Strange Things Done (24 page)

As the town crier called out Jo’s words, figures began to emerge from the dark doorways and still-closed shops along Front Street. Jo wondered if the person responsible for Marlo’s death and May’s disappearance was among them. There were some notable absences:
Grikowsky. Doug. Peter. Sally. Caveman. Byrne.
Anyone who was not in range (those who lived across the river like Caveman, or up the Dempster Highway like Byrne) would hear about it soon enough.

Jo turned away from the onlookers. She was still on salary at the
Daily
, for the time being at least, and there was work to be done. But she had one more errand to do first.

At shortly after ten on Thursday morning, Jo’s package bound for Vancouver via Whitehorse achieved liftoff. A lonely stretch of snowy pine bore mute witness to the departure of the small turbo-prop aircraft with four passengers and Jo’s water sample on board. Jo suffered a feeling of deflation as the plane disappeared over a ridge of firs, the bright orange dorsal fin sinking like a setting sun. She wondered whether she was watching the last flight out of Dawson for the season.

Her boots squeaked in the empty, one-room terminal as she approached a pay phone. She deposited a cold coin, which made a cheerless clinking sound as it fell. Jo breathed in the scent of stale cigarettes as she dialled.

Frank didn’t pick up. Jo listened to his voicemail message and then left careful instructions to meet the Air North flight in Vancouver. She hoped he would get the message in time.

Jo felt a little lighter as she shuffled back along the icy wooden boardwalk toward the office. She hung onto the warm feeling inside her despite numb fingers and toes. She had done it. She’d made a choice she could feel good about and her journalistic ethics were intact. Maybe now she could put the past to rest. As she climbed the wooden steps to the
Daily,
the shrill cry of a raven sounded like laughter.

There was a plastic mail pouch hanging on the front door. Jo unhooked it and fished in her shoulder bag for the key. Jo was looking at an envelope stamped “City of Dawson Y.T.” as the door swung open, so the first thing that struck her as unusual was the sound of the space heater running. She must have left it on, which was strange; Jo thought she’d turned it off last night before leaving.
Stupid.

When Jo looked up she saw the blood. Rust-coloured prints on the floorboards that looked like paw prints. In fact, they were paw prints. Paw prints that led away from the desk and toward the water cooler, where a small rodent cowered, its bloody whiskers twitching. “Marshall, what happened to you?” For a moment, Jo thought the guinea pig had been injured, but it scampered away easily when she spoke. She looked back in the direction of the desk.

The top of the desk was now empty. Her laptop was gone, as was the black rotary phone that had perched there, gargoyle-like, a technological monstrosity from years gone by. On the floor behind the desk, two legs protruded at odd angles.

24

The body of Doug Browning lay in a pool of congealing blood behind the desk, one hand still holding the tangled mess of phone line that was wrapped around his throat. Jo shuddered
.
She clenched her hands into fists as she leaned in for a better look.
He was bleeding from numerous places on his body, about the chest, hands, and throat. The slashes on his hands looked like defensive wounds. His eyes bulged and, magnified by pop-bottle lenses, exaggerated the shocked expression on his face. Then Jo noticed his ear. Jo felt her insides drop like a roller-coaster ride. Three dead, if you counted May Wong. At least two had bruising about the throat. Doug’s ear had been mutilated.
This was all beginning to feel uncomfortably familiar.

Jo fought to slow her breathing and stay calm. She had to call Cariboo, but she hesitated, reluctant to touch the phone for fear of hampering any investigation by altering a crime scene.
Cell phone …
Before she could even finish the thought she remembered that Dawson had no cellular service.

She glanced around the room, feeling panicky that someone might still be there, though the blood was evidently not fresh. The filing cabinet drawers at the far side of the room were open and the files had been dumped all over the floor. The main desk drawer was completely extended, and others had not been closed properly.
The Geiger counter.
With one gloved hand, Jo gently slid open the bottom desk drawer: the Geiger counter was still there.

Jo picked up the device and stared at it. What had the intruder been looking for, if not the Geiger counter? She tucked it into her coat pocket and then picked up the phone, doing her best not to disturb the position of anything. This meant that she had to lean forward into the tangle of phone line—which made her think of intestines—in order to reach the receiver. Doug gawked at her from the floor, their faces close, almost in a position of intimacy. No dial tone. It had been yanked from the wall in their struggle, evidently. Jo had to unwind some of the cord and plug it back in. Although the call was short, it felt like a purgatory.

While Jo waited for the RCMP, she couldn’t resist inspecting the open desk drawer to see what, if any, files may have been removed. The answer didn’t surprise her. A raw gust of air swept through the office, rustling the documents scattered about the floor near the filing cabinets. She hugged herself tightly and walked toward the draft, which seemed to originate from the small bathroom at the back of the
Daily
.

