Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery (20 page)

“Stothers will fly me in, with the snowmobile, land me as close as he can to where we saw the light, unload the snowmobile, give me a compass course to where we saw the light, and I'm off.”

“You're still taking a hell of a chance if that's the murderer.”

“I'm willin',” I said . “Barkus is willin'.” I don't remember everything I read in Dickens, but I do remember Barkus, the one who, faced with whatever test of dumb determination, always replied, “Barkus is willin'.”

Ted got it. “Yeah, but Dickens never sent Barkus out on a snowmobile after a murder suspect and two or three accomplices.”

“He would have if the situation had called for it,” I said stoutly.

Reluctantly, “Okay. Be careful. We'll keep in touch by radio if we get anything on Bonner or anything else. And you bloody well keep in touch, too. Every hour on the hour would do fine.”

When I hung up I thought very briefly of Edie. She should be warned against anybody, especially a plausible bastard like Bonner, applying for the use of her dog team. Nevertheless, I decided I'd try Gloria first.

She answered the phone in her room. She sounded strained, not much more together than she'd been in that bizarre conversation the night before. “I've been trying to figure out whether to phone you,” she said. “I had a couple of drinks with William, I mean I had a couple and he had six, and he was talking real crazy about those other guys . . .”

Her voice trailed off. Then, as if she'd taken a deep breath and decided not to stop now, went on. “Maybe I'm wrong, but I almost got the idea that he'd seen them! Kept saying he didn't blame Harold Johns, he hoped he was okay. And once he said, like mumbling to himself, I mean he was really drunk, ‘I fixed those two bastards, though, and I'll get the other one, too.' Those were his exact words. What do you think he meant?”

Well, I had an idea. But it seemed too much.

I said, “Do you know where No Legs is?”

“No. I tried to find him, but he must be staying with friends. He's probably a little short of cash for a hotel.”

“One more thing,” I said, and told her about Bonner. She listened to that in silence. The question running through my mind was whether Bonner was now desperate enough to be a killer himself.

Edie. Her place wasn't far away. I walked. The wind had died a little but had left a frosty clear sky where northern lights were forming and reforming, audibly crackling. My beautiful North.

I really missed being able to talk to No Legs. Never mind Bonner for the moment. He might never show up. I had an idea we had almost everything we needed to know, if we could just jiggle it around a little: the caribou crossing, the second snowmobile, and William's wild claim, if it was intended as a claim rather than a forecast, to have “fixed those bastards”. If anyone could project all these elements into a guess on where the centre of the action was, based on knowledge and experience, it was No Legs. Before, there'd been no way of narrowing the search into one specific spot somewhere between that caribou crossing and the Mackenzie River. Maybe it was right in the middle of the Franklins, a hidden place that William might know and only a few others, Natives like No Legs, a place where a plane might land and nobody would suspect it was there.

But if I couldn't find No Legs, I couldn't find him. His sister had gone with him, so I couldn't check with her either.

Edie's dogs set up a clamor when I got close. I knocked on her door. She must have started for the door when she heard the dogs. But if she had any holdover annoyance from the previous night she didn't show it, just looked past me to her dog lines and decided they didn't need her attention, then said, “Come in. Tea? Just made a pot.”

Her space was small, neat, everything in place. She was wearing a pink sweatsuit, her hair neatly brushed, and without the bulky winter clothing she'd worn every other time we met, she looked fetchingly feminine. In contrast, I felt sweaty, harried, dirty, and somewhat masculine, oddly enough. She came to the point as soon as she'd poured my tea.

“I was rude to you the other night, Matteesie. I'm really sorry.”

“That's okay.”

“I was disappointed because it seemed like such a great trip and then got blown to hell.”

“I was disappointed, too. I thought it would be sort of nice, you and I and No Legs snuggling up in the tent to keep warm and listening to the wind.”

She looked at me for signs of lack of seriousness, but I wasn't showing any.

“Anyway,” she said, “I want to volunteer again, if you need me and the team. Today I heard a few things.”

“Such as what?”

“About the guy stealing that gasoline maybe being the one who shot Morton Cavendish.”

“Who told you that?”

“Oh, hell,” she said, “that Icelander talks a lot. I heard him in Bear Lodge saying he wished he'd had a chance to shoot the son of a bitch and, I quote, ‘beat the fuckin' Mounties to it, about time there was a little law and order around here' unquote.”

“That sounds like Oscar.”

