The Stranger on the Ice

by Bernadette Calonego

  Rest. Music to Valerie’s ears.

  Faye shouldered her handbag and was already in the hall when she stuck her pretty head in the doorway again.

  “Just in case the police ask me: Why in the world did she call you of all people?”

  Yes, why? She hadn’t heard from Sedna since October. Almost half a year. Valerie had dropped the neighborhood watch because she’d been on the road with tour groups in British Columbia, Quebec, and Ontario. She’d invested a lot of energy and preparation in her cultural tours; they were well received, to her great satisfaction. She’d hardly given Sedna a thought. And nobody had mentioned her. Not even Faye.

  Valerie thrashed around restlessly. Sedna really knew how to dream up outlandish scenarios. Valerie recalled a visit to her last spring. She found Sedna crafting pottery in her shed. Sedna was forever taking up new hobbies that she’d pursue for several months then suddenly abandon. For example, Valerie had met her when she was knitting with giant needles; later Sedna gave her a glass mosaic she’d made herself; after that she’d poured chocolate into metal molds with erotic scenes (and sold them at the Christmas market in Gibsons). She’d also sewn beach bags out of old parachutes. When Sedna took up pottery, Valerie bought three huge flowerpots, though they cost five times more than at the garden center.

  Sedna was sitting at her potting wheel that day and immediately put a finger to her lips, where it left a gray streak. She wiped her hands on a bleached-out towel, then picked up a ballpoint pen. She laid a finger on her lips once more, as if somebody had forbidden her to speak. She scribbled something on a piece of old newspaper and beckoned to her visitor to come closer. At first Valerie found it hard to decipher the scribbles.

  She finally made out the words: “Have you got your cell phone?”

  Sedna’s strange fussing about intrigued her in spite of herself, and she nodded.

  “Put it in the hallway in the house,” Sedna wrote.

  Valerie took the pen out of Sedna’s hand and wrote one word: “Why?”

  Sedna wrote three words below that: “Just do it.”

  Valerie went back to the house and put her cell phone on a little table by the front door. Then she went back to the shed.

  “Now I can explain everything,” Sedna said, resuming her work at the potting wheel.

  Valerie heard a crazy story that began with a CIA agent, apparently a fascinating man who was in love with Sedna, though she wasn’t really interested in him. She said the guy stalked her and spied on her through her computer and with listening software on her cell.

  Valerie was amused but feigned interest.

  “Spyware on your cell phone? How does that work?”

  “These guys can eavesdrop using your cell phone and hear everything going on around you. You can only block it by taking your battery out.”

  Valerie said nothing. Sedna was intelligent—that, she knew. So why would she invent stories like these? Sedna evidently sensed her skepticism.

  “I went to the Vancouver Police Department. I asked if I was right in thinking it is actually possible to spy on people in their own homes by accessing their cell phones.”

  She gave Valerie a meaningful look.

  “They agreed. They said yes, it’s technically possible.”

  “How?”

  “You can program it by remote control.”

  Valerie paced back and forth in the shed. She’d planned to buy a new pot—and now this.

  “How’d you get to know this CIA agent anyway?”

  “On a website for . . . interesting political theories.”

  “And you arranged to meet him?”

  “Of course. In Seattle. I met him several times. We had some interesting conversations.”

  “Sedna, why would you want to meet with someone like him? Someone who spies for a living?”

  “Because agents are human beings, too, and they do important work. I used to be a private detective. We talked shop a bit—that was fun.”

  “What? You never told me that.”

  An enigmatic smile played around the corners of Sedna’s mouth.

  “Well, you haven’t said much about your early life.”

  The remark was tossed off lightly. Not seriously enough to make Valerie suspicious. That wouldn’t come until later.

