Sammy said, ‘They’re gonna bury us.’
‘Uh nuh,’ Edie said. She felt oddly calm now. ‘If they wanted to do that, they’d have dug in from the top. Whoever it is, they know what they’re doing. They want us out alive.’
They could hear the rhythmic chopping of the axe now, slicing its way through the compacted snow. After what seemed like an age, a thin blade of light shone grey through the wall.
Then a voice said, ‘Hey, is anyone in there?’
It was Megan Avuluq.
The relief Edie felt passed through her chest and into her face like an electric storm, fizzing as it went. She heard herself gasp, then Sammy’s voice booming, ‘We’re here, we’re here!’
A minute later a gap opened up in the snow. The light shone briefly then dimmed as Zach Barefoot’s face appeared through the hole. There was a loud whoop.
‘You folks down there ready for breakfast?’
They were less cheerful when they saw what a state Sammy and Derek were in, and stunned into anxious silence when Edie explained how they’d got there. Once they were out of the snow, Zach threw up a bivvy shelter, hustled them inside and lit the oil stove. He wrapped them in survival blankets while Megan inspected their frostbite and administered hot sweet tea. There would be time to explain how they’d found them later. For now the priority was to get them back to Nome and into the clinic.
Zach dialled the satphone and immediately got through to the Alaska State Troopers’ dispatcher who promised to send the helicopter and a doctor right away. They talked about what to do with the frostbite and agreed it would be best to wait for the doctor. They could try to unfreeze the tissue slowly in warm water but while there was still even the faintest possibility that the helicopter might be weathered out and the flesh refrozen, they decided it was just too risky to begin thawing them out.
The ’copter arrived shortly afterwards. Edie’s own hands, only mildly frostbitten, were already beginning to thaw, the pain coming on strongly now. Sammy and Derek were still too numb to feel much from the frostbite and from the looks Zach and Megan were exchanging Edie understood that things were worse for them than even she had realized.
They loaded up. Zach hitched the two snowmobiles together and started back to Nome alone while Megan came with them in the helicopter. She was in uniform, and she was armed.
In the air, Megan said, ‘When you didn’t come back we called Chrissie Caley. She said two of the race stewards at the Safety roadhouse had left you and Derek waiting for Sammy.’ A while later Caley called her back. Sammy’s dog team had come limping into White Mountain. They were still dragging the sled but the tarpaulin was missing.
‘We called the AST but they just blanked us. Zach said that stuff with Harry Larsen got their backs up. They kinda thought we were muscling in on their territory. Whatever. They just said they were tied up with Marsha Hillingberg’s visit right now, but they’d send out the search helicopter when the weather had cleared.’
Marsha Hillingberg. In all the circus of the past twenty-four hours, Edie had forgotten. Megan saw the look on Edie’s face.
‘Listen, Edie.’ Megan turned away from the men and, leaning in to Edie so far that their noses almost touched, she spoke in a grave voice. ‘You can’t go on with this. Whatever you think Marsha Hillingberg did or didn’t do, you’ve got no proof at all.’
‘I’ve got Detective Truro.’
‘You honestly think that Truro’s gonna be able to rock the boat? Edie, you don’t understand how things are here. For half a century Alaska’s been run by the same bunch of old sourdoughs, bankrolling each other, glad-handing, swapping jobs, pushing their agenda and keeping anyone new out. Marsha Hillingberg is the first real opportunity for political change Alaskans have been offered since they became Alaskans. Believe me, they aren’t gonna turn away from her because you have some grainy tape with her holding a baby, even a baby who was subsequently found dead. You won’t persuade them to connect the two events because they don’t want to and because there’s no proof.’ She laid a hand on Edie’s knee. ‘The moment Derek and Sammy are fit to travel, you have to leave. You have to go back to Autisaq. We can’t protect you, Edie. Neither can Detective Truro.’
Most of her knew Megan was right. It was the other part Edie was worried about.
