Murder on the Iditarod Trail

by Sue Henry

  Schuller drew a deep breath, marshaling his strength, knowing he would have to make the decisions. Turner was, justifiably, in shock. George Koptak had been a friend and mentor to the younger man; they’d both been obsessed with sleds and distance. For over two years they had raised and trained dogs together in Teller, an Eskimo village outside Nome. George had run the Iditarod many times, but this was Bill’s first try and, Schuller hoped, not his last. It was like losing family for the twenty-six-year-old rookie to lose George. To be the one to find him dead in the trail had to be devastating.

  Taking his sleeping bag and brandy, Schuller walked back to the bloody tree.

  “Here, take a hit of this.” He forced Turner’s cold fingers around the bottle and raised it to his lips. The younger man choked down a swallow or two, coughed before he took a third, and handed the brandy back.

  “What are we gonna do?”

  Schuller looked down again at George’s body. “We’re gonna get him to Finger Lake, Bill. We can’t leave him here.” He thought of the wolves that periodically stole dog food during the race. “We’ll put him on my sled in my bag, since we don’t have his. But you’ll have to help me get him on. Maybe we’ll find his team on the way in.”

  He took a long pull of the brandy and shoved it into his parka pocket. Hell, I’m in shock myself, he thought.

  They worked the body into Schuller’s sleeping bag and lashed it to his sled. It took over twenty minutes to untangle the traces and straighten out both teams.

  Before they left, Schuller tied his red bandana to the trunk of the tree as a marker. After the race, he promised himself, I’m coming back to cut down this damn tree.

  3

  Date: Monday, March 4

  Race Day: Three

  Place: Finger Lake checkpoint

  Weather: Clear, light to no wind, snow predicted

  Temperature: High 5°F, low –3°F

  Time: Early morning

  State Trooper Sergeant Alex Jensen wasn’t interested in hunting. The first autumn or two after he had moved to Alaska he had gone out after moose and caribou, but the allure of big game soon palled. Carrying a rifle was part of the attraction of the hunt for those who kept their guns in the rack most of the year. He wore a .357 Magnum as a part of his uniform. His off-duty choice was a Colt .45, the semi-automatic side arm he had learned to prefer as squad leader of a Marine airborne team. He qualified as an expert with both. Shooting moose held no excitement; working homicide was blood sport enough. He felt no hesitation in using firepower when appropriate, but it was identifying a killer that challenged him, patiently putting details together until an unmistakable profile emerged.

  Alex walked out of Palmer, center of the Matanuska Valley farms and dairies. It was surrounded by the majestic peaks of the Chugach and Talkeetna mountains, forty miles from Anchorage, a morning’s drive from Mount McKinley, and three hours from the fine fishing of the Peninsula.

  He had moved there eight years before from Idaho, soon after the death of his fiancée. A month before the wedding, a shadow had appeared on an X ray. Seven months later Sally was gone, leaving him more thoughtful and less inclined to laughter.

  Jensen was tall, rawboned, clean-shaven except for a reddish-blond mustache as full as regulations would allow. There was a gleam of ironical humor in his clear blue eyes. He was pleased to be out of uniform for the assignment he was beginning in the predawn glow of this Monday morning. Under his jeans and wool shirt he wore a layer of thermal underwear, over them, a heavy sweater and bibbed snow-machine pants. Insulated boots covered two pairs of wool socks, and behind him in the rear seat of the helicopter were a down parka, double mittens, and a fur hat with flaps to protect his ears. A ski mask and thick wool scarf lay in the parka pocket, in case a snow­ machine trip was necessary.

  Reaching forward with his right foot, he pressed the communication switch on the floor of the helicopter and spoke through the microphone to the pilot over the roar of the spinning blades, “How much farther, Bob?”

  “Fifteen minutes. Maybe a little more.” The pilot’s disembodied voice came back through the headphones against the constant rush of static. He thumbed at the right window. “There’s Skwentna.”

