Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (27 page)

Hunter was awakened by the sound of a woman’s voice.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry to wake you, but there’s no one at the reception desk. I’m looking for someone and I was told she might be here.”

He opened his eyes, and saw a woman standing in front of him. She had short blond hair and was dressed in jeans and a denim vest over a white long-sleeved shirt, and a large leather purse was hanging on one shoulder. She was frowning slightly.

Before he could answer, she said, “You look familiar to me.”

Her face was familiar to him, too. She looked about his age. Someone he’d known years ago when he’d lived in the Yukon?

“Do you know if there’s a woman named Betty Salmon here?”

His mouth fell open as he tried to reconcile the woman’s tired face, mature figure and blond hair with the slender, dark-haired, free spirited girl he’d last seen almost twenty five years before. “April?”

Her frown deepened. “You remember me from Whitehorse? I’m sorry–”

“Hunter Rayne. I used to spend time at the Sluice Box when you worked there.”

“One of the Mounties,” she said, still frowning as if trying to place him. Then she nodded. “I had a crush on one of you guys. His name was Ken something. You were his friend, right?”

Hunter offered a crooked smile. “Yes, Ken was my friend.” It had happened to him more than once. Hunter had never been considered a bad-looking guy, but he’d found out early in their friendship that he couldn’t compete with Ken’s dashing good looks and outgoing personality. He wondered, if he
had
asked her out, way back when, if she would have even gone out with him, or would she have held out for an invitation from Ken. He didn’t really want to know. “He passed away a few years ago.”

She put a hand to her mouth before saying, “I’m sorry.” Her lips couldn’t seem to hold the apologetic smile for more than half a second. “Look, I’ve got a lot on my mind right now. I had a call from a number in Whitehorse and I know that someone in the Yukon is looking for me. It has to be something important, and I thought Betty Salmon –” She stopped in mid-sentence, as if debating how much to say to him.

“That someone was me. I’ve been looking for you since 1972.” He smiled in sympathy at her confusion and motioned for her to sit down beside him.

She sat on the edge of the couch, both hands gripping her purse. The question ‘Why?’ was evident in her eyes.

Hunter paused a moment, trying to decide just where to start his story. He chose to answer what he knew was her most pressing question first. “Your daughter wants to meet you.”

“Oh, my God. I hoped so much. Oh, my God. Where is she? Is she here?”

He shook his head. “That’s not why I’ve been looking for you, at least not the original reason. I want to know what happened in Blake Martin’s cabin in October of 1972.”

The woman froze. An expression Hunter couldn’t read crossed her face, and the hands that held her purse began to clench and unclench, as if she were kneading the leather bag.

Before he asked her any questions, he knew he should answer some of hers. He told her where her daughter had been living, and how Betty Salmon had only just revealed to Goldie the truth about her mother and the way April had arrived at Betty’s cabin near Hootalinqua with her as a baby.

“She didn’t tell my daughter about me before last week?” As she digested that fact, the expression on April’s face progressed from puzzled to angry. “She stole my baby. Betty Salmon stole my baby.”

Hunter’s heart sank. He’d guessed there was a chance Betty Salmon could be prosecuted for abducting Goldie, but he wanted to believe it wouldn’t happen. It would be a complicated and costly proceeding, given the involvement of both the Canadian and American legal systems, and the amount of time that had passed. Putting Betty in prison for any length of time would no doubt be worse than death for a woman who’d always been so fiercely independent and reclusive. He nodded at April, but held up one hand to caution her.

“You told Betty you’d come back for your daughter. Did you ever come looking for her?”

“I wanted to. She was just a baby. It wasn’t her fault –”

“Did you come back?”

“I wrote to Betty. I needed to know where she was, if she was still in the same place. I didn’t even know for sure I could find my way back there again. I thought maybe I’d arrange for her to bring the baby to me in Whitehorse or somewhere.”

“And did you come back to the Yukon?”

Hunter had his answer when April looked at the floor.

“Why didn’t you come back for her?”

April closed her eyes and swallowed before replying in a quiet voice, “I needed to make a new life for myself, find a little more security, before I came back for my baby.” She straightened her shoulders and raised her eyes to Hunter’s. “Betty never answered my letters. I sent them to Carmacks General Delivery and all but one of them were returned by the post office.”

