by Sue Henry
“Quiet, thank goodness. We’re drawing a well-earned breath between tourists and the race madness that will gear up after the holidays. Can I give you coffee?”
“No, thanks. Just need a little of your time.”
He introduced Becker and explained their errand.
“I need to know if you’ve received any recent letters, packages…anything that would constitute threats against the ITC, the race, or mushers involved in it. Or if you’ve heard of anyone who has.”
“Threats? Nobody’s mentioned any. Of course, we get our share of strange letters—mostly unsigned—from the animal activists, and a few that are more general. But I can’t say we’ve had anything lately—or against specific mushers. We do keep a file, though. Let me get it and we’ll look.”
She brought a handful of envelopes and letters to her desk and spread them out on the side closest to Jensen and Becker. “Here. Maybe you’ll recognize it, if there’s anything similar to what Jessie’s been getting.”
Jensen and Becker went through them all one by one, but found nothing.
“I think there’re more archived somewhere,” Potts told them. “But they’re over five years old. Can’t see how they’d apply now, but still we keep them, just in case. I’d have to dig them out of storage. They’re not kept here: Space is limited, as you see.”
“Don’t bother,” Alex told her. “That’s too long ago. If we need to see them, I’ll let you know. How about phone calls? You been getting any hang-ups? Anything strange?”
“No more than usual.”
“Any mushers with particular attitudes about women in the race, or with a grudge against other racers?”
“Well, there’s always stuff being said to intimidate the competition—part of the game plan. But it’s not done with any serious intent to scare anyone—almost tongue-in-cheek, most of it.”
“Well…let me know if you notice anything,” Alex requested, getting up from his chair and offering his hand. “Thanks, Joanne.”
As the troopers walked back through the gift shop, Becker stopped for a minute to take a look at a picture of several Iditarod champions that hung next to the sales counter. As he turned to follow Alex to the door, a tall woman in the gray-blue uniform of a postal worker came in and up to the counter.
“Hi, Jennie. Here’s your mail.” She handed over a pile of envelopes, large and small, held together with a rubber band, and went out the door.
“Thanks.” The clerk didn’t lay them down, but moved from behind the cash register to take them into the office the troopers had just left. As she passed Becker, he glanced at the collection in her hands and stopped short.
“Hey, wait a minute.”
At the sound of his unexpected demand, both she and Alex swung toward him, startled.
“What…” she began.
“Let me just look at that top address.”
She held it out in silence, a puzzled expression on her face.
Jensen took two or three long steps that brought him close enough to look over Becker’s shoulder at the envelope. Joanne Potts stuck her head around the doorframe to see what was going on in the shop and raised her eyebrows in question.
The address label was printed in exactly the same font and size as those Jessie had received. The upper left corner, where a return address would have been, was empty. The postmark indicated that it had been mailed in Anchorage.
Potts came from her office and crossed the room to see what they were examining so closely.
“It could be anything,” Jensen said. “Lots of people use this same kind of print.”
“But it could be our guy.”
“True. Better find out. Joanne, will you give us permission to open this one envelope? It looks just like Jessie’s.”
“Of course. You want me to do it?”
“I’d rather you didn’t touch it before we know. There haven’t been any prints, but you never can tell. Let’s go back to your desk.”
Using another letter to hold it down, he carefully slit the top of the envelope with an opener she provided, and with the metal tool lifted out and spread open the single sheet of paper. They all leaned closer to read the short vindictive message:
THE IDITAROD COMMITTEE SHOULD LOOK INTO JESSIE ARNOLD’S ILLEGAL TRAINING AND RACING METHODS. SHE’S NOT THE ETHICAL, EXEMPLARY MUSHER YOU THINK SHE IS. HEED MY WARNING, OR YOU WILL REGRET IT.
“Good God!” Becker exclaimed. “We were ahead of this, but not by much.”
“Not when you consider that it had to be mailed yesterday or the day before,” Jensen returned.