  In the half-dark, Alex could just make out lights against the horizon and the shape of a few buildings. Closer, a wide bend of the Skwentna River swung north toward Finger Lake. He turned as far as his double shoulder harness and seat belt would allow to see if Trooper Philip Becker had heard the exchange, then back to watch the frozen river unwind under them.

  The midnight call from Iditarod headquarters had gone to the Anchorage dispatcher, relayed down the trail from Finger Lake by the ham-radio operators who volunteered to handle race communications each year. The report of a death, first ever in the famous sled-dog race, had set wheels spinning rapidly. The story would undoubtedly hit newspaper headlines and national television news. Local law enforcement had better be quick to answer the inevitable rush of questions about the unattended death. Since the incident fell along the western edge of Trooper Detachment G’s territory, Jensen found himself aloft well before sunrise, anticipated arrival at seven-forty. This time of year each twenty-four hours gained about four minutes of daylight.

  As they came down onto the ice of Finger Lake, the rising sun cast its glow over the mountains of the Alaska Range, turning each peak the color of rose quartz. The small lake was divided down the northeast end by a narrow peninsula. Several teams rested in the snow around a small cabin at the top of a steep bank. At the sound of the rotors the dogs all lifted their heads. Some tested their restraints, barking and lunging. Alex watched, a dozen or more people came out of the cabin and stood waiting on the hillside. Two of them started down through the restless dogs toward the helicopter on the ice.

  Alex removed his headphones. “Let’s get the gear out,” he said, stepping down to the ice’s snowy crust. From a rear compartment they unloaded food for two or three days, heavy sleeping bags, a two-man tent, a camera, and other miscellaneous detection and survival gear. A couple of lightweight over-and-under rifles in compact cases were last onto the pile.

  The two figures from the cabin reached them, and the taller one held out a mittened hand. “Tom Farnell,” he said as Alex awkwardly shook the bulky paw. “This is Roy Hamilton, the race checker. Glad you’re here. We’ve had quite a night.”

  “So I hear,” Alex responded. “We should take a look at the site. Can we get there by chopper?”

  “Doubt it,” Farnell said. “Schuller said it was around fifteen miles. That area’s covered pretty thick with spruce and alder. You’d have to land so far away it’d be easier to take a snow machine.”

  Alex turned to Bob. “Guess you might as well go on back. We’ll load the body so you can get it to the Anchorage lab and then do our hit here.”

  Bob began to rearrange the left-hand seats in the helicopter. Minus their cushions, they folded flat to accommodate a collapsible metal stretcher, which he took from its compartment and handed to Jensen. The four other men headed off across the lake toward the cabin.

  Roy Hamilton, a round ball of a man, spoke as they went up the hill. “Why the lab?”

  “We need to know how and why it happened, verify accidents. It’s standard procedure for any unwitnessed death. An autopsy’s part of the process.”

  “That’s going to go hard with Turner,” Hamilton said to Farnell.

  “Turner the guy who found him?” Alex asked as they went around the cabin to a small woodshed.

  “Yeah, one of them. He’s pretty shook up. They trained together.”

  “Who were the others?”

  “Just one. Dale Schuller. He’s gone on to Rainy Pass.”

  “Didn’t someone tell him to stay put till we got here?”

  “Yeah, but we got a race going on and Schuller has a shot at it this year. He marked the tree with a red ba
ndana. He’ll be easy to find if you need him. Every checkpoint clocks him in and out.”

  They fell silent as they stepped into the shed. George Koptak’s body, still in Schuller’s sleeping bag, lay on a piece of plywood across two heavy log chunks. The drawstring at the top of the bag had been pulled tight and knotted. Alex untied it and, unzipping the bag, lowered the fabric to search the body for injury. “Good God. A tree did all this?”

  Farnell answered. “Dale said there was a sharp limb that he went into face first.”

  Alex nodded and examined the rest of the body. Finding nothing further, he reclosed the bag.

  They had brought a regulation body bag with them from Palmer. With Koptak’s body already in the sleeping bag, Jensen elected to forgo the inner liner. They placed the body in the heavy outer cover, zipped it up, and sealed it. “Let’s get him on the stretcher.”