Hunter shook his head. “Goldie has grown up believing herself to be Betty’s granddaughter. Betty is the only family she’s ever known. Who will win if you accuse her of abducting Goldie?” He paused. “More importantly, who will lose? All three of you will be hurt, and badly.”

“I want to talk to Betty.”

Hunter shook his head again. He tried to imagine what Betty’s reaction would be. She was in no condition to receive a shock like that. “Wait for your daughter. She’s on her way here from Eagle. Let her break the news to Betty.”

He suggested April go back to her hotel and get some sleep, but she informed him she had flown up to Dawson from Whitehorse without even booking a place to stay. “Besides, I couldn’t sleep now anyway.”

Hunter looked at his watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. He’d already managed to sleep a couple of hours, and doubted he would be able to get back to sleep himself. “Then how about we go find somewhere we can get something to eat? I still have some questions for you, remember?”

Dan Sorenson was sitting in the big armchair in front of the television pushing buttons on the remote. He was flipping from one channel to another, but there was nothing on TV that he wanted to watch. Hell, he didn’t want to be watching TV at all, but he was too wired to even try to sleep.

At first, coming home felt wonderful. The kids and the dog were out the front door and dancing around him before he’d even swung his leg over the Harley. Sasha jumped into his arms and Bruno hugged his leg, and Doobie was wiggling his butt so hard he almost fell over, all the while showing his teeth in that goofy Doberman grin. He couldn’t stop grinning himself. He bent down and gave Doobie’s neck a good scratch, then headed for the house with a kid perched on each hip, both kids chattering non-stop.

Mo stood in the doorway, smiling. He leaned forward to kiss her and she kissed him back, just a superficial smack, but it was a good start. He’d arrived just in time to barbecue the hamburgers, she told him.

“We’re having hamburgers and fries, just like McDonald’s only more healthy,” said Sasha. “Isn’t that right, Mama?”

“Oui, cherie,” Mo said, “More healthy and they taste better, too. The buns are fresh and won’t be all soggy.”

Sorry couldn’t resist saying, “Your mom’s buns are the freshest and best I’ve ever tasted.”

Mo’s smile vanished and she looked away. He decided he’d better not push his luck, and tried to be on his best behavior, but somehow things still managed to go downhill from there.

He helped with the dishes after dinner, then played with the kids so Mo could have some time to herself for a long bath. Later he read stories to the kids and put them to bed. He even cleaned off the barbecue grill and picked up all the kids’ toys from the patio.

It was a bad sign when Mo sat in the recliner reading one of her French novels and left him sitting by himself on the couch to watch a rerun of NYPD Blue. He kept trying to catch her eye, and when she did finally glance up at him, all he got in exchange for his sexiest come-hither expression was about two seconds of a rather chilly smile.

“C’mon, Mo,” he said with a wink. “Didn’t you miss me, just a little?”

She didn’t look up from her book again, only shrugged.

He was doing exactly what she told him to do, he was treating her like a queen, and still she was treating him like shit. With every minute, his resentment grew. Why should he put up with a woman who didn’t appreciate him? He began to work his jaw, trying to keep from saying anything that might make things worse.
Pussy whipped!
He made a conscious effort to see things from her point of view, to figure out if there was any justification for her behavior, but the phrase his fellow bikers would use if they could see him now kept repeating itself in his brain.
Pussy whipped!

Next time she glanced in his direction, he was glaring at her. He looked away and began to scratch at a corner of his moustache. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her put her book down on the end table and get up from the recliner. Without speaking, she left the room and came back a minute later with a blanket and a pillow.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, enunciating each word slowly.

He was on the verge of an angry explosion when she put her hands on his shoulders – as soft and gentle as kitten paws – and he felt the warmth of them through his teeshirt. She leaned in and kissed him on the lips, a tender kiss, lingering just a delicious few seconds. “I do love you, mon cher. But I was hurt and sadly disappointed one time too much. I am afraid to trust you, cherie.” Her eyes searched his, for an answer or for forgiveness, he couldn’t tell which. “I hope you understand me, and please – please, Daniel – give me time to trust you again.”

She turned and walked away. At the hallway leading to the bedrooms, she stopped and turned back to him. “I will set my alarm clock and wake you in time,” she said. “Good night, mon coco.” With a little wave and a smaller smile, she was gone.