The tea was good. I could have used a drink but she didn't offer. I warned her about Bonner and described him to her: “Curly hair, parted in the middle, reddish moustache.” I told her about him beating up Gloria and saw the glint in her eyes. She didn't like the beating-up-Gloria story at all. Then, since we were being chatty and I'd been too unchatty with her before, too busy being the steely-eyed man-hunter of song and story, I told her what Stothers and I had done today and what we had planned for tomorrow. I'm sometimes like that with good-looking women. Like them to know that even if I'm five feet six, I think like a giant.

“I'd rather be going out with dogs,” I said. “Quieter. Better on the trail.” I was laying it on. Besides being true, I figured she'd like that. “But I've got to start a lot closer to the action than I can get by dog team. Anyway, you've got a school week starting tomorrow.”

She didn't comment on that, just shrugged. I finished my tea. It was getting late. She came with me to the door. “So we're friends?” she said.

“Sure.”

“I haven't met many men like you, Matteesie,” she said, and reached over—we were about the same height—and kissed my cheek.

 

So I had that much more on my mind when I was flying over the empty tundra the next morning. Because of our load, we'd had to switch planes. “No problem, we'll take my jumbo jet,” Stothers said, wheeling out his Twin Otter.

Among other essentials, we were carrying Charlie Paterson's Norman Wells detachment snowmobile and sled, the outfit I'd brought down to Fort Norman. On the sled was loaded what every well-equipped Mountie on a getting-our-man patrol in the frozen North required—extra fuel, watertight match box backed up by three Bic lighters or vice versa, bottle of Mount Gay rum, light block and tackle, tools, spare belts, axe, tent, police strength two-way radio, Verey pistol, signal flares, binoculars, boil-in-the-bag food, primus stove and fuel, kettle for boiling snow, flashlight, tea bags, bedroll, snowshoes, extra socks, spare parka. In the way of guns there was a Colt M-16 rifle which fired .223-calibre ammunition from a 20-shot magazine, and a sawed-off Remington Model 870 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. The shotgun I hoped I'd never have to use (they make a real mess).

I also had what I considered to be a lifetime supply of ammunition, too much, but Pengelly had argued, “You'd feel pretty stupid swinging an empty at the bad guys and yelling on the radio for more ammo.”

He'd picked me up at Bear Lodge in the van, and lectured me all the way to the airport about being careful.

“Nothin' personal,” he said. “There just ain't so many Eskimo cops around that we can afford to lose one.”

It all took a while to load, but after that we made good time. At a little after eleven, an hour after sunup, Stothers landed where the caribou had crossed Big Smith River. We'd estimated that to be about 30 to 35 miles east of the Mackenzie.

In the air he'd yelled that he'd like to take a run farther in, maybe find a landing place closer to where we'd seen the snowmobile headlight, but I shook my head. A desperate man who suspected he might have been spotted could decide to lie in wait to see what happened next. He'd have to be nuts, but people do nutty things sometimes. It was chancy enough without us towing a banner reading, “Look out, man! We're on your tail.” Stothers didn't argue.

When it came to unloading I was glad I wasn't using one of the heavier breeds of snowmobile. A forklift had helped load it. Unloading was up to us. Neither of us was Arnold Schwarzenegger. The heavy webbing holding the Elan and sled in place reminded me briefly of Morton Cavendish as he was strapped in on his last ride. We unlashed it, laid a narrow sheet of one-inch plywood as a ramp from the Twin Otter's door to the snow below and attempted to manhandle the snowmobile a couple of feet to where gravity would lend a hand. At our first, “One, two, three—heave!” it didn't budge an inch. Stothers looked at me with a smile and released the brake. Next heave, we got it moving and then had to strain mightily from behind on ropes to keep it from breaking the Northwest Territories speed limit even before it hit the ground.

The loaded tow-sled was easier. I had to remove my mitts to secure its rigid tongue with its draw-pin attachment to the snowmobile's hookup. Icy metal and bare hands don't go together; the sensation is like a burn. On top of the load I added Thermoses, ammunition boxes and the radio. The guns were in light scabbards, one ahead of each knee, rifle on the left and shotgun on the right. The rifle's loaded ammunition clip went in one parka pocket, a handful of shotgun shells in another. Face-mask on, helmet on, goggles ready to be pulled down, I switched on the radio.

“Matthew Kitologitak testing testing, over.”