  It wasn’t difficult. The body was frozen stiff. As they brought it around the cabin, five of the mushers who waited by the door stepped forward. “We’d like to do that,” one of them said. They raised the stretcher to their shoulders. Although they didn’t walk in step as they went down the hill and crossed the ice to the plane, it occurred to Alex that he had seldom seen anyone accorded more respect.

  “When and where were his dogs and sled found?”

  “About two this morning. Ron Cross brought them in behind his team. We’ll make sure they’re sent back to Anchorage with Turner’s dogs when the support plane comes in. Bill’s decided to give it up.”

  Jensen nodded. “I need to go through the gear before it leaves and see Turner. Then I can release it. We’ll have somebody meet the plane in Anchorage.”

  Bob took off in the helicopter, initiating another round of sound effects from the dogs.

  For the next hour, Jensen and Becker carefully went through everything in Koptak’s sled. Jensen’s expertise was in sifting through physical evidence. If there was anything to be found outside a laboratory analysis, he would find it. He had a reputation for picking out the most minute detail and proving it significant. Becker often accused him of witchcraft and swore it was mental alchemy, but he was learning to apply the same painstaking thoroughness to his own investigations. Though the twenty-eight-year-old had been with the post for over three years, he was new to the investigation unit. Becker’s fascination with crime detection had caught Alex’s attention. He encouraged the younger man, sharing cases when possible, and Becker jumped at opportunities to work with him.

  With the assistance of Roy Hamilton, they sorted Koptak’s gear. It included what every musher was required to carry and have verified at each checkpoint: cold-weather sleeping bag, hand ax, snowshoes, one day’s food for each dog, a day’s food for the musher, dog booties, and a carefully packaged handful of envelopes with Anchorage postmarks, which would be postmarked again when they reached Nome. One of the ways the Iditarod race committee made money was by selling the trail mail, while acknowledging mushers of the past who had carried mail to small communities during the winter.

  Also in the sled were a Coleman stove, fuel, a large square cooking pot for dog food, George’s extra clothes and boots, dog medicines, an assortment of tools, lines, bungee cords, harness, and a small pack containing personal things: a razor, soap, toothbrush, aspirin, Alka-Seltzer Plus, and a plastic quart bottle of seal oil. Instant energy for the musher.

  In the smaller sack hung on the back of the sled they found plastic bags of trail mix, vitamins, chocolate bars, and beef jerky, extra mittens and gloves, and George’s wallet containing forty-six dollars and his driver’s license. Under this, at the bottom of the bag, was a Smith and Wesson .44 in a leather holster.

  The gun was not unusual, Alex knew. Many mushers carried them as protection against the moose they often met on the trail. Deep snow made walking difficult for the rangy animals, and they stubbornly refused to give way, sometimes fighting for their right to the packed snow, kicking and stomping dogs and sleds. If they couldn’t be avoided, they sometimes had to be shot, although the musher was required to gut the carcass before continuing his run, losing precious time. Mushers usually preferred to drive a wide arc around any moose claiming right of way.

  Also in the bag was the cap from a thermos. The thermos itself was nowhere to be found. Jensen frowned as he turned and studied the cap.

  Otherwise, neither Alex nor Phil could find anything odd or unnecessary. They photographed the gear, along with the smashed stanchion and runner, repacked it all in the sled bag, which they sealed securely so it could not be opened, and headed for the cabin to talk to Bill Turner.

  The cabin on the remote lake shore was home to Tom and Nancy Farnell, who each year welcomed the Iditarod racers with hot food and a place for a brief rest. The only stipulation was that they not park their teams on the lake ice. “We’ve got to drink that water in the spring, you know,” Farnell was quick to remind them.

  The cabin seemed smaller inside than out, and its damp heat was oppressive. Clothing, dog harness, and booties hung every­where drying. Eight or nine mushers filled most of the open space. Their conversation stopped as the two troopers came through the door. One by one they put on their warm clothes and went out, one carrying a bowl of stew, which he refused to surrender. The last, a tall woman in a red parka and headband, stopped momentarily beside a seated figure. “I’ll be back, Bill,” she said and left, giving them privacy of a sort.