So now Sorry sat on the couch. The biker side of him kept arguing with the husband and father side of him; the biker side sneered and chanted ‘pussy whipped!’ while the husband and father side told him to give her time, she was worth it. The kids were worth it. Then the biker would say ‘Fuck her!’ and call Mo a bitch. Sorry was caught in the middle, feeling so unsettled he couldn’t rest.

Doobie wandered in from the kitchen, his nails clicking on the linoleum tiles until he reached the carpet. He laid his head on Sorry’s knee, looking up at him with woeful brown eyes. Were those eyes expressing sympathy for Sorry’s circumstances, or did the dog just have to pee?

“Okay, pal,” said Sorry, rubbing the dog’s head. “Let’s go pee.”

He walked out the back door behind the dog. Doobie trotted over to a well-watered lilac bush while Sorry stood in the middle of the weedy lawn and unzipped his fly. As he pissed, he looked up at the night sky. There was a waning moon, still big and bright enough to make soft shadows as his eyes adjusted to the dark. He heard a soft snuffle from Bruno’s open window and a feeling of contentment seeded itself somewhere in his chest.

“Welcome home, Sorenson,” he whispered to himself. The husband and father side of him repeated the earlier messages: ‘Give her time, she’s worth it, the kids are worth it’, and surprised him a little by adding one more line.

‘And you, Daniel Henrik Sorenson, you’re worth it, too.’

– – – – – SIXTEEN

They sat in a corner booth at the first open bar they came to by walking the unpaved streets of Dawson. On the table between them an unappetizing plate of nachos was cooling off and two bottles of Corona beer were warming up. The soft yellow light of the fixture hanging above the table was kinder to April than the white light of the nurses’ station had been. In spite of the bleached hair, he could more clearly see in her the young woman he had been attracted to so many years ago. He had no illusions about how much his own face had aged, nor did he feel attracted to her now, or wish she was attracted to him. He’d never really known her, he realized, never thought of her as the kind of woman who would willfully abandon her child.

At his request, April explained to Hunter why she had suddenly decided to come back to the Yukon. She had received some mysterious calls and felt sure that they had something to do with her daughter.

“A woman from some detective agency had managed to track me down, but she wouldn’t say why. I knew it had to be about my daughter. Then when I saw two calls from a Whitehorse payphone on my caller ID, I decided I had to come. I flew in to Whitehorse just this afternoon and immediately went to talk to the RCMP to ask if they knew the whereabouts of Betty Salmon or my daughter. She was born at Martin’s cabin so her birth was never recorded. She didn’t have an official last name, except maybe my own maiden name, so the only name I had for her was Golden Dawn. They told me Betty was missing, and that the report had been made by her granddaughter, a girl named Goldie. I can’t tell you how that made me feel, knowing Goldie was alive and I would get to see her.”

She blinked rapidly, then closed her eyes a moment before continuing. “I was still at the detachment when news came in that Betty had been found and taken to Dawson, and that Goldie would be notified to come for her, so I arranged a flight here.”

“Your daughter’s twenty-five years old.” Hunter softened the inherent reproach with a sad smile.

“You’re asking me why I waited this long to come looking for her.” April looked down at her lap, and seemed in no hurry to explain.

Since learning that April was alive, Hunter had wondered if she had ever made an effort to find her daughter. Had Betty’s relocation to a remote village in Alaska made it impossible for her to find Goldie? Or was there another reason, possibly a reason related to the bloody cabin near Johnson’s Crossing? There was no statute of limitations on murder. Had she been afraid that she was on the suspect list?

“What were you afraid of?”

She took a deep breath. “It took a lot for me to come here,” she said. “My husband – he’s a psychologist who does counseling for army vets – he says I have PTSD. Do you know what that is?”

Hunter nodded. Reasoning that the police and the military weren’t all that far apart, he’d researched combat stress when Ken was struggling with depression, before his suicide. He didn’t want to apply the term to his own situation, but in the back of his mind he knew that seeing Ken’s body had been some kind of trigger – the proverbial last straw – the event that began his own descent into apathy and enervation at work, that feeling of burnout that eventually led him to resign from the force.

She closed her eyes again. “I’m on Prozac now,” she said. “But up until recently, just the thought of returning to Michigan or the Yukon would have me curled up in a fetal position in a dark room.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My husband wanted to come with me, but I told him it was something I had to do on my own. Facing my demons, I guess.”