An ambulance with two gurneys was waiting for them on the landing strip in Nome. They bundled Sammy and Derek inside. The paramedic went in after them. Edie and Megan squeezed in last and they moved off towards the airport road. From out of the tiny back windows, Edie could see something out of the ordinary seemed to be happening in the terminal building. There were troopers everywhere and men in fancy outerwear over city suits talking into headsets. Over in the parking lot, a couple of TV crews were stationed. The whole thing screamed ‘dignitary’.
They waited for a moment at the exit to the lot as a black SUV drew up to the airport entrance. The driver went around to the passenger side and opened the door.
Edie could feel the adrenaline rise up inside her like some tundra weed at the first summer sun. Megan saw her, shouted, ‘No, Edie!’ but it was too late. She had grabbed the handle of the ambulance, pushed open the door and was already running towards where Marsha Hillingberg was settling herself in front of the TV news cameras, Andy Foulsham beside her, with a phony grin on his face. The only thing going through her head right then was the hunter’s overwhelming need to bring down her prey.
Others had seen her running now. A tall man wearing a headset came up and made a grab for her, but she managed to shrug him off. Another filled his place, but she dived under his arms and escaped. It seemed that Marsha Hillingberg hadn’t yet seen her. She was talking into the TV cameras. Edie ran forward, her heart pounding, aware of a uniformed trooper, a young guy, tall, approaching her from the side. There was a moment when Marsha spotted her and time ground to a halt and in that moment Edie was driven by some wild energy that seemed not to belong to her. The trooper was nearly on her now, she knew she didn’t have much time. There was no rational explanation for what happened next. She leaned down and with her puffy frostbitten hands, she scooped up a handful of snow and threw it as hard as she possibly could, watching, as if in slomo, the snowball rising up and over the heads of the security detail, the TV news crews, and in one instant she felt hands bundle her arms to her sides and saw Marsha Hillingberg’s face, the eyes screwed into blank slits, her mouth a gasp of horror as the snowball detonated on her face.
As the gubernatorial candidate just stood there, stupefied, Edie heard herself scream, ‘You’ll trip up, Marsha Hillingberg. God’s Little Error will turn out to be your biggest.’
A large mittened hand went over her mouth and she felt herself being whirled around and the trooper’s face was in hers, shouting something she could not hear. And then it was all over. From the extreme edge of her field of vision, she saw Andy Foulsham brushing Marsha Hillingberg down. Her eyes snapped about. Megan was pushing through the crowd towards her, shouting something she couldn’t hear.
The young trooper brought out his cuffs. She held out her hands and noticed him reel back a little. The hands were like blown rubber gloves, puffed, raw and sinister, the wrists swollen and purple.
‘Cuff those, sonny.’ Her lips widened into a wry smile.
Megan bustled in, panting. She threw the trooper an apologetic look.
‘I’m sorry, officer, the lady’s just come off a S&R. She’s a bit, you know, rattled. Hypothermia and all. We’re trying to get her to the clinic right now.’
The trooper hesitated, looked at those hands again, then gave a little nod.
‘You make sure they keep her inside till she’s…’ He searched for the right phrase. ‘…till she’s all better.’
Megan looped an arm through Edie’s and escorted her away. When they reached the ambulance, she frowned and said, ‘What the hell was that?’
Edie clambered back up into the vehicle and cracked Megan a smile. ‘Just one woman giving another a head
s-up.’
46
The sound of the phone woke her. She blinked and saw her hands, huge and bandaged, lying on the counterpane and remembered where she was. Then the pain kicked in.
The phone continued to trill. She wondered how long she’d been asleep, glanced through the chink in the blinds, saw that it was still dark and realized that it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours. She hoped Sammy and Derek were managing to get some rest at the clinic. The phone stopped ringing and a woman’s voice came drifting through from the next door room. There was a knock on the door, then the sound of the handle turning. She saw Megan’s face, then heard her voice, still thick with sleep, saying:
‘Hey, Edie, it’s Sharon on the phone. She says it’s urgent.’
Edie took a breath and tried to bring the name to mind and the only one she could think of was Sharon Steadman, Tommy Schofield’s assistant. She checked the alarm clock beside the bed. It wasn’t far off midnight.
‘OK,’ she said, scrambling to get out of bed, ‘I’m coming.’
Megan came into the room and switched on the bedside lamp. ‘I got the phone.’
