Strange Things Done (16 page)

The shaky beam of Jo’s flashlight lit the snowy path to the excavation, as Sally stumbled and slid, clutching onto Jo’s arm for greater stability. Jo felt like one half of an elderly couple shuffling along, and she silently cursed Sally.

As they approached the lip of the open pit, Jo turned off the light and squatted down. Sally joined her, PVC squeaking as her knees bent. Circles of light bounced in the pit below, where a small night crew laboured near an overhang of cliff wall. Jo leaned against her companion for warmth and whispered, “Does it seem odd to you that they’re drilling at this time of night?”

“Hmm,” was the only insight Sally offered.

“Damn, I wish I could get inside Grikowsky’s office,” Jo whispered.

Sally nodded toward a stark, rectangular shape behind the excavation. “Well, I’d bet it’s that trailer right there. The cabins back there will be for crew.”

Jo saw what Sally meant. Behind the trailer were the dark silhouettes of dwellings, where pinpricks of light indicated signs of life. The main trailer, though, was in darkness.

Sally added, “It’s not like he’ll be there now …”

“Well, aside from the fact that I’ve just come dangerously close to a breaking and entering conviction that would have cost me my career, there’s also every likelihood that it will be locked.”

Sally rolled her eyes. “This is the Yukon, hon. No one locks their door. So it’s not breaking; it’s just entering.”

Jo hesitated just long enough to allow Sally to go in for the kill.

“Besides, I hate to be blunt, but isn’t your career already ruined?”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, you wanna know the truth about what’s going on down there, or not?”

Sally’s breath escaped in a long, broken line, like punctuation.

Navigating their way around the pit in the darkness was painstaking work. By the time they reached the trailer, Jo’s fingers had gone numb in her leather gloves, and Sally could no longer feel her toes.

“I love this weather,” Sally said. “My boots are actually comfortable.”

Jo clenched and unclenched her fingers and listened to the crunch of snow as they approached the main trailer: a dull, utilitarian rectangle iced in white like a boxed cake from the supermarket.

“Maybe I should go back by the pit and keep watch in case anyone comes this way? I could moose call if I see anyone,” Sally said.

“Yeah, yeah. Good idea.” She watched Sally’s black figure recede into the night, then climbed the humble plank steps and paused at the door. Jo listened for a moment, but heard only the hollow hum of machinery in the distance and the peculiar cry of wolves and wind. She knew she was about to cross a line.

When Jo was eight, not long after her mother died of lung cancer, she began keeping a flashlight under her bed so that she could do extra homework under the covers after “lights out.” Once Frank had caught her, and she was thereafter taken for regular visits with Dr. Rivera, a vivacious woman with a passion for boldly coloured skirt suits and a talent for provoking patients into an emotional response. Dr. Rivera had plagued Jo with questions about her feelings, something she was loath to talk about. Most of the time, Jo was secretly feeling like she was wasting valuable time when she could be doing something more useful. On one particular visit, Dr. Rivera informed Jo that children who lose a parent, either through death or abandonment, often become people pleasers, which can tip over into perfectionism and workaholism if left unchecked. Jo had nodded and pretended that she was listening. Dr. Rivera had reached out and touched Jo’s knee softly, heavily pencilled eyes uncomfortably sympathetic. Then she told Jo that lots of famous people were overachievers with lousy personal lives.

It irked Jo now, as she stood at the threshold of Grikowsky’s trailer, that Dr. Rivera may have been right about her after all. Jo might have a sharp tongue, but at the end of the day, she was still a people pleaser, not a rule breaker. She had done what the police had asked her to do by killing the Surrey Strangler story. She had also done what Frank had thought was the right thing to do, which was something she might never forgive either of them for.

She thought about Marlo’s body floating in the river, hair waving like seaweed. This time, things would be different. Jo placed one gloved hand on the chilly metal handle of the trailer and squeezed tightly. It wouldn’t turn.

“I thought you said that no one in the Yukon locks their doors,” Jo said to Sally when they rejoined on the path.

“They don’t,” Sally said. “Unless they have something to hide.”

“In that case, most of Dawson probably locks their doors. Anyway, I have to get in there.”

“We could chuck a log through the window …” Sally offered.

“Too noisy.”

“Then … we seduce the miners into giving us a key.”

“What, you’re just going to sashay down into the pit in the middle of the night? You don’t think they’ll find that a little suspicious?”

“Shame. I rather like Plan B.”

Jo shook her head. “Have you no pride, woman?”

Sally put her shoulders back, forcing her chest into a prominent position. “Actually, I have quite a lot of it.”

Jo was about to retort something cutting about the source of her pride, but at that moment they heard low voices coming along the path. They exchanged a panicked look, and Jo pulled Sally forward into a run.

A male voice called out in the darkness. “Hello?”

“Plan B! Plan B!” Sally whispered.

“No!” Jo attempted to propel Sally through the shadows at a more reasonable speed.

“Who is that?” A man’s voice, full of doubt and suspicion.

Jo sprinted through the night, Sally a few paces behind now, her heart thrumming at a nightclub beat.

“Stop!” The deep voice rang out; someone was chasing them along the path.

“Faster!” Jo hissed, the thought of Sally’s useless boots flashing in her mind. She pictured Sally falling … sprawling out in the snow in slow motion while their assailant closed in on them.

