Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (7 page)

“Who is that man, Gran? Are you okay? When you didn’t come to pick me up, I began to worry.”

“Everything is fine, child. He’s an old trapper I just met in town.” She pulled a big lard tin with a cloth draped over it down from a shelf above the stove. She removed the cloth to reveal a white mound, like a bubble of bleached skin, and thrust her fist down into it. “You go on. Supper will be ready in an hour. Will you be back?”

Goldie nodded as she inhaled the smell of yeasty dough, watched her grandmother pull out the flaccid mass, throw it on a flour-dusted board and begin to knead. She obsequiously waved some flies away from the counter as she watched the old woman’s knobby hands press and pull and spin the elastic ball.

“Is it okay with you, Gran? Sorry I’m not helping in the kitchen. I’ll clean up after supper.”

Her grandmother snorted softly. “We won’t wait for you if you’re late,” she said, waving Goldie away with a puff of flour.

We?
Her grandmother and that man had become
we
?

As she and Mark drove away, Goldie felt as if she were in a dream. Since they’d come to live near Eagle, her grandmother had been fiercely protective of their privacy at the cabin. She’d managed to rent them a small and isolated homestead on the far side of Eagle Village where there were few passers-by. She did all her business – buying, selling and bartering – in town and discouraged Goldie from inviting school friends over. Now here she was, all in the same day, not only had she not scolded Goldie for bringing a young man to the cabin, but Gran was entertaining a stranger she met in town. It was peculiar enough for Goldie that she found herself in the company of an attractive young Outsider, but her grandmother’s uncharacteristic behavior eclipsed even that.

Betty Salmon had changed. She was becoming unpredictable. The change was sudden, it was drastic, and to Goldie, it was cause for alarm.

– – – – – SIX

According to the hours of service regulations, Hunter shouldn’t have been driving when they arrived in Whitehorse, but he was. Sorry had dozed off in the passenger seat, then retired to the sleeper around midnight and hadn’t yet emerged. Hunter wanted to baby The Blue Knight to help forestall any further deterioration of the U-joint, so he was happy to do the driving himself. The road was good, a few twisty, hilly stretches but for the most part the curves were gentle and the horizon clear and distant. Besides, it was June north of the 60th parallel so it was still dusk around midnight, and the sun had already risen when he pulled into a Petro Canada just south of Whitehorse that looked like it had a machine shop. It was about four-thirty a.m.

The service station was closed, and the bunk behind him was occupied by his co-driver, so he had no choice but to try and catch some sleep sitting almost upright in the driver’s seat. Usually he could sleep almost anywhere, but not so now. It was partly due to the daylight, and partly because he kept looking out the truck windows at the two lane highway lined with skinny trees, remembering what it was like to live and work in the north. It had been over twenty years since he’d left, and he’d never been back – until now.

Faces he hadn’t pictured in his mind for many years kept coming, uninvited. The face of the man who’d owned the service station he was parked in; Hunter judged that he’d been over fifty then, could he still be here? The faces of the staff and regulars at the restaurant he and Ken used to frequent in the Edgewater Hotel. Would it still be the same?

They’d stayed at the Edgewater briefly on their arrival in Whitehorse in 1972 until they’d found a small house to rent on Jarvis Street, a walkable ten or eleven blocks from both the old G-division RCMP building and the Edgewater Hotel, whose bar and grill remained one of their favorite haunts. Not that they didn’t sometimes drive – Hunter had a ‘63 Nova and Ken a ‘65 Rambler – but in the summer especially they enjoyed the walk and the small town feel of Whitehorse, seeing familiar faces on a daily basis, checking out the fresh-faced girls who’d come to town for summer work.

The traffic was picking up as the sun climbed in the sky. He watched a small convoy of RVs lumber by, then closed his eyes and returned to his reminiscences.

He pictured the face of one girl in particular, the dark-haired flower child who had been a waitress that first summer at a watering hole called the Sluice Box Pub. Again he saw her waving to him from the window of her VW Beetle, her long hair windblown, a wide smile lighting up her face. April. Did she die in that isolated cabin near the Teslin River? He thought so, but they hadn’t found a body by the time he left the Yukon. Maybe he could hunt up the detectives here, and ask if the case was ever solved.

He tried to remember the names and faces of his colleagues in G-division, and later M-division. Several he recalled fondly, others not so much. Some of them might still be here, maybe retired, maybe still with the force. How would he feel about seeing them again? He knew they would ask about Ken, although he had no doubt that the news of Ken’s death would have made it to his old detachment. Thinking about Ken still hurt; it hurt a lot. He knew he couldn’t tell any of his old colleagues how he had seen his best friend’s body, and found the suicide note that Ken had written to his wife, but that she had never seen. He couldn’t tell them what he did with the note, how he staged the scene so it wouldn’t look like anything but an accident. It was something he hadn’t told anyone, and never would.

