by Sue Henry
In shock, she stood without moving, staring down at what the fox had found on the riverbank. She saw that it, or some other animal, had been at the right arm, for it was chewed, a chunk of flesh torn away to the bone.
Stumbling away, a few unstable steps toward the trees, she fell to her knees and vomited onto the edge of the sandbar. Tears poured unchecked down her face, and the paroxysms continued long after her stomach was empty. When they finally stopped, she wiped her face on the sleeve of her coat and got to her feet, white and trembling. Without looking again at the body, refusing to think, she staggered back the way she had come, her balance improving as she went until she was capable of climbing the hill to the place where she had left her car.
Leaving it where it was parked, she crossed the road and went up the long drive to the house on the hill above.
“Please,” she said in a thin anguished voice to the man who answered her pounding on the kitchen door. “Call the troopers. There’s a woman’s body down there on the riverbank.”
12
“HI. I’M DONE FOR THE DAY,” JESSIE TOLD LYNN EHLERS on the phone at seven-thirty that evening. “Even took a shower.”
“Well, thank God for that,” he teased. “I’ll be right along.”
While she waited for him to show up in his truck, Jessie stepped outside to take a look at what had been accomplished that afternoon.
All the forms had been removed and lay once again in piles in the yard, ready to be picked up by one of the contractor’s trucks. The outside of the bare concrete walls was painted with sealer and had blue foam insulation in place, ready for Hank Peterson to move the dirt back in the morning with his Bobcat. Tomorrow the floor would go on before they could start raising logs.
Crossing to Tank’s box, she let her lead dog off his tether, then crouched, careful not to muddy the knees of her clean jeans, to give his ears and shoulders an affectionate rubbing.
“Hey, good dog. We’re gonna have logs late tomorrow—big, heavy logs that will make strong walls. There’s gonna be a house for me, and for you to visit sometimes this winter, when it gets cold. How’s that sound?”
He grinned a doggy grin at the sound of her voice, closed his eyes in ecstasy, and leaned harder against the knowing fingers that had found a sweet spot between his shoulder blades.
Jessie patted him a last time and stood up again. The basement was now looking like part of a real house. Anxious to see the log walls go up, she could, for the first time, begin to picture how the rooms would be. She badly missed the cabin that had burned. This one, however, would be even better, with more room and light.
I’ve been camping out all spring, she thought. First in a tent, then in a borrowed motor home. Like an old bear, I need my own cave.
She seldom noticed how much she defined herself in terms of her living space. Anyone who wanted to know could figure out a lot about people by paying attention to where and how they lived, what they kept and valued, what they got rid of, and the things they chose to decorate their lives and houses. She recalled how adrift and anchorless she had felt when everything she owned had gone up in smoke, wanting, consciously and unconsciously, to go home to a place and things that no longer existed. Now it was all beginning to exist again, and she found herself more settled and confident.
But it didn’t necessarily have to be a house, she decided, remembering times when she had felt perfectly at home out on the trail with her dogs, living out of a sled bag full of only the essentials that would feed and protect them. There were also people who spent most of their lives never owning any of the places in which they lived. Others lived out of suitcases and traveled the world, making wherever they landed home for the moment.
I couldn’t do that, she thought, walking across the yard toward the new basement, Tank padding along beside her. I need a place to come home to.
It had been sunny all afternoon, and all the puddles were gone from the yard. The forecast called for good weather for the next few days, but who knew what witchcraft meteorologists used in their predictions. She hoped they wouldn’t decide to be angry with anyone along Knik Road in the near future. For now it was still pleasantly warm. She lifted her face and took a deep breath of the breeze that blew in from the surrounding trees, bringing a hint of evergreen fragrance with it.
The sound of a vehicle behind her in the drive drew her attention to Lynn Ehlers, pulling his pickup into the yard. As she fastened Tank back onto his tether, Ehlers stepped out and walked across to the new foundation.
