Strange Things Done (2 page)

She tumbled backwards, kicking and clawing at the emptiness as she fell. Her panicked hands reached out to the swirling mass of northern lights above her, an undulating pattern that formed a last wordless message while the river below rushed up to meet her.

1

Jo Silver heard the throng of reporters before she saw them: a cacophony of questions and her name shouted abrasively.

“Josephine! Over here! Jo!”

She cursed under her breath, but kept her head down as they swarmed, jostling and squawking like the seagulls that battled for scraps in the city’s bloated dumpsters.

“Jo, what do you think of the public’s scrutiny of the media in the wake of …?”

She focused on navigating the wet concrete stairs down from the
Vancouver Sun
.

“Jo! What about the media’s moral obligation to protect the public’s safety?”

Jo wondered who had talked. Was it her source? Or was it someone associated with the department? Either way, the fallout would be the same.

“Josephine, is it true that the VPD paid you to kill the story?”

She hurried from the base of the building to an adjacent parking lot, watching the water bleed into the toes of her black canvas sneakers.

“Josephine! Do you know the true identity of the Surrey Strangler?”

She calculated the distance to her car. Twenty feet? Thirty?

“Is the
Sun
going to keep you on?”

Cold rain trickled down the back of her neck and traced the top of her spine. Almost to the car. Almost safe. And there it was. The question she’d been dreading.

“Josephine! How does it feel to be responsible for the death of another human being?”

Jo jolted awake. The dream was always the same in tone, if not in content. Accusation. Anger. Guilt. Her present surroundings were only vaguely familiar …
Dawson City
, she thought. She’d been in this “city”—if you could call it that—for a week now. She’d rented a room from a dancer named Sally LeBlanc, her new housemate. That much she remembered, but her recollection of entering the room any time recently was dim.

Jo lay on the bed in the darkness and breathed deeply, taking in the dry, dusty air, feeling the cold permeate layers of bedding. The scent of smoke from the bar lingered on her hair. The skin on her face felt like it was stretched to the point of breaking, same as the rest of her. Brittle. She listened to a heater working overtime, thinning out the air even more. Her tongue was coated in a layer of something thick and sour, and her head throbbed.
Had that been the pounding sound?
The pillowcase smelled of mold and nicotine. She wished she’d had the foresight to leave a glass of water on the bedside table last night.

Last night
…

There was a thudding sound again, a fist on wood. Someone was at the door. Someone wanted in.

Her memory of the previous night was hazy after a certain point. They’d been drinking something Sally ordered … Canadian Ice: peppermint schnapps and Yukon Jack. (She felt her insides roil at the very thought.) They’d argued and Sally had stormed off in a clatter of high heels. Alone at the bar, Jo had quietly observed the woolly strangers around her, searching for some hidden connection with another person, finding nothing. The dark winter months had stretched out before her then. She’d toyed momentarily with the idea of leaving on the next flight out. Last chance before freeze-up: when the Yukon River froze and the ferry to the west was dry-docked. Then the Top of the World Highway to Alaska would close, the airport would follow suit, and the Klondike Highway—the only route out via the south—would begin to snow in. She’d shivered and pushed the thought away. A winter in Dawson might be punishing, but it was at least a chance to start over.

Jo had known she was in trouble when the first slap of cold air hit her in the parking lot and she still didn’t feel sober. The stars had looked messy as she’d squinted at them, and she’d fought the urge to rearrange them. Then she’d felt a gentle hand on her elbow.

“Hey,” he’d said, “you okay?” It was his eyes that had startled her: the shifting colours of water, framed in laugh lines. He’d looked concerned, despite his smile. There was an intensity about him that was disarming, but also promising. Jo’s timing had always been lousy.

She’d turned away. “Fine.”

“You’re Josephine, aren’t you?”

“Just Jo.”

“Well, Just Jo.” He’d said his name, but she was distracted. His dark hair was long, almost down to his shoulders, and there was a hint of fire in the suggestion of a beard. He had a Celtic look about him. She was willing to bet he’d had freckles as a kid. He’d removed his glove to shake her hand, so she’d done the same, and felt an electric jolt when their skin met. She’d shoved her mittens back on and thrust fists back into pockets while he’d layered on thick gloves.
What had he said his name was? Burn? Burnie?

