Strange Things Done (35 page)

Nugget was on Cariboo before Jo could shout a warning. A shot ripped through the fabric of the night sky, and the big dog lay still. Cariboo stooped and reached out to the dead animal. He didn’t see Byrne. “Look out!” she screamed. A second shot exploded in the darkness beyond the shack and the fire.

“Johnny!”

He didn’t respond. He had a stunned expression on his face. He opened his mouth to say something, before he crumpled into the snow.

Jo rushed to swing her leg up over the roof to the other side. That was when she lost her footing. She scratched and clawed as she slid, plummeting down toward the hungry sound below. Her foot hit a bit of trim at the edge of the roof, slowing her down for a moment. Then she hurtled into nothingness.

She landed hard on her back in front of the cabin, the heat of the flames making her blink. The snow on her cheeks and eyelashes was already melting and running down her damp face. She didn’t know where Byrne was. She struggled to her feet and raced toward Cariboo, where he lay sprawled in the snow, his rifle lying abandoned beside him.

There was a thunderous noise like the cracking of ice on a frozen river.

She looked down, trying to see the bloody hole in her chest. She couldn’t seem to feel the bullet.
Shock
.
This is how it feels to die.
She was falling. She hit the ground with her numb, bare hand, landing not far from Cariboo. Close enough to see shallow swirls of his breaths.
Alive
, she thought, and the idea spiralled out inside of her like ink in water.

Next to Cariboo: the gun, a dark promise reaching up out of the snow just a few feet away. She looked down at her chest.
Nothing.
Not hit.
She could make it to Cariboo’s rifle. Jo jammed her hands into the ice and snow to lift her body, sending a searing lick of pain through her wrist. She used her elbows instead, crawling forward through the snow.

When she looked up, Byrne was bearing down on her with the gun. He was having trouble holding the rifle with only one hand. The blue-green eyes blinked, either in surprise or acknowledgement. It was difficult to know. “Jo,” Byrne said. His eyes were locked on hers. “I wish things could be different. I never wanted to hurt you.” She was glad he was wearing the ski mask, because even now she felt the pull of him. For a split second, she was tempted to imagine what it would have been like if Marlo hadn’t followed him, hadn’t discovered his secret, but she pushed the thought away.

“Like you didn’t want to hurt Alice?” Cariboo said, his voice a thin whisper.

Jo’s mind reeled.
This is about Alice?
Just when she thought she had the puzzle of Dawson put together, the landscape shifted again. She wished Cariboo would say more, but he either couldn’t or wouldn’t. He’d turned his face toward them, but his eyes were closed and his face was contorted with pain.

Now she felt the despair welling up inside of her. Even if they managed to evade Byrne and escape into the cover of the woods, her damp clothes would quickly freeze. And Cariboo couldn’t be moved. She needed time to think. “They’ll know we didn’t die in the fire.”

Byrne shook his head. “They think it’s Grikowsky. I planted May’s gun in his cabin. They won’t be looking for me. Not tonight.”

Cariboo’s voice was raspy. “We let Grikowsky go. I came to warn Jo because Sally …” Jo never found out what Sally had to do with any of it. Cariboo’s voice was lost on the wind.

The gun wavered, swinging back and forth in Byrne’s one good hand like a venomous snake about to strike. “Have you ever seen a wild animal in a trap? I see it all the time. They chew their own limbs off to escape. I’m sorry, Jo, but I just can’t be locked up again.”

She thought about the abusive father and Byrne’s one-room cabin. No closets. No cupboards. Nowhere to be locked in. Then she felt the arctic cold in her lungs, felt her insides tightening.

“They won’t look for me until tomorrow,” he said, “and by then I’ll be gone. My partner is coming for me with a ski plane.” Byrne lifted the gun again, with a gesture of resolve.

There was another explosion, and this time Jo squeezed her eyes tightly shut. When she opened them, the back part of Byrne’s head was missing, and he was face down, the snow painted crimson around him.