  The hammering in Valerie’s head started up again. One thought took root firmly in her mind: I’m not going to let Sedna into my life ever again. No matter what crazy thing she says or does.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Ice Road’s fate was sealed. Clem was reminded of this whenever he drove to Helvin West’s company buildings. In a few years, nobody would travel over the frozen Mackenzie River delta in winter. Soon there’d be no trucks with twenty-foot-thick ice under them, and below that the waters of the river and the Arctic Ocean. No truck or car wheels would roll along the second-largest delta in North America, and neither would any snowmobile runners. Farewell Ice Road, and so long ice master Clem! Pretty soon nobody would be there to supervise the formation of the glassy roadway, to measure the echo electronically, and to have holes drilled deep down to find out how thick the ice is over all those 115 miles. Nobody to deploy the graders and snowplows. Or send out rescue teams if a truck occasionally did something stupid and fell through the ice.

  There was no going back. The new overland route between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk was almost completed. A road on permafrost, which is just ice with a thin layer of soil over it. Ground that expands and contracts. Those construction guys could only work in winter when it was frozen. That’s why Clem preferred the Ice Road a hundred times more.

  His boss was of a different opinion. Helvin West had moved his company buildings to the newer part of Inuvik at the right time. A good move, Clem had to admit. Absolutely nobody had shown any interest in that part of town until then because there was no road to it. Now the head office of Helvin’s company, Suntuk Logistics, could easily be accessed from the new highway. West had snapped up some land early on along the future site of the overland road and built dozens of identical prefabs for his construction workers on it. He’d guessed where the new road would be located. Now he was building part of it. The previous Canadian government welcomed all this activity and approved the plans because they were anxious to reinforce their presence in the Arctic. Didn’t a Canadian prime minister once say about the Arctic, “Use it or lose it?”

  Clem passed by the usual array of vehicles in Helvin’s depot. Sixty-ton trucks, graders, and excavators. When he caught sight of the police car at the entrance to Suntuk Logistics, he briefly wondered if this was an opportune time or not. At least he now knew he’d find Helvin in his office. He dismounted from his snowmobile and rushed into the building. The secretary protested—her name was Laura Minetti—but he bypassed her with a determined stride, knocked on Helvin’s door, and barged in.

  Three heads turned toward him, two policemen whom he knew and a person he’d never seen before. Helvin West didn’t have to turn his head because he was leaning back in his office chair facing Clem and looking ostentatiously relaxed. Clem’s boss was sturdy but not tall, about a head shorter than Clem was. Valerie Blaine had once confessed to Clem that she found Helvin rather intimidating. A square face with a jutting jaw. If he’d had a darker complexion, he could have passed for half-Gwich’in. But Helvin was a blond descendant of Scottish whalers who, unlike other European settlers, had never intermarried with the Inuvialuit or the Gwich’in.

  Clem saw his boss’s eyebrows slacken—was it out of relief?—when he said, “Clem, as you can see, I’m busy. Can you come back later? Let’s say . . . around six?”

  “OK,” Clem said and left, but not before again quickly scanning the other people at the unexpected meeting. As he headed for the building’s exit, the secretary’s eyes shot burning arrows at him, but to his amazement none of her famous tirades followed. Laura Minetti was originally from Italy and hadn’t adapted to friendly Canadian manners as quickly as she had to the winter cold in Inuvik. Helvin
tolerated Laura’s snootiness because he wasn’t her main target and because other imported secretaries had fled Inuvik posthaste.

  Clem hurried out before he could further ignite Laura’s anger. The bitter cold air filled his lungs as he breathed deeply. He’d seen what he wanted to. That meeting didn’t look like an interrogation. Nevertheless, he couldn’t describe what it did look like.

  His snowmobile glided past the colorful facades of the prefabs that seemed like Monopoly houses. He heard the agitated barking of dogs in the distance; it sounded like the chorus of a sled dog team before the musher gave the signal to start. That must be Alana Reevely and her boyfriend, Duncan Divinsky, who were training for the dogsled race in two weeks. Alana was very pretty, and Clem wouldn’t have been averse to a closer relationship, but Alana’s passion was mushing and dogs. She talked about almost nothing else. Clem loved Meteor, but his interests were broader. Men had broken Alana’s heart time and again. Then Duncan appeared on the scene, and she fell head over heels in love. Duncan was outrageously handsome, and Clem expected Alana to get hurt yet again. But he was wrong. The two had been together for three years, and Duncan had proved to be a calm, reliable guy and a musher heart and soul, just like Alana.

