Natalia’s eyes swelled with tears. She swallowed hard and nodded. ‘The day Schofield’s body was found, my father had a call from Marsha Hillingberg. She said that she knew Peter Galloway was still alive and that if my father didn’t sign the land over to Tryggve, she would have every trooper in the state out looking for him. It was then we understood that God no longer wants us to be in this place. And so we signed.’
Edie and Derek swapped glances. It didn’t surprise Edie to know that Schofield had been Hallstrom’s puppet all along. She’d witnessed firsthand his fan-like adoration of the Norwegian. But once Marsha Hillingberg had got herself involved in the action, Schofield was doomed and he must have known it. If his old playground wound hadn’t opened up then, Marsha’s casual disposal of Vasilly Chuchin must have brought the blood to the surface all over again. Edie could only imagine how much Schofield hated Marsha Hillingberg and how powerless he was to do anything about it. They were so tied that the only way to denounce her would have been to go down with her. Marsha had boxed him in so that his life was no longer his own. Edie wouldn’t have been surprised to discover he had contemplated suicide. And yet, if she knew anything, it was that footprints in the snow never lied.
‘That’s it,’ Natalia said. ‘You have the story.’
Edie rose from her chair and went over to where Derek was standing. ‘We’re done here.’ At the door, she turned and wished Natalia good luck.
42
They picked up Edie’s things at the studio and called round at the Bear Motel. A man in a thick blue parka was standing in the walkway just in front of Olga and Lena’s room. Derek flashed Edie a warning look to stay back and went ahead, clutching his weapon, but catching sight of them, the man waved and shouted over, ‘It’s OK, I’m with Bob.’
The man was Tom Brokovich, an old friend of Truro’s. They’d met at the Alaska Investigative Bureau in Anchorage. He owed Truro a favour and this was his way of helping out.
Inside the room the two women were sitting on the bed playing with the baby. Detective Truro sat in the chair beside the bathroom talking on his cell phone. He stuck a finger in the air to indicate he wouldn’t be long, then pointed to the chair on the other side of the table. Derek plucked his Lucky Strikes from his pocket and made a sign to indicate that he was going out for a smoke, while Edie asked the two women on the bed if they’d slept.
Lena said, ‘A lot better than in dog cage.’
‘You get some breakfast?’
Lena smiled and pointed to a half-full Dunkin’ Donuts bag. ‘Bob treat us like Empress of Russia.’
‘Don’t get any big ideas,’ Edie said, chucking the baby under the chin, ‘this little one’s a Republican, I can tell.’
Lena laughed and explained the joke to Olga, who cracked a little smile. Oblivious to all the trouble, the baby lay on her back doing her best to remove her socks.
‘Bob say if we cooperate, agree to testify, maybe we get leave to stay.’ Lena gently lifted the baby up and, clucking, said, ‘You American baby.’
Derek came back in, looked inside the doughnut bag then put it down just as Truro was finishing off his conversation.
‘The house of cards has a brick missing.’
Edie raised her brows and gave him a quizzical look.
Truro shot her a sheepish grin. ‘OK, so I’d make a lousy contractor, but you wanna hear some good news or not?’ The women stopped playing with the baby and went quiet. ‘That was an old bud of mine at the APD. Seems like Police Chief Mackenzie’s taking early retirement with immediate effect. Grounds of ill health.’
‘The rats are running for cover,’ Derek said.
‘They got Harry O’Brien flying in from Juneau as Acting Chief. We go way back. He’s a straight-up guy.’
‘What if Mackenzie goes public with what he knows?’ Edie said. ‘Wouldn’t that lead directly to Marsha?’
‘What’s his incentive? That way, all he does is incriminate himself. He was at the Lodge too and, presumably, DNA tests can prove that he fathered the Stegner baby. Besides, what could he prove even if he wanted to? Unless he’s got something we don’t know about, there’s nothing to connect Marsha Hillingberg to the Lodge except the tape. And even the tape’s no proof that she knew what was going on or that she had anything to do with Vasilly’s death. Mrs Hillingberg’s real smart. Right now we got a suicide, a plane crash, a dead baby everyone thinks got sacrificed by a satanist nut, plus a bunch of circumstantial stuff but nothing definitive.’