“Looks good.” He turned to Jessie, with a smile. “So do you.”
“Thanks.” She felt herself flush at his words and turned away toward the Winnebago. “I’ll get a jacket in case it gets chilly later.”
The evening went well.
Lynn and Jessie went first to Antonio’s in Wasilla, where they shared a pizza and an hour’s conversation about dogs and the training they planned for the summer and fall. Then they drifted on to Oscar’s Place, the current haunt of many of the people involved with sled dogs, who now congregated there while they waited for the owner, Oscar Levant, to finish rebuilding Oscar’s Other Place beyond Jessie’s yard on Knik Road. That favorite watering hole of most mushers and dog handlers had also been torched by an arsonist, a few days before Jessie’s cabin was burned, and they were all anxious to have it back.
It was taking shape more quickly, for rebuilding the pub was less labor intensive, as it was not being built of logs that required special techniques. For now, Oscar’s customers were willing to wait, but they kept close track of the progress of the Other Place, some often stopping by to lend a hand, hoping to speed things up. Oscar had promised to throw an opening celebration, plans for which were already in the works.
At what was the original Oscar’s Place in Wasilla, Jessie and Lynn perched on tall stools at the bar while they waited for a turn at one of the pool tables in the back. Oscar, who was working hard to keep up with the demand for liquid refreshment from the crowd of people who filled the place, greeted Jessie with a grin.
“Hear you’re about to put up logs.”
“Yup, day after tomorrow. How’s your place coming along?”
“Good for you. Mine’s doing okay. Another couple of weeks and I can open, I think. Leave some of the finish work for later. This bunch is beginning to growl that it’s taking too long.”
Jessie grinned and took a sip of the Killian’s he handed her without asking, already knowing her preference. “You ought to do a Tom Sawyer on the paint and finishing—get some of them working something besides their mouths.”
“Good idea, but there’s more hands than I can use already. Who’s this?” Oscar asked, nodding at Lynn.
“I’m sorry.” Jessie apologized for her oversight. “Oscar Levant meet Lynn Ehlers from Minnesota. Did the Quest with me this year.”
Oscar wiped a damp palm on the towel he had slung over one shoulder and reached across the bar to shake hands with Lynn. “Welcome to my place. What can I get you?”
“Hey, thanks.” Lynn looked beyond Oscar to assess the assortment of beer labels behind the glass door of the cooler. “That’s quite a variety you stock. I’ll have a Budweiser, please.”
The pub was, as usual, noisy with conversation and the crack of pool balls, combined with country-western music from a jukebox in one corner that was almost impossible to hear, let alone recognize. The smell of hot popcorn, slightly scorched, hung in the air. The requests for drinks were almost nonstop, but the grin on Oscar’s face revealed that he was thoroughly enjoying the press and the relaxed good humor of the crowd, half of whom Jessie recognized as regulars from the Knik Road area. She was therefore not surprised when Hank Peterson appeared between her and Lynn.
“Hey, Jessie. Running away from home?”
She introduced him to Ehlers and glanced back toward the pool tables, while the men shook hands.
“Looking for a game?” Peterson asked.
Jessie nodded.
“Thought we m
ight,” Lynn told him.
“Ah.” Peterson grinned wolfishly. “Fresh blood. You any good?”
“Well…”
In a few minutes, Lynn was skillfully knocking balls around one of the tables with Peterson.
While Jessie waited to play the winner, she looked around the crowded room, but no one she knew was close enough for conversation, so she sat quietly, enjoying her surroundings. Across the room, Dell and Stevie from the construction crew were sitting at a table with several other people. Seeing Jessie, Stevie raised a beer bottle in salute.
A dart game was in progress in a nearby corner, a short long-faced man attempting to teach a taller woman in a red-and-white striped shirt how to throw the sharply pointed missiles so they would stick into the board. Jessie grinned as his efforts produced little result. The darts kept flying wide of the target, the woman clearly more interested in having his arm around her than in hitting the circle on the wall.