  Clem turned left and headed down to the frozen Mackenzie. He knew where he’d find the two. The tracks for the race were being prepared on a flat part of the bank. He saw the trailer loaded with small crates for transporting the dogs. Straw stuck out of some openings. Alana took one of her four-legged friends out and calmed him down with gentle words. It was her great talent, the envy of many mushers. She disciplined her dogs without shouting or beating them. And she had a sixth sense when matching up dogs into a good team.

  Something was in the air. Clem picked up on it right away as he parked his snowmobile. Duncan kept a tight leash on a lead bitch. But it wasn’t Booster, the dog Alana had named her outdoor business, Booster Adventures, after.

  “Where’s Booster?” Clem called.

  Alana tied the dog up to the trailer.

  She looked at him, her expression sad.

  “Dead.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she brushed them away at once.

  Clem was shocked. Booster had been a strong, intelligent alpha dog that the other dogs deferred to. She was Alana’s best chance for a win at the Muskrat Jamboree, the spring festival.

  “What happened?”

  “She had cramps yesterday. Out of the blue. She writhed on the floor and foamed at the mouth. We took her to the vet immediately. She died last night.”

  “What did the vet say?”

  “He’d like to have an autopsy done. In Yellowknife. To find out what it was.”

  “Wow!” Clem wanted to sit down, but there was no place for him to. “I’m terribly sorry for you both. Booster was a fantastic dog.”

  “She was the best lead dog I ever had.” Alana’s voice took on a defiant tone. “I’m in the race regardless; the dogs are still young and inexperienced but have speed and stamina. I’ve made Bolter the lead dog. Duncan trained him.”

  Then she said in a near whisper, “Duncan believes somebody poisoned Booster.”

  Clem looked at Duncan. He looked crushed.

  “A terrible loss,” Clem said with sympathy. “And so close to the race.”

  “We’ve still got a chance. Raven Link from Alaska is unbeatable for now; I really want to beat Cole Baker, from Dawson City. The damn loudmouth.”

  “I can only say you’re right,” Clem replied. He’d never heard a good word about Baker.

  Alana petted the dog on his chain.

  “When’s Valerie coming?” she asked Clem.

  “In twelve days, I think.”

  “She’s booked a dog-trip with us. She loved Booster too.”

  “Alana, we’ve got to get a move on!” Duncan said.

  Clem waved to them both and continued on his way.

  His thoughts wandered. The festival. Valerie Blaine.

  Four times she’d brought her tours to the annual Muskrat Jamboree of the Mackenzie Delta residents. He couldn’t imagine the spring festival without her. And he didn’t want to. When the sun returned to Inuvik after continuous winter darkness, he’d always look forward to Valerie’s reappearance. He visualized her getting off the dogsled, with ruddy cheeks and a beaming smile for him, who just happened to show up at the right place. He thought about how she teased him in the bar of the Great Polar Hotel because he wanted to win the snowmobile race so badly.

  Last year he managed to sit beside Valerie at the pancake breakfast, a fundraiser for Inuvik’s soup kitchen. They talked about the past and the future of the Arctic and its inhabitants. He was amazed at how well read and articulate she was, but she never flaunted her knowledge. Instead of the familiar ponytail, her lustrous hair hung loose over her shoulders. Her olive-green eyes sparkled in her narrow face, and her fragrance reminded him of the flowery meadows of his home province, Ontario. At the same time she was also on her guard, which didn’t escape his notice; she quickly defused crackling tensions with a dry remark. Maybe the scars from her divorce. Or a new man.

  He was beset by a subtle fear. Had Sedna betrayed something? He’d thought until now that Valerie didn’t suspect anything. She hadn’t given any hint of it during their long phone calls after her trip last summer. Sedna’s name never came up in their communications.

  And now Valerie would return and hear about the dead woman on the ice. It was only a matter of time before she found out about it. He knew he had to call her as soon as he’d sized up the situation.

  A snowmobile came nearer. He recognized the driver from a long way off. Pihuk Bart. A serious contender in the upcoming snowmobile race. Nobody wanted to have him as an opponent. Pihuk was a shaman.

  He was also the sole survivor of a mysterious tragedy that still shook people in the Canadian Arctic years later. Clem had heard the story soon after moving to Inuvik seven years earlier. He himself had suffered a very personal tragedy, one that had resulted in his fleeing to the Arctic. But he told nobody about it.

  Pihuk’s terrible tragedy struck the tiny settlement of Inuliktuuq in the winter of 1989, when two dozen Inuvialuit living about a hundred miles from Inuvik were not heard from for a week. Finally, a party of four men set out from Inuvik to check on them. More out of curiosity than concern, they crossed the frozen tundra. It wasn’t until they reached Inuliktuuq that they had a disquieting feeling. Something wasn’t right in the settlement. There was no smoke coming from the chimneys; doors had been left open in spite of the brutal cold. The party had the impression that the inhabitants had left their houses in great haste. They found dirty cups on the tables, sleds leaning against walls, and kiiyallak left behind everywhere, as if a person could walk through the snow without those warm sealskin boots. The men followed the tracks in the snow, tracks made by bare feet, not boot soles. They walked for just over half a mile before they found the corpses. Some simply lay in the snow, as if asleep. They’d nestled together, at the mercy of the cold, inadequately dressed, all barefoot, many without gloves. Fourteen adults and ten children. All dead, all frozen. Everyone except an infant they found back in one of the shacks, hungry and crying in a box under some reindeer hides. Almost like Moses in the Bible. The infant Pihuk was taken to the hospital in Inuvik, and he survived. Depending on whom you ask—his friends or his critics—that was the beginning of Pihuk Bart’s rise to becoming a powerful shaman, or the start of his descent into a dungeon of darkness.

  When the awful story went out from Inuvik to the whole world, it was not front-page news. Because on that very day, the Berlin Wall came down, bringing an end to the Cold War. The Cold War—what an interesting term, Clem thought, as his snowmobile skirted the heap of snow beside the Hungry Bear Market in the center of town. Maybe the Cold War was over in Europe and the United States. But in the Arctic it kept on going; it just wasn’t called that. Still, during arguments in the Crazy Hunter and the Great Polar Hotel bar, Clem kept his opinion to
himself.

  He could only hope that the police would get to the bottom of the woman’s death on the Ice Road faster than they had in the Inuliktuuq tragedy. Investigators at the time didn’t come up with a conclusive explanation for the extraordinary behavior of people who had evidently fled their houses in panic and walked to their certain death. Many in Inuvik believed that armed intruders had forced the unfortunate occupants out of their homes. But nobody could figure out why those unknown people didn’t leave any tracks. Speculation and theories about who or what caused the tragedy flourished: a plane flying too low and terrifying the inhabitants; an earthquake—although there’d been no sign of one; drugs; a ritual murder (the favorite theory in the tabloids); or a panic caused by high-frequency sound waves, an explanation that emerged on the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy.

  Pihuk expressed no opinion about the events. But some speculated that somehow he knew something, that he was keeping a deep, dark secret.

  This thought brought Clem back to Lazarusie Uvvayuaq.

  When he got home, he found the Inuvialuk in the kitchen still in his anorak.

  “Laz, for God’s sake take off your bear skin, or isn’t the house warm enough for you?”

  Laz grinned as he took off his anorak while Clem put the kettle on. Meteor was barking and running around like a chicken with its head cut off, but Clem hushed him. He put two cups down on the shiny Formica of a round table, a relic from the sixties.

  “Any news for me?”

  Lazarusie shrugged. He didn’t like direct conversational gambits.

  Clem sat down and stirred sugar into his steaming tea. A glance at his guest told him that something was wrong. He picked out some cookies from a green tin and pushed them across the table.

  “How was the trip over the Ice Road?”

  Lazarusie sat there in silence, eyeing the cookies.

  “Help yourself, my friend.”

  “Unpleasant. It was an unpleasant trip,” Lazarusie responded.

  Clem cast a baited hook.

  “See anything funny?”