But Helen had known anyway. He had seen it in her eyes that first day, after he told her to go make coffee while he stayed with Ken’s body and called the police. He had seen it again a few months ago when he’d driven Helen and her son, Adam, to the Vancouver airport after Adam was released from hospital. The secret had created a wall between them that neither one had the courage to breach, each unsure and afraid of what damage the truth could do. Funny how little secrets could be fun, but this big secret wasn’t fun at all.

He pictured Helen, her hair, her face, her eyes. He could recall the scent of her, the softness of her skin when her lips brushed his cheek as they said goodbye in February. They hadn’t seen each other for years, and they’d had no more than two hours together, in the company of young Adam, who only knew the official story, that his father had accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun. Conversation had been sparse and superficial. Their eyes seldom met, but when they did, they only telegraphed pain and sympathy, on both sides. On his side, sympathy for Adam’s growing up without a father, troubled and rebellious; sympathy for Helen being a widowed single mother trying to steer her son through adolescence whole and unbroken; sympathy for the nightmares that must haunt the widow of a man who had been unmistakably suicidal in spite of the coroner’s verdict of accidental gunshot.

On her side, Hunter suspected she felt sympathy for him because of his divorce and the resulting separation from his two daughters – although he did see them now and then – and like many others, she probably didn’t understand why he left a good career as a homicide investigator for a solitary life as a long-haul trucker. So many people thought it was a come-down, a disappointment, an admission of failure on his part. In truth, it had been a blessed relief; it was like therapy for his wounded psyche after the twin tragedies of his wife’s demand for a divorce and his best friend’s death. Both events he had no choice but to attribute to him and Ken being police officers. He’d had to stop; he wasn’t sure if it was forever, but he had to stop.

Ken’s face came to him, startlingly clear, in a scene from the past, about a year before Ken’s death. Ken sitting across from him in the bar at the Villa Hotel in Burnaby, just after they’d come from court. A case had just been dismissed. They’d worked for months to find enough evidence for an arrest. He could remember Ken’s voice, slurring slightly after a couple of double vodkas. “What the fuck is wrong with the system. You think what you’re doing is important. You think you’re making the world a safer place. You bust your ass trying to put these scumbags behind bars and then some slick lawyer in Gucci loafers has 'em back on the street before you can spit.” Another slug of vodka, then, “Well, fuck it, Hunter. Just fuck it!  Don't you get tired of being a fuckin' retriever? You bring your handler the stick, and then he throws it back for you to go fetch again. You’ve accomplished fuck all. You complain about it, and the big shots pat you on the head and tell you to go lie down, like some kind of idiot Irish Setter.”

Hunter shook off the image and settled deeper into the truck seat. He finally dozed off, soon to be awakened by the sound of the roll-up door on the mechanic’s shed. He looked across the cab at the building, and saw a figure retreating into the dim interior. Hunter rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and opened the cab door. Time to find out what this clunking sound was going to cost him. He hoped it wasn’t going to cost him his entire paycheck for the trip, or even more.

The news wasn’t good. Parts needed ordering and would have to be shipped, so Hunter’s Freightliner wasn’t going anywhere for at least three days. Hunter called El. Even on a Sunday she was in her office catching up on paperwork and chewing the fat with any drivers who happened by. Her work was her life. Hunter understood her. Days without work could bring you face to face with yourself. They could feel as empty as an abandoned warehouse and leave you examining the crumpled scraps of yesterday that littered the cold concrete floor.

“Damn it, Hunter. Don’t screw up this account for me. Hold on, would ya.” He heard some yapping and rustling, then from a distance but still loud, “Pete! Get back here you little shit. Come. Sit.” Hunter couldn’t help but smile, imagining El’s little black dog, Peterbilt, blissfully unabashed, with his pink tongue hanging out and his dark eyes glittering with mischief. When El was back on the line, she said, “You’ve got a few days yet before the deadline. How far is it to Fairbanks from where you are?”

“About six hundred miles. I’d say twelve hours or so once we’re on the road.”

“Good thing you’ve got Sorenson on board. You won’t have an hours-of-service stop before you get there. Then again, he’s probably the one who fucked up your truck.”

“I’ve thought of that, but it was probably just a matter of time. Wear and tear.”