Potts leaned forward, both hands on her desk.
“This is awful, Alex. Can we do anything to help?”
Jensen thought for a moment before answering.
“What would you have done if you got it cold—before we got here to explain? How would you have reacted?”
“Well, it would have gone to Stan, of course, probably the board. We treat every accusation seriously, so we would have discussed it and made a decision about following up on it. We don’t get many, but only a few are such obvious trash that we ignore them.”
“And this one—if we hadn’t come in?”
“We’d probably have gone to Jessie, checked her kennel and equipment, if she’d let us. Everyone’s rights have to be respected, including hers. We’re not the sled dog racing Gestapo, and don’t intend to be, but she’s registered for the next race, so that gives us some latitude and authority. We’re not out to police mushers, just to keep the race as clean as we can make it.”
“Then you should do exactly what you would normally. I’ll take this—with your permission—to the lab and get you a copy to show Stan. Let’s keep it tight—need-to-know only. Whoever’s doing this might anticipate that you would do something involving Jessie, be expecting it. It should seem that you are following through, as usual.”
“Yes, I see. We can do that. Will you tell Jessie?”
“Of course. She’ll go along with…whatever.”
Phil Becker raised a hand, frowning as a new thought came to him.
“Do you think this person could be tapping Jessie’s phone, Alex?”
They both turned to look at him—Potts with astonishment, Jensen with a nod, knowing how the younger man’s mind skipped from point to seemingly unrelated point in the clues of a case.
“Possible, I suppose. Good thinking, Phil. We can find out easily enough. But if it is tapped, I want it left alone. Shouldn’t alert the perp by messing with it. Joanne, if you call Jessie for any reason, be sure you keep that in mind. Don’t say anything that would let a listener think you suspect there is a tap, but try not to sound unnatural, either.”
“Right. I’ll keep that in mind. And, of course, you can take that piece of garbage to the lab. Maybe it’ll help somehow. Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of right now. I’ll be in touch, okay? If you get any more of these, or if anything happens that I should know, call me.”
“You bet—immediately. And Alex—thanks. This is important to us, too, you know. And, please, tell Jessie I’m here if she needs me and to hang in there.”
“Thanks, Joanne. I sure will.”
“Damn—damn—damn!” Jessie’s anger once again had her pacing the room, after tossing a pillow furiously at the sofa. “This is too much, Alex. It never crossed my mind that this bastard would do something to involve the committee. It’s monstrous—insulting. How dare he! I feel like I’ve been assaulted.”
“You have. Don’t kid yourself. Assault doesn’t have to be a physical attack. Filth comes in all shapes and sizes.”
He was in the process of attaching a recorder to the telephone, meaning to capture on tape the next hang-up call that came in. An expert from the lab had checked the line and the cabin for listening devices and found none, but he’d warned that if it were somewhere outside it might not be easily detectable.
“It could be tapped on an irregular basis—someone listening at specif
ic times, for instance, or recording only when in use, like the one you’re going to use.”
The recorder Alex was installing would automatically turn itself on whenever the receiver was lifted in response to an incoming call.
“I want the techs to play with that short bit of sound at the end of these hang-ups. They can slow it down, massage it, maybe identify something we’d miss, and give us ideas on what it is. We’ll get a trace going with the phone company, too. See where it’s coming from.”
He had also picked up a caller ID device, which, before the phone was answered, would show the identification of the caller—if it wasn’t blocked, which he suspected it would be.
Jessie had left the few bills and junk mail in the mailbox as Alex had instructed. He wanted to pick them up as he turned into the long driveway. He had arrived early, to find that the day had passed uneventfully for her and Linda Caswell, most of it behind locked doors, planning what they would plant the following spring and how their gardens would be arranged. Linda had brought along a sweater she was knitting, and some extra yarn to show Jessie how to crochet a pot holder that required a clever fold in its construction.
