Strange Things Done (20 page)

“So you said?”

Rusty shrugged. “Just took a bit of a cheap shot. I said, ‘What’s the matter, Jack? ’Fraid it’s not clean?’ The water, I meant. Because everyone knows that placer mining is a dirty business.”

“Do they?”

Rusty nodded. “Oh yeah. That’s why they’re not allowed to do it in certain areas, because of the wildlife. They can’t do it in rivers or streams with certain types of fish. A lot of people here hate placer mining.” She turned away and began fumbling through an old shoebox full of audio CD cases.

“What about Marlo McAdam? Did she hate placer mining?”

Rusty paused for a moment and gave Jo a strange look. “With a passion.” She selected a CD and hit an eject key on a monstrous black piece of technology mounted over the bar. The metal disc player swung open like robotic jaws. “Marlo supported a strike a couple of years back that caused a
huge
ruckus in town. ‘Black Friday.’ Half the people picketed, and the other half—the miners and their families—were … well. There were more than a few fisticuffs in the bar, I can tell you. Then people started putting up the stickers you see in the windows around town, the ones that say, ‘We Support Placer Mining.’ ” Rusty fed the CD into the drawer and nudged it closed. It made an angry grinding sound.

Jo thought for a moment. “What happened to establishments that didn’t put the stickers in their windows?”

“Well …” Rusty said, “let’s just say they weren’t too popular, eh? Some didn’t last the winter.”

“I see,” said Jo, though in fact, the more questions she asked about Dawson, the less she felt that she truly did
see
. It was like diving down into a cold, muddy river to see beneath the surface, and finding that all visibility was obscured by silt and debris. Then the currents took you in directions that you did not intend to go. “Did you happen to notice whether Mr. Grikowsky left early that night?”

“I just know he left the bar area after our … tête-à-tête.” Rusty chuckled, and the sound turned into a rolling, hacking cough. She paused to pull out a cigarette and light it. “I couldn’t tell you where he went, or whether he left the building,” she said as she exhaled. “I can only tell you that I was glad to see the backside of him.”

Jo stood and made to leave, saying, “Thanks.” Then added, “Oh, I almost forgot. I don’t suppose … I don’t suppose you were working the night Christopher Byrne and Marlo McAdam had that argument?”

Rusty straightened up and looked at Jo appraisingly. “Don’t suppose you’re the first one to ask after Byrnie. Don’t suppose you’ll be the last, neither.” She smiled at Jo, in a way that Jo didn’t like.

“So you did hear it?”

Rusty took a long drag on the cigarette, squinting through the smoke. Her face looked like a store receipt left in the bottom of a handbag for too long. “I hear a lot of things, eh? You sure you’re still asking for Marlo? Or some other reason?”

“It’s all part of the same thing,” Jo said quickly. Her face felt warm. “What did they argue about?”

Rusty looked thoughtful as she tapped ashes from the cigarette into an empty beer bottle. “Marlo had been following him.”

“Why?”

“Dunno. Thought the woman had more sense than that, but there you have it. People do stupid things when they’re in love.” Rusty punched the “play” button and, after a prelude of vinyl static, a low, bluesy growl of instruments plucked a slow tempo, accented with a pop of Klondike-style piano. Jo recognized the tune. “Frankie and Johnny.”

“Was it love?” Jo asked.

“For her. Or maybe just obsession. At any rate, Marlo followed Byrnie and found out something she didn’t like much, I guess. I heard her say, ‘I know what you did!’ with this terrible look on her face. Byrnie hushed her up right away, and they went outside. That was it. I think it ended badly.” Rusty took one last pull on the cigarette and added, “Like most things,” then thrust the butt of the cigarette into a bottle where it fizzled out in the dregs of someone’s Yukon Gold.

Outside, the streets had been half cleared, but the snowplough was idling in neutral, grumbling like a malcontented old man. Curious, Jo peered through the frosty windows, then abruptly wished she hadn’t. Sally was sitting on the driver’s lap, lips locked, his hand reaching inside her fur coat. Jo looked away, at the dirty ditch snow, thinking about the song that Rusty had chosen to play.