Pengelly said, “Hear you good, Matteesie. Be careful, now, it's a jungle out there, haw haw.” Hill Street Blues has a lot to answer for.

I started the machine, waved and headed west. When I glanced back Stothers was taking off with a short run north into fairly heavy ground drift whipped up by the wind. He made an immediate bank east to lessen the chance of being seen from where I was heading. The sound was another thing; even with the muffling effect of the wind, if anyone was close enough the aircraft would be heard.

I'm not really big on snowmobiles, especially where there's no track to follow, and here there was definitely none. The weather was worsening fast. High above was a cold sun, but on the deck the wind-driven ground drift cut visibility to a few yards in some places.

I followed the course of the caribou herd we'd seen yesterday. It was churned up, the snow in rough icy chunks, like riding a road made out of loose bowling balls. Then I began to see here and there a snowmobile track. One looks much like another, but there were no others. It figured that these were William's. We'd lost him from the air in this stuff, but being on the ground was a new ball game. In one place I might see the mark of the drive belt, about sixteen inches wide with lugs a couple of inches apart. In another I might see the narrow cutting mark of his runners. I concentrated on these signs so much in one stretch that I clean forgot to keep a lookout ahead. I reminded myself that William's track was one thing, okay, he was in Yellowknife right now, but remember the other guy. From then on I looked down, then ahead, every few seconds. It was very slow going.

Despite my precautions, I was banking on my quarry having hit the trail again last night quickly after we saw him. What else could he do? He was not the type to sit and wring his hands. If he traveled all night, or as much as required to reach his objective, he might be dozens of miles away by now.

I was on William's trail for about an hour when I neared where we'd seen the headlight of the other snowmobile. I stopped, looked around for some shelter, pulled over beside a snowbank with a wind-sculptured flaring crest and took out the chart Stothers had made for me from notes the night before.

It was a single sheet of white cardboard, the kind some shirt laundries use, protected by Saran Wrap or a reasonable facsimile thereof Near the bottom, he'd drawn an arrow pointed at tiny linked circles denoting the caribou trail. The length of this arrow was marked: “300 yards approx.” At the top of the arrow was what looked like two golf balls close to one another. They were labeled “twin-peaked hill.” Beyond that was what looked like a big tent labeled “long sharp-topped hill.” Between Twin-Peaks and Sharp-Top, Stothers had drawn a rectangle with handlebars, labeled: “Snowmobile.” In front of it he'd drawn outward-bursting lines like eyelashes, or a kid's concept of a headlight.

I went on slowly for nearly a mile watching to my right before, more like 400 yards away than 300, I saw a hill with two rounded peaks. I gazed carefully ahead, behind and to both sides. As I looked, I took up the shotgun at my right knee and loaded it, mostly by feel.

The shotgun law when you're hunting is one shell in the breech and two in the chamber, but that's for ducks and geese and ptarmigan. I'd never paid a lot of attention to it anyway until I became a special and had to check other people's guns from time to time. Now, for hunting men, it was back to the joys of childhood: one shell in the breech and five more into the chamber, all it would take. I'd used pump guns a lot and knew I could fire almost as fast as I could pull the trigger. I swung it to my shoulder, sighted on a scraggly tree, let the gun down and was swinging it up again, getting the feel of it, when a big Arctic hare jumped up in front of me. I had the gun on it encouragingly fast but of course didn't pull the trigger.

I put the gun back in its scabbard by my right leg and turned toward the twin-peaked hill. I went slowly and watchfully, the snowmobile at less than half speed. To climb directly over the hill would have taken more power. I figured I didn't need the extra noise, so I turned right to skirt the base of the hill. When I reached the other side I stopped to reconnoiter.

Before me was the long sharp-topped hill, as advertised. In the narrow, winding little glen between the two I could see plainly a snowmobile track—and something else.

I turned off the machine and could hear nothing. I took the binoculars out of the body-warmed front pocket of my parka. They fogged up immediately. I waited a minute or two to let their temperature adjust to the minus thirty-five or whatever we had out here. Meanwhile I wasn't as interested in the snowmobile track below me, as back along the glen to a place that even to the naked eye was noticeably not just right. When I could use the binoculars I saw that someone had made camp there and hadn't done much to make it look as if he hadn't.

At first, extra careful, I didn't move. I turned the binoculars along the snowmobile's trail heading straight west and out of sight. Then I swept the hills around. The sun had gone and it was one of those days when snow blended with sky in a way that made the horizon strictly guesswork. At dead slow I descended through the soft and unmarked snow to where the man had camped.