Edie sat up. They both looked at her bandaged hands and swapped sad smiles.
Megan said, ‘You want me to put her on speaker?’
‘Sure. Then we can both hear.’
Megan gave a sorry shake of the head. Her eyes shifted back to the doorway. ‘I’m sorry, Edie, but, you know, I gotta go feed Zoe.’
Edie watched her leave the room. She knew that Megan was trying to tell her that she was drawing the line, that she had a daughter to think about, and that was OK. She took a breath and leaned forward towards the phone.
‘Sharon?’
‘That you, Edie?’ Sharon Steadman’s voice for sure. The girl sounded as though she’d been crying.
‘What’s up?’
‘Edie, you near a laptop? I’d like for you to go online.’
There was a laptop on the small table in the living room. She’d seen Zach using it. Lifting herself from the bed, she went to the door and peeked out. The laptop was where she had last seen it. She went back inside and bent down so her mouth was as close to the phone as she could make it. The throbbing in her hands had become an all-out burn now.
‘Sharon, I got some stuff going on right now. Maybe you could tell me what this is about?’
The voice just said, ‘Please.’
‘OK, but be patient, right?’ As she said the words, Edie heard her mother, Maggie, asking the same thing of her when she was small. Right now, that seemed impossibly distant. Grasping the phone between her wrists, she shuffled to the door and into the living room. The laptop lid was down, but she managed to work the top loose with her teeth. Strong teeth, she thought. Maggie would have approved. A woman with strong teeth could chew many pelts and a woman who could soften pelts could make clothes for many children. That’s what Maggie would have said.
She found a pen and, holding it awkwardly between her bandaged hands, pressed down the On button. The screen lit up and a chord sounded.
‘OK, so what now?’ she said.
‘Type “MoFo Eskimo” into Google.’
Edie felt her heart sink right there.
‘Sharon, it’s midnight, I’m in pain and I don’t have any fingers available, so maybe you just want to tell me why you called?’
The door to Megan’s room cracked open. She looked like she wanted to get back to Zoe then get some sleep. But not yet. ‘Seems like you could use some help,’ she said.
Edie gave a reluctant nod. Into the phone, she said, ‘Sharon, my friend Megan’s here. Anything you want to say to me you can say to her.’
The voice on the phone sounded frayed. Perky Sharon had left the building. ‘So, like I said, what I want you to do is to type “MoFo Eskimo” into Google.’
Megan’s eyebrows rose. She typed in the words and followed the link to a YouTube page with a blank screen and the legend ‘Eskimo gets hot under the collar with would-be-governor Marsha Hillingberg’. The clip had 187,945 plays. Megan groaned and put her hands over her face.
‘This MoFo Eskimo says bring it on,’ said Edie. She was thrilled that nearly two hundred thousand people had seen Marsha Hillingberg getting snowballed.
Megan raised her eyes and pressed play. Whoever had taken the footage had captured Edie throwing the snowball, then spun round and picked up Marsha Hillingberg’s reaction. Edie’s voice played through the laptop’s microphone, muffled but still audible:
You’ll trip up, Marsha Hillingberg. God’s Little Error will turn out to be your biggest.
The clip faded out.
‘What do you know, Sharon?’ Edie asked quietly.
There was a pause, then what sounded like a single sob.
‘“God’s Little Error”, you said that.’ Sharon blew her nose.
Megan mouthed, ‘Drunk?’
Edie shrugged a ‘maybe’, then in the kindest voice she could muster, she said, ‘Look, Sharon, it’s late, why don’t you get some sleep? You can always call me in the morning.’
‘You think I can sleep knowing what I know?’ Sharon’s voice screeched up an octave.
‘At this point, that’s hard for me to say.’ Edie’s hands were on fire now and she was struggling hard not to lose her temper.
‘I gotta tell you, but I’m scared.’
Edie gave a long sigh. ‘Scared? We’re all scared. Get this straight, Sharon. The only folk who aren’t scared are the dead ones, and even they get a little nervous sometimes.’
There was a pause. ‘I know what you thought about Tommy Schofield.’