  Turner, a blanket around his shoulders, was sitting on a bench pulled close to the barrel stove. The hot chocolate in the cup he clutched in both hands sloshed over the edge as Alex introduced himself and sat down.

  The young man’s face was drawn, and dark circles defined his eyes. Though he must have had little, if any, sleep, he seemed alert and answered the troopers’ first few questions clearly in a flat, quiet voice. Giving Turner time to grow more at ease, Alex moved slowly into the questions he needed to ask. He and Becker had, gratefully, accepted steaming cups of coffee from Nancy Farnell. Becker sat quietly, staring into the small square of flame visible through the window in the stove door, and listened intently to the conversation. Turner’s story closely matched what they had been told by Farnell.

  “I understand you’re giving up the race,” Jensen said at last. “Sure you want to do that?”

  “Yeah. It doesn’t matter much now. I want to make sure George gets taken care of right. He doesn’t have any family. I guess I’m about it.”

  “We’re going back out on the trail to check it out. Is there anything else we should know?”

  “No. He was just lying there in the trail. I ran over him before I could stop.” An involuntary shudder racked Turner’s hunched shoulders. “I can’t shake the feeling of the sled going over him.”

  “Isn’t it strange for an experienced musher to hit a tree like that?”

  “I guess. But it was a pretty sharp corner. He hit it funny, though. Lower than he should have if he was standing up on the runners. He may have leaned forward, trying to miss it.”

  “Could he have been asleep?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so. We’re all tired. It takes a while to get into the race. He kept telling me that. ‘Give it time and be careful when you start to get tired.’ But he was a pro. He wouldn’t rest while he drove through the trees. It had to be some kind of crazy accident.”

  He shook his head and set down the empty mug on the end of the bench. Alex could hear Nancy Farnell across the room, talking quietly to her husband, who had come in from outside. Two mushers lay on sleeping bags on the floor beyond the stove, heads pillowed on their parkas. One had a yellow stocking cap pulled down over his eyes to shut out the light, leaving only his full beard and slightly open mouth visible. In place of the well-known cat logo, this cap read dog. The man nearest the stove shifted in his sleep and flung an arm out. The other lay on his back, motionless.

  How, Alex wondered, did these guys stand it, lov
e it, come back year after year? Close to two weeks on the trail with little sleep and grueling physical exertion. By the time they reached Nome they must be burned out.

  “We found a thermos cap in his sled bag, but no thermos,” said Becker.

  Turner straightened suddenly, remembering. “I got it,” he exclaimed. “Picked it up in the trail just before I found him. I put it in my bag and meant to give it to him. He always carried coffee. Filled his thermos at every checkpoint.”

  “How do you know it’s his?”

  “It’s got his initials on it. I’ll get it for you.”

  Alex stood up and put a hand on Turner’s shoulder. “I’ll go. I’m already booted up. Where’s your rig?”

  Outside, he paused to fire up his pipe, relishing the warm taste of tobacco. He found the thermos in the bag on the back of Turner’s sled, as he had described, with the initials G.K. in black paint. It was empty, missing its cap, and ice crystals, faintly brown, showed in the neck. Handling it carefully, he took a plastic evidence bag from his pocket, put the thermos inside, and sealed the top. Back in the shed he also bagged the cap. He stood for a moment with both bags in his hands before he put them into Koptak’s sled and resealed it.

  Something bothered him about the thermos. He made a mental note to ask the lab to run a test on the traces of frozen coffee and check the container for fingerprints. There was nothing to indicate this death was not an accident. Still, it was odd that an experienced musher would simply fall off his sled and into a tree. Especially one who knew enough about trail hazards to warn his younger friend to stay alert. George Koptak had run this part of the trail before, was aware of its dangers, and took coffee along from every checkpoint.

  That was it. If George had carried coffee consistently, why hadn’t he stopped to retrieve his only thermos when it fell? Two days into the race, he would not have ignored it when it dropped from his hand. He had tucked the cap into his bag, but left the thermos in the trail.