Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  “Nice-looking husky. Sled dog?” the trucker asked.

  “My lead dog,” Jessie told him.

  “You one of those Iditarod mushers?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling at the gleeful grin he gave her as he rose.

  “Hey, you know, I think I saw you leave the gate in Anchorage on the first Saturday in March a year ago, but you look different—much slimmer—without all that cold weather gear.”

  They smiled at each other, remembering the same race.

  “Looks like we’re gonna be here awhile,” he commented with an impatient gesture in the direction of the slide and line of vehicles.

  “It does. Pretty grotty weather,” Maxie agreed.

  The look he gave her was quizzical and amused at the same time.

  “Aussie?”

  “No, but my husband was. I picked a bit up from him, I’m afraid. Some of it stuck.”

  “Crowded in there?” Stringer nodded in the direction of the restaurant.

  “You could say that. But if it’s coffee you’re after, I’m about to make a pot and you’re welcome.”

  He accepted Maxie’s offer, and the three walked together to her rig in the campground, where Stringer’s robust presence seemed to fill most of the available space.

  Before the coffee had finished perking, the clouds had once again filled in the gap and the sun disappeared. Stringer sighed as he looked out the window. “Well, at least we know it’s still up there. I think that…” He paused, his attention caught by a brown-and-cream-colored pickup passing on the campground loop road. “Hey! There’s those kids again—the ones I saw at Kiskatinaw. There’s only two of them now.”

  Jessie craned her neck to see and was instantly on her feet headed for the door.

  “Maxie, I think that was Patrick,” she called back over her shoulder as she jumped out and took off running. Thinking quickly, she did not chase the pickup but turned in the other direction, hoping to cut it off as it completed the loop. Reaching the entrance she paused, but not seeing it coming toward her, trotted on around the loop, expecting it to appear at any second.

  She had seen a flash of red hair as the passenger leaned out the open window, looking back toward the line of vehicles waiting to move north. Could it really have been Patrick? If it was, she wanted to know. Not only that, there were a lot of questions she was no longer content to leave unanswered.

  The campground was not large, and in just a few minutes Jessie had jogged halfway around the loop that connected its parking spaces. It was also fairly flat and had few trees, so she soon saw that the pickup had parked in the space farthest from the entrance. Picking up her pace, she ran up to it and looked in. Empty! Where had they gone? Glancing around she noticed a hiking trail that appeared to curve along the lake opposite the construction and off into a small grove of trees. She glimpsed someone moving quickly away from her along the trail and without hesitation hurried after them, not bothering to turn at the sound of another vehicle sliding to an abrupt stop, throwing up gravel on the loop road behind her.

  As she trotted along, the trees grew thicker and the hiking trail twisted and twined through them, obscuring the way ahead. It had grown darker, and as she felt a few drops of rain she realized that she had left her raincoat in the Jayco, and Tank as well. She would soon be soaked if she didn’t go back, but she quickly discarded that thought: she was not about to quit trying to catch up with the boys ahead of her, whoever they were. If it wasn’t Patrick, she wanted to know. If it was—well, she wanted to know that even more. And who was with him?

  Her feet pounded along on the already muddy path, which was becoming wetter and more slippery by the minute as the rain increased. The trail was uneven and full of roots and rough spots. On one sloping section a foot went out from under her and she fell to one knee, scraping it painfully. Ignoring the hurt, she jumped up and started on, but not before she thought she heard someone else running behind her. Who else would be foolish enough to run on this muddy trail, and why? Was this other person also chasing the boys or…A new thought leaped into her mind—they were following her? Maxie, perhaps, or the trucker? She hurried on, intent on the objects of her pursuit.

  A sharp turn around a tree, and the hiking trail divided, one section continuing to follow the lakeshore, one heading uphill into the trees. Which direction had they gone? She remembered a sign with a diagram of the hiking trails in the area and wished she had bothered to read it. Even in the rain this was evidently a popular spot, for there were footprints in the mud of both branches of the trail. Now what?