Then Jo had remembered reading something about him during her first couple of days in Dawson.
Byrne.
“You’re the artist, right?”

“Yeah. Maybe you should let me paint you sometime,” he’d said.

“Is that a line?”

“Most definitely. I’m a carver.” Said with a smile.

Jo had seen his carvings around Dawson: smooth, elegant lines, hewn from wood and antler and bone. Many of the statues were snarling wolves or the stray huskies that loped through town with heads lowered and tails down, sniffing the bones of buildings abandoned since the Gold Rush. Dawson City was a ghost town, with snow drifting along the wooden boardwalks instead of tumbleweed.

Whether or not the offer of a ride had been entirely innocent was difficult to say, but something about the man was like a flaming hearth in a snowstorm. The heat generated by his touch had coursed through the rest of her body.

Again the banging sound.
“Go away!” Jo called out, her voice hoarse. It was probably Sally. Jo couldn’t remember if Sally had come home last night. Maybe she’d forgotten her keys.

Had anyone seen Jo leave Gertie’s with the sculptor?
There’d been that woman in the red parka. Byrne had just opened the passenger door to his pickup when a figure descended the front steps of the bar and disappeared into the shadows of parked trucks.

“Christopher!” The woman’s voice had been shrill. Byrne had slammed the passenger door, but Jo had still been able to hear snippets of their dispute. Their faces through the thick frost on the window had looked distorted and eerie, the woman’s red parka bleeding through the cracked ice.

“It’s none of your business, Marlo.”

“There are some things that I make my business, Christopher. I’ve been watching you. I know where you go!”

The woman had followed him to the driver’s side. In the cab, he’d thrust the key violently into the ignition and let the engine idle for a moment as she shouted at him and banged on the glass. “Don’t think I’m going to keep your dirty little secret! I’ll tell! I’ll tell
her
!”

Then the giant pines were moving. Jo remembered the icy feel of the seatbelt under numb fingers. Byrne had fumbled with the radio dial until something soft was playing, guitar strings pleading in time with the insistent scratch of wipers against windshield. Jo had the dim recollection of driving somewhere with Byrne, and also of him being at Sally’s house. He might have helped Jo into bed.
Oh no …
Then her memory ended.

Someone hammered at the door again, in time with the thudding in her head. They weren’t going away, then
.

Jo leaned on one elbow and felt for the switch on the lamp next to the bed. The light blinded her momentarily. She squinted at the bedside clock; it was just after seven.
A wholly uncivilized hour.
Next to the clock: an old photo of her father and his terrier, Pepper Spray, a paperback copy of
The Name of the Rose
, and a pair of prescription glasses.

The windows were framed with velvet curtains, not fully drawn, exposing a thin line of black glass. Still dark outside. The room was small, but lushly decorated in hues of bright pink and blood red that made Jo think of a Western frontier bordello. A bearded face on the wall watched her with beady eyes: the stuffed head of a mountain goat, which resembled either Pan himself or some kind of sacrifice to the god of pleasure in his honour.

Jo pulled back the musty blankets to reveal that she was still wearing the same clothes she’d worn to Diamond Tooth Gertie’s. Minus her jeans. She caught sight of herself in a gold-rimmed mirror on the far wall. Her dark, unruly hair was tied back in a painfully tight ponytail, and her face—pale at the best of times—looked downright ashen. She looked older than her twenty-five years.
Some days it’s best not to look.

There was a plastic bucket next to the bed.

“Oh God,” she said, to no one in particular, though it sounded as if she were addressing the goat. She had just remembered that it was her first day of work in her new post: editor of the
Dawson Daily
. She leaned over and unceremoniously dry heaved into the bucket.