19

A hostile sun was just dipping over the rolling hills along the highway as Jo approached the mine. The cold seemed to permeate everything now, the truck, every layer of clothing, her very bones. She had to keep moving, jiggling along with the truck and the box of dog biscuits on the passenger seat. Jo alternated hands while driving to keep one hand shoved coolly between her thighs while the other went numb on the wheel. It was her toes that worried her the most. Jo couldn’t feel them anymore.

She turned her attention back to the mine, thinking of something her father used to say all the time: “Things in law tend to be black and white. But we all know that some people are a little bit guilty, while other people are guilty as hell.” Frank’s world view had eventually become her own: everyone was guilty—it was only a question of degree. She had run out of time for asking polite questions, questions that seemed to centre on the mine. Jo wasn’t sure what to make of Christopher Byrne yet, but she was betting that Jack Grikowsky was guilty of something. This time, she couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t trust it to the police. Jo stirred the embers of her emotions, prodding and poking until she had a bright, steady heat. That low flame drove her forward, to the mine.

Sally’s dashboard hula dancer bounced and quivered in anticipation. Jo didn’t dare park in front of the gate, so she turned off her lights and pulled over on the shoulder of the highway, far enough away that the truck would not be visible. In the half-light, she waded into the woods behind the mine. Back to where Jo thought she’d stumbled onto the ice.

A frozen creek snaked its way through hard banks of snow. Jo followed the path of the water to where it widened, listening to the crunch and squeak of her rubber boots as she approached the edge. One thing was clear; she couldn’t do without proper Yukon boots any longer. She’d layered on two pairs of wool socks but couldn’t feel a thing. She silently cursed Kessler, who had told her that she could pick up a pair when she got to Dawson.

Jo crouched down in the looming darkness, withdrawing from her pocket a plastic film canister that she’d liberated from the
Daily
’s ancient stash. Jo planned to experiment with the film stock over the course of the winter, documenting the slow demise of all the decaying houses collapsing into the ice.

She chiselled down into the stream until she’d captured a chunk of ice in the container. The closing lid had just made a satisfying, self-congratulatory “pop,” when she heard them coming for her. The dogs. A howl like a canine call to arms rang out across the whiteness and lengthening shadows, and was answered in kind. Dogs, or wolves. Jo sucked in her breath so deeply that the air felt like it might cut right through her lungs. She shoved the canister in a pocket and ran.

The scenery flashed by in jumpy bursts of pine and creek and fleeing sun. She could hear them gaining on her, barking their excitement. Quite close now. She fumbled clumsily for the biscuits in her pocket and threw them down. Still the dogs came. She felt her heart sink with the pale orb in the distance.

Jo could see Sally’s truck now. She knew that she should not look back, but curiosity overcame her. She glanced over her shoulder. She caught a quick glimpse of two massive, wolf-like dogs with lolling tongues and eyes the colour of a Yukon sky. Then, her right foot hit a patch of ice and she began sliding forward. She overcompensated by leaning back, and went down hard on her tailbone. Jo found herself blinking at the heavens for half a second, observing where the sun bled into cloud. She heard it coming and leapt to her feet, but it was too late. The first dog was on her, lunging and snarling.

She kicked at the crazed animal so that its bite glanced off a rubber boot, but now the second dog sank its teeth into her thigh, causing her to cry out. She pounded on the beast with a gloved fist until it released. The husky sank into an aggressive stance, tail held low and teeth bared, preparing to spring again. Jo threw down more brightly coloured bones, which sank pointlessly into the snow.

Jo managed to open the door of the Chevy and place her body most of the way into the cab before the dog attacked again in a frenzy of fang. She kicked it hard in the nose with her boot and slammed the door on its head, so that it fell away from the truck with a howl. The moment she slammed the door shut she could hear claws on the metal as the huskies threw themselves at the truck. Their heads appeared at the window, jaws wide and eyes wild. Jo started the truck with trembling hands and prayed that the engine would turn over. It didn’t.