  As Jessie hesitated by the tree, the sound of running feet behind her grew louder. Frowning, she turned to see who was following but was too slow. All she saw was a dark shape that burst from behind the tree and sprang at her, one arm raised. Something hit her head hard, she felt an intense flare of pain, and she was falling, partially aware that the figure had leaped over her and away, down the lakeside section of the trail.

  For what seemed a long time Jessie lay with one side of her face in the mud, fading in and out of awareness, and couldn’t make her body move to get up. The back right side of her head hurt like fury, and she scrabbled ineffectively with the fingers of one hand, digging them into the wet ground. Then she began to feel the cold rain pouring on her hair and the pain grew a little less fierce.

  It took all her remaining strength to pull herself carefully to a sitting position, where she held still for a minute or two, afraid she would be sick. Concentrating, she raised her muddy hand, touched the back of her head, and found a lump and her hair sticky with blood. Fingering the swelling created another agonizing flash of pain, but it faded again to a sharp ache that made her clench her teeth and grimace, and the sound that escaped her lips was a sort of half whine, half grunt.

  It seemed to take forever to regain her feet and stand wobbly and sweating, determined to keep her balance. Her shoes, jeans, and shirt were caked with mud, and something was running down her neck out of her hair—either rain or blood. Who had hit her? Why? What the hell was going on? For the moment she didn’t much care but knew she had to get back to the campground and find help.

  Slowly, cautiously, she started back the way she had come. Every one of the first few steps cost her, jarring her head and making the trail beneath her feet seem to recede, then come closer, but gradually it grew easier and less painful to retrace her steps. She had made it almost halfway to the campground when she heard a thumping, swishing sort of sound on the trail in front of her and a voice called out something she couldn’t quite hear for the ringing in her ears.

  Oh God, was it her attacker again? But he had gone the other direction, hadn’t he? Staggering, she turned to look for somewhere to hide, but the trees had thinned out and there was nowhere, unless she ran—and she simply could not run. Defensively she braced her feet, faced the new sound, and waited.

  In a moment there was motion from the small stand of trees closest to the campground. Then out of them came a man on a bicycle pulling a trailer, with another man close behind him. Jessie stood staring dumbly. Severson! It was Craig Severson and his friend—Lee? No—Leo. With the delay caused by the slide, they must have caught up. Her legs gave way and folded under her, and she sat down suddenly on the muddy trail, relief flooding through her at the sight of someone she knew.

  “Jessie? What the hell happened?” The cyclist stopped in front of her, leaped from his bicycle, and dropped to his knees in the mud beside her. “Did you fall?” He noticed the blood, now soaking the shoulder of her shirt. “Let me look at that.”

  His friend Leo came with a compact first-aid kit, but Jessie waved him away. “Just help me back to my rig, will you? I’ve got more stuff there. I don’t think this is as bad as it seems.”

  They insisted on checking her injury and decided the cut could wait the short time it would take to get her in out of the rain. Jessie stood up again and with Severson’s support was soon leaving the trail for the loop road in the campground. There they met
Maxie and Stringer, who, worried when Jessie didn’t return, had come out to find her.

  Then it was a jumble of voices in a small space, as all five of them crowded into Maxie’s Jayco, the uninjured four all asking questions Jessie couldn’t answer and expressing concern at once. Stringer and Leo, both trained in first aid, soon conferred and declared that the cut was small and would not need stitches, but she might have a mild concussion. They applied first aid and an ice pack to Jessie’s head. Tank came to lie at her feet and would not be moved. She made them leave him there, knowing that he sensed something was wrong and would be uneasy anywhere else.

  She was beginning to feel overwhelmed with attention when Maxie remedied the situation by announcing that it was time for the three men to leave. “You blokes have all had a gander and she’s going to be fine, but she needs to rest now.”