Though Linda had completed a significant amount of her fluffy peach-colored sweater-in-progress, Jessie had found close work frustrating. Used to spending her days with her dogs, she resented being cooped up indoors and had been unable to sit still, making her friend nervous. Once, as they discussed the situation, she had burst into angry tears and threatened to go out.
“I won’t live in a box. It’s what he wants—to scare me silly. It’s not fair.”
But halfway to the door she had changed her mind and taken her temper and anxiety to the kitchen, where she threw together a large batch of bread and spent the next hour kneading it, punching it, pounding it—taking out her rage on it—then waited for it to rise and repeated the process. More plump loaves than she and Alex could eat in weeks now cooled on racks all over the room, waiting to be wrapped and deposited in the freezer. Several had now already gone home with Linda, and Alex cut large slices from both ends of one still-warm loaf and devoured them appreciatively with homemade raspberry jam.
“Yum-m. Best part. Have to make you mad more often if this is the result,” he teased. “Great appetizer. What’s for dinner?”
“Spaghetti, with sausage in green and black olive sauce. Some of what I froze last month.”
“Wonderful stuff! I skipped lunch. Becker had a burger, but I wasn’t hungry.”
But he had something to do before dinner. He crawled out from under the desk once he had finished his installation chore.
“Now call this phone on the cellular, will you? I’ll see if it’s working right.”
It was. The caller ID refused to give the number of the cell phone, as expected, and the recorder clicked on correctly when he lifted the receiver.
“Okay. Now we wait. Did you get any of those calls today?”
“No. But I jumped every time the phone rang. I let the answering machine pick it up and only answered when I knew who it was. There weren’t any hang-ups.”
Alex crossed to the sofa and sat down near the warmth of the stove.
“Come and perch for a bit. I’ll tell you about the rest of my day.”
7
Monday night was long, wakeful, and completely quiet, with no further incident. Alex woke in the wee hours to find Jessie’s side of the bed empty, and he was half aware that she had spent more time trying to find a comfortable position than sleeping. The air was chilly as he climbed out of bed and went to the door of the outer room.
“Can’t sleep, Jess?” he asked the shadow that occupied the end of the sofa nearest the stove, from which he could smell the sweet scent of burning pitch and hear logs crackling as they came to life. She was sitting in the dark, facing the dog lot, once again wrapped in the afghan.
She turned her face toward him, and in the glow of the flames that shone through the glass of the stove door he glimpsed her weary smile.
“I’m okay, but I can’t just quit trying to figure out who could be doing this. Sorry. I tried to be quiet.”
“You were. I didn’t hear you—just knew you weren’t there and woke up.”
“Get cold?”
“Nope, just lonesome.”
He crossed the room and sat down close to her, inside the afghan that she held open for him. They watched the flickering fire in silence for a few minutes, until the wood blazed, increasing the glow.
“I had a bad dream,” she confessed shortly.
“What was it?”
“I was running the race, the other side of McGrath. You know—where all the willow and snow machine tracks make the trail really hard to follow, and you can lose it if you’re not careful? I couldn’t seem to find it—kept going and going, and winding up back where I started. I knew I was lost. There weren’t any markers, and there was no one to tell me where the trail was. Then there was someone, but they were following me and I couldn’t see them. I knew it was someone who wanted to hurt my dogs, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get away. They kept coming closer, and—I could hear their phone ringing…. Then, all of a sudden there was a giant hole in the trail and I was falling into it—the whole team pulling us right in, they wouldn’t stop—like they couldn’t hear me yelling at them—and the phone kept ringing—and I woke up. Not very hard to figure out, huh?”
She was very still. He put his arm around her and could feel the tension in her body.
“It’s okay, Jess. I’m here…right here.”
She sat up straight and rigid for a second or two, before leaning back against him. “I hate this. Really, really hate this.”
“I know. So do I.”
“I’m so tired, Alex. Seems like every bone in my body aches and my mind won’t stop. It feels like a bird that flies into the house and keeps frantically hitting the windows, trying to get out.”