Lena suddenly let out a choking sob. She’d risked her life to get the CCTV tape and this was the first time she’d heard it wouldn’t be enough. She sank back and put her face in her hands.
Bob Truro said, ‘I apologize, Lena, for my tactlessness. That was low cop-talk. I should have phrased myself better.’
Lena looked up through eyes punched with grief. ‘You think phrase hurts me? Everyone betray my son. No justice for God’s Little Error. That hurts.’ Olga reached out her arms and held Lena on the bed. For a moment no one knew what to say.
Derek waited until he thought no one was looking, then checked his watch. Lemming brain, Edie thought, glancing at him. Bob Truro had picked up on it too.
‘Derek, you’d make a lousy undercover cop,’ he said. Derek’s head snapped up. He looked guilty, then grateful.
‘Sammy doesn’t know about any of this and I wouldn’t want to let him down.’
He was right, Edie thought. Her ex had been through a lot. He deserved this. She sucked on her teeth.
‘Lena, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘our fella lost his son last year. Running this race means the world to him.’
‘’s OK,’ Lena said, digging her thumbnail into the pad of her index finger. ‘I know how is, losing child. You go.’
‘Thank you,’ Edie said simply.
‘Don’t worry about Lena and Olga or the baby,’ Bob added, as much for Lena’s benefit, Edie thought, as for her own. ‘They’ll be fine. Tom’s gonna stay here until we can get ’em to a safe house. Alaska’s full of places to hide.’
Edie opened her mouth to speak. Truro tried to wave her off, but she ignored him.
Turning to Lena, she said, ‘Lena, we’re gonna get Marsha Hillingberg. I guarantee it.’
From the other side of the room, she saw Derek Palliser bite his lip.
43
At the Iditarod HQ in Nome, people were shifting to and fro packing things up. Chrissie Caley let out a disappointed sigh. There were dark moons under her eyes and her skin was sallow, a nerve twitching in her left cheek. Ever since Aileen Logan’s quick exit and the mayor’s tragic death the atmosphere had been muted.
‘It’s such a shame what’s gone on. At one point it was looking so exciting.’ A TV news crew came up waving their accreditation passes. She waved them off. ‘I’m tellin’ ya, I was Aileen’s biggest fan but, boy oh boy, did she leave a stink behind when she baled.’
The room was being used as the communications hub for Marsha Hillingberg’s visit. The mayor’s widow was due to lay a wreath at the site of her husband’s plane crash, then make a speech this evening at the Glacier Inn. In the circumstances, the gubernatorial election had been postponed, but all the buzz suggested that Mrs Hillingberg was going to use tonight’s event to announce her candidacy. She seemed to be riding high in the political blogs.
Derek said, ‘You think she’s got a chance?’
‘People are ready for a change,’ Caley said. ‘They were ready to vote her husband in, why not her?’
Derek flipped a cigarette from the carton and lit it. ‘Democracy, dontcha love it.’
Caley gave a wry smile. ‘Not a fan, huh? Me neither. Even less so since Aileen debunked. My ex-boss was crazy about Mrs Hillingberg, almost convinced me at one time, but these past days, I’ve kinda come to question Aileen Logan’s judgement.’
The film crew moved away. Edie waited till they were out of earshot then said in a low voice, ‘Look, Chrissie, tell you the truth, the reason we came is we’re
kinda anxious for news about Sammy.’
Caley looked uncomfortable. ‘He’s officially off the race, guys, so I don’t have any more information than you. We’ve said he can use the trail so long as he does the stopover at Safety. We don’t want the animal welfare folks on our backs, but he’s not on our GPS tracker any more.’
Derek put the cigarette out on his boot and threw the stub in the trash. He looked at Zach.
Zach said, ‘Last time I saw him, he’d just rested up at White Mountain and was heading for the Safety roadhouse.’
Caley went on. ‘Like I said, I don’t have any more accurate intel on that than you. We had a call from White Mountain a couple of hours ago. They’re shutting up right now, but they mentioned Sammy had been through. Said he looked real tired. My guess is he should be reaching Safety any time around now.’ Her phone rang. ‘You might wanna go down there yourselves. It’s only twenty miles or so.’ She answered the phone, listened for a moment, then, placing her hand over the receiver, she furrowed her brow and said apologetically, ‘Sorry, guys, I gotta take this.’