  In minutes they were gone—Severson to collect his bicycle from where he had left it on the trail, Stringer to nap in his truck after an admonition to wake him if they needed anything. Leo—his last name was Taylor, they had learned sometime in the hubbub—mentioned pitching a tent, for they had decided to stay till the next morning and start early. Before they left, remembering how miserably cold and wet Severson had been in the rain at Kiskatinaw, Jessie offered the two cyclists her Winnebago for the night, which they gratefully accepted.

  Maxie had insisted that Jessie stay in the Jayco, where she could keep an eye on her for the time being and feed her dinner later. So, patched up and clean, in warm socks and her oversized T-shirt, Jessie crawled into the bed made up from the dinette table and sighed in relief over a cup of hot tea.

  “Was it Patrick?” Maxie asked, when everything had settled down.

  Jessie started to shake her head but quickly thought better of it. “I never got close enough to see who it was before I got hit.”

  “And you didn’t see who hit you.”

  “Just an impression of someone in dark clothes. But was he chasing me? Or the boys?”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter right now. Get some rest and we’ll talk about it later,” Maxie told her, but her forehead was creased in concern and puzzlement. “Some loony, perhaps.”

  But Maxie didn’t believe that and neither did Jessie, who drifted off to welcome sleep still wondering about the incident and wishing she could think straight.

  She slept the rest of the afternoon, woke enough to eat a light dinner of hot soup Maxie brought her from the restaurant, then went back to sleep again. Maxie woke her once in the night to make sure she wasn’t comatose. After dark, Tank jumped up and settled down close to her at the foot of the bed, which he never did unless she was sick. Though the blankets belonged to Maxie, Jessie let him stay, feeling comforted and safe with him there.

  15

  ALL NIGHT LONG IT RAINED, AND IT WAS STILL raining when they woke early the next morning to the sound of engines and found that, though there had been a second smaller slide, it had been cleared, the road was finally open, and lines of traffic were slowly moving along below the raw cut in the rocky cliff. Mist hung close at the summit, obscuring the hilltops and dulling the colors of the landscape.

  After an early breakfast and some Advil, the headache that had accompanied Jessie into consciousness subsided enough for her to declare herself fit for driving, tired of the drizzle, and ready to see some new country. After checking the lump and redressing the cut on Jessie’s head, Maxie suggested that they make it a short driving day and only go as far as Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park, ninety-seven miles away and another place Jessie had on her wish list.

  “Soaking my aches away in the hot water of those pools will be heaven,” she said. “Even if it’s raining.”

  Cyclists Severson and Taylor had put the Winnebago back to rights after their night of dry comfort and again expressed their gratitude for the loan of it. Packed up and ready to travel, they rode away leaving Jessie waving from the door. Stringer, who had stopped to check on her and agreed that she wasn’t concussed, just battered and bruised, pulled out right after them, with a blast from his air horn as he swept past the campground on the highway.

  “What a nice man,” Maxie, who had eaten dinner with him in the restaurant the night before, commented.

  She was filling a thermos and Jessie was folding blankets and making the bed back into a dinette table when there was a rap on the door of the Jayco. Maxie opened it to find two men standing outside, one of whom identified himself as an RCMP inspector.

  He looked up at her with rain dripping from the hat he tipped rather than removed. “The clerk at the store said that you were asking for the police. I’m also looking for Jessie Arnold.” He gestured toward the Winnebago parked next door. “Would you happen to know where I might find her?”

  “She’s right here.” Maxie moved aside to make room for him to step in, followed by his slightly taller companion. Stretch hopped down from the bed in the back and came barking at strangers invading space he knew didn’t belong to them, but hushed immediately at a word from Maxie.

  Jessie, the table raised back into position between the two benches, had just picked up the bedding to put it away when she recognized the voice at the door and turned to greet Inspector Webster from Dawson Creek. But her eyes widened in surprise at the sight of the man who came into the Jayco behind him, and she backed away till she ran into the edge of the table and froze, staring. There, in the same black windbreaker and blue baseball cap, was the man with the mustache she had seen three times in Jasper.