With a sudden odd sensation of being watched, she looked beyond the game to see J.B. sitting alone at a table, staring at her across the room with a questioning sort of expression. He didn’t move when he saw that she was aware of him, but when she smiled and waved before turning away, he grinned and gave her a two-finger salute. Somehow, however, she had a feeling that the grin hadn’t quite reached his eyes.
As she swung back toward the sudden grinding of ice in the blender Oscar was using to whip up a margarita, she noticed the face of someone else she recognized coming through the front door: the reporter who had portrayed her with such venom in the paper several days before. As he glanced around the room, their eyes met and held for a second. Jessie returned her attention to Oscar, hoping the reporter would sit somewhere else, but he crossed the room and, without invitation, hiked a hip onto the edge of the stool beside her, knocking the jacket Lynn Ehlers had left hanging on its back onto the floor.
Grinning, he stooped to pick it up.
“Hi, there, Jessie. Buy you a beer?”
The confident assumption in his voice that she would welcome his presence ignited a flame of resentment that stiffened the tone of her brief response.
“I have one, thank you.”
“But you’ll soon need another. Hey, bartender!”
Jessie noted the quick response of Oscar’s head turning and the narrowing of his eyes at the reporter’s imperious demand for attention, knowing he did not like to be yelled at, treated his customers with courtesy and expected the same. Catching his eye, she raised a palm in his direction, indicating that she did not want the drink the uninvited man beside her was trying to order. Oscar came quickly along the bar to halt in front of her unwelcome benefactor.
“You bothering this lady, son?”
His abrupt question startled the cocky reporter into a defensive denial.
“Hey, just trying to be friendly. I’ll have a Heineken’s.”
Oscar, well aware of Jessie’s frown of discomfort and rejection, nodded slowly, then issued a warning. “I’ll serve you, but I’d suggest you drink it somewhere else.”
Reaching into the cooler, he retrieved a beer, removed the cap, and rapped it down on the bar.
“That’ll be three-fifty.”
As Oscar rang up the sale and deposited the money in the till, the no-longer-smiling reporter took a long swallow and turned again to Jessie.
“I assume you didn’t like my article.”
Jessie held her temper and answered without looking at him. “No, I didn’t.”
“Well, hell. You should have talked to me. I had to go with what I had. If it wasn’t your side, that’s not my fault. I’m sorry, okay?”
Still not looking at him, Jessie gritted her teeth and took a deep breath.
“Sorry about what? That it wasn’t my side, or that you wrote it the way you did?”
“That you wouldn’t talk to me, obviously. It would have been a much better story if you’d…”
That was enough. Jessie interrupted his refusal to take responsibility by swinging around to confront him directly.
“And since I didn’t want your television crew trampling all over what had taken a lot of work to build, you decided to get even.”
“Whoa!” He threw up both hands as if warding her off. “It wasn’t my crew. I just rode out with them to get the story for the paper. I’ve tried to apologize several ways….”
As she gave up, decided to pretend he didn’t exist, and turned back to her beer, Lynn Ehlers’s strong voice broke into the reporter’s defensive monologue.
“Who are you anyway, fella? You’re in my seat—next to my date.”
Wide-eyed, the reporter slid off the stool, grabbed his beer, and held out a hand to the strong-shouldered man who confronted him.
“Sorry. I’m Gary—ah, Huddleston, Anchorage Daily News.” His half smirk was suddenly a bit nervous.
“Well, Gary, huddle somewhere else,” Ehlers told him, glancing down at the hand without taking it. “I think it’s clear that Jessie would be more comfortable with you gone.”
When the irritating reporter had vanished into the crowd, Jessie was still giggling.
“Huddle somewhere else?” She grinned at Ehlers, as he climbed back up on his bar stool. “Lots of sled-time improve your one-liners, Lynn?”
