Deadfall (12 page)

It worked. There was silence on the open line for perhaps ten seconds, then the short sound he had wanted to catch—as if the caller had taken his hand away from the mouthpiece to hang up the phone and allowed the background noise to be heard for a second or two—sounds like those that would be made in a crowded place by other people—a bar, maybe, or a restaurant, a gathering of some kind. The receiver on the other end of the line went down and the sound changed to that of a closed line.

The recorder he had attached had automatically clicked on. He was able to play it back and assure himself that he had captured an example of the harassing calls that could be analyzed and might possibly lead somewhere.

Satisfied, he went to bed, anxious to make an early start to the Anchorage lab the next morning.

It was almost two o’clock in the morning when a fist-sized, note-wrapped rock shattered the window that overlooked the dog lot, sending shards of glass flying across the outer room.

Alex unwrapped the note:

I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, BITCH
.

Well, at least he thinks Jessie is at home, Alex decided, assessing the damage with disgust.

J
essie spent the afternoon outdoors, enjoying the sunny day, but though she felt safe and relieved to be away from the harassment, she found that a significant part of her mind and emotions was still very much attached to Knik. She couldn’t quite relax and allow herself to let go of the wary watchfulness that had so quickly become a part of her everyday life. There was also a niggling thread of guilt at leaving Alex to solve the mystery of the mysterious stalker—a feeling that she should be doing something herself, not hiding out. But it had been clear that he would do a better job without her to worry about, and there had been little choice, really. Well, she decided, it will take some time. By tomorrow I’ll be able to let more of it go.

From the boxes of groceries she took three slices of wheat bread and, tearing them to pieces, scattered them along the bench on the deck for the opportunistic jays. But while she watched them greedily gobbling up the offering and took several pictures, using a zoom lens to fill the frame with the cocky
birds in their brilliant plumage, she couldn’t keep herself from occasionally lowering the camera to glance around, checking to make sure she was alone. Aside from a small boat with a red canopy that, made tiny by distance, sped across the open water of Eldred Passage heading for Tutka Bay, there was no sign of anyone at all. The day was warm, fingered by a gentle breeze that rippled the surface of the cove, holding only the natural sounds of birds and water washing the larger rocks of the shingle as the tide continued to go out.

When the bread disappeared, so did the jays, though two squirrels chased each other up the trunk of a nearby evergreen and a large, inquisitive raven perched on the wooden handrail to watch her closely and assess the possibility of additional scraps. Ignoring it, she called Tank, who had been exploring new and fascinating smells between the pilings on which the house was raised, and they walked slowly west along the sweeping crescent of the beach, avoiding the big rocks, keeping to the pebbles and sand above the high tide line.

As she walked, Jessie examined the varicolored, water-worn stones and white pieces of broken clamshell, picking up a few pieces, pocketing one of a smoothness particularly pleasing to her fingers. Bleached pure white by the elements, the shells reminded her so much of skeletal remains that she had always called them beach bones, and on each trip to Niqa, she took home a handful to add to a gradually filling glass jar on her desk. She also looked carefully for small flat stones with notches chipped in two opposing sides, for, hundreds of years earlier, they had been shaped by Native fishermen to use as sinkers for their lines and could sometimes be found, though she had always been remarkably unsuccessful in her attempts and retrieved none now.

Over the edge of a low rise above the beach, the meadow spread out: a wide-open space full of tall grass, and beyond, dense forest met it at the bottom of a steep slope, full of brush and all but impassable. Along the water side of the rise, huge logs had washed in, driven by a combination of winter storms
and high tides. A few were piled atop each other; others lay half buried in sand and had been there so long that runners of beach peas had thrust their way up to cling and camouflage sections of the pale, sea-silvered driftwood with their bright green foliage and purple blossoms.

Among these, Jessie found a gap where two logs lay together in a V, forming a deep, sun-warmed space carpeted with sand and affording a view of the north side of the nearest island across the waters of the cove. Here she sat, wiggling her hips to make a comfortable depression in the sand, then leaning back against a log to watch an eagle draw lazy circles overhead as it searched the waves for fish.