  He nodded to her as Webster introduced him, taking note of her reaction. “Detective Dan Loomis from Cody, Wyoming. You’ve met?”

  “No,” the detective answered quietly, assessing Jessie’s reaction with half a smile. “But we sort of ran into each other in Jasper.”

  Maxie raised a what’s-this-about eyebrow but said nothing, though his mention of Cody rang warning bells in her mind.

  “You were following me.” Jessie found her voice, but Webster broke in before Loomis could answer.

  “We have some problems we need to straighten out, Miss Arnold, and you may be able to help. May we sit down?” The request was directed to Maxie, who nodded.

  She poured the coffee back out of the thermos into cups at the table, and the four settled, women on one side, men on the other.

  The inspector turned to Jessie with a questioning look, but she raised a hand before he could put it into words.

  “Before we start, I need to know.” She gave Loomis a suspicious frown. “Were you following me in Jasper or not?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yes, I was, actually. But it wasn’t you I was looking for. It has to do with a case I’m working on—with the inspector’s help.” He nodded courteously toward Webster, establishing that the RCMP was in charge, that it was Webster’s territory and responsibility after all. “I’ll explain later, but let the inspector start with the things he needs to know first—okay?”

  She agreed, because it wasn’t the only thing on her mind. Why would these two show up together? Did it have something to do with the death at the Kiskatinaw bridge? She reluctantly waited and let him speak, anxious for information.

  The inspector began by directing an unexpected question to both women. “Patrick Cutler. That name mean anything to either one of you?”

  They stared at him, astonished. “But that’s what we wanted to talk to the police—to you about,” Maxie said with a puzzled frown. “We met the boy at Dutch Creek.”

  “I saw him earlier than that,” Jessie reminded her.

  “That’s right,” Maxie agreed, thinking back. “But that’s where you found him under your rig and we really met him.”

  “But it all started when he stole my lunch at Fort Steele,” Jessie began, and went on to tell the two attentive policemen all she could remember about Patrick, from Fort Steele until he disappeared in the provincial park. Maxie listened, adding a comment or two in her low, gravelly voice but mostly watching the two law enforcement officers closely for their
reactions.

  “Okay, let me see if I’ve got it straight.” Webster looked up from the notes he was once again making in his book. “You’re sure it was Cutler you saw at Fort Steele?”

  “Yes, definitely—he admitted it.”

  “How’d he get there?”

  “Hitchhiked, from what he told us.”

  “You know,” Maxie broke in with a sudden realization, “I think I saw him on the road between Fort Steele and Dutch Creek with his thumb out. I don’t pick up hitchhikers so I went on by. He must have caught a ride to Dutch Creek.”

  “There’s no record of him at the border. Do you know how he crossed and where?”

  “He never said and we didn’t ask,” Jessie told him.

  “He came close once,” Maxie mused, remembering that middle-of-the-night conversation. “When you asked him how much money he had and he avoided the question. We thought he couldn’t have had very much.”

  “From all we know, you’re probably right,” Loomis said. “So he must have slipped across illegally somehow. Wouldn’t be too hard for a smart kid.”

  “Then you caught him under your motor home in the middle of the night.” Webster addressed Jessie, striving to be sure he was correctly interpreting what she had told him. “Trying to keep dry.”

  “And he would have run, but I got there first with the can of pepper spray.”

  “So you didn’t report him—you fed him.” Loomis grinned at the thought.

  Maxie nodded, encouraged by his sense of humor and the note of sympathy she recognized in his tone. But Jessie was remembering the bedraggled sight of Patrick as he crawled from beneath the Winnebago with his dirty face and chattering teeth, the little they had learned about his background, and what she had heard on the next day’s drive.

  “Were you looking for him on the Icefields Parkway?”

  A question passed between the two men in a glance. Loomis set down the cup he had been about to drink from and straightened himself on the bench. “Why do you ask?”

  She told him about the conversation she had overheard concerning two men looking for a red-haired boy.