. Tall, thin guy in a green, patched parka. You’re right, Debbie, he does look other-wordly—face of an angel, eyes like a cat, and the heart of a stone predator.”
Debbie stared at him, appalled. “I did see him before,” she said. “I’d forgotten—I only saw him from the front. He came and talked to me in Braeburn, just before I left. I didn’t…know.”
There were just a few tears mixed with her anger.
“It’s all right, baby. We’ll get him,” Leland assured her.
“Where is he?” Delafosse demanded of Wilson.
“He took off down the river with the money. Fixed my snowmachine so it wouldn’t run and sneaked out on me, headed for Circle this morning. Rotten bastard.”
“It’s clear enough to fly,” Cas said. “We can catch him before he gets there, or be waiting for him.”
“I’ll be going with you for that one,” Alex told him. “It’s in Alaska—where it’s going to be a satisfaction to do my job—in more ways than one.”
“Hey, this is Alaska,” Delafosse suddenly realized, and turned to Jensen and Caswell. “I’ve been treating this like it was my case, and that stopped at the border. I apologize.”
“Go ahead, Del,” Alex seriously encouraged with a grin. “It’s been your case from the start. Don’t worry about it. You’re doing our work for us.”
“Okay, if you say so.” Delafosse chuckled and turned back to Wilson.
“And who else was in on it? We know there are a couple of others. One that was with you when you abducted Debbie, and at least one more that has been giving you information from the checkpoints. Who are they?”
“That vet—Spenser. He mixed up the numbers of the chips, so two of Arnold’s dogs were disqualified—we wanted to slow her down some.”
“Bob Spenser?” Jessie’s astonishment stopped the questioning momentarily. “That’s incredible. Why would he do that?”
“Franz had something on him—he was caught somewhere in the Lower Forty-eight with an underage girl. Made the papers and cost him a teaching position.”
“He’s taken care of my dogs for years.”
“Don’t worry, he’s not interested in dogs,” Wilson couldn’t resist saying with a nasty grin.
“I didn’t mean that, you filthy old man.”
“Who else?” Delafosse interrupted, yanking Wilson’s attention back into his groveling recitation. “Who else was helping—passing on information? Someone told you Jessie had a gun. Who was it?”
As Wilson spat out the name of the last accomplice, the room grew silent with shock, disbelief, and a deep sense of anger.
27
“I am not a tree, born to stand in one place always and know not what there be over the next hill; for I am…made to go here and there and to journey and quest up and down the length and breadth of the world.”
—Jack London, “Li Wan, the Fair”
“SO FRANZ HILDEBRAND DREAMED THIS ALL UP. AMAZING,” Jessie said with a sigh, as Alex walked her back to where she had bedded down her team for their rest. “If he’d turned around as I went out of Braeburn, I’d have recognized him. All I saw was his back, as he was talking to Debbie. And I think I saw him one other time, too far away to see his face, but I remember that green parka—on the bluff of the Takhini River, first day out. I could be wrong, but I think so.”
Wilson was safely secured, even from Jake Leland, who had finally agreed that he wasn’t worth the effort of thrashing, except in court, where he would eventually wind up along with the others.
The group had agreed to say nothing of the results of their meeting until the other three kidnappers had been collected—all Alaskans, all now on the Alaskan side of the border. No one wanted to lose them or have them warned, so they all agreed to be silent and let the law do its work.
“We’re going to have some real cooperating and coordinating to do with Canada,” Alex said, as they walked through Eagle. “But, with Del’s help, I think it’ll get settled in our courts.”
“Couldn’t they be tried in both countries?” Jessie asked.
“Anything’s possible, but I doubt anyone will take the trouble, if they get what they deserve. Anyway, we’ve got to get the rest of them first. Cas and I will get a hop to Fairbanks with one of the Yukon Quest pilots, then pick up an official van, drive to Circle, and arrest Hildebrand as he comes off the river.”
“Dr. Spenser’s already left for Circle. He’ll be there checking the teams as they come through.”
“I think we’ll let him slide until we can get the last two at the same time. He won’t suspect that we know anything about his part in this, or be going anywhere fast.”
“I’d like to be there,” Jessie said.
“You probably will be by then.”