Alex and Jessie fed the dogs together the next morning and checked their condition.
“They need exercise,” she said sadly, pouring warm food into the last bowl. “I should be running some of them with the four-wheeler until it snows.”
“Don’t even think about it. They’re fine,” he told her bluntly. “A few days without a run won’t hurt them.”
“Is it only going to be a few days?”
“I certainly hope so.”
She stopped to pet a female that approached, wagging her tail in anticipation.
“Hey, Sadie. You just want a little sugar, don’t you? She’s going to have another litter.”
“Great. She has good pups. How many of hers did you take along on the race last year?”
“Four, and I’m thinking of adding the Darryls this year, if they work well at wheel.”
As they were bringing the feed buckets to the cabin for cleaning, Linda Caswell pulled up, the back seat of her Blazer full of grocery bags. She grinned at Jessie’s questioning lift of an eyebrow.
“If cooking makes you feel better—we’ll cook. It’s a little early, but I thought, if you’d help, I’d get the fruitcake done ahead of time this year. We can test it at Thanksgiving.”
They carried sacks of food into the cabin and Linda began to sort the supplies into piles on the table. Linda’s fruitcakes were highly prized by friends and family, appreciated even by those who claimed to hate the traditional holiday confection. She refused to use the usual candied citrus, made them instead with dried apricots, peaches, dates, pineapple, cherries, pecans, and a generous amount of fruit brandy—before and after baking—prior to storing them away for a month or more to ripen. Preparing the ingredients—chopping and dicing—usually took her a day; mixing and baking the loaves, another. But with two of them working, she thought they might complete the job in one.
“Great idea,” Jessie agreed, and began to fill the kitchen sink with soapy water for washing the breakfast dishes—clearing space in the small kitchen.
“Be sure she doesn’t get out the door with all of them
, Jess,” Alex instructed with a grin, and left the two absorbed in their culinary occupation of the day, pleased to see Jessie’s mood lighten, even slightly. Nevertheless, when she accompanied him to the door and kissed him good-bye, she clung just a little, in an uncharacteristic way.
“Don’t forget to call me,” she requested as he put on his coat.
“I won’t,” he told her.
As he went down the steps toward his truck, he heard the deadbolt thump solidly into place in the front door. It renewed his uneasiness as he headed for Palmer, more determined than ever to track down the offensive cause of their tension. The longer this threat lasted, the more damage would be done to Jessie’s self-assurance and confidence. Bound to affect their relationship, it was intolerable.
As his anger and resentment grew, he put his foot down a little heavier on the gas pedal, impatient with the time it took to reach his destination and some possible solution. He was so close to the situation, he felt he was blinded by the emotion of it, which added to his anxiety. As the truck rumbled over the railroad tracks and into Wasilla, he pounded the wheel with a frustrated fist, causing a woman headed the other direction in a van to give him a startled glance as she passed.
Jessie and Linda spent the morning slicing dried fruit and crushing pecans. By noon they were ready to take a break for lunch.
Looking out the window at the dog lot for the dozenth time, Jessie frowned.
“It’s really warmed up out there,” she said. “I should give the mutts more water.”
“Is that a good idea?” Linda looked up from the bowl into which she was scooping apricot pieces from the cutting board.
“I can’t take this out on the dogs—it’s not fair. I’d normally water them. If we go out together and you keep watch with the gun while I do it quickly, I think it would be okay.”
After thinking it over for a minute, Linda agreed, even though there was really no way to spot a sniper should one be interested in concealing himself among the trees and brush.
“Okay, but let’s take the cell phone and lock the house.”
From the windows, they cautiously examined everything they could see around the cabin before pulling on their coats and boots and going out onto the porch. Linda carried the shotgun and walked with Jessie as she poured water in the pan for each dog; both of them watched nervously as they moved through the lot. They had reached the last row of dog boxes when Linda’s troubled voice stopped her friend cold.