As they tromped back to the house, Zach made the plans.
‘Actually, that’s not a bad idea of Chrissie’s, you meet Sammy up at Safety. Megan and Zoe are at some mom and baby programme at the school most of the day and I gotta go on shift so you’d be welcome to take our snowmachines.’
Later, when they were out checking over the snowmobiles, Derek said, ‘Things seem to have worked out pretty good for Marsha Hillingberg. No one has been able to link her to any of this.’
Edie looked up and pulled off her snow goggles. She remembered her mother’s saying that great hunters were fashioned out of patience. ‘Not yet,’ she said.
Derek keyed up Zach’s vehicle, then let the engine run idle.
Edie followed suit. ‘What say we ask her about it?’
Derek swung around. His eyes were full of light. ‘Tonight?’
‘Why not?’
Derek laughed. ‘Hell, yeah,’ he said.
Someone had ploughed a track from the drift leading out of Nome along the shoreline towards Safety, but they chose instead to take the snowbies out over the pressure ice onto the flat pan, where the going was smoother. On the way out, Edie tried to erase the investigation from her mind. She wanted to meet Sammy clean, unimpeded. Partly, it was being on the move that made her feel that way. There would be time to fill him in on the story later. The sun appeared, briefly, and it was bitter cold, the kind of hard crisp freeze you could do business with. Heading east on the sea ice with the land spread low and rocky to her left, the great expanse of Norton Sound to the right, she felt more at home than she had since she’d arrived in Alaska. Home. It felt as if it was just over the horizon, right up ahead.
They made landfall a few miles shy of what was a speck of a building on the horizon, and carried on along the track. The wind had picked up alarmingly now, stirring up drift like a great brush sweeping a dusty yard. Six feet up, the air was clear, but look down and you couldn’t see your own foot. Up ahead a pair of snowmobile lights appeared out of the gloom, followed by the machine itself. The driver slowed and stopped. He was a large man, a qalunaat, wearing the uniform of an Iditarod steward.
‘You folks heading for Safety? We’re just packing up there. Last musher left about two hours ago.’ He was shouting against the wind.
Edie said, ‘Sammy Inukpuk?’
The man cupped a mittened hand around his ear to indicate that he hadn’t heard. When she repeated herself, he shook his head slowly.
‘Can’t say that name’s familiar, but we’ve been real busy with the stragglers today. If you wanna go up to the roadhouse there’s still a coupla folks there can help you out.’
The roadhouse was the only structure in Safety, a large, wooden building surrounded by a handful of outbuildings and fishing shacks, all shabby around the edges and oddly out of keeping with the grand sweep of tundra and low hummocky slopes and wide, salt-ridden ice lakes about. A pair of ravens clung to the snow hooks, buffeted into green-black bouffants by the wind. All around were sled tracks, but no sleds.
Edie and Derek exchanged worried looks. They went into the snow porch, tamped the ice off their boots and removed their three layers of mittens and gloves, their snow goggles, hats and parkas. A woman and a man bustled around inside tidying up equipment. The woman whirled round, said her name was Laurie and asked how she could help.
‘We’ve come for Sammy Inukpuk. Chrissie Caley down in Nome said he’d be here by now.’
Laurie looked surprised. ‘He a musher?’ She dived into a bag, pulled out a list and began checking it. She was the kind of qalunaat woman Edie had seen a lot around Alaska – well-intentioned in a flinty sort of a way, can-do and unflappable. The kind Edie always took to.
‘I’m real sorry but he’s not on our list,’ she said, looking up. Her face took on a sympathetic air.
‘He dropped out of the official race at Koyuk.’
Laurie let the paper fall back into her bag. ‘Well, that explains it right there. He should have flown out of Koyuk then.’
Edie continued. ‘No, he wanted to carry on. They said he could still use the trail.’