“Now I can finish this race—somewhere in the middle of the pack and not as well as I intended—and take my mutts home. Debbie’s going to run with me—so are Ryan and Lynn Ehlers. We all know we’re too late to place, so we thought we’d just enjoy it together.”
“Leland’s going to let her go? I thought her dogs were in Whitehorse.”
“Let her? He’d have a hard time stopping her, though he may have some trouble convincing her mother. She may be his stepdaughter, but she refuses to be a child. All this has made her grow up a lot—the hard way—but she’s decided that the best way to get over it is to get right back on the horse that threw her, and I agree. Jake’s realized it, I think. He’s agreed to have her dogs flown in from Whitehorse. She won’t be an official racer—for that she would have to go back to Mandana Lake, where she left the trail—but she doesn’t care. She’s going to be a really good racer soon, Alex. I’m proud of her, and I’ll be glad to spend some time with her.”
“I can understand that, all right. She really laid into Wilson. Surprised even herself, I think.”
They walked a ways in silence. She pulled off a mitten, took his hand, and tucked them together into the pocket of his parka.
“Hey, trooper. Did I tell you I’m glad to have you home? I was never so glad to see you—well, maybe once, on the Iditarod that time just outside of Nome.”
He stopped and turned to face her, light from the windows of a house they were passing shining on his smiling face, glinting from an ice crystal or two that clung to his handlebar mustache.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that.”
“I know. When you heard I was in trouble, you just dropped everything in Idaho and came flying back up here, didn’t you? And you’ve got to go back, right?”
“Right. But that’s not all, Jess.”
He reached for her shoulders, drew her close, and held her in the circle of his arms.
“I’ve got something—”
“I knew it,” she interrupted. “You’re going back down there to stay, aren’t you? I had a feeling in Pelly Crossing that—”
“Sh-h-h. I’ve got something to ask you.”
“Alex.”
“I said, hush. Let me talk now. This isn’t a competition.”
She waited, meeting the serious intent in his eyes with a wary stillness of voice and body.
“I’m through tiptoeing around about this, Jessie. Will you please marry me?”
Her silence continued, but she gave a small exhalation and looked down, unseeing, at the middle of his chest.
“Well? Will you?”
She looked up again. “Alex…” she began softly.
“Think, Jessie,” he cautioned. “Don’t just react. Think. This is the time for it.”
“I’m thinking,” she assured him. “But you are going to stay down there, aren’t you? I have to know.”
>
He nodded slowly. “Yes. They’ve offered me the sheriff’s job, and I’ve accepted—for a lot of reasons. And, yes, I want you to come with me. But it’s more than that, Jess. You know it is. You’ve known for a long time. I want a home and a family—even if that’s just the two of us and a lot of dogs. But I want it settled, secure—permanent. It’s past time, and I want us to get married. I love you, Jess.”
“And I love you—more than I’ve ever loved anybody.”
Something in Jessie’s chest began a dull throbbing ache. She couldn’t seem to get past what she could identify as disappointment—and a certain amount of enervating anger at his solitary decision. She took one step away from him.
“You’ve accepted it, but you never even told me about it.”
“I had to make a decision. You were already in Whitehorse and so totally focused on the race that when I got you on the phone I knew I couldn’t go into it. I told Cas I was going to take it.”
“I had a feeling he knew something he wasn’t saying.”
“I told him not to tell you. It wasn’t his place—it was mine. Look, Jess. Yes, I’ve committed to this sheriff’s job in Salmon. I can’t walk away from it now. It’s two years of my life—promised. I never thought that you would feel so…this way.”
“But you decided without me, committed without even asking me—without finding out how I felt.”
She heard herself saying it and knew it was wrong—that she was making it the issue to avoid answering his proposal. He knew it, too, and turned away to face the river, discouraged.
“Is that the point? Are you going to turn being angry at me into a reason to say no? I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have asked you. I made a mistake. Please don’t punish us both for it. That shouldn’t be the point.”
“But I feel like you’ve done an end run on me and I haven’t had time to consider any of it. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. No matter how I feel, or what I do, we’ll both lose somehow.”
“I don’t want to lose you, Jessie.”
“And I don’t want to be lost. I know what being lost feels like.”
In an agony of conflict, she knew that much. She didn’t want to be lost. The rest would have to wait until she had examined it, considered every possible result.