A gunshot sounded, echoing across the white landscape. Jo forced herself to wait a moment before trying again. The engine spluttered and coughed. She was going to die in this godforsaken wilderness and be eaten by mad dogs. She wrenched the key again.

The next bullet shattered the left mirror. The next whizzed through ice and snow somewhere near the tire.
He was going to take her tires out, she realized. But the engine was rumbling. Jo knew she needed to wait for the truck to warm up, but another shot reverberated in the cold air. She hit the accelerator and threw the truck into gear with a violent spray of snow.

20

Smoke twisted and wreathed in the flickering beam of a projector. Larger-than-life images of Marlo McAdam flashed on a screen mounted over the stage at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s. Below the screen, Johnny Cariboo was seated on a wooden stool, playing a worn guitar. He was wearing street clothes: jeans and a charcoal grey Thaw-Di-Gras T-shirt. His arms, usually covered when he was working, were—Jo realized with surprise — adorned with tattoos. First Nations art, like you’d see on a totem pole, in striking reds and blacks. Eagle. Salmon. Wolf. He was painted right down to his hands. His strumming hand was tattooed with a word across the knuckles, but the motion prevented Jo from reading what it said.

He began singing the song Jo had heard on the radio in Byrne’s truck.

Light up that cigarette, fingers exposed.

It’s the first one in months, and I blame the cold.

In a frozen town. In a frozen town.

Through the undulating smoke, Marlo smiled down at the bar from the two-dimensional safety of the screen, her expression knowing. Cariboo bowed his head as he worked the strings of his instrument, also playing the heartstrings of those left behind.

Now that I’m back in town,

I don’t want me around.

Hangnails and coattails,

The snow sounds like crushed rails

And I have failed at leaving on time

In a frozen town. In a frozen town.

Wind to me, wind to me, you’re steaming away

In a century old way

I call out the names of the ghosts of this place

That have loved us, and locked us up tight

In a frozen town. In a frozen town.

And it’s tooooo cold,

It’s too cold for car thieves tonight.

And it’s tooooo cold,

It’s too cold for car thieves

And everyone’s hanging on tight

In a frozen town. Everyone is hanging on.

He cast a spell that swirled around them in the cigarette smoke and hushed conversations. Doug was right. Cariboo was good. He could have been someone, something, big—if he’d left Dawson.

Too cold for car thieves, but not too cold for murder
.
The patrons of Diamond Tooth Gertie’s, bundled in warm sweaters and toques, leaned in to one another to speak, glancing furtively at one another. A few waved their lighters against the darkness as Cariboo sang. Jo caught low snippets of conversation about Marlo and May; there seemed to be an uneasy sense of disbelief among Dawsonites. They huddled together and murmured softly about the coming storms. A collective sense of isolation and grief and anxiety permeated the room.

As Cariboo finished the song and the room filled with quiet applause, Jo moved up to the stage to get a better look at the block letters on Cariboo’s playing hand.
A L I …
She couldn’t make out the rest, but it was enough. Now she understood the reason he wore the bandages at work. With a sick feeling, Jo remembered her dig about him cutting his knuckles shaving.

When she looked up, he was watching her. Ashamed, Jo turned away, Cariboo still haunting her as she limped to the bar.

Jo had treated her thigh with rubbing alcohol and wrapped it in stretch bandages with enough gauze to stop the bleeding. She didn’t think she needed the airlift to the hospital in Whitehorse. In a way, she was relieved that there was no choice in the matter. If she couldn’t seek treatment, then she wouldn’t have to explain how she’d been bitten.

Her favourite jeans had been torn clear through and she’d had to dispose of them. Her backup pair were uncomfortably snug, particularly over the Tensor bandage and long johns, making her gait strangely stiff.