It was easy to see where his tent had been, a melted place where his stove had sat, a Cameo cigaret package, two Oh Henry wrappers, an empty pork-and-beans can, an empty corned-beef can, a yellow stain in the snow where he had urinated, and an empty red five-gallon gas container. On its side in black paint was one word: Oscar.

I figured the man couldn't have been more than a minute or two away from his camp last night when we saw his light from the air. He could not have heard us or he wouldn't have started. Maybe our sound was wiped out by his snowmobile warming up while he got ready to move out. After we'd passed he might have thought that he'd got lucky, had been unseen, so didn't bother to clean up traces of his camp. Or, if he thought he'd been seen he might have panicked and zoomed out of there without the cleanup. Or maybe he was just some guy from Nashville who didn't know that the Arctic, while big, is not big enough to leave garbage around even half buried in snow and have it unnoticed. Discards don't go away in the Arctic. He wouldn't know that odds and ends left by weary and starving men a century or two ago are useful now as firm evidence that Sir John Franklin, for instance, spent much of a winter in one place, or Samuel Hearne in another. Admittedly, none of those early explorers left red gas cans around with the name Oscar painted on in black.

It was decision time. William's old trail along the road left by caribou herds was a few hundred yards south of me. But now I had a fresher track, and the conviction that, while moving separately, the two had the same destination—and that whichever one I followed likely would lead me to the same place, where also I'd find the Cessna and, I was convinced more and more, the three men who had been aboard.

I turned on the radio, wondering if the radio in the Cessna, if operational, could scan frequencies and eavesdrop.

So, I thought, what you gonna do, Matteesie, use smoke signals?

“Matteesie calling Fort Norman, over.”

“About bloody time,” Pengelly said. “Where are you? Over.”

I told him, as closely as I could. “Found where a guy camped yesterday and left one of Oscar's gas cans. Over.”

“So you're getting close. Want some help? Over.”

“No help needed until I ask for it. I'm going to stay on the new guy's trail. Over and out.”

After I picked up any debris that I thought might be useful (in court?) and began following this snowmobile trail not much more than half a day old, I jacked up the speed a little. He had moved at night and because he was the one breaking trail, I could travel at close to twice his night-time speed but didn't, for safety. If he had made his objective before daylight, in a few hours I might know a hell of a lot more than I did right now.

The ground drift was getting worse as the afternoon wore on. In places I'd lose the trail, but the contours of the little valleys and frozen streams pretty well dictated where he'd go, or I kept guessing right. If he'd had to make camp again at daylight he couldn't be far ahead. After another hour or so, near dusk, I dropped my speed to dead slow, a walking pace. If I caught up before nightfall when he'd feel safe to move again, I'd really like to see him before he saw me. Prudence is my middle name.

There came a time a little after six, not totally dark yet but with the sun down and shadows filling the hollows, when I began to feel very jumpy. By my machine's trip counter, I figured I was no more than six or seven miles from the Mackenzie. I'd been going all along on the idea that the Cessna's landing place, if there was one, was east of the river. If so, I was close.

Suddenly, well ahead, I could identity where the river was. On the shore south of Fort Norman was the area called the Smoking Hills. These were coal deposits on the east bank that had been burning as far back as recorded memory. Early explorers had seen them. From the river at night the fires on the bank could be seen glowing dimly, like nearly spent coals in a home fireplace late at night. But by day smoke could be seen rising here and there. I could see smoke now.

I stopped to think.

I had one Thermos of hot chocolate left. I drank a cup of it and ate the last of my sandwiches. Maybe it was time to give up for today, find a safe place for the tent, get the primus going, eat, sleep and be ready for the dawn. One thing was pretty sure—nobody was following me. And if I came on my quarry now, the gathering dark would be a help to anyone who became aware of my approach, and a hindrance to me and anyone I might summon to help. In short, it was time to camp. The only thing I didn't like about my present position was that here and there there were clumps of wispy trees. Like all Inuit brought up on vast, treeless, open spaces, I liked to be able to see. Anyway, I'd check in.

I unpacked the radio. “Matteesie here. Over.”

“Ted Huff here, Matteesie. No more word on Bonner's whereabouts. Position, please. Over.”

I wondered what the hell Ted was doing in Fort Norman. I gave my position as being about six or seven miles east of the Mackenzie and pretty well straight west of where I'd started from this morning, a position they had.