They were both silent for a moment. Hunter picked at the nachos and April took a couple of sips of beer.

“Tell me about Martin Blake.”

Even in the soft light he saw the color drain from her face.

“Martin was a kind man. He knew I was pregnant and had nowhere else to go, and he took me in.”

Hunter was confused. That wasn’t what he expected to hear.

“So what happened?”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Her face displayed her sorrow.

“I can’t confirm that. The day you left, what happened?”

Instead of answering, she said, “That wasn’t his real name, you know. He confessed to me once – I guess he felt safe telling me because I was kind of a deserter myself, in a way – he confessed that he was a deserter from the army. That’s why he kept such a low profile. Well, one reason. He wasn’t a sociable man. He didn’t share much information about his past, even with me.”

“You mean from the U.S. Army, right? So he told you that was why he didn’t use his real name?” They’d been right in identifying him as Grant Sanford, he thought.

“That’s right,” she said. “He’d been in Vietnam, and when he came back to the States on compassionate leave – his dad suffered a heart attack – he knew he couldn’t go back. He said he’d killed a man in Vietnam. He said he was very young, almost a boy. He saw the boy’s face when he was hit; he looked so surprised that he’d been shot, and Martin watched him die. He didn’t ever want to have to do it again.”

“But he killed his wife,” said Hunter, thinking Blake must have lied to April about when and why he’d deserted.

“No,” she said, sounding and looking horrified. “Why are you saying that? Martin was never even married, and if he was, he never would have hurt a woman. If he couldn’t face killing another soldier in Vietnam, how could he be capable of killing anyone at home?”

Had Martin been able to hide his dark side from April? That wouldn’t be at all unusual, given how short a time they’d been together. “Betty Salmon said you’d been badly beaten when she found you beside the river.”

April shuddered. “Yes,” she said. Her eyes seemed to lose their focus, and she seemed to be holding her breath.

“Can you talk about it?” he prompted gently. “Did he hurt you that day?”

She let out her breath and shook her head. “No. That wasn’t Martin.” Her eyes sought out Hunter’s, and he saw a sudden realization in them, or perhaps a plea. “He did kill Martin, didn’t he? All that blood. I knew he couldn’t have survived.”

“Tell me what happened.” He reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, as if steeling herself. “I think it was the man Martin told me about a few weeks before. Martin said he recognized a man from army training in Louisiana, and he was worried the guy might have recognized him and might turn him in. Whoever he was, I never saw him before, and I prayed to God I would never see his face again.”

She took a couple more deep breaths before continuing, her eyes again somehow unfocused as she spoke. “I was in bed with the baby. Napping. Martin had taken the canoe out fishing. I heard the dogs bark, then someone entered the cabin. I assumed it was Martin, so I called out. Just hello or something, to let him know I was awake, then I dozed off again.” She frowned, as if straining to remember. “Next thing I knew, someone pulled back the quilt, held me by the throat and ripped off my shirt, and there was a heavy, foul-smelling man on top of me. I was afraid for the baby; I couldn’t feel her beside me but I heard her crying. Her cries were muffled, and I worried she was smothering.”

She was staring into a distance well beyond the walls of the room. “I screamed and tried to push him off, and he hit me with his fist, again and again until I stopped fighting. Even when I stopped, he punched me in the head and called me a sanctimonious bitch. I know he raped me, I was hurt and bleeding there later, but I think I passed out because I don’t exactly remember it, and I don’t remember Martin coming back. He must have, though, because when I woke up, Martin was lying face down on the bed across my legs. He wasn’t moving and there was so much blood.” She stopped speaking, as if she was out of breath.

Hunter squeezed her hand, hoping it would ground her, but she pulled her hand away and put it in her lap.

“The man who hurt you, can you describe him?”

She shook her head. “His face is a blur. He was big and he had a beard like Martin’s. I think so, anyway. I hate to think about it, him killing Martin when Martin was probably trying to protect me.”

“He didn’t hurt the baby.” Hunter tried to nudge her in a more positive direction.

“He pushed the baby off the bed. I found her all tangled up in the quilt, so I guess it cushioned her fall.”