‘We don’t need to discuss it, then.’ She cleared her throat. ‘You know, seeing as it’s midnight.’
‘I felt bad about making that call to you, Edie. But you shouldna come to Tommy’s office pretending you were someone you weren’t.’
‘Who would you like me to pretend to be?’
‘You don’t like Marsha Hillingberg much, do you?’
‘If I had a Christmas card list she wouldn’t be on it.’
‘Tommy hated her. He called her Hellingberg.’
‘A wit too,’ Edie said drily.
Sharon went on. ‘I knew something was wrong when Otis and Annalisa Littlefish kept coming into the office some time after Thanksgiving. Mr Schofield seemed fine for a while, but after Christmas he started to get kinda agitated. He would come in yawning like he hadn’t slept and he was kinda ornery with me. One time I thought I heard him crying in his office but then he came out all smiley like nothing happened. I heard him shouting on the phone a lot too. First I knew he’d, you know, killed himself, was through my neighbour Diane who read it on the Homer web page. Afterwards, I had to clean out the office. I found the combination for the safe.’ Edie leaned forward. Now they were getting somewhere. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have peeked in. There was a pile of stuff, just papers. None of it meant anything to me. There were so many files, so much crap, you know, I didn’t know what to think of it. But there was this one file, with “God’s Little Error” written on it in Tommy’s handwriting.’
Edie and Megan exchanged glances. This was beginning to feel like something now. Sharon had seen the YouTube clip and heard Edie use the same phrase. She’d made the connection.
‘I went and got the file out of the storage facility.’ She was a bit breathless now, replaying the scene over in her mind. ‘Edie, the file had one of those cards in, you know, those memory cards, like the ones you put in a camera? I’m not good at all with that technological stuff, so I took it over to this friend of mine.’
‘Pictures?’
‘Uh nuh. It was a recording of a phone conversation.’
Edie felt her breath quicken. Her eyes shifted briefly to Megan. Her face wore an expression of intense concentration.
Sharon said tentatively, ‘Does that make me a bad person?’
Megan leaned forward.
‘Sharon, this is Megan. You tell us what was on the recording.’
> ‘Yeah.’ There was another sniff and a pause. ‘It was Tommy and Marsha Hillingberg and they were fighting. I don’t think Marsha knew she was being recorded.’
In the brief silence that followed Edie could hear her own blood rushing through her veins.
‘What were they talking about?’
Silence. There was a gasp on the other end of the line then Sharon Steadman burst into wracking sobbing. For a few impossible minutes all they could hear was the sound of anguished weeping. Then, gathering herself, Sharon said:
‘They were fighting about what she did to “God’s Little Error”.’
47
‘I’m sure gonna miss that hound!’ Stacey laid a mug of hot tea on Edie’s usual table at the Snowy Owl Café. ‘Bonehead and me, we’re like this.’ She crossed the first two fingers of her right hand and scanned the table. ‘Now, can I getcha anything else or you gonna wait for your guest?’
‘I’ll wait, thanks,’ Edie said, pouring sugar into her tea. The bandages had come off her hands now but they were still red and leathery and exquisitely sensitive to temperature. She wrapped some napkins around the handle of the mug and took a sip.
Two weeks had passed since Megan Avuluq and Zach Barefoot had dug Edie, Derek and Sammy out of their snow cave. The doctors in Nome had discharged Derek and Sammy only yesterday morning. Sammy’s left hand was still in bandages, and Derek’s frostbite was likely to take a few months to heal, but right now it looked as though they’d both avoided any amputations. All three of them had flown back to Anchorage. They’d checked into a bland hotel in the middle of downtown and were expecting to board the evening plane to Vancouver, from where they’d take the red-eye to Ottawa. So long as the weather held off, they could expect to land in Autisaq in a couple of days. It felt good to finally be going home.
Meantime, though, there was business to attend to. First off, Detective Truro had asked to see her. After that, she intended to fetch Bonehead and make her way back to the hotel where she was meeting Annalisa and Otis Littlefish. The Littlefishes were picking up their daughter from the Green Shoots Clinic. TaniaLee had put in a particular request that Edie be there so she could say goodbye.
The Boy in the Snow Page 30