Jo managed to pull her jeans back on, navigate the stairs, and find the front door, while only bumping into one item of furniture in the dark living room on the way. She considered this to be a victory of sorts. “Coming!” she called out, irritated as much by another knock as by life in general. She’d planned to set her alarm for 6:30 a.m., but had either bungled it or forgotten. “Keep your pants on!” She kicked away a stray pair of Sally’s stilettos that were blocking the door and opened it to find a uniformed officer. His dark eyes expressed surprise. He blinked.

“Josephine Silver?” His tone was serious. Jo felt a rush of confusion. Surely he must want her housemate? Or did he have some connection to her father at the VPD? Strange hour for a welcoming committee …

“Jo. Yes,” she said.

“Sergeant Cariboo, Dawson RCMP. ” He flashed the badge.

Jo caught herself thinking that he was young to have made sergeant, still this side of thirty.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. Silver, but I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Me? Now?”

“I’m afraid so.” Cariboo had a lean and lanky look about him that made Jo think, “hungry.” He also had an undeniable boyish appeal.
Too clean cut, though. And a uniform

“Come in,” she said.

Jo felt around the wall in the kitchen until she found a light switch, then immediately regretted it. Sally was not the type to tidy up. The sheer scale of disorder in the two-bedroom Victorian house was overwhelming. A faucet above a sink full of moldering, unwashed dishes tapped out a methodical rhythm. On a table in the living room, an emerald bottle of absinthe dripped onto the stained carpet, gluing a hot pink feather boa in place. Jo led Cariboo through to the living room. The floors were uneven, or maybe it was just that she felt off balance; it was difficult to tell for sure. She made a quick mental list of things that needed to find another place to exist: an antique sewing machine accompanied by scraps of fur and sequined material (apparently abandoned in midproject), more dirty dishes, a discarded cancan costume, and bits of laundry—of dubious cleanliness. The pièce de résistance: a rifle leaning precariously in one corner of the living room.
Hope to God she’s got a licence for that.

The sergeant glanced at the gun only fleetingly, accepting a seat on an overstuffed Victorian armchair once Jo had swept a pile of laundry onto the floor. “Is there anything wrong?” she said. “Is Frank okay?”

The officer pulled out a notepad. The knuckles on his right hand were bandaged. “Frank?”

“My father.” She felt her throat constrict.

“It’s not a family matter, Ms. Silver. I’m sure your father is fine. Can you tell me where you were last night between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m.?”

Jo swallowed. She wished for a glass of water, an idea that was both appealing and repulsive at once.

“Ma’am?”

“Am I in some kind of trouble?”

“Just a routine investigation at this point, but I do need you to answer the question.”

“What kind of an investigation?”

Sergeant Cariboo straightened up in the chair, as though squaring off for a fight. “I’m not at liberty to discuss the investigation. Please. Answer the question.”

“Hang on a second, Sergeant … Cariboo, is it?”

“Yes.”

“I’m pretty familiar with police procedure, and I know that I don’t have to participate in the interview unless I want to. And I’m not feeling especially helpful at the moment. So if you want to interview me, you’re going to have to tell me what this is all about.”

Cariboo gave her a long, appraising look. He pushed himself farther back in the chair, as though shifting gears. “We’ve found a body in the river.”

“Whose body?” Jo leaned forward.

Cariboo said, “My turn. Where were you last night?”

“I was at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s last night. The gambling hall?”

“Yup,” he said. “Until what time?”

“Whose body?” Jo folded her arms over her chest. There were times when it was handy to have been raised by a police officer. Of course, that sad fact had also been her undoing.

Cariboo looked conflicted. He raked one hand through his thick, black hair. Jo tried not to think about what pressures he might be under. She guessed by his surname that he was First Nations and wondered then whether he had a point to prove—and a small, underqualified team to prove it with—but she filed the thought away. She didn’t want to empathize with him. Not this time.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss it with you,” Cariboo said. “Besides, we haven’t made a positive identification yet.”

“Well, what’s this got to do with me?”

“What time did you leave Gertie’s last night?”

“I’m not sure … I didn’t look at my watch when I left.”

“Did you leave before closing?”

“Why would the RCMP want to question me? What is this, some kind of small-town ‘pin-it-on-the-outsider’ act?”