“Or it could just be some kind of Alaska Highway curse. I haven’t sent many loads that far north, but it seems to me every time, there’s some kind of mechanical on the trip.” She sighed. “Call me when you’re back on the road, sweet cheeks.” She hung up before he could reply.

The trailer was tucked in beside the building, secured with a pin lock. “It’ll be fine there,” said the mechanic, who also happened to own the shop. “I live just out back.”

Sorry came back from the convenience store at the Petro Canada, munching on a prefab sandwich and carrying a coffee. “Good thing we got spare wheels,” he said, pointing to the trailer. “Open up the back and let’s wheel ‘er out so we can go somewhere good to eat.”

“Somewhere nearby where I can rent a car?” Hunter asked the mechanic.

The man shrugged. “Airport?”

“What for, man?” said Sorry, sounding aggrieved. “Let’s just use my bike.”

Hunter made a face.

“What?”

“I don’t relish the thought of snuggling up behind you every time we want to go somewhere. Besides, I don’t have a helmet.”

“Fuck the helmet.” Sorry turned to the mechanic. “The cops stop you without a helmet up here?”

“’Fraid so,” the man threw over his shoulder as he walked back to his shop. “If they catch you. See you in a few days.”

Hunter opened the back doors of the trailer and hooked in a ramp so they could wheel Sorry’s Harley out. He was relieved to see that the straps and dunnage had held it firmly so there was no visible damage to the bike. At least something had gone right.

A few minutes later, duffel bags roped securely behind him, he was seated behind Sorry as the bike roared down the highway into Whitehorse. The wind ballooned his jacket and whistled past his ears, but it felt seductively free to be bareheaded and unbelted at that speed. He only wished he had control of the brakes and throttle himself, as being a passenger made him feel disturbingly vulnerable.

He tapped Sorry on the shoulder and pointed when it was time to veer right off the highway, and they ended up cruising down 2nd Avenue into the heart of town. The early birds out on the street turned their heads at the sound of the Harley, no doubt concerned or at least curious about the arrival of an outlaw biker from the south. By this time they were at a speed that allowed Hunter to relax, but it was still a relief when Sorry finally slowed to a stop in front of a Tim Horton’s, one of the few places open at that time of day, which was just before seven-thirty.

“Now what?” Sorry sipped at his coffee, keeping an eye on the counter for a signal that their breakfast sandwiches were ready for pick up.

Hunter couldn’t help yawning as he stirred some sugar into his coffee. “I need some sleep. I should have stayed with the truck.”

“You would’ve had to eat cold cardboard sandwiches wrapped in plastic if you had.”

“Right. I’ll probably feel better after I eat.” He blew on his coffee, then took a sip. “I’d like to look up some old friends while I’m here.”

Sorry snorted. “Cops, no doubt.”

Hunter just smiled.

“Well, I want to check out the town,” said Sorry. “On my bike.”

“You do that.”

So after breakfast, Sorry revved up his Harley and roared up 2nd Street while Hunter, duffel bag hiked up over his shoulder, set out on foot for the RCMP detachment on 4th. He needed wheels, and was hoping he’d find an old colleague with some to borrow.

“You old son of a gun.” Bartholomew Sam grabbed Hunter’s right hand in both of his and shook it vigorously. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Hunter took a step forward, and his old friend took that as a cue to grab him and lift him off his feet in a big bear hug.

“Damn, but it’s good to see you,” said Staff Sergeant Sam as he released Hunter momentarily, then lifted him off his feet again. “You’ve hardly changed. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were still a cop.”

“Good to see you, too, Bart,” grunted Hunter. “Real good,” he said as Bart released him.

“Come to my office. We’ve got some catching up to do.”

Bartholomew Sam had been one of the first Native Special Constables in the Yukon in the mid-seventies, and he and Hunter had worked together on a number of investigations during Hunter’s time in Whitehorse. Bart was born the son of a shaman of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation, and after several years serving as a Special Constable, became a regular member of the RCMP. He was smart, and fair, and Hunter had found him intriguing, right from the first time they’d met.

“Congratulations on the stripes. You still in investigations?” he asked as he dropped his duffel bag on the floor and pulled a chair around to face the one Bart had settled into. Homicides in the Yukon were rare, but there were enough assaults and property crimes to keep investigators working.

“Yep.” He tapped a folder on the desk beside him. “Just had a homicide in town early yesterday, in fact. The owner of a strip joint on the north side of Whitehorse was found dead in the parking lot of his club, just outside his truck. Knife under the ribs. Only weapon at the scene was his own hunting rifle behind the back seat of his truck. Door was open, seat forward, like he’d been going for his gun.”