Laurie raised an eyebrow. She was still sympathetic, only perhaps a little less patient. ‘I’m real sorry, Miss, but we can’t fully support competitors who’ve dropped out. Last musher on my list passed by here two hours back. We’re packing up and getting ready to leave, before that old blizzard gets going.’ Just then there was a loud clanging sound from outside as the wind whipped up something metallic and threw it around a little. ‘Look, there’s fresh water and some cans and plenty of fuel if you want to stay here and wait for your friend. I guess he should be along any minute, right?’
The man hurried by carrying a box, acknowledged them with a nod, and addressed himself to the woman.
‘We gotta go, hon.’
‘Love, honour and obey!’ Laurie let out an ironic but affectionate little laugh. ‘You guys staying?’
Edie nodded.
‘OK, then. Good luck with your friend. Looks like the wind’s whippin’ up. When he shows it’d be best if you all keep in here till it’s passed over.’ And with a wave of her hand, she was out of the door.
Edie and Derek heard two snowmobiles start up then fade into the screeching of the wind. They dumped their packs on a table to the left of the front door, pulled off their outerwear and looked about. The place was cosy at least. A large dark wood bar curved around at the back. Someone had tacked postcards and foreign banknotes up on the supporting pillars. Edie went over and cast an eye over them. Nowhere she’d rather be right now than at home in Autisaq. Derek pulled off his fleece and lit up a cigarette, a worried expression on his face.
Edie said, ‘You think something’s happened to Sammy?’
‘You think it hasn’t?’ He sucked on his smoke, anxiously squeezing the fingers of one hand with another.
‘It could just be the weather. Or maybe the dog team. Some of those dogs we picked up at Koyuk weren’t as fit as the ones he left behind.’
Derek wasn’t so easily reassured. ‘The fella already got sabotaged.’ He shook his head. ‘We should have told him what was going on. We should have pulled him off the race.’ His voice was full of anger and regret.
Edie bit on her lip. ‘Derek, this was the only thing in his life he always wanted to do. Run the Iditarod. You crush a man’s dreams, he’s dead already.’ As she said the word ‘dead’ a bolt of terror shot up her spine and made her light-headed. If something had happened to Sammy then it was because of her, because she had just kept going on and on picking at the old sore. Justice for Lucas Littlefish and Vasilly Chuchin. Who was she kidding? Wasn’t this all just another Edie Kiglatuk production?
She sat down on a barstool and took a deep breath. They would just have to go out and look for him. The trail was still marked, if not by official flags, then by the runner lines of dozens of sleds. Sure there was a blizzard coming up, but th
ey had snowmobiles and emergency supplies. If he’d been at White Mountain earlier in the day, he couldn’t be that far away.
‘We need to go find Sammy,’ she said. ‘You got your service pistol?’
‘What kind of question’s that?’
Edie started pulling on her outerwear. She was putting her hat back on when she heard the door swing open. For a second she thought it was Derek going out to the snowmobiles. Then she knew it wasn’t. She moved her head round slowly. There, standing in the doorway were two large qalunaat. The one with the ice-blue eyes was pointing a handgun at her. The other, moose-nosed, held his weapon against Sammy Inukpuk’s forehead.
44
The two men took them outside the roadhouse at gunpoint, forced them to remove their outerwear then hog-tied each. For what seemed like an age they waited outside in the gusting snowdrift while the two men hitched Zach’s and Megan’s snowmobiles behind their own, laughing and bickering in a combination of Russian and broken English. Edie picked out the words ‘Ice Row Truckers’.
‘Ice Road, dipshit,’ moose nose said, in English. ‘How they gonna truck down Ice row for chrissakes?’
‘Man, that’s what I said,’ his companion said. ‘You listen one time, you know this.’
Their work with the snowmobiles done, they hauled Sammy and Derek to their feet and got one man on each of the towed snowmobiles so that he was sitting upright with his hands tied around the steering column. For some reason, perhaps because they saw her as less of a threat, the man with the moose nose untied Edie’s ankles and instructed her to ride pillion behind him.
She looked back at Derek and Sammy. If they were afraid for what was to come, none of that showed on their faces. Say what you liked about Inuit men, when it came down to it they were tough as walrus hide. Women, too. She worried about Derek in particular. He had taken his fleece off inside the Safety roadhouse and what he had on was nothing sufficient for the weather. Tough he might be, but even Police was still human.
The Boy in the Snow Page 28