The cold had permeated every part of her now. Her entire body seemed to be vibrating with it. A wave of nausea passed over her. She looked away from the piteous thing in the snow, peering into the night to see who the shooter was, but could see nothing. Jo rolled over onto her side, cradling the injured wrist, and staggered to her feet. She lurched over to Johnny. His face was pale. “Johnny?” His eyelids flickered open, but he said nothing. His breathing was rapid. She removed her scarf.

Then he said, “I have to know about Alice—is he …?”

“Gone.” She folded up the scarf, placed it over the hole in the shoulder of his parka and pressed down, making him cry out between gritted teeth. “I’m sorry!”

Something or someone moved in her peripheral vision. Jo froze, thinking immediately of the second person: Byrne’s partner, the person with the ski plane. Another member of the smuggling ring, some kind of vengeful accomplice who had double-crossed Byrne. A malicious, unknown entity still lurking in the woods with a shotgun or rifle. Jo squinted though the smoke. The flames had engulfed the cabin and lit up the surrounding area, making the approaching form a black silhouette.

The shadowy figure stepped forward, walking in a peculiar manner. The little mincing steps sounded like the crackling of tiny spines as boot heels broke a thin crust of snow. She stepped into the flickering light cast by the fire like a demon from the underworld, a flash of fur and fiery skirts. She was holding a long rifle.

Their eyes met. For a second, Jo thought of seizing Cariboo’s gun. She thought of the gleeful look on Sally’s face when she’d discovered the animal parts in May’s house. But Sally lowered the barrel, hands shaking, cheeks streaked with frozen tears.

“What are you doing here?” Jo said.

“They released Jack Grikowsky. I had to warn you. You weren’t at home, so I told Johnny I thought you’d be here.” Sally’s gaze shifted to the thing in the snow. “It’s where I would have gone.” The look on her face was horrible to see.

“But how did you get through? Is there anyone else here?”

“There are certain advantages in taking the occasional tumble with a snowplough driver. When we heard shots, we called Johnny on the two-way radio on his snowmobile. He called for backup.”

“So where is it?”

In the distance, the urgent wail of a siren hit a high note, in harmony with the wind. Through the blowing snow and trees, a pulsing light appeared, first bright blue and then red. An RCMP snowmobile, yellow and black like a hornet, emerged from the forest path, bounced over a hill and into the clearing, toward the fire. Surrounded by trees and nearly obscured by snow, the snowmobile looked small and insect-like, an impossibility in a frozen landscape. And still it came.

39

Marshall the guinea pig sniffed the air as though checking for trouble, whiskers twitching anxiously. He’d been quite skittish since Doug’s death.

“It’s all right,” Jo whispered. “They’re not angry with you.”

At the sound of Jo’s voice, Marshall started nervously and buried himself in a pile of wood chips and headlines.

“Go ahead, hide. Wish I could do the same.” Jo deleted the message she’d been listening to and skipped to the next heated opinion sounding from the speakerphone on her desk. She had received countless calls and letters in the weeks since the death of Christopher Byrne and, subsequently, the arrest of Jack Grikowsky and a DFO inspector for bribery, fraud, and environmental crimes.