The door to the bathroom was open. Inside, the window had been shattered. Shards of glass lay strewn about the cracked linoleum floor like fractured ice, making Jo think of the river. For a moment, Jo pictured herself falling through the dark crust of the Yukon River, floating under the ice, green bubbles of breath trapped just below the surface while the current carried her far away.

Jo breathed deeply as she navigated the glass and then leaned out the window to look into the alley. There were indents in the snow, along the side of the building, but the tracks had largely been snowed in.

The RCMP office in Dawson was small and had an intimate feel to it. There were no photographs on the wall of the interview room, and the overhead lights had the queasy yellow tinge of fluorescents, but the room was equipped with a surprisingly comfortable tweed couch and matching armchair. Jo could almost imagine that her visit was merely a social call, but for the fact that Cariboo had just videotaped her statement.

A large husky with cloudy blue cataracts wore dog tags that read “Justice.” The dog snapped at the powdery bit of doughnut that it was offered. “He can’t see a thing anymore, but his nose still works.” Cariboo nodded toward the dog. “Had him since I was a kid.” He leaned forward, offering Jo the box of doughnuts, dark eyes studying her. His knuckles were bandaged over again. Cariboo looked weary, and also concerned. “Cruller?” he prompted. “You’ve had a shock. Sometimes a bit of sugar helps.”

Jo slouched down into the worn loveseat and waved the doughnut away. “I’m good, thanks. She felt a wave of fatigue that the blood-hued sofa wasn’t helping, and she could feel herself shaking. She hoped Cariboo hadn’t noticed.

Cariboo returned the box to the desk. “More water? Or are you ready for coffee now? It’s Tim Hortons—only Dawson’s finest for you.” He smiled. Jo couldn’t quite tell whether or not he intended the irony. She decided that he did.

“I’m fine, really,” she lied. “What about the tracks in the alley?”

Cariboo frowned. “A lot of snow during the night. We’ve tarped over them to preserve them as best we can and photographed them but … We’re also dusting for prints.”

“Oh,” she said, thinking,
he’d have been wearing gloves.

“We’re looking for anything we can get in the way of DNA samples.”

“Do you have a forensics team up here?”

“No. We’d like to send for one, but … freeze-up is going to make that tough. The body will be preserved in the freezer at the rec centre at Minto Park, under police guard, until weather permits it to go to Vancouver for examination, along with any DNA samples.”

“I see.”

“It is possible that someone just broke in to look for cash and was surprised,” Cariboo said.

“But Doug was murdered.”

“True, but it doesn’t appear to have been premeditated. Cause of death was probably strangulation, but the body showed wounds inflicted from a fairly small knife, possibly a jackknife. Not something a guy typically uses to plan a murder.”

“So, escalated violence like a serial killer—and yet, it seems to have been a crime of necessity, if the killer was startled by Doug’s sudden arrival.”

“Yes. That it is … curious.” Cariboo looked at Jo with an odd expression. “It does seem unlikely that the intruder expected to find Doug at the office, given the hour. Unless, of course, someone arranged to meet him there … By the way, do you know what Doug was doing there?”

“What? No,” Jo said, not liking his tone. What she didn’t say was that she suspected Doug’s nocturnal visit to the
Daily
had something to do with the story on her laptop. Perhaps he had gone back to read it, to learn who Jo was pointing the finger at … whether it might be him. Jo didn’t want to raise the issue of her story with Sergeant Cariboo if she didn’t have to. Not yet. She wondered if he’d heard about her blog already. “So. Dawson’s had two breaks-ins in one week. And possibly three murders.”

“Two deaths, by my count.”

“Have you found May Wong yet?”

He looked away. “The break-in bit is not so unusual this time of year. Folks get hungry. A couple of years ago there was a prospector out in the bush; his claim went bust and he was starving. The guy broke into a cabin and was in the middle of stealing some bread and peanut butter when the owner came home. The intruder panicked. Shot him in the head. He killed a man for a peanut butter sandwich.”

“Even two murders in a town this size in the space of a week is …”

“Doug was murdered. Marlo’s death is still under investigation. And as far as we know, May is only missing.”

“With all due respect, someone drove Marlo up to the Bluffs, and that someone is still unaccounted for. Plus, the pathologist pointed to marks at Marlo’s throat that could not be explained by the fall. That makes it two murders. At least. More if May’s been … Well. You’ve got a serial killer on your hands. Did you notice Doug’s ear?”

Cariboo straightened in his chair. “We are exploring a number of possibilities. But do you know what I notice? And I wish I didn’t have to … I notice that you were on the Bluffs the night Marlo McAdam was killed. You were also the last one to see Doug Browning alive.”

“You can’t seriously think …?”

“And you found Doug’s body.”

“You’re not suggesting …?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just observing.” He considered her for a moment. “However, the facts are certainly suggestive.” His tone was cooler now.

“Do I need a lawyer?” Jo folded her arms, hands in armpits, searching for any last vestige of warmth.

“Did you leave Gertie’s last night with Christopher Byrne?”

“Yes, and I lived to tell the tale.”