They plunged along the crooked path, arms pumping, the snow-shrouded trees and glassy underbrush leaning in to stop them. The man was gaining on them. Sally, though surprisingly agile given the height of her heels, was falling behind. Jo reached for her companion’s hand and dragged her forward again, with a hot rush of adrenaline. Then, Sally stumbled. The moment hung there, frozen in time, like a thrilling circus act that you know will, eventually, succumb to gravity. A delicate china teacup, spinning on top of a white porcelain plate, on top of a long pole. Perfection, however temporary—like Sally’s black, PVC-clad curves glinting in the moonlight.

Then they fell. Sally pulled them both down, into the snow and ice. A gunshot split the icy night and reverberated in the darkness. Sally was first back on her feet, tugging on Jo’s arm and urging her forward. “Not a good time to take a nap, sister!”

“Me?” Jo stumbled to her feet, staggering loosely forward.

They heard footsteps in the snow behind them, and more voices calling out. “Dave! We’ve got uninvited guests!”

Jo didn’t think things could get much worse, but she was wrong. The excited cry of dogs echoed across the shadowy landscape.

“We’ve got to split up!”

“Meet you at the truck!” Sally said, and then she was gone, a shapely silhouette in the night, slipping into the undergrowth alongside the path to the right.

Jo veered to the left and crashed into the forest, tree boughs swiping at her like maces as she darted relentlessly deeper into the snowy underworld. The dogs sounded louder now, their clamour more insistent. Jo felt the white heat of alarm spreading through her body, eclipsing all other sensation. She couldn’t feel the cold anymore—or the porcupine bristles of frozen pine. Only the sense of panic and the baying of dogs filled her mind.

Jo slipped. Her foot hit a patch of ice and she went down hard on her tailbone. Flakes of snow worried at her as she got clumsily to her feet. Jo was on water. About to pitch through the black skin of ice. There was a loud crack—a rifle firing or ice breaking. Jo didn’t know which. She was disoriented. She thought of Johnny Cariboo’s father for a fleeting moment, about the way he had died, lost in a storm.

Her mind was beginning to snow in with terror. Jo spun in a circle, looking for the way back to the road. She couldn’t find it. Jo had always had a terrible sense of direction. The ice creaked ominously as she moved to what looked like the nearest bank.

Jo couldn’t be sure, but this didn’t look like one of the big rivers. Not the Yukon or Klondike. It might have been a smaller river, or a very wide stream. Her breath came in clouds that caught wetly in her eyelashes and made her blink as they froze. Jo wondered how long before frostbite would set in, and what it would feel like. Somewhere in the distance a dog howled, and now she considered whether she should run toward the sound and surrender. She might have a better chance of surviving the people than the weather. They might take her inside to question her.
Inside.

Jo clambered over the bank, back onto solid ground. She moved toward the receding sound of the dogs, now, lurching forward through her own breath like a steam train. A thin sheet of ice had formed across the top of her raw cheeks.

A quick, will-of-the-wisp light flashed in the distance. A flashlight? Car headlights? Jo stumbled through the trees toward the light, but there was nothing further. She floundered in the dark trying to retrace her steps. Trees. Snow. Trees. Snow. Nothing. Then, a clearing.

Jo emerged where she thought the truck should be. She could barely make out the Dempster Highway under the drifting snow, but one thing was clear: there was no vehicle anywhere in sight. Jo beamed her flashlight up and down the highway, the spiralling snow catching in the light. Had she come out at the wrong spot on the road, or had Sally taken the Chevy and left? There was little for it but to pick a direction, start walking, and hope for a ride—an unlikely prospect.

Jo pulled back her hood for a moment to hear better. The lilting cadence of the wind obscured all else. She zipped up the hood tightly under her chin, turned to her left, and began walking into the sting of the wind. She tried not to think about the emptiness of the road. The cold gnawed at her face and fingers. She was just giving over to panic when she saw the bright spray of headlights.

Jo peered into the night. Was it the men from the mine? Was it Marlo’s killer?
She glanced around for the closest cover, torn between flagging the driver for help or dashing for the treeline. She held up a hand to shield her eyes.

“I said meet me at the truck! This is not at the truck.” The window of the old Chevy was rolled down and Sally was leaning out the driver’s window.

“You moved!” Jo shouted, but she felt dizzy with relief.

“Only after you didn’t show! I’ve been driving up and down the Dempster looking for you!”

“They fired at us! We’ve gotta get Cariboo.”

“Get in,” Sally said.

16

“They let us go,” Jo said. In the half-light somewhere between dusk and dawn on a Wednesday morning, she clenched a thermos with gloved hands and breathed deeply, the buoyant scent of coffee driving away persistent swells of anxiety. She and Sally were huddled together on a turquoise bench overlooking the Yukon River, listening to the thunder of the current rushing enormous chunks of ice to nowhere.

“Nonsense. We outran them.”

Jo shot a look at Sally’s heels, but said nothing.

Sally, noting the silent skepticism, added, “I could play …”

“… soccer in these boots,” Jo finished for her.

Sally straightened on the bench. “Well, I could.”

“They shot at us, but missed. They called the dogs off.”

“But why would they do that?” The heat from Sally’s flask billowed around her as she took a sip.

“Exactly. And why not report trespassers to Sergeant Cariboo?”

“Hmm,” said Sally. “How do you know they haven’t?”

“Don’t you think he would have come calling? Believe me, I’ve been up half the night waiting.”

“Hoping?” Sally’s green eyes twinkled dangerously.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Jo looked away and took a swill from the container. The coffee had a freshly brewed, hazelnut flavour, with warm, welcome undertones of whisky. Sally hadn’t mentioned that the coffee was spiked, or asked permission to spike it. She’d just made the assumption. Jo frowned into the thermos, but refrained from asking why.