The town had taken on a theatrical atmosphere, where political sideshows were the order of the day and blame was handed out like popcorn. Candidate hopefuls jostled for position to replace the disgraced mayor and made impassioned speeches about the decaying moral fibre of the community. In all things, a deep sense of shame permeated the town, as well as fear. Fear, in the wake of Christopher Byrne, that you could never really trust your neighbour again, in a place where survival depended on trusting your neighbour. Fear that Dawson, now known to be badly in the red, might lose its right to self-governance and be gobbled up by the territorial government. Often, this particular problem was attributed to the revelations Jo had made about the mayor and the mine. Many asserted that her dedication to publicizing the truth had damned the lot of them. Others left messages at the
Daily
to say that Dawson City without self-governance would cease to be Dawson City. Dawson’s particular brand of charm, it was widely felt, was due to its fierce sense of political independence, die-hard do-it-yourself attitude, and strong sense of local community. And Dawson without Claim 53 would not be able to support the miners and their families. Jo couldn’t win.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Frustrated, she picked up a copy of the story that she’d had published in a glossy American newsmagazine, an article that had garnered international attention. The headline read, “A Tale of Two Cities,” in a gilded Western font, and featured a huge photograph of Christopher Byrne, dressed in his turn-of-the-century poker attire, his smile enigmatic. The opposite page pictured Peter Wright being led into custody. Jo hadn’t written about Doug, although she suspected that he’d known about the mine and been paid off by Grikowsky to keep his silence. She had no proof that Doug had gone back to the office that night to read her article, to find out whether she’d pointed her finger at him too. Most likely he’d encountered Byrne there, doing something similar. Jo turned her thoughts away from Byrne. Her feelings about him were still too complicated. She ripped out the page, allowing Byrne’s face to tear in half so that he was like the city itself: part one thing, part something else. A page in a story that was constantly fabricated, told, and reinvented again. Jo passed the torn paper to Marshall. “There you go, furball. All the news that’s fit to eat.”

Since publishing the article, Jo had been offered a crime column with the
Toronto Star
in the new year. The big time. She would have a regular paycheque, access to the city’s biggest stories, and a chance to make a new name for herself in a national publication. It was what she’d been hoping for. She’d be a fool not to take it —once spring came and freeze-up relinquished its hold on her.

The answering machine beeped. Jo let the next caller go to voice mail. She was done caring about what anyone thought. She stood, stretched, and reached for her parka.

The wallpaper that adorned the Jack London Grill was crimson with a silver flock pattern that looked like smoke. In places, the paper was eclipsed by old movie posters: Charles Bickford and Irene Rich starring in Jack London’s
Queen of the Yukon
.
Sign of the Wolf
.
Wolf Call
. The heroines of these stories were cruel-lipped and poised, raising their thin, arched eyebrows in expressions of challenge while they clutched poker hands and pistols. Jo searched the details of these images for some hidden truth, some parallel to her own character. Finding nothing, she returned her attention to her cup of coffee. The room smelled of gravy and reheated pastry—a warm, comforting scent that almost relaxed Jo’s permanently tensed shoulders. She’d slept the previous night, six hours straight, without dreaming. Or rather, if she had dreamed, she had no memory of it, and was happy for that small blessing.
Simple pleasures.
She wondered if her present quietude was an illusion, like the flickering half-truths of the films made about the Yukon in the early decades of the last century. Somewhere just below the calm surface of her subconscious, something menacing floated yet, threatening to breach the still waters and emerge at any time to point a bony finger in accusation. Jo consoled herself with the notion that this particular ghost might not haunt her quite so often.

She cupped her hands around the porcelain “Call of the Wild” mug, letting the warmth leach into her flesh. The irony of the moment did not escape her: now that she had the luxury and the time to enjoy her morning ritual, she was almost two thousand miles away from a café that prided itself on its coffee, unless it were laced with booze. She wondered how different life would be if she accepted the position in Toronto.

Everything would change. Of course it would. She pictured herself, jostling into line for a paper cup from a faceless server whose fingers had never graced a piano at a turn-of-the-century gambling hall. Jo would be looking at her watch, feeling the squeeze of the day’s time constraints already. She thought of Johnny Cariboo, of his particular stillness.

He’d been airlifted to hospital in Whitehorse, but was now recuperating at his mother’s cabin in Moosehide. Jo had visited him. She’d intended to ask him if the RCMP had located the ski plane yet and whether the pilot might be able to use the frozen river as a runway. Instead, she found herself asking about Alice Wolfe.

His face had clouded over. “I looked for Alice for eight years.” He’d left one of his long silences, but it was not uncomfortable, somehow. “But that’s the thing about winter. Even a Dawson winter doesn’t last forever. You’ll see.” He’d reached out his hand then and she’d taken it. Perhaps he’d meant the gesture as some kind of reassurance, but it felt more like a bridge. “At a certain point, you just have to let go of the past.” She’d smiled, not trusting herself to speak, but she’d let the moment settle over her, softly.