Tank abandoned his olfactory examination of a drying pile of bull kelp the tide had abandoned, flopped down beside his mistress, stretched his jaws in a huge yawn, and laid his muzzle on his forepaws for a rest that soon turned into a nap.

It had always seemed to Jessie that time on Niqa was somehow different from time anywhere else. It passed too quickly, filled with the comings and goings of people who enjoyed each other’s company. She had never been alone on the island before, and wondered if the time would stretch out without conversation and activities to fill the days. She also wondered briefly what Alex would be doing with
his
time, how he would go about finding the person who had upset her life—both their lives—so completely. Involuntarily, she felt her body tighten as if a fist had clenched inside her. Part of the reason she had lost her appetite, had not been able to sleep well or lower her guard in the last few days, had been a constant feeling of weight and pressure in her upper chest and throat. She laid a hand flat against her breastbone and, taking two deep breaths, felt the sensation lessen slightly.

Leaving the beach house, she had borrowed a faded, billed cap from one of the hooks by the door. Now she purposely pulled it down to cover her eyes, ignored a stab of concern at not being able to see what was around her, and closed her eyes. Stubbornly, she refused to contemplate any danger and
chose to think instead about the coming winter’s sled dog racing schedule and what preparation her dogs would need to be ready for it, what gear she would need to acquire or repair, what events she would enter this year.

She was considering the possibility of entering the state’s second premiere distance race, the Yukon Quest, as well as the Iditarod, feeling that she finally had enough well-trained dogs to field two teams. The Quest took place in February, however, and her own physical recovery time between the races would be critical, for both were exhausting endurance tests. There would also have to be someone at the kennel to keep up the training of her Iditarod team to get them ready for her return from racing between Fairbanks and Whitehorse in Canadian Yukon Territory. In the twenty-five years since it had started, the Iditarod had changed and become a more professional event, with highly technical equipment and training methods. The Yukon Quest was close to the same length, but more like sled dog racing had been in the Iditarod’s early days. It had fewer checkpoints and longer runs. Though both races took mushers through difficult wilderness country in winter weather, temperatures during the Quest were usually colder because its course ran through interior country far from the coast.

As she had mentioned to Alex, the two Darryls were becoming good wheel dogs, and they would work well in a team for the Quest, both of them heavy through the chest, wiry and strong enough to work just ahead of her sled, managing its weight in the turns, keeping the lines tight. She planned to take Tank as lead dog on both races, for he would recover much more quickly than she and, barring the unforeseen injury or illness, would be eager and ready to go, for he loved to race—would be disappointed, even insulted, if left at home.

He whined slightly at her side, causing her to peer through her lashes to see that he had turned onto his side and, though he slept on, all four legs were in motion as if he were chasing a moose through his dreams. A cloud or two drifted across the blue sky, casting shadows that alternated with the sunshine,
lightening and darkening her cozy nook in the logs, a condition she half noticed when she closed her eyes again. But as she considered her dogs one by one, mentally selecting teams that would work well for each race, the warmth of the day helped her to drift off into a nap and a dream of her own.

In the middle of the Iditarod was a seventy-mile stretch between Eagle Island and Kaltag on the Yukon. When she raced this flat, frozen section that followed the wide river’s graceful curves, if the weather was good Jessie usually put on her headphones and played favorite tapes. Now she dreamed she was there and the music she was listening to was classical, full of the delicate trills of a flute.

She had no idea how long she had slept when a sharp movement and breathy sound from Tank brought her drowsily back to the present. As she opened her eyes to see him on his feet and attentively staring at the dense forest on the hillside west of the meadow, she thought she heard a few notes of the thin echo of the flute in the soft sigh of the breeze that whispered past her ears. The sound was not repeated, and she reached out to lay a hand on Tank’s shoulder.

“What is it, guy? You see something? Hear something?”

He relaxed and turned to give her wrist a sloppy, affectionate lick.

She gathered herself up, sudden adrenaline waking her completely, and sat very still, waiting…listening intently. Nothing but the wind. What had it been? Left over from her dream—or the inspiration for the flute music she had imagined on the Yukon? Standing up, she considered searching for the source of the odd sound, tension and pressure once again a lump in her chest. Her breathing altered and resentment filled her mind. If it was real, it was unwelcome and disturbing.

Before she could decide to move, there was a sudden shrilling from the trees, and an eagle rose from it and flew out over the open space, clutching a still faintly shrieking squirrel in its talons. Tank’s attention turned quickly to the bird and
they watched together as it circled and disappeared toward the east.

Jessie sank to her knees and gave him a good rubbing of ears and throat.

“Well, old mutt, you’re a good pup, but we’re still kind of flinchy, aren’t we?”

A rumble of her stomach reminded her that it had been a long time since her early breakfast, and she picked up her camera as she spoke again to the dog.

“You hungry, buster? Let’s go find something to eat, okay?”

Recognizing the familiar words, he dashed playfully around her, scattering sand and pebbles as they headed back along the beach. She picked up a stick of driftwood and tossed it for him to fetch until they reached the ramp to the deck, where she laid it on one of the huge logs to save for a future game.

Looking to the west, Jessie noticed that a bank of clouds was drifting in and would soon steal the warmth and glow from the day. It was dark and probably full of the storm Ben Caswell had predicted. Before she went inside, she checked the firewood that had been split and piled under the deck. Finding there was plenty, she remembered that she had planned to drag some in from the beach for cutting. Taking a large armful, along with some kindling, she lugged it up the ramp and into the house. She could collect driftwood another day.

By the time she had fed Tank, made a sandwich, and heated a can of soup to fill a large mug, the sunshine had disappeared and the wind was making waves of the ripples in the cove. So she retrieved a new Father Brad Reynolds paperback that she had brought along and settled in the upholstered rocker, with her stockinged feet on the table, to enjoy one of her favorite inactivities—simultaneous food for mind and body.

Except for pauses to make mugs of tea and locate a package of oatmeal cookies in one of the half-sorted boxes, nothing disturbed the peace and quiet of Jessie’s reading for the remainder of the afternoon. When she finally noticed that the
house was becoming uncomfortably cool, and dark enough to qualify as gloomy, she laid aside her book and took Tank for a quick trip to the beach, while a fire she had started in the fire-pit stove took the chill off the room.

It was lighter outside, the wind was stronger, and the tide was coming up the beach with enough strength to create a rattle in the medium-sized rocks that it reached with each surge. She spotted a gray harbor seal riding easily on the white-capped waves of the cove, with its large round head raised out of the water, seeming to watch her walk across to the front of the deck. From a distance, lighter coloring around the eyes made it appear to be wearing a pair of enormous spectacles. With barely a splash, it slipped beneath the surface, reappeared much farther from shore a minute or two later, then vanished for good.

Jessie took Tank back into the house and out of the wind, which so far had brought no rain—a condition that could clearly change at any time.

The fire had done its work and the room was rapidly growing warm. She lit a kerosene lamp, wondering briefly if it was a good idea to advertise her presence with a light in a supposedly empty house. But there would be no one to see it from the water or the other island, which had no houses on its near side—not even a tent camp of sea kayakers this late in the year. She made herself a cup of hot chocolate and another sandwich and, cutting a slice of Linda’s fruitcake, went back to the rocker and resumed her reading as it grew darker outside the large windows. Soon all she could see was her own reflection in the broad panes of glass.

At eight, she called Alex in Knik for a reassuring check-in. By nine-thirty, fire banked in the stove, Tank snoozing on a rug beside the bed, she was snug and warm under two blankets and a quilt, oblivious to the growing storm outside, and—for the first half of the night, at least—sleeping better than she had in a week.