“Did you check to see if Martin was still breathing?”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t moving and there was so much blood. I just had a sense that he was dead.” She looked at Hunter as if imploring him to tell her she wasn’t negligent. “I couldn’t bear to touch him, and I couldn’t have helped him if I stayed. I don’t even know first aid. I just wanted to get the baby away from there in case he came back, so I gathered up a bundle of stuff I thought I’d need and ran.”

“You took the canoe.” Hunter remembered Betty Salmon’s story.

“Yes. I was going to go to Whitehorse. I was going to go to the police.” She offered a wan smile. “It was the only thing I could do, although if I had been thinking straight, I’d have known I didn’t have a chance to get there. I guess I was half dead, or more, when Betty found me. I was struggling just to stay awake and hold on to little Golden. After I recovered, any idea of getting to Whitehorse just evaporated.”

“You got there eventually. When you left the Yukon the next October, you dropped that anonymous note off at the RCMP detachment, the note giving us Martin’s real name.”

April frowned and shook her head. “A note? What note? I don’t remember going to the RCMP in Whitehorse. I hitched a ride from Carmacks, where I’d gone with Betty. She went to sell her furs and beadwork and stock up on supplies for the winter. I hitched a ride down the highway to pick up my car. I drove south from there and never went back.”

“You didn’t leave a note about Grant Sanford? It mentioned him being from a military base in Leesville, Louisiana.”

“Grant Sanford?” She shook her head again. “I don’t remember a Grant Sanford. Who is he?”

“That wasn’t Martin Blake’s real name?”

“I wouldn’t know. He didn’t tell me. He said it was better that I not know.”

Hunter tried to make sense of what she’d just said. The fingerprints had belonged to someone named Grant Sanford who was an army deserter, but Martin Blake had never given that name to April.

They had assumed that the fingerprints they’d found in the cabin belonged to Martin Blake. If they weren’t Martin’s prints, Hunter wondered, who was Grant Sanford and what was he doing in that cabin? “Did Martin have regular visitors at the cabin, friends or people he did business with?”

She shook her head. “None while I was there.”

Maybe April could ID the photo of Grant Sanford as the man she knew as Martin. “Tell me more about this man Martin said he recognized from army training.”

“I don’t know anything more.”

“Can you remember anything else he told you? Where did he run into the man?”

She chewed her lower lip, frowning, before she spoke again. “Teslin, I guess. He usually went to Teslin, I think. When he got back, he told me about this guy he’d seen there. He said he pretended not to know the guy, but they’d been somewhere in the army together and he was afraid he’d been recognized.” She picked up a chip from the plate of nachos, examined it with a worried expression on her face, then put it down again. “Up until then, I always thought Martin was a draft dodger. That was when he told me he was afraid the man would turn him in as a deserter. I remember wondering what I would do if somebody came for Martin. The baby was due in a few weeks. I was pretty reckless in those days, but not reckless enough to have my baby all by myself in a cabin, miles away from any other human, let alone a doctor. I decided that if somebody came to get Martin, I’d ask them to at least take me back up the highway for my car.”

She looked at her watch. “When do you think my daughter will arrive in Dawson? Shouldn’t we go see if she’s at the clinic yet?”

Goldie stole a glance at Mark’s profile. He looked serious and competent and self-assured. She would have liked to stare at him, but the occasional quick glance would have to do. Riding with Mark felt different in Sally’s big F250, not like it had in Mark’s sporty red Jeep. It felt right, somehow, sitting here beside him in the big Ford crew cab pickup, almost like they were – she was afraid to think it – married or something. He couldn’t know what she was feeling, but she felt embarrassed just the same; when he caught her looking at him, she started to blush.

“What?” he asked.

She pressed her lips together, suppressing a nervous giggle. “I was just thinking about Gran,” she lied.

“She’ll be okay.”

“I know that’s what they said. She’ll be
physically
okay.” Goldie sighed. “I’m more worried about her –” Goldie paused. Was she worried about her mental state or her emotional state? It was odd to think about Gran having emotions; she’d always been so strong and stoic and didn’t show much emotion one way or another. Irritation sometimes. More rarely, enjoyment. Gran was like a rock or a tree, impassive and restrained. “I don’t know what this experience will do to her.”

“Meaning?”

“Failing at what she set out to do. Having to be rescued. She’s not used to that. She’s been living life on her terms, being a survivor. Now suddenly she won’t know how to think of herself.”