“Not so you’d notice,” he returned. “Come on. Let’s have another beer and play pool. I whipped Hank—barely—so it’s your turn now.”
13
IT WAS NEARING MIDNIGHT WHEN LYNN AND JESSIE RETURNED to her place on Knik Road. The sky was still lighter in the west than in the east, and a few stars glittered overhead in the openings between the tops of the tall birch trees that lined her drive. The radio in Lynn’s truck was tuned to KLEF, the local classical FM station, and the soft notes of Debussy that filled the cab were very much to Jessie’s liking. She leaned back against the seat, relaxed and a little tired, thinking that except for the appearance of Gary Huddleston it had been a great evening. Lynn Ehlers was good company, with or without his dogs.
She yawned as he pulled into the space next to the Winnebago.
“Sleepy?”
“Yeah. I got plenty of exercise today. A run with the mutts early this morning, then we worked hard all afternoon.”
It was just dark enough for the motion sensor to switch on the yard light, flooding the area brightly enough for Jessie to see that some of her dogs were moving around and a few were barking. They aren’t used to Lynn’s truck yet, she thought. But as she shoved her arms into the sleeves of the jacket she had been wearing around her shoulders, a hint of motion on the far side of the lot, where it shouldn’t have been, made her sit up straight. A dark form had swiftly disappeared into the trees behind her shed.
“What?” Lynn asked, turning his attention in the direction in which she was looking, startled by her reflexive motion.
“Did you see that?”
“See what?”
She hesitated. Had she really seen something? Yes, she had.
“Someone just walked out of my yard into the trees.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” Jessie said, wide awake now, concern drawing her brows together. “He was walking away.”
“I didn’t see anyone.”
“He was only there for a second, at the edge of the light.”
She stared at the place where the figure had vanished, troubled and confused. Opening the door of the pickup, she slid out onto the ground and started across the lot toward the shed.
“Hey, Jessie, wait,” Lynn called, climbing out after her. “I’ve got a flashlight.”
They walked together to the point where Jessie thought she had seen someone disappear but saw nothing.
“Maybe I imagined it.”
In the grass and weeds that carpeted the ground near the trees there were no footprints or marks of anyone passing, but some of the new blades had been crushed underfoot and Jessie noticed the droop of a twig that could have been snapped by someone in enough of a hurry to be care
less.
“There. See that?”
He crouched to examine the twig.
“It’s fresh, all right. Let’s take a look around the rest of the yard.”
For half an hour they searched: the basement excavation, the storage shed with its new hinges, all her equipment, the dog yard. Remembering a former intruder who had left traps for her dogs, Jessie was particularly careful in inspecting their boxes, using a rake to thoroughly toss the straw bedding, but she found nothing suspicious. She had checked the motor home door first of all and found it locked, as she left it.
When they had gone over everything she could think of, Jessie stood, once again staring into the trees behind the shed.
“Nothing’s missing or seems to have been touched. Who could it have been?” she wondered in frustration. “I did see someone, Lynn. Didn’t I?”
“I think you probably did,” he assured her. “You’re familiar with your own yard and would notice. I’d trust your judgment.”
“Well—hell!” Jessie gave up and began to walk toward the Winnebago. “I’ll look again in the morning. Want some coffee before you go?”
He hesitated before answering, as he kept pace beside her.
“No, I think not. You’ve got a lot on your plate for tomorrow, and it’s late.”
She nodded, feeling relieved but a little disappointed to have the evening end—and on a bad note. Thinking how much it bothered her to have someone trespassing in her yard without identifying himself, she did not notice for a minute that Ehlers was no longer beside her. Swinging around, she found he had stopped, and in the glow from the yard light she could see he was looking after her with a thoughtful expression.
“See something?”
She waited till he moved to catch up.
“No,” he said, as they faced each other. “I just—look, Jessie. I asked around about that trooper you were seeing during the Quest